WICHITA, KS — A Wichita family is searching for answers after a grandmother’s body was found inside a suitcase that two people brought to a city fire station. Police identified the woman as 67-year-old Lorretta Moody, and detectives are now treating her death as a homicide.

The Wichita Police Department said it received the call on Sept. 16 after the suitcase was taken to Fire Station 22. Moody was pronounced dead at the scene, and her body was sent to the Sedgwick County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Investigators have not announced any arrests. Police said the two people who brought the suitcase to the station are being interviewed as part of the case.

Police say Moody had been reported missing before her body was found

Authorities said Moody had previously been reported missing to law enforcement, adding another layer to a case that has already shaken her relatives. Police have not publicly detailed how long she had been missing before the fire station discovery.

Because detectives are treating the case as a homicide, the focus has shifted to how Moody died and who may have been involved before the suitcase was delivered to firefighters. Police said the investigation remains active.

The department has also not released a cause of death. That kind of determination will likely depend on the medical examiner’s findings, along with interviews and other evidence gathered by investigators.

A granddaughter says the family is struggling with how Moody was found

One of Moody’s granddaughters, Lexi Shafer, told FOX Kansas that the family is having a hard time accepting both the loss and the way her grandmother was discovered. Shafer said Moody was more than a case file or a grim headline to those who loved her.

“That was our family. She wasn’t just a woman in a suitcase,” she said.

Shafer said Moody had started spending time with people who were heavily drinking and using drugs a few years ago. She said the family later learned that someone had reported Moody missing last week.

Her comments reflected a family trying to understand what happened while detectives continue sorting through the timeline.

Strange phone calls and text messages added to the family’s concerns

Shafer said that on the same day Moody’s body was found, she got a puzzling call from a man using her grandmother’s boyfriend’s phone. She tried calling the man back, hoping for useful information about Moody’s whereabouts.

“If this was your family, you would want to know. Do you have any information? I know that you hang out around my grandmother and her boyfriend,” Shafer recalled telling him. She said the man promised to call back, but never did.

The next morning, before Moody had been identified, Shafer said her fiancé received a text message warning, “If you love your wife at all you’ll call me ASAP.” Minutes later, she said, another message followed: “They have found her grandmother.”

Detectives have not announced arrests as the investigation continues

Wichita police say the case is still under investigation, and they have not announced any arrests. That leaves investigators with a narrow set of public facts: a missing woman, a suitcase delivered to a fire station, and a homicide probe that is still unfolding.

Police have said the two people who brought the suitcase to Fire Station 22 are being interviewed. Beyond that, the department has not released details about their possible roles or any connection they may have had to Moody.

For Moody’s relatives, that uncertainty is the hardest part. Shafer said the family is trying to stay patient while detectives work, even as they wait for clearer answers about what happened.

The fire station discovery left a neighborhood case with a grim and unusual ending

The case stands out not only because it is being investigated as a homicide, but because of where it ended: at a neighborhood fire station, where first responders were handed a suitcase containing a dead woman. That detail has made an already painful story even more unsettling for the family and the broader community.

Police have not said why the suitcase was brought to the station instead of to law enforcement directly, or what led up to that moment. Those unanswered questions now sit at the center of the investigation.

For the family, the need for answers remains simple and urgent. Shafer put it plainly: “Why? Why in a suitcase? Why not just call the police if something did happen? Why panic and do whatever you did?”

Local news that matters, from Dulaney Griffin.