SUSSEX COUNTY, Va. - Detectives are investigating after a hunter discovered a body in a trash bag in a wooded area off Route 35, on Jan. 12.
The Sussex County Sheriff's Office identified the victim as 36-year-old Kenneth Moore of Franklin.
"I loved my son very much and I want him to be at peace," Patti Bass toldWTKR.
Bass laid her only son to rest on Jan. 22.
She said Kenneth Moore was on Route 35 hitchhiking for a ride to Richmond on Jan. 12 when he was robbed.
"He had a backpack, his notebook, computer and he had a nice phone, wallet, credit cards," Bass mentioned.
A hunter, tracking a dog by transmitter, noticed a trash bag in a ditch full of water near a hunting path leading into the woods.
When the hunter opened the bag, he told officers he saw a body wrapped in trash bags.
Investigators said Moore had trauma to his head and neck, causing him to bleed out.
"Why they had to kill him? I don't know. Why did they have to kill him like that? I don't know," cried Bass.
Bass said she wanted justice for her son's gruesome death.
There was no missing person's alert for Kenneth Moore, authorities said. The case is being investigated as a homicide.
UPDATE: A previous version of this story indicated Moore was a graduate student at the University of Mary Washington. Moore had been a student at the school, but was not enrolled at the time of his death.