LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The scorched earth is still preserved by crime tape, days after the body of a woman was found burned in the trunk of a car.
The coroner's office identified the woman as 33-year-old Whitney McCabe. A preliminary autopsy shows she died from an assault and was likely dead when her body was found burned in the trunk of a car. The discovery last week has been difficult on her family, according to her uncle, John Weber.
"It's been really, really hard. I find myself at night just trying to think of what her last moments were like. Hoping that she went quick," Weber said,
Weber says Whitney was the mother of three children. The two oldest by now understand their mother is gone. But the adults like Weber still don't understand why or how McCabe was killed.
"It hasn't been easy," Weber said. "We only know what the detectives have told us, which is how they found her. Which isn't good. Ninety-eight percent of Whitney's life was a good life. She was a good mother, a good daughter. But the two percent overtook her. You get mixed up in some of the stuff like that and it comes back on you."
That two percent, Weber fears, is what might have led to her death. Court records obtained by WDRB News show Whitney McCabe was arrested over the summer for possession of heroin along with other misdemeanors.
She was due back in court in November.
The discovery in the alleyway near Greenwood Avenue was puzzling. It took days to identify McCabe. The family had a hunch, police found McCabe's license, and the burned car was registered to her father.
"We all think about what she went through in the last couple hours of her life," Weber said. "And that's kind of hard on everybody. And it's extremely hard on her mother and father.
Weber does not want to focus on the two percent - but the 98 percent he knew, the mother, the daughter, the niece.
"She loved her kids, she loved her family," Weber said.
Police have no arrests in the case. Anyone with information is urged to call the anonymous tipline at 574-LMPD.
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