HOUSTON, Oct. 27 (UPI) -- The hunt is on for a convicted murderer after a woman's body was found in a barrel in his back yard, authorities in Houston said.
Harris County sheriff's homicide investigators went to Dennis Ray Anderson's home Thursday after receiving a Crime Stoppers tip, the Houston Chronicle reported.
They found a barrel containing an unidentified female's decaying body covered in dirt. Her legs were tied with wiring, which also was wrapped around her neck, a criminal complaint said.
Investigators estimated the victim had been dead for months.
Anderson, 64, is charged with tampering with evidence, and homicide investigators are still searching for him. He was not at the house when it was searched last week, CNN reported.
Anderson was sentenced to life in 1972 for stabbing a woman to death and drowning her granddaughter in a toilet bowl during a robbery. Anderson served nearly 17 years before being paroled. He was charged in a robbery earlier this year.
The body was discovered when an informant called Crime Stoppers Oct. 18, saying Anderson had confessed to strangling someone and placing the body in a barrel outside his house.
A man who had rented a room from him for the past two weeks told KIAH-TV, Houston, Anderson told him he had done time and said he had acted in self defense.
