The information provided below is courtesy WBIR Reporter Jim Matheny via CNN, see the video above for his report.
Knoxville police are working to identify a dead body that was found under the deck of a west Knoxville home during a child's Easter egg hunt.
Police said woman who lives on Forest View Road found a dead body under her deck while she was having an east egg hunt for her four-year-old son in the back yard.
The woman told police she had been hunting for the source of a foul odor for several days. She had looked around for what was causing it a few times, but did not see anything.
In fact, earlier this week the owner had someone mow the grass and asked them to be on the lookout for whatever might be causing the bad odor. The person who cut the lawn did not see anything either.
If you're wondering how anyone would miss something like a dead body: Look at the deck pictured in the video above and you can see how this can happen.
It's a large deck that gets very narrow and dark up where it meets the house, and the body was around 15 to 20 feet up in there from the edge of the deck, so it's not something you can easily see.
Wednesday night at around 7:19, the owner noticed the smell again during an Easter egg hunt and finally discovered the body.
Police said there were no signs the man had set up any kind of camp beneath the deck to use it as a shelter.
Medical examiners began an autopsy Thursday and hope it will provide some clues to identify the victim, because right now they don't have much to go on. Police said the dead body was beneath the deck for at least a week, maybe even a couple of weeks.
The remains were decomposed enough they couldn't get fingerprints or tell much of anything about the person other than it was a man who had on all of his clothes.
