Human Head Discoverer Posed For Photo With Find? Pictures Being Shopped to Tabloids

If you're ever involved as a witness in a homicide investigation, try not to pose with the grisly evidence for pictures.

That's just common sense. But it turns out that the story of human body parts, including a head, two hands, and two feet, found in the Hollywood Hills this week, is getting even more surreal.

Yeah, only L.A. can turn the macabre into a full-blown tabloid circus:

Turns out one of the women who found the head Tuesday posed for photos with it before authorities arrived. According to Gawker, she's smiling in at least one of the shots.

The site goes on to say that a big-time Hollywood paparazzi photo agency is peddling said photos for $5,000. The site says:

According to the agency, the images originated on the cellphone of "a guy on the trail who had a phone--the lady didn't have a phone so she asked him to borrow his."

Bad etiquette? Dog-walker Lauren Kornberg says she thought the head (believed to belong, with all the other parts, to a man in his 40s or 50s who has yet to be ID'd) was a Hollywood prop.

Gawker found only one news outlet willing to pay for the shots. We know of one other place that might want them, however:

The LAPD.

Or maybe not. LAPD Officer Rosario Herrera tells the Weekly:

It's not something that we would use if we had the actual head. We have our own SID [Scientific Investigation Division] people who would take photos of the head.

The posing, she said, wouldn't constitute a crime, either.

Just maybe bad taste.

[Update at 12:18 p.m.]: Kornberg says it wasn't her. She told Gawker that she didn't have access to a camera or camera phone and that no shots were taken of her when she made the discover.

But she said a pair of hikers with a mobile phone, who actually called 911 about the find, might have been the source of the images. "I believe they snapped the photo," she told the site:

"I had nine dogs on a leash, and they were bouncing around like crazy."

A photo agency had no comment.

[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]