A Duval County jury needed just 15 minutes to convict Reginald House of murdering Philip Curtiss, a 44-year-old man who vanished from a Jacksonville property in November 2022 and whose remains were later found buried in a field. The case began as a routine missing-person report and ended nearly four years later with a guilty verdict on charges of murder and abuse of a dead human body.
Curtiss had not been seen for several weeks when officers first learned he was missing in November 2022, according to News4JAX. At the time, Curtiss was living in a boat on a property on Starratt Road in Jacksonville's Oceanway area, the station reported. A witness later told police she had heard that Curtiss was shot and killed and that his body had been dragged into the woods behind the Starratt Road property, according to the same report.
Cold Case Detectives Take Over
The initial missing-persons investigation stalled until May 2023, when detectives transferred the case to the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit based on information gathered by missing-persons investigators, per Action News Jax. Around that same time, House was arrested on unrelated charges of attempted murder and was questioned again about Curtiss's disappearance, the station's report notes. Detectives also executed a search warrant at a residence in the 1700 block of Starratt Road as the investigation progressed.
It was only after detectives questioned House for a third time that investigators went to a vacant lot and found Curtiss's remains, according to the same account. On November 13, 2023, House — who was already incarcerated at the Pre-trial Detention Facility on the unrelated attempted-murder charges — was arrested on charges of murder and abuse of a dead human body, Action News Jax reported.
Remains Found Buried in a Trash Bag
Curtiss's remains were located buried in a field in the 200 block of Elm Street in Jacksonville's Brooklyn neighborhood, inside a trash bag, according to the same Action News Jax report and corroborated by News4JAX's account of the Brooklyn-neighborhood discovery. The Medical Examiner's Office identified the remains as those of the missing 44-year-old. Under Florida law, abuse of a dead human body is a second-degree felony, according to Florida Statute 872.06, which covers anyone who mutilates, sexually abuses, or otherwise grossly abuses a body.
A lower-confidence report attributed to investigators indicated that House had previously confessed to killing Curtiss, burning his body, and burying the remains, according to a First Coast News report on the case. That same outlet reported that House was ultimately convicted in the 2022 murder of Curtiss, though the available details of the trial itself — including the proceedings and evidence presented to jurors — were not independently confirmed.
A Case Years in the Making
The arc of the investigation — from a missing-person report filed in November 2022, to a cold-case transfer in May 2023, to an arrest later that same year — reflects how long it can take for a disappearance to be definitively tied to a homicide. What started with detectives simply trying to locate a man who had stopped showing up ended with a jury returning a guilty verdict in a fraction of an hour.
The case remains notable for how it unfolded: a man living on a boat, a tip about a body dragged into nearby woods, and ultimately a discovery in a trash bag buried in a city field far from where Curtiss was last known to live. For investigators, the break reportedly came only after repeated questioning of House while he sat in custody on other charges, underscoring how incremental the path to answers can be in cases that start cold.
