Longboat Key police tight-lipped about mysterious sauna death

LONGBOAT KEY (FOX 13) - A woman was found dead in a sauna at a Longboat Key spa and police believe she may have been killed.

Longboat Key police say they are treating the investigation as a homicide, but it's still unclear if the woman killed herself or if someone else did.

Officials have given very limited information about what they've found since someone called to report an injury at the spa. The 54-year-old woman police found has not been publicly identified.

“We are working this as if it were, in fact, a homicide until we know differently,” said Longboat Key Police Chief Pete Cumming.

Cumming says a member of the Longboat Key Club found the woman inside a sauna at the community's clubhouse. The body was taken to the medical examiner's office.

Police say they know what killed the woman, but it’s the how they still need to figure out.

“The autopsy was performed the following day at the medical examiner's office and his conclusion is inconclusive at this point,” Cumming said. “Toxicology, DNA, everything is out at the lab right now. When that comes back it will assist me in making a determination.”

Cumming says the department is working with the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office to piece it all together. In the past 17 years, he says the town has only had three confirmed homicides.

Two of those happened last summer when a masked man shot and killed two employees at a resort.

Police don’t think there is any threat to the public.