Family wonders why bones remain where missing man was found last year

The family of Isidro Diaz Fonseca, 28, says he was found dead in 2020 in a wooded area of Wayne County after being reported missing for two years. At that point, his body had decomposed, and it took several more months for DNA specialists to identify him.

"To this day, we don’t know how he got out here, who he was with, if he was with someone, how did he die," says the mother of his 4-year-old son, Jamie Goff. "We don’t know anything."

The wooded area where Diaz Fonseca was found has since been cleared, and things took a strange turn when the family went to set up a memorial at the site and found what they believe are human bones.

"We came out here to make a memorial for him and put up a cross. I’m walking out here, and I look down and I feel something on the bottom of my shoe. It’s a bone to his arm. We found many bones out here," Goff said.

She immediately reached out to the detective assigned to the case with the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office, but was told that he wouldn’t come out to the scene because Diaz Fonseca’s remains have already been identified. The family has many questions about what happened.

"The family doesn’t have closure," Goff said. "We just want to know what happened to him. For them not to do a thorough search and just leave the bones out here, it’s not right."

In a statement to WRAL News, a spokesperson for the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office said:

"It is my understanding that the family has found and collected some bones though no one knows if human or animal. The family did not call at the time of finding the bones. The family has been in touch with the detective and apparently a language barrier existed with the person being spoken to by the detective. The detective is planning on meeting with the family in person and discuss any concerns they have as well as collecting the items they have found."

Goff provided screenshots to WRAL News showing she did have a conversation with a detective. She also says while Diaz Fonseca’s mother and siblings are native Spanish speakers, she was the only person communicating with detectives, there shouldn’t have been a language barrier.

"I called them right away," she said. "First, I called the detective on the case. He said he was on his way, then he called me back maybe two minutes later and said that he had talked to his co-workers and said that we could pretty much do whatever we wanted with the bones [because] they already determined who the bones belong to."

The family has been carrying the remains around in a box. They returned three times this week to collect more bones.