SYDNEY: A lifelike doll was briefly “mistaken” for a murder victim after it was found inside a suitcase dumped in rural Australia, police and local media said on Monday.

Two men were driving through the Australian countryside on Sunday when they stumbled across an abandoned suitcase seemingly packed with human remains.

A strike force of homicide detectives and forensic experts was set up to solve what police initially treated as a murder. But tests soon showed the suitcase was actually stuffed with a lifelike sex doll, public broadcaster ABC reported.

“They were mistaken for a human originally,” New South Wales Police Superintendent Linda Bradbury told reporters.

“They are very realistic in terms of looking like human remains.” Police said “forensic examinations” had shown it was actually a “lifelike doll”, replete with clothes, hair and a nose piercing.

Further muddying the waters was the fact the doll “also had markings that resembled bruises and grazes”, police said in a statement. “Investigations have concluded.”

Published in Dawn, August 11th, 2026