The body of a man found Sunday afternoon in Basehor apparently was a suspect in a Florida murder case. Police say the man committed suicide.

Basehor Police Chief Lloyd Martley said the man was 50-year-old Ricardo Castro, who police began seeking in mid-August, after his girlfriend was murdered in Orange County, Fla. Police in northeast Kansas have been on the lookout for Castro since a vehicle registered to the victim was found abandoned in a field Aug. 17 near 198th Street and Sandusky Road, just east of Tonganoxie. According to previous reports, Castro’s fingerprints were found at the murder scene.

Around 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Martley said, Daryl Potts and his two sons found the body near a pond on their property just north of State Avenue on 150th Street, about seven miles from where the car was found.

A coroner who performed an autopsy Monday determined the preliminary cause of death was suicide by hanging.

A set of keys with an attached Winn-Dixie grocery store card found on the body helped police identify Castro.

Leavenworth County sheriff’s Lt. John Schermbeck suggested a connection between the keys and the abandoned car that was still in police custody.

“He said, ‘We have a car with no keys and you have keys with no car. Maybe they’re connected,'” Martley said. “And it just so happens they were.”

Police found another Winn-Dixie card in the console of the abandoned vehicle and matched the numbers to the one on the keychain found on the body.

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation later confirmed the identity of the body as Castro through the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System database.