The airport employee who discovered a woman’s body in the baggage carousel at Chicago O’Hare Airport told police that he didn’t immediately make sense of the gruesome scene that greeted him when he started his shift on August 8.
Missionary Virginia Vinton was found dead shortly before 7:30 a.m. last Thursday. According to initial reports, she had become “caught” in one of the airport’s baggage conveyor belts.
Now DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal the horrifying truth about the 57-year-old mother of two’s bizarre death and explain why authorities in Cook County, Illinois, ruled it a suicide.
According to the Chicago Police incident report obtained by DailyMail.com, Vinton was discovered by a Delta Airlines baggage handler as he began loading luggage from a recently arrived flight at baggage carousel 11.
Virginia Christine Vinton, 57, mother of two from North Carolina, with husband Jim, 59, and daughters Abby and Emily
Vinton’s death in the baggage claim area of O’Hare Airport was ruled a suicide by the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office
The report describes the ominous scene in detail, stating: “He started the conveyor belt by swiping his airport ID and using his fingerprint to initiate the operation.”
“As the belt started moving and the small gate opened, the worker noticed a woman at the entrance of the conveyor belt.”
The worker, whose name is redacted in the report, stated: “He thought to himself, ‘Why is there a woman standing in the slide watching me, maybe she’s watching me do my work.'”
Then he asked the woman, “Would you like me to turn off the conveyor belt?”
As he continued to place bags on the belt, he told the police that he had a “weird feeling” and called out to her, “Hey, are you OK?”
Only when he got closer did he notice that she was unresponsive and had an electrical cord wrapped around her neck.
Chicago Fire Department personnel arrived at the scene and were able to free Vinton. Rescue efforts, the report states, were “futile,” and she was pronounced dead by a doctor on scene at 7:55 a.m.
Vinton worked for Wycliffe Ministries in Waxhaw, North Carolina, where she lived with her husband, Jim, 59, and daughters, Abby, 23, and Emily, 21.
The reason for their stay in Chicago is unknown, but the couple stated on a website that they enjoy visiting friends in the Midwest every summer.
The Wycliffe Ministries website states that the couple lived in Mozambique in East Africa for 12 years, where they worked as missionaries and translated Bibles into local languages.
A police report obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com details the airport employee’s gruesome discovery, revealing that he found her “unresponsive with an electrical cord wrapped around her neck, possible strangulation.”
The area of the O’Hare airport terminal where Vinton’s body was discovered is considered secure, but not “highly secure.”
In 2011, Jim became a Bible translation consultant, providing final proofreading of translated Bibles before they went to print. He was recently promoted to CEO of the Seed Company, a Bible translation organization whose goal, according to the company’s website, is to change lives.
All that is known is that Vinton was sitting next to Customs Door B in Terminal 5 at O’Hare Airport in the early hours of Thursday morning.
Surveillance footage obtained by Chicago Police shows her “leaving her seat, walking to baggage carousel 11, and entering the baggage carousel at 2:26 a.m.”
She was not seen again until five hours later, when the porter made his gruesome discovery.
The Chicago Fire Department initially assumed that Vinton’s death was the result of an industrial accident.
However, as a fuller picture emerged and it was concluded that Vinton had wrapped the umbilical cord around his neck, the Cook County coroner concluded that it was suicide by asphyxiation.
Her husband Jim could not be reached for comment.
Authorities said access to the part of the airport where the woman entered was restricted to employees only. Although the area is considered safe, it is not a high-security area, ABC 7 reported.
