Human Head Found in Arizona Fuels Political Debate

A controversy is brewing in Arizona over assertions by advocates of more stringent immigration laws that drug and human traffickers have beheaded illegal immigrants as a warning to rival cartels operating along the Arizona-Mexico border. A cowboy on the Atascosa Ranch in Santa Cruz County found the skull of an undocumented immigrant on June 27, 2008, and the property's owner, J. David Lowell, recounted the grisly discovery in a letter to Gov. Brewer this month. "On that day one of our ranch hands was working horseback and discovered a human head near a trail believed to be used by drug and alien smugglers," the letter read. "Although the head was missing the lower jaw, it was immediately apparent that much of the mass and flesh of the head was still present. The cowboy searched the area in hopes of finding the remainder of the body to no avail." Lowell notified officials at the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office, who went to the ranch and took possession of the head. Dr. Bruce Parks, who serves as the chief medical examiner for Pima and Santa Cruz counties, confirmed to FoxNews.com that the head was identified through DNA testing as that of 43-year-old Francisco Fuentes Dominguez, who was not a U.S. citizen. Parks said a cause of death was not determined, but there was no evidence of decapitation. Other "badly decomposed" parts of Dominguez's body were found nearby earlier in the year, he said. Another skull, which was never identified, was found by U.S. Border Patrol agents on Sopori Ranch in Tubac, Ariz., on June 9, 2008, said Parks, adding that no evidence was found linking that skull to decapitation. Lowell's letter also recounted a total of "five shooting incidents" on his ranch in the past seven months, most recently on July 2...more