Georgia · Macon, Bibb County · Missing & Alerts

Body Found in Downtown Macon, GA at 653 Second Street

People mowing found a woman's body behind hedges outside an abandoned building on Second Street on Tuesday morning. Two named newsrooms reported the case, and one of them placed it at 653 Second Street, the former Macon-Bibb County Board of Assessors Building. She had not been identified in either account.

What the two newsrooms reported

A woman's body was found behind hedges outside a building on Second Street in Macon, Georgia. 41NBC News reported that the body was found in the 600 block of Second Street, near Plum Street Lane, just after 10 a.m. Tuesday, and that it was found by men cutting grass.

13WMAZ reported the same discovery and put a street number on it: 653 Second Street, in downtown Macon. 13WMAZ reported the body was found behind hedges while people were mowing.

13WMAZ reported that the property is the former Macon-Bibb County Board of Assessors Building, that the building is abandoned, and that it is owned by the Macon-Bibb Hospital Authority.

Both newsrooms reported that Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones described the body as badly decomposed, and that the Bibb County Sheriff's Office found no signs of foul play and said the death is “possibly due to natural causes.”

41NBC News reported that Coroner Leon Jones said the body will be taken to the GBI Crime Lab for examination and to determine the person's identity. That referral is attributed in the 41NBC News account to the coroner rather than to the sheriff's office, and this page keeps it that way. 13WMAZ also reported the body is going to the GBI Crime Lab.

41NBC News reported that deputies aren't sure how long the body had been there.

13WMAZ reported that the woman is suspected to be homeless. That is a suspicion carried in one newsroom's account. It is not an identification, and nothing further on this page is built on top of it.

Those are the statements of fact this page rests on. Everything below is either an explanation of the process they describe, or a plain statement of what the record does not carry. No part of this page adds a detail to the incident itself, because there is nowhere honest to get one. This page publishes no photograph, no description of the scene beyond the words above, no theory about how a person came to be behind those hedges, and no name — neither newsroom named her, so there is none to withhold and none to guess at.

Exactly where: 653 Second Street, downtown Macon

13WMAZ put the address at 653 Second Street, in downtown Macon. 41NBC News placed the discovery in the 600 block of Second Street, near Plum Street Lane. Those two accounts do not conflict — 653 falls inside the 600 block — and the second one simply carries the number.

We publish that address rather than rounding it back down to a block. A named newsroom published it, so it is already in the public record, and holding it back on a death story would be under-reporting dressed up as restraint. The address is how a family, a neighbor or a records clerk recognizes the case they are looking for.

Macon is the seat of Bibb County, in middle Georgia. That matters for search results: there is a Second Street in a great many American cities, and a “body found on Second Street” headline circulating without a state attached is one of the easiest stories in the country to mistake for a local one. This incident is in Macon, Georgia.

The record compiled for this page contains no map coordinates, so this page publishes none — no pin, no satellite view, no street-level image, no driving route. An address is a fact a newsroom reported. A map is a directive, and this page is not sending anyone to a scene.

The building, and the authority that owns it

13WMAZ reported three things about the structure the body was found outside of, and each is worth taking on its own.

It is the former Macon-Bibb County Board of Assessors Building — the office that values property for tax purposes. The building's previous use was governmental, which is why it has a name at all rather than a street number only.

It is abandoned. This page does not go past that word: no description of its condition, no account of how long it has stood empty, no characterization of who does or does not go inside it.

It is owned by the Macon-Bibb Hospital Authority, per 13WMAZ. This is the detail most likely to be flattened by anyone rewriting the story, so here it is as sharply as we can put it: the Macon-Bibb Hospital Authority is not the Macon-Bibb County consolidated government. A hospital authority is a separate public entity with its own board, its own budget and its own property, and a records request to one is not a records request to the other. That distinction is general background from The Local Alert; the ownership itself is 13WMAZ's reporting.

So the property has passed through two distinct public hands, which is exactly what a careless summary turns into “a county building.” The Board of Assessors is the past use. The hospital authority is the reported present owner.

One boundary, stated plainly. Nothing in the record compiled for this page connects the building, its condition or its ownership to how this woman died. That a public authority owns an empty building is not, by itself, a finding about anything. It is published because it is where she was found and because a named newsroom reported it.

When: “just after 10 a.m. Tuesday”

The time in the record is just after 10 a.m. Tuesday, from 41NBC News. That is the time of discovery — the moment someone found a body and reported it. It is not a time of death, and nothing in the record compiled here offers one. No separate time appears in the 13WMAZ material compiled for this page.

Now the small honest complication. The reporting works in a weekday, not a date. The 41NBC News article carrying that line was published Aug. 11, 2026, which was a Tuesday. Reading those two together puts the discovery on Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026.

That date is ours, not the outlet's. It is a calendar operation performed on a weekday and a publication date, and we are labeling it as arithmetic rather than laundering it into a newsroom's mouth. If you are filing paperwork or making a call, use the weekday the agency uses and let the agency's own record supply the date.

Keep the two clocks separate. The discovery clock started just after 10 a.m. Tuesday. The clock on how long the body had been at that location had already been running, and 41NBC News reported deputies could not say how long.

Who found her

41NBC News reported that the body was found by men cutting grass in the area, behind hedges. 13WMAZ reported she was found while people were mowing. Those are two descriptions of one discovery, and they agree.

Neither account names anyone, says who employed them, or says how many of them there were, and this page is not going to invent any of it. People who stumble onto a death while doing ordinary work are witnesses, not characters. What the record establishes is that grounds workers found her, and that is what is printed.

What the coroner said, and how we are handling it

Both 41NBC News and 13WMAZ reported that Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones described the body as badly decomposed. It appears once in each account and once on this page. It is here because it is the single most consequential fact in the whole record — not because it is vivid. Here is what those two words actually drive, in order:

• It is why there is no name. Visual identification, the fastest route in most death investigations, may not be available. 41NBC News reported the coroner said the body will go to the GBI Crime Lab in part to determine the person's identity.
• It is why nobody can date the interval. 41NBC News reported deputies aren't sure how long the body had been there.
• It is why a cause of death will not be announced quickly. An examination takes longer, and answers fewer questions, when time has passed.
• It says nothing about how the person died. Decomposition is a function of time and conditions. It is not evidence of violence and it is not evidence against it.

No further description of the body or of the scene appears anywhere on this page — not in the fact card, not in the FAQ, not in the schema a search engine reads. A family looking for someone may find this page by searching a street name, and there is a version of this article that would hand them an image they cannot unsee in exchange for nothing.

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“Suspected to be homeless”: what that is and is not

13WMAZ reported that the woman is suspected to be homeless. That sentence needs both a defense and a fence around it.

Why it is published. A named newsroom published it, and this site does not quietly drop facts a newsroom put in front of the public. It also bears on the one question every reader of this page has: when will she have a name back. A person without a fixed address may go a long time before anyone files a missing-person report, and may have no recent photograph or dental record anybody can find. Identification is a matching problem, and that suspicion describes a case with fewer things to match against.

What it is not. It is a suspicion, in one account, attributed to no named official in the record compiled here. It is not a finding, not an identification and not a status anyone has confirmed. It does not explain how she died. It does not mean she had no family, and it certainly does not mean nobody is looking for her — families search for people who are unhoused for years.

And what this page will not do with it. There is no description of her and no speculation about how she came to be behind those hedges. If she is identified, someone will recognize a name, not a circumstance. Until then, the honest thing is to print what a newsroom reported, mark it as a suspicion, and stop.

“Possibly due to natural causes” is not a ruling

Both 41NBC News and 13WMAZ reported that no signs of foul play were found and that the death is “possibly due to natural causes.” Each account attributes that to the Bibb County Sheriff's Office.

Read the sentence the way it was written, because the whole meaning is in two words most people skim past.

“Possibly” is doing work. It is the difference between an early impression formed at a scene and a determination made after an examination. An investigator standing outside on a Tuesday morning can say what they are not seeing; that is not a certified finding, and the sentence does not pretend it is.

“No signs of foul play were found” is narrower than it sounds too. It describes the result of a look, at one moment, at one scene, by one office. It is not a conclusion that nothing happened, and it is not a finding that anything did.

What that phrase absolutely is not is a cause of death or a manner of death. Those are formal determinations, they are made after an examination rather than at a scene, and the record compiled for this page contains neither. If you encounter this story reposted with a confident cause attached, check which named office is said to have determined it. In the record compiled here, none has.

This is a fact two newsrooms carried the same way. That makes the wording more reliable. It does not upgrade the assessment into a ruling, and nothing on this page treats it as one.

A death investigation is not a homicide investigation

This distinction is the one most often lost when a story like this is rewritten by people who were not at the scene.

A death investigation begins whenever a person is found dead in circumstances that are sudden, unexpected, unattended or unexplained. That is a routine, statutory function in Georgia, and it starts automatically. It is not an accusation and it does not imply a crime.

A homicide investigation begins when an agency says one has. It is a specific characterization by a specific office, and it is reportable only when a named agency makes it.

In the record compiled for this page, both newsrooms reported the Bibb County Sheriff's Office found no signs of foul play and described the death as possibly due to natural causes. Nothing in either account uses the word homicide, describes a suspect, describes a search for anyone, or describes a charge. The description of how death investigations work above is background from The Local Alert, not something either newsroom reported.

Where our sources differ

Two named newsrooms covered this death, and the table below sets them side by side, point by point: what each one established, where they overlap, and where only one of them carries a fact. There is no contradiction between them in the record compiled here — only a difference in how much each carries.

Read the fourth column and the shape of this story is visible at a glance: the two accounts agree everywhere they touch, and one went further on the place and on the person. That is why a page that stops at the first article it finds ends up thinner than the public record it claims to summarize.

Four public entities, four different jobs

The record names four public entities. Blurring them is how a page ends up attributing a coroner's statement to a sheriff, a lab result to an investigator, or a hospital authority's property to a county government. The division of labor below is background from The Local Alert, not reporting.

Two distinctions are worth stating flatly. A county sheriff's office and a city or consolidated police department are different agencies with different case files and different records custodians. And the GBI is a state agency whose crime lab performing an examination is not the same thing as the GBI taking over an investigation.

What a Georgia coroner actually does

General background, from The Local Alert, on the office that appears in this record.

In Georgia, the coroner is an elected county official, chosen by the voters of that county the way a sheriff is. It is not a medical licensure. Georgia coroners are trained and certified for death investigation, and the job is to investigate and certify deaths that fall into certain categories.

Georgia's Death Investigation Act (O.C.G.A. § 45-16-20 et seq.) sets out when a coroner or medical examiner must be brought in: deaths that are sudden, violent, unexplained, unattended by a physician or otherwise suspicious — the category a person found outdoors falls into regardless of what caused the death.

What a coroner does in practice looks roughly like this:

• Takes legal custody of the body. Until the coroner releases it, the body is not the property of a hospital, a funeral home or a family.
• Investigates the circumstances of the death, alongside — not instead of — the agency handling the scene.
• Orders an autopsy when one is warranted, which is how a county case reaches a state laboratory.
• Certifies the cause and manner of death, the entries that appear on a death certificate.
• Notifies next of kin, once there is a next of kin to notify.

That is why the GBI referral here is attributed to the coroner rather than to the sheriff's office. Sending a case to the state laboratory is a coroner's decision, and 41NBC News reported it in exactly those terms: Coroner Leon Jones said the body will be taken to the GBI Crime Lab.

Notification governs the pace of a case like this. A coroner cannot notify a family until there is an identification, and there is none yet in the record compiled for this page.

Coroner, medical examiner, crime lab: not the same thing

Television has flattened three distinct offices into one character, and it causes real confusion for families making phone calls. Background from The Local Alert.

A coroner is an elected county officer, as described above. A medical examiner is a physician — usually a forensic pathologist — who performs autopsies. A handful of Georgia jurisdictions run their own medical examiner offices; most counties do not, and their coroners send cases to the state. The GBI Crime Lab is that state system, run by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and it handles the disciplines a county cannot: forensic pathology, toxicology, DNA, latent prints, firearms.

So an ordinary Georgia county case runs: an agency works the scene, a coroner takes custody, the coroner sends the case to the state lab, the lab examines, and the coroner certifies. Both newsrooms reported the body is going to the GBI Crime Lab — the third step.

The practical consequence: these offices do not share a phone number, a records desk or a timeline. A question about the investigation goes to the sheriff's office. A question about custody of the body, identification or a death certificate goes to the coroner. A laboratory does not brief the public on individual cases.

General process only. This is how a Georgia county death case ordinarily moves — it is not a timeline of the Second Street case, and no step here should be read as something that has already happened. The single step the record places in this case is the examination at the GBI Crime Lab, reported by both newsrooms.

How an unidentified person gets a name back

41NBC News reported that Coroner Leon Jones said the body will be taken to the GBI Crime Lab for examination and to determine the person's identity. That describes the beginning of a process, not the end of one. What follows is general background from The Local Alert.

Identification proceeds by whichever method the condition of the remains allows, roughly in order of speed:

• Personal effects and circumstance. Fast, never sufficient alone. A wallet is a lead, not an identification.
• Fingerprints. Where prints can be recovered and the person has prints on file, the quickest formal method — sometimes same-day.
• Dental comparison. Requires knowing roughly who the person might be, because there must be an antemortem record to compare against.
• Medical evidence in the body itself — surgical hardware carrying serial numbers, healed fractures, implants with traceable identifiers.
• DNA comparison. The most durable method and the slowest. It needs a reference: a relative's sample, or a database entry.

Every one of those except the first depends on having a candidate to compare against. Identification is usually a matching problem, not a discovery problem — which is why missing-person reports matter so much, and why the tip line published by 41NBC News is not a formality.

It is also why the 13WMAZ line about her circumstances matters procedurally. If a person has been unhoused, the ordinary sources of a comparison may be thinner or older. That does not make identification impossible. It makes it slower, and it makes a call from someone who knew her more valuable than usual.

There is also a national system for exactly this situation — NamUs, described in the missing-persons section below. How long any of this takes in this case is not something this page can tell you, and the record compiled here does not address it.

Why next of kin come before the public

The question that arrives with every unidentified-person story is a version of “why won't they just say who it is.” The answer is not secrecy. Background from The Local Alert.

An identification has to be confirmed before it is announced. A preliminary belief about who someone is can be wrong, and the cost is that the wrong family is told their person is dead while the right family is not told at all.

Next of kin are notified in person wherever possible. Nobody in that role wants a family to learn it from a phone alert, a comment section or a page like this one. That courtesy is the whole reason for the gap between an identification and a public release — a gap that only starts once the identification exists.

Sometimes there is no next of kin to find, and an office may hold a name while it looks for someone to tell. That is common and it is not sinister. One practical note: the office that will contact you is the coroner or the investigating agency, not a newsroom and not this site.

“How long had it been there” is its own question

41NBC News reported that deputies aren't sure how long the body had been there, and no interval appears in the 13WMAZ material compiled for this page. That is a hard question, not a lazy answer.

Estimating a postmortem interval is one of the least precise things forensic science does, and it gets less precise as time passes. Early on the estimate can be tight. After a longer period outdoors it widens into a range measured in weeks or seasons, and the variables — temperature, shelter, moisture, exposure — are the ones nobody was recording at the time.

So an interval estimate may never be announced as a number. It may be given to a family as a range, or held inside a case file, or never resolved to anyone's satisfaction. An office declining to give one is not an office hiding one.

Second, discovery date and death date are not the same fact. The record here has the discovery: just after 10 a.m. Tuesday, per 41NBC News. It has nothing at all on the other. Anyone who treats the discovery date as the date of death is inventing a fact, and this page does not.

What we don't know yet

Nothing above is filled in by inference. This page records what two newsrooms had established at the time it was written. It does not update itself as the case moves. For the current status, contact the offices named above.

If someone you know is missing in middle Georgia

General information from The Local Alert. It does not connect this case to any missing-person report, and nothing in the record compiled for this page does either. It is here because people arrive at pages like this one while searching for someone.

There is no waiting period to report an adult missing in Georgia. The idea that you must wait 24 or 48 hours is a myth that costs people time. Report it when you believe something is wrong.

Report to the agency where the person went missing, not where they live, if the two differ. In an unincorporated part of a county that is generally the sheriff's office; inside a city it is generally the city or consolidated police department. If you pick wrong, the agency will route you.

Georgia has a statewide alert for a missing adult with a cognitive impairment or disability, a Mattie's Call, issued through law enforcement rather than requested by a family. Ask whether the case qualifies.

Ask that the report be entered into NCIC, the national law enforcement database, and ask for the case number. A report on paper but not in the national system will not match against an unidentified person found in another jurisdiction. For a long-term case, ask about NamUs, the federally funded database where coroners, law enforcement and families enter missing-person and unidentified-remains records so they can be cross-matched across state lines.

Bring the unglamorous material. A recent photograph, a physical description, dental provider, medical conditions, surgical history and hardware, tattoos and scars, phone number and carrier, vehicle and tag. Ask what is needed for a DNA reference sample from a relative. Those are the things that turn an unidentified person back into a named one.

If your question is specifically about this case, the numbers 41NBC News published are the Bibb County Sheriff's Office at (478) 751-7500 and Macon Regional Crimestoppers at 1-877-68-CRIME.

Records: which office holds what

The Bibb County Sheriff's Office is named in this record as the investigating agency, so an incident-report request goes to that office under the Georgia Open Records Act (O.C.G.A. § 50-18-70 et seq.). The Bibb County Coroner holds a separate file, and the state laboratory holds a third. Three custodians, three requests, three clocks.

A fourth custodian exists on the property side. 13WMAZ reported the Macon-Bibb Hospital Authority owns the building, and a public authority keeps its own records separately from a county government. A request sent to Macon-Bibb County about an authority's property goes to the wrong desk.

Attention: The Local Alert is not publishing a mailing address, an email address, a fee schedule or a records-desk phone number for any of those offices, because the record compiled for this page establishes none of them. A wrong address costs a family a week, and a plausible-looking guess is worse than an admission. The only phone numbers on this page are the two 41NBC News published, and they are tip lines, not records desks.

Four things worth knowing before anyone files.

Records of a pending investigation are routinely withheld. The Open Records Act carries an exemption for records of a pending investigation or prosecution (O.C.G.A. § 50-18-72), and agencies apply it while a case is open. Expect that answer. It is not personal and it is not a signal about the case.

An initial incident report is often released even when the file is not. The front-page report is a different thing from the investigative file, and asking specifically for it is often the difference between a denial and a document.

The autopsy report and the death certificate are not police records. They come from the coroner's side of the case, on the coroner's timeline, and a request to a sheriff's office will not produce them.

Next of kin have standing that the public does not, and it is worth saying so plainly when you call.

If you are the family reading this: answers arrive slowly, in fragments, from offices that will not call to explain themselves. The Local Alert is not a law firm and not a law enforcement agency.

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Frequently asked questions

What happened in downtown Macon, Georgia?
41NBC News reported that the body of an unidentified woman was found behind hedges in the 600 block of Second Street, near Plum Street Lane, in Macon, just after 10 a.m. Tuesday, by men cutting grass in the area. 13WMAZ reported the same discovery at 653 Second Street in downtown Macon, outside an abandoned building, found while people were mowing. Both newsrooms reported that Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones described the body as badly decomposed and that the Bibb County Sheriff's Office found no signs of foul play.

Where exactly was the body found in Macon?
13WMAZ put the address at 653 Second Street in downtown Macon, outside an abandoned building. 41NBC News placed the discovery in the 600 block of Second Street, near Plum Street Lane. Those two accounts agree: 653 falls inside the 600 block. Both reported the body was behind hedges. No map coordinates appear in the record compiled for this page, so this page publishes no pin and no driving route.

What building is at 653 Second Street, and who owns it?
13WMAZ reported that the property is the former Macon-Bibb County Board of Assessors Building, that it is abandoned, and that it is owned by the Macon-Bibb Hospital Authority. The hospital authority is a separate public entity from the Macon-Bibb County consolidated government, and the two should not be collapsed into the word county. Nothing in the record compiled for this page connects the building, its condition or its ownership to how the woman died.

Who was the woman found in downtown Macon?
She has not been identified in the record compiled for this page, and neither newsroom named her. 41NBC News reported that Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones said the body will be taken to the GBI Crime Lab for examination and to determine the person's identity. No name, age or physical description appears in that record, so none is published here.

Was the woman homeless?
13WMAZ reported that the woman is suspected to be homeless. That is a suspicion recorded in one newsroom's account, not a finding and not an identification, and this page treats it that way. It is published because a named newsroom published it and because it bears directly on how long identification can take. It says nothing about how she died and nothing about who she was.

When was the body found?
Just after 10 a.m. Tuesday, according to 41NBC News. The article carrying that line was published Aug. 11, 2026, which was a Tuesday, so the discovery falls on Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026. That date is arithmetic by The Local Alert rather than a date either outlet printed. No separate time appears in the 13WMAZ material compiled for this page.

Who found the body?
Men who were cutting grass in the area, according to 41NBC News. 13WMAZ reported the body was found while people were mowing. Those are two descriptions of the same discovery. The record compiled for this page does not name them, give their number or say who they were working for, and this page does not fill in any of that.

Is this a homicide investigation?
No agency in the record compiled for this page has called it one. 41NBC News and 13WMAZ both reported that no signs of foul play were found and that the death is possibly due to natural causes, an assessment attributed in each account to the Bibb County Sheriff's Office. A death investigation begins whenever a person is found dead in sudden, unexplained or unattended circumstances, and it is not the same thing as a homicide investigation.

What did the coroner say about the body?
Both 41NBC News and 13WMAZ reported that Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones described the body as badly decomposed. That is the only description of the body in the record compiled for this page, and this page publishes nothing beyond it. Decomposition reflects time and conditions; it is not evidence of violence and it is not evidence against it.

Which agency is investigating the Second Street death?
The Bibb County Sheriff's Office, according to both 41NBC News and 13WMAZ. 41NBC News reported that deputies aren't sure how long the body had been there. Two other agencies are named in that record: the office of Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones, and the GBI Crime Lab, where 41NBC News reported the coroner said the body will be taken for examination. A sheriff's office, a coroner and a state crime lab are three separate offices with three separate jobs.

What will the GBI Crime Lab do?
41NBC News reported that Coroner Leon Jones said the body will be taken to the GBI Crime Lab for examination and to determine the person's identity, and 13WMAZ also reported the body is going to the GBI Crime Lab. As general background, the GBI Crime Lab is Georgia's state forensic laboratory system, used by county coroners that have no facility of their own. A laboratory examining a case is not the same thing as the GBI taking over an investigation, and nothing in the record compiled here says it has.

How long had the body been at that location?
Undetermined. 41NBC News reported that deputies aren't sure how long the body had been there, and no interval appears in the 13WMAZ material compiled for this page. Estimating that interval is one of the least precise things forensic science does, and it becomes less precise as time passes, so it may be given as a range or never announced publicly at all.

When will the woman's name be released?
The record compiled for this page gives no date. As general background, a name is ordinarily released only after an identification is confirmed and next of kin have been notified, and notification is done in person wherever possible. Sometimes there is no next of kin to find, which lengthens the wait. An office holding a name back is following that sequence, not withholding information from the public.

How do I report information about this case?
41NBC News published two numbers: the Bibb County Sheriff's Office at (478) 751-7500, and Macon Regional Crimestoppers at 1-877-68-CRIME. Those are tip lines. If you believe this case may involve someone you are looking for, calling the sheriff's office is the correct step, because identification usually depends on having a candidate to compare against.

How do I get a report about this from Bibb County?
The Bibb County Sheriff's Office is named in this record as the investigating agency, so an incident-report request goes there under the Georgia Open Records Act. The coroner holds a separate file, including the material a family would need for a death certificate or an autopsy report. The Local Alert is not publishing a records-desk address, email or fee schedule for either office, because the record compiled for this page establishes none, and a wrong address costs a grieving family a week. Records of a pending investigation are routinely withheld while a case is open.

What should I do if someone I know is missing in middle Georgia?
There is no waiting period to report an adult missing in Georgia, and the belief that you must wait 24 or 48 hours is a myth. Report it to the agency covering the place the person went missing, ask that the report be entered into NCIC, and ask for the case number. For a longer-term case, ask about NamUs, the national database that matches missing-person records against unidentified-remains records. Bring a recent photograph, medical and dental information, surgical history, tattoos and scars, and ask what is needed for a DNA reference sample from a relative.