Purdue Body To Be Identified Tuesday

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- Authorities expect on Tuesday to identify a body that a Purdue University worker found inside a residence hall's utility room, a school spokesman said.

Purdue spokesman Phillip Fiorini said the body was removed Monday afternoon from the high-voltage utility room in Owen Hall a few hours after it was discovered.

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Slideshow: Body Found In Purdue Dorm's Utility Room

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The coed residence hall, which houses about 700 students, is near the last reported location of missing Purdue freshman Wade Steffey, 19, who vanished Jan. 13.

Fiorini said the Tippecanoe County coroner's office expects to identify the body on Tuesday. He said investigators have not said whether the body was that of either a male or a female, or released any other details.

Steffey, of Bloomington, was last seen leaving a fraternity party on the north side of campus. His parents, who were alerted to the body's discovery by Purdue officials, arrived on the West Lafayette campus Monday.

Steffey was reported missing after friends returned from the school's three-day break for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and could not find him.

Purdue spokeswoman Jeanne Norberg said the body was discovered after someone heard a "pinging" noise coming from inside the room and called the campus utility department, asking it to investigate.

"The utility worker went in and found a body in this room. It's a high-voltage area," Norberg said. "She was traumatized. It's a very difficult situation for her."

Power was cut to the residence hall while the body was removed from what she described as a transformer room filled with high-voltage connections.

She also said that the ground-level utility room is not accessible from Owen Hall and is locked with two sets of keys, one each for two sets of doors.

"The only people with the keys to that room are the people who work in our utilities area, so it would not normally be an accessible room," Norberg said. "I don't know how many people work in our utilities area, but I'm told it is a very limited number of keys that are available for the room."

Norberg said that when the building was searched for clues into Steffey's disappearance the utility room was apparently not examined because it was locked.

"Right now we don't know how this deceased individual would have gained entry. That's certainly a question we need to answer, but right now our most important concern is with this individual's family," she said.

Campus officials have staged several searches for Steffey, the most recent one on Sunday when about 60 volunteers, assisted by dogs, conducted a ground search.

Searchers also were examining more than 2,000 aerial photographs taken of the West Lafayette area, hoping to find clues about what happened to Steffey.