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ST. JOSEPH COUNTY – A body has turned up in Chicago, and police believe it’s a missing murder victim from St. Joseph County.
Late Tuesday afternoon, Chicago police called St. Joseph County homicide investigators to say a utility worker found human remains behind a building and under tires at 91st and Harper.
Detectives say they have reason to believe it’s the body of Trina Winston.
In August, 49-year-old Tarrance Lee of Mishawaka was arrested for Winston’s murder, even though police did not have Winston’s body.
Investigators say they had evidence that Lee killed Winston because she cheated on him and was leaving him.
Authorities say Winston told them Lee had abused her, but she did not want to prosecute, then later started seeing him again.
In March 2012, Lee told Winston’s father he was going to kill Winston because she left him.
Winston filed for divorce from Lee in June.
Court documents show Lee asked three friends to come to his apartment located at the Hickory Village Complex in Mishawaka because he had a body in his living room and he needed to dispose of it.
South Bend police officer Anthony Bontrager says the men went to Lee's apartment and saw Winston's body.
One of the men refused to help him and called police.
But court documents show the others helped put her body in the trunk of a car which Lee then drove somewhere outside of St. Joseph County.
This is the fourth time Lee has been accused of being involved in a murder.
Lee is a convicted killer and spent over 20 years in prison for his role in the murder of two people in South Bend in 1986.
Lee, then 22 years old, was accused and convicted of the drug-related murders of two people on Corby Boulevard in South Bend and attempted murder of a third person.
He appealed the verdicts, but his conviction was upheld in 1988.
Lee was originally sentenced to 150 years for those crimes but according to court documents obtained by WSBT Lee asked for a modification of his sentence.
Lee’s sentence was reduced to 40 years for each count to be served concurrently, instead of consecutively. That reduction allowed Lee to get out of prison in 2006 when he entered a work release program in South Bend.
Lee is being held in the St. Joseph County with no bond.