Searchers found the first leg, while scrubbing a brushy area near Christie Road in Caldwell County, Hickory Police Chief Tom Adkins said in a brief news conference Wednesday. The authorities have yet to check the serial number to confirm the first leg is 10 years old, Zahra, a native of Australia.
Searchers also returned to the family home in Hickory to find additional evidence. Police taped off the chair and brought a back hoe to dig at least two holes near the house.
Wednesday afternoon, a neighbor said he saw investigators carrying two bags of household trash and consideration of an access. With the setting sun, the authorities could be seen inside the house, looking for a bedroom.
For two weeks, police have said they believe that Zahra is dead.
The events were the latest - and perhaps most important - in a frantic search that has captured worldwide attention. The authorities have combed three counties, several homes and trailers, a dump and a rural lots used for fertilizer, while the trees in search of the remains of Zahra, leg or DNA testing.
Zahra, the deaf, used prosthetic leg from his left leg was amputated several months due to bone cancer.
Nobody has been charged in the disappearance of Zahra, but his stepmother and his father have been arrested on other charges.
Elisa Baker, 42, was charged with obstructing justice after police say she admitted writing a fake ransom note. Adam Baker, 33, was arrested this week on unrelated charges of assault and writing bad checks.
Officials would not say Wednesday whether to charge any person would be considered with the death of Zahra, in the absence of his body.
Experts say it is difficult - but not impossible - to prosecute a murder case if the victim's body not found.
Zahra was reported missing on October 9, but police said they have not found anyone besides his father and stepmother, who claim to have seen alive since 25 September.
Without a body, prosecutors often lack substantial evidence to build their case, as an autopsy, the exact cause of death, time of death and last known location of the victim.
Should be based on circumstantial evidence to show a murder has occurred and to remove any reasonable possibility that the victim is still alive.
"You're starting with a big problem," said Tad DiBiase, a former federal prosecutor in Washington, DC He received a sentence in a murder case without a body in 2006. In the present case studies at national level.
"In these cases circumstantial, you have to test a series of events that point to the defendant," said DiBiase, who has counted about 330 cases of murder without a body, in the U.S. "Only the strongest of cases go to trial."
Although the law does not require the body of a person who is found to treat a case of murder, the lack of a body makes the job harder for prosecutors.
In criminal cases, the prosecution always has the burden of proving the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The defense did not have to prove anything to win an acquittal. But Charlotte defense attorney George Laughrun said that although the burden of proof is not reversed in a murder case with a missing body, may be in the minds of the jurors.
"The argument of the prosecution is saying, 'Well, if she is not dead, where is it?" "Laughrun said. "The defense again - 'We have to prove that." But the planes did not fall from the sky, and girls do not go away. "
On Wednesday night, Adam Baker made bail and left the Catawba County Jail, where he was held in $ 7,000 bonds. Elisa Baker was still being held on bail of $ 65,000.
Searchers continued to comb the house of a baker in Hickory, although some of the dozen or more researchers began to leave early in the dark. Authorities were not saying they planned to look next, or when any person can be charged in her disappearance.
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