Five hideous crimes that led to the Everglades.

The Everglades is a national treasure, a world like no other. But its endless miles of razor-sharp sawgrass can hide hideous secrets.

Boaters have found severed heads floating in the canals cut into the limestone. Hikers have come across corpses eaten by alligators. Park Rangers have stumbled onto decomposing cadavers, triggering investigations by the FBI.

This is a roundup of five of the most infamous South Florida crimes that started off with a body in the River of Grass.

The killing of Marissa Karp

Marissa Karp, a troubled 17-year-old from Broward, was discovered Aug. 19, 2002, by airboaters just beyond the Broward County line in Collier County. She had been shot through the chest and her corpse stuffed into a green garbage bag that was then dumped into the L-28 canal. It took investigators a month to identify her through fingerprints.

Though her death was ruled a homicide, no one has been brought to justice for her killing. Three men, part of a Bahamian drug ring, became the primary suspects in the murder of the teen after investigators learned from neighbors that the girl had cooked the three men dinner at a Hollywood apartment the evening before Karp’s body was found. The main suspect in her murder was deported to the Bahamas and himself was murdered. No one has been charged in her death, and Karp’s father continues to call for her killers to be brought to justice.

Lorraine Hatzakorzian’s demise

Many facts about the brutal murder of Lorraine Hatzakorzian remain a mystery. The severed head of the 41-year-old New Jersey woman was found floating in a canal off Alligator Alley in western Broward County. Two tree trimmers from Port Orange, New Jersey, were convicted in her slaying.

But investigators are still not sure where Paul Bryan Trucchio, 33, and Robert Mackey, 39, carried out the killing. And their motive for the slaying remains unclear. A witness who had shared a hotel room with the two men told police that they had bragged about dismembering Hatzakorzian with tree trimming equipment and depositing her body deep in the swamp. Even though the two men were ultimately convicted for the crime, the rest of Hatzakorzian’s body has never been found.

Bobby Kent’s seven murderers

A complicated web of young adult drama in South Broward County turned deadly in the 1993 murder of Bobby Kent. Kent, a high-school bully, weightlifter and surfer, became the victim when his friend group turned on him, luring him out to edge of the swamp. There, they stabbed him multiple times and beat him over the head with a baseball bat. Several of the young men and women that participated in the murder were given lengthy sentences. The crime was dramatized in the 2001 Hollywood film “Bully.”

The death of Brianne Slabaugh

Brianne Slabaugh’s death remains a mystery. Her body was found in Everglades National Park in February 2020. Its discovery led FBI agents to what they now call a murder-forhire plot — one carried out in part by Slabaugh, 26.

Slabaugh’s father says she led a troubled life of drugs and strip joints, but her spying and secrecy emerged after federal prosecutors charged a father of three — Daniel Slater, 51, of Jupiter — with hiring her and others to follow and assassinate his former girlfriend. Slabaugh’s death was ruled an accidental drug overdose, but how her body got to the swamp, and whether anyone is ultimately responsible for her demise, remains unknown.

The killing of Camilo Salazar

Camilo Salazar was kidnapped and murdered for having an affair with the wife of a supermarket impresario. Salazar turned up dead in the Everglades in 2011, with his testicles burned off and his throat slit.

Manuel Marin, the grocery chain impresario, was accused of hiring a former boxing promoter and two mixed martial artists to carry out the deed. After the murder, Marin fled to Spain. He was arrested in 2018 and returned to the United States and remains in custody pending trial.

Among the men Marin is accused of hiring to help with the gruesome killing was Alexis Vila, a former Cuban Olympic wrestler who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for his role in the slaying.