NYC Parking Tickets Pile Up on Windshield of Dusty Minivan With Dead Body Inside

NEW YORK - A man's decomposing body inside a minivan covered in parking tickets went undiscovered for weeks because the vehicle's windows were apparently tinted and ticketing officers don't normally search cars, police said Friday.

George Morales, 59, died naturally from heart disease, the medical examiner's office said Friday. The body was found in the backseat Wednesday when a city marshal tried to tow the vehicle from beneath an overpass on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, police said. He was believed to have been living out of the white Chevrolet minivan, which had North Carolina plates.

But his daughter, Jennifer Morales, 29, told the Daily News he had been living with her family in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. She said she last saw him in early May and had called police.

"The window was cracked open. I don't understand how no one noticed him. They just gave him tickets," she told the Daily News.

She said her father was a handyman who suffered from diabetes. But police do not have a missing person's report on record for Morales.

It wasn't clear exactly how many tickets were on the minivan's windshield when the body was discovered. Witnesses had reported a foul odor near the vehicle.

The Morales family plans to cremate the remains. Officials used X-rays taken of him in 2007 at Elmhurst Hospital Center to positively identify him, Jennifer Morales told the newspaper.

Body Found Near Where Prof's Jeep Was Located

BOGART, Ga. (AP) — Police dogs searching for a University of Georgia professor accused of killing his wife and two other people discovered a body Saturday near where the teacher's abandoned Jeep was found.

Police said the body was taken to a state crime lab for identification. The body was found 1.3 miles from where George Zinkhan's Jeep was located about a week after the April 25 shootings, the Athens-Clarke County Police Department said in a news release.

Authorities planned a news conference for Saturday afternoon.

Zinkhan has been on the run since police say the marketing professor opened fire on a reunion for a local theater group a short distance from the university's campus.

Authorities said they believed Zinkhan left his two young children in the car at the time of the shootings. He was last seen dropping the children off at a neighbor's house shortly after the shooting, saying there was an emergency.

At one point, more than 200 law enforcement officers scoured the forest where the Jeep was found wrecked in a ravine near Zinkhan's home, trying to locate him. His passport also was found in the Jeep.

Bulletins were issues nationwide and authorities kept watch on airports in case Zinkhan tried to flee to Amsterdam, where he has taught part-time at a university there since 2007. Federal authorities later revealed Zinkhan had an upcoming flight booked to Amsterdam, but the professor never showed up at the airport.

Zinkhan had been a professor in the university's Terry College of Business and had no disciplinary problems, school officials said. He had taught at UGA since the 1990s and was fired after the shootings.

The shooting victims were identified as Zinkhan's wife Marie Bruce, 47; Ben Teague, 63; and Tom Tanner, 40. Two others were injured by bullet fragments. Authorities said initially they had no motive for the shooting. Later the FBI said interviews with family and friends indicated Bruce may have been considering a divorce and said the shooting was likely a domestic dispute.

Zinkhan's wife, a family law attorney, had been serving as president of Town & Gown Players, the local theater group that was having the reunion at the Athens Community Theater.

Tanner was a Clemson University economist who taught at the Strom Thurmond Institute of Government and Public Affairs in Clemson, South Carolina. Tanner was playing Dr. John Watson in the group's performance of "Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure."

Teague was one of Town & Gown's longest-serving volunteers and was married to a popular University of Georgia English professor.

Bogart is a rural town about 60 miles east of Atlanta.