Los Angeles surveillance video captures man dropping large object in dumpster where headless body found
LOS ANGELES - A white SUV pulls into an Encino, California, parking lot, a man gets out and opens the trunk, and then struggles to place a large object in a dumpster — which appears to be the same dumpster where police later recovered a headless body, surveillance video provided to Fox News Digital shows.
He appears to stumble with the object, which is wrapped in plastic, and he drops it in.
An LAPD spokesman said he was not aware of the video, but that wouldn't mean investigators had not reviewed it.
The provider of the video said it had been turned over to police before police made an arrest and that a witness in the parking lot took a picture of the SUV's license plate, which was also given to police.
Police have said that evidence at the scene led them to the home of 35-year-old Sam Haskell IV, about 3.5 miles away. He is the son of a Hollywood executive and an actress beauty queen, who police arrested on suspicion of murder after a homeless man made the grim find while searching through the dumpster around 6 a.m. Wednesday.
Homicide detectives found additional evidence in the Coldstream Terrace home where he lived with his 37-year-old wife, Mei Haskell, her parents and their three children.
Surveillance cameras in a parking lot at the intersection of Rubio Avenue and Ventura Boulevard recorded the incident around 4 p.m. Tuesday, according to the source. That's the intersection where the LAPD said they found the woman's headless torso Wednesday shortly after 6 a.m.
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"You can clearly see what he’s doing in broad daylight, and he struggles to get the black bags into the dumpster," the tipster told Fox News Digital.
Mei and both of her parents, Goashan Li, 72, and Yanxiang Wang, 64, are now missing, according to the LAPD. No positive identification had been made in the body as of Friday, but investigators said they suspect it belongs to Mei Haskell.
Haskell's home is about 3.5 miles away from the dump site. Police arrested him at a mall in Canoga Park around 11:30 a.m. The couple's three children attended school Wednesday, according to authorities, but have now been placed in the care of child welfare agents.
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Police were also looking for a white Volkswagen Tiguan SUV, which was unaccounted for at the time of Sam Haskell's arrest, police said.
Her husband is being held without bond at a Los Angeles jail.
Anyone with information on the case is asked to call the LAPD at 213-486-6890.
Haskell's famous dad was a longtime A-list talent agent who represented stars like Dolly Parton and George Clooney before becoming an Emmy-winning producer. He received four Emmy nominations and a single win for teaming up with Parton on "Christmas on the Square."
He was also a longtime Miss America Organization CEO who was embroiled in a scandal after leaked emails showed him disparaging former winners.
His fall was chronicled in A&E's "Secrets of Miss America" miniseries in June, which included allegations of the elder Haskell sabotaging the career opportunities and romantic lives of pageant winners.
His son, meanwhile, used to maintain an Instagram account where he frequently posted about his Hollywood lifestyle under the hashtag #richkids.
The suspect Haskell's mother is the former beauty queen and actress Mary Donnelly Haskell, 1977's Miss Mississippi.
Fox News' Jasmine Baehr contributed to this report.