Fragments of 10 to 20 human skulls have been discovered in a burned-out house in a small town in New Mexico, raising unsettling questions about whom the bones belonged to and how the people died, investigators said this week.

Lea County Sheriff Corey Helton said the bones had been discovered this month inside a dilapidated property in Jal, which is home to about 2,200 people in the arid southeastern corner of the state, by the Texas border.

Helton said investigators had sent the fragments to a state lab for testing and potential identification, which could take up to a month. He said investigators didn’t know if the bones were ancient, if they had been purchased online, or if they could be linked to any missing persons or homicide cases.

“Everything is based on what we find out from the anthropologist,” he said.

Helton said investigators were exploring whether some of the skull pieces might be linked to the disappearance of a Jal resident, Angela McManes, 43, who was last seen in May 2019. She lived on the same street as the property.

— The New York Times