Los Angeles County deputies dug up the remains of two people on a cluttered Lancaster property and opened a homicide case two weeks after a local man vanished, with no official link confirmed.
Human remains belonging to two people were found near 50th Street East and Avenue F in Lancaster, a remote Mojave Desert city in Southern California, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department confirmed Tuesday it is treating the deaths as a homicide.
Homicide investigators said they are still in the early stages at the scene. Identities of the dead and details about how they died are being withheld to protect the integrity of the ongoing investigation.
The property was littered with debris, RVs, and what looked like the remains of an old greenhouse. Video from KTLA showed agents digging a large hole there. Witnesses reported cadaver dogs on site, along with evidence markers and a canopy set up for photographs and evidence work. Law enforcement presence was heavy.
The discovery came against the backdrop of a separate missing-person case in the same city. Ricky Allen Phillips, 61, was last seen Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026, on the 44900 block of 10th Street West in Lancaster.
The sheriff’s department classified him as an “at-risk missing person.” A department bulletin said his family was “concerned for his well-being.” Phillips is described as 5 feet, 7 inches tall and 230 pounds, with black hair and green eyes.
Authorities have not said the remains case and Phillips’s disappearance are connected. No public evidence has been offered tying him to the two bodies or to the property where the digging took place.
Sheriff’s officials put it plainly: “Based on the circumstances surrounding the discovery, the case is now being investigated as a homicide.”
They added that homicide investigators “are in the early stages of investigating the scene.” That is the full public picture so far, two dead, a dig underway in the desert, and a missing man whose fate has not been officially tied to either body.
Cause and manner of death have not been released. Ownership or occupancy of the property near 50th Street East and Avenue F has not been detailed in public statements. The absolute calendar date of the find beyond the department’s Tuesday confirmation has not been pinned down in the available account.
For now, Lancaster has a double homicide investigation on a debris-strewn desert lot and an at-risk missing-person case still open a short drive away. Residents, taxpayers, and the family waiting on Phillips deserve clear answers, names, timelines, and whether these tracks ever meet, from a department that has so far kept the hardest facts under wraps while the digging continues.
