CONCORD, NH – On Friday the NH Attorney General’s office released the following update explaining the connection between the discovery of two bodies found in two separate locations in September, first, the body of a female located at a transfer station in Belmont, and 12 days later, the body of a man found at a solid waste station in Maine.
On September 9 Belmont Police Department responded to a waste transfer station where the deceased body of Jessica Lurvey 28, had been found, removed and separated from a delivery of Dumpster contents.
Twelve days later, the deceased body of Matthew Schofield, 29, was found at a solid waste facility in Lewiston, Maine. The facility in Maine where Mr. Schofield’s body was found was a facility at which waste would continue on for processing from the Belmont transfer facility.
New Hampshire’s Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Mitchell Weinberg has concluded that Ms. Lurvey died as a result of crush injuries, and her manner of death has been ruled accidental, to wit, crushed by a trash compactor while intoxicated by fentanyl. According to the Maine Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Mr. Schofield’s death has been ruled accidental. His cause of death is undetermined, either acute polysubstance intoxication or crush injury.
Based on the investigation conducted into the deaths of Ms. Lurvey and Mr. Schofield, who were involved in a prior romantic relationship, it appears that on the evening of September 8, during a heavy rainstorm, the two sought shelter from the inclement weather in a large trash or recycling bin, which was mechanically picked up by and loaded into a compacting waste removal vehicle. The contents of the vehicle, including the bodies of Ms. Lurvey and Mr. Schofield, were then brought to the waste facility in Belmont. There, Ms. Lurvey’s body was discovered during the waste sorting process. Mr. Schofield’s body was not discovered at the Belmont facility but was further transferred with waste products to the facility in Maine where his body was subsequently discovered. Ms. Lurvey and Mr. Schofield were intoxicated by drugs at the time of their deaths, a circumstance that likely factored into their accidental deaths.