Cape Elizabeth police recovered the remains of a badly decomposed body Tuesday night from Cliff House Beach, a town-owned beach at the end of Sea View Avenue.
Police Chief Neil Williams said a person walking on the beach spotted an object that looked suspicious and notified police around 7:45 p.m.
Investigators determined that it was a body of a white Caucasian, but Williams said it was so badly decomposed that police do not know if it was a man or woman.
Williams said Cape Elizabeth and South Portland do not have any active missing person cases. Portland does have a couple of unsolved missing person cases.
But Williams said police really don’t know much yet.
“This case is really in its infancy stages. It’s so fresh that we don’t know what happened,” Williams said.
Cape Elizabeth police notified Maine State Police about the discovery. The two agencies will work together to try to determine who the person is.
The body was scheduled to be taken to the state Medical Examiner’s Office in Augusta, where it will undergo an autopsy. Williams was not sure when the autopsy would be done.
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