Human Skull Found in Florida Thrift Store

Halloween just passed so there was no shortage of crazy decorations everywhere. You’d expect to find skeletons, witches and web, but one Florida thrifter found more than just a decoration. One shopper found a human skull in a thrift store in Florida, according to officials. 

An anthropologist was browsing a Fort Myers thrift store when they noticed something odd on display. It’s not unusual to find a skull on display around Halloween, but this turned out to be a real human skull. It was not just a fancy replica and was sitting on the shelf to be sold as a decoration. The anthropologist notified the Lee County’s sheriff's office.

Detectives responded to the thrift store located on North Cleveland Avenue to investigate and recovered the skull. When officers arrived at the scene, the store owner had said that they had found the skull in a storage unit they purchased a few years prior and put it on sale. 

The Lee County Sheriff’s Office said, “The Lee County Sheriff’s Office will work in conjunction with the District 21 Medical Examiner’s Office to facilitate further testing of the skull”. According to authorities, they do not believe the skull to be suspicious in nature, but they are still investigating.

The Lee County Sheriff’s Office and the District 21 Medical Examiner's Office will be working together to take action and further test the skull.

There have actually been a few instances just like this one over the years. In September 2023, a Goodwill store employee found a skull while going through donations. This store was located in Arizona. According to reports, they deemed it to be a real human skull. Officials said they did not believe the skull to be associated with any crime.

In 2014, police say a human skull was donated to a thrift store in Austin, Texas. The Goodwill staff recovered the skull and it was said that three other skulls had been donated to Goodwill stores that summer.

What would you do if you found a human skull in a thrift store?

We know how ominous "The most dangerous cities in Florida" sounds, but we think it's important to know. The good news is out of a list of 100 dangerous cities in the U.S., only 5 in Florida made the list. Of those 5 cities, none of them cracked the top 50 in this updated study. A lot of people probably assume big metros like Miami, Tampa and Orlando made the list, but nope!

We got this information from Neighborhood Scout. Their analysis includes crimes reported by all agencies. They studied cities with 25,000 or more people, based on the number of violent crimes per 1,000 residents. Data used for this research are:

Florida is known for some of the country's most bizarre crimes. And while all of them may be dangerous, they may not qualify as "violent." Driving a golf cart naked down I75, assault with food, and similar "Florida Man" crimes don't fall into the FBI category.

If you want to see how other cities rank, click here for the full study.