Thrift store manager: ‘I knew it was a real human skull’

The manager of the Paradise Village Market in north Fort Myers is speaking about how a human skull ended up for sale in one of their display cases.

It was priced at $4,000, and a shopper, who happened to be an anthropologist, saw it and called the Lee County Sheriff’s Office and said there was a human skull in this antique mall.

It was found in a storage unit full of animal fossils, and clearly, Beth Meyer, the manager of Paradise Vintage Market, thought nothing of putting it up for sale.

She said a guy moving away asked if she’d take the stuff in his storage unit off his hands, and she did.

The manager of the vintage store said she knew it was a human skull and decided to sell it anyway.

“We had the skull, and I decided, OK, in September, I’m going to put it out right here,” said Meyer.

She said she knew this was a human skull since she first opened the tub from the older man’s storage unit in February.

“I knew it was a real human skull,” Meyer said.

However, selling human remains is illegal in eight states, including Florida.

Florida law strictly states, “Whoever buys, sells, or has in his or her possession for the purpose of buying or selling the dead body of any human being shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of the first degree.”

As of now, who the skull belongs to is a mystery.

“I got a call from staff, ‘Beth, please come to the front.’ It was the sheriff, and he was like, ‘We got a report there’s a human skull.’ I said, ‘Yes, here is it,” Meyer said.

Meyer said the skull sat in her store for almost two months with a sign that said “human skull” before the anthropologist came in last Saturday and called LCSO, and that anthropologist knows her stuff — so much so that she told deputies that she believes the skull was that of a Native American.

Tests are now being done to determine if that is indeed the case.