Bodies buried in Camden backyard ID'd by cops

Authorities have identified a young Burlington County couple whose bodies were buried in a Camden back yard last week, but the mystery of how they got there remains.

The Camden County Prosecutor's Office said that Muriah Ashley Huff, 18, of Cinnaminson, and her boyfriend, Michael Hawkins, 23, of Mount Holly, were found buried in the yard of a rowhouse on Berkley Street near Broadway Thursday night.

Huff, a senior cosmetology student at the Burlington County Institute of Technology, in Westampton, suffered blunt force trauma and was strangled. Hawkins also suffered blunt force trauma and was shot several times.

Jason Laughlin, a spokesman for the Camden County Prosecutor's Office, would not say why the couple was at the Camden rowhouse.

"We're energetically pursuing leads in this case," said Laughlin. "We have two victims who apparently suffered before they were wrongly killed."

No arrests have been made and no one answered the door at the red rowhouse yesterday afternoon. Laughlin said that the bodies were buried sometime on Feb. 23, and that investigators believe that Huff and Hawkins were killed shortly before. Camden police received a tip and found the bodies about 6 p.m. Thursday.

On Friday, the home's owner, Yehuda Klein, of Brooklyn, said that he didn't know the names of his tenants on Berkley Street but that they were in the federal subsidized-housing program formerly known as Section 8.

Klein said he had received a letter from Camden police in the past about drug dealing in the back yard of the home. A man who answered the phone at Four Corners Management, the company that manages the property for Klein, declined to comment yesterday.

On two Facebook groups that were created over the weekend for Huff, friends and family described the woman as church-going, happy and determined to become a hairstylist. According to an obituary, Huff's brother, Edward Lee Huff, died last year.

A man who answered the door at Huff's home in Cinnaminson said the family "wasn't ready" to talk. Mia Ramos, a fellow senior at BCIT, in Westampton, said Huff's closest friends wore black to school yesterday.

"She could really cheer up anyone," said Ramos, 19, of Willingboro. "She was a bright spot in the day."

Ramos said she heard that Huff may have been with Hawkins when he tried to leave a gang he was involved with.

A Burlington County woman who knew Hawkins for many years said the man never knew his parents and spent most of his life in foster care with the Division of Youth and Family Services. After he turned 18, she said, he went to jail for fighting and other offenses.

"I only heard from him when something good happened," said the woman, who asked not to be identified. "I hadn't heard from him in a year and then detectives knocked on my door Friday and said he was murdered."