A suspected woman's body found stuffed in a bag near Goulburn on Sunday has been confirmed by forensic officers to be a lifelike doll with hair, wearing clothing complete with a nose piercing, fake bruising and grazes.
Hume Police District officers were called to Oallen Ford Road, at 12.50pm on August 9 after two people on a weekend drive made the shocking discovery in the bushland area.
While initially treated as a homicide, the forensic medicine laboratory revealed the highly realistic remains were not human on Monday morning. Police have concluded their investigations.
Superintendent Linda Bradbury said police had only received the updated information 15 minutes before addressing the media on August 10.
"Some good news here that we don't have a suspicious death of a human on our hands," Supt Bradbury said.
"We can confirm that the remains found at Oallen Ford Road, Oallen yesterday are now identified as not being human," she said.
"They were mistaken for a human originally, they are very realistic.
Two daytrippers who had stopped for a break found the bag on the side of Wolgon Road, near Oallen Ford Road.
"The members of the public did initially think that they'd come across human remains," Supt Bradbury said.
"We had our forensic officers and police as well turn up and, of course, we don't like to disturb them too much in situ, particularly when we are facing inclement weather as we did yesterday and again today.
"The idea is not to disturb crime scenes as much as possible ... and it is due to that where we've been able to collect the remains and then take them to investigation at forensics to then determine that they are not human," she said.
Supt Bradbury said police handled the situation well.
"We followed our processes to a 'T' to a high level and I think there's no regrets at all," she said.
Supt Bradbury said the members of the public who found the bag would be informed of the outcome.
