Dead Woman With Severed Hands Identified

DENVER, Dec. 13, 2004 -- -- A woman whose naked body was found nearly two months ago with her hands cut off behind a Westminster strip mall was identified Monday as a 26-year-old Denver resident.

Westminster police said the body found Oct. 25 is that of Catrina Rene Powell, who was last seen the day before her body was found.

The break in the case came when a family member tentatively identified Powell through a composite drawing obtained from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Westminster Police Department spokesman Tim Torres said.

Positive identification was made through dental records, he said.

A trash collector found the woman's body next to a Dumpster at the rear of the Country Meadows shopping plaza. The Adams County coroner said his autopsy revealed the woman was beaten to death, dying from blunt-force trauma.

The coroner did not say if her hands, which have never been found, were cut off before or after she was killed.

Police said she was murdered and are continuing their search for the person or persons responsible. Investigators had said that they needed to identify the woman in order to continue their investigation into who may have killed her.

Joanna Gallers, a forensic psychologist, told ABC News affiliate KMGH in Denver that the way the murder was carried out tells a lot about the woman's killer.

The removal of the woman's hands shows the killer is a man and that he has great contempt for women, and that the hands were possibly kept by him as "trophies," Gallers said

"There are a number of serial killers who keep trophies and keep them where they live and that is a way of reliving the excitement of the killing," she said.

She said the killer is not stupid and is therefore very dangerous.

"To be able to orchestrate this kind of killing, he has to be sane, he has to be well-organized and fairly intelligent," she said.

Investigators have said they are not sure why the killer would have cut off her hands.

"Maybe this was a situation where it was a vengeance thing or possibly gang-related; we don't know," Torres said.