A dozen friends heading to the Kentucky Derby for a bachelor party discovered a dead body en route to the Run for the Roses.
The group was headed to Churchill Downs Thursday when they stopped off in Winona, Minn., and made the grim discovery, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.
The groom and his pals had started out in the Twin Cities and stopped off in Winona to pick up a few more partygoers when they found a body in an exterior compartment of the RV they had rented.
Jake Wanek, of Minneapolis, told the newspaper the first hint of trouble came when someone opened one side of the compartment and there was a foul odor. He said when someone opened the other side he saw the body. It “didn’t look fresh. Let’s put it that way,” he said.
The body has since been identified as 22-year-old Kevin Casserly of Anoka, Minn. Casserly had been missing since November.
No information on the cause of death has been released.
A member of the group, John Kirk, told the Star Tribune that the RV’s owner had cautioned against opening the front compartments because they didn’t work.
Groom-to-be Dan Trainor, of Rochester, told the newspaper that the whole episode “was like we were in the middle of a movie.”
The friends made new plans to return to Minneapolis to watch the Derby on TV at Canterbury Park.