WACO, Texas -- Waco police found a badly decomposed body in a watery gravel pit Friday and have told Patrick Dennehy's family that they believe the body is that of the missing Baylor basketball player, ESPN has learned.

An autopsy was performed Sunday morning, ESPN's John Barr reported. Because of the decomposition of the body, positive identification likely will come through DNA testing and will take at least one to three days, Barr reported.

"I think they're presuming it is Dennehy's body," Waco Police Sgt. Ryan Holt told CNN.

On Sunday evening, authorities also have recovered a human head in the same area where they found the body.

Dennehy's stepfather, Brian Brabazon, said he and his wife Valorie would remain in Albuquerque, where Dennehy's girlfriend lives, and return to Waco if the body is determined to be Dennehy. The couple left Waco on Friday after cleaning out Dennehy's apartment and meeting with police and Baylor officials.

"We still have hope that Patrick is still alive, but we want closure," Brabazon told The Associated Press.

Carlton Dotson, who played basketball for Baylor last season and had been living with Dennehy for a few months, was charged with Dennehy's murder last week in his home state of Maryland. He remains jailed without bond awaiting extradition to Texas.

Dotson, 21, gave police three locations in Waco where Dennehy's body might be found, Dennehy's family said. The body was found in one of those, about five miles southeast of Baylor.

Meanwhile, the McLennan County Sheriff's Department is continuing to search for physical evidence in the area in which the body was found. Sheriff Larry Lynch issued a short statement Saturday afternoon, saying that the body was discovered at 8:50 p.m. ET Friday and that his officers guarded the area until daybreak Saturday.

McLennan County Justice of the Peace Belinda Summers told the Dallas Morning News that the remains recovered lay in chest-high grass. According to the newspaper, the area is about a quarter-mile off FM3400, a rural road that becomes University Parks Drive -- the main thoroughfare that runs past Dennehy's apartment, the Ferrell Center, where he had hoped to play basketball, and the rest of Baylor's campus -- when it reaches Waco's city limits.

"You could tell it was a body just by the shape of it, but it was really badly decomposed," Summers told the Morning News. "It was impossible to tell if there would be any trauma."

Because of the body's advanced decomposition, Summers told the newspaper she is listing the cause of death as undetermined until her office receives the autopsy report.

Dennehy's family decided not to return to Waco from Carson City, Nev., if the body is determined to be Dennehy's, said Jessica De La Rosa, Dennehy's girlfriend.

"If that body is his -- which we understand it probably is -- it's not his anymore," De La Rosa said Sunday. "Technically, there's nothing we can do out there."

Baylor athletic director Tom Stanton said Saturday afternoon that the university felt a sense of heartbreak and tragedy after learning a body was discovered.

"We all share the family's agony over these past several weeks and the horror his friend has been charged with murder," Stanton said at a news conference at the Ferrell Center. "I can tell you that coach [Dave] Bliss feels a deep sense of sorrow and despair that something so unreasonable may have happened. Everyone in the basketball program and the university is grieving."

Dennehy, a 6-foot-10, 230-pound center, was last seen on campus June 12. His family reported him missing June 19 and his Chevy Tahoe was found in a Virginia Beach, Va., parking lot June 25 without its license plates.

Waco police said Dotson told FBI agents in Maryland he shot Dennehy after the player tried to shoot him. But after his arrest, Dotson told The Associated Press he "didn't confess to anything."

A McLennan County sheriff's department car blocked a rural dirt road leading to a pasture and gravel pits where the search centered Saturday morning. Investigators were seen combing the knee-high grass near a reservoir on the property. Two sheriff's patrol cars escorted two white vans away from the scene at midday.

Brian Brabazon and De La Rosa each confirmed that they spoke Saturday with the sheriff, who told them a body was found but they were awaiting forensics tests before confirming the identity.

Brabazon said authorities did not give him a description of the body or where it was found, but De La Rosa said the sheriff told her the body was found in water.

Barrett Lee Brandon, who lives in the rural area where the body was found, said he found what he thought was a size 12 men's yellow tennis shoe along the side of the road the last week of July. He had seen the shoe several times while driving to his father's house but stopped to pick it up one day when he realized it could belong to Dennehy. Baylor's colors are green and gold.

"I kept getting a really strong feeling about it," Brandon said Saturday.

He picked it up by the black shoestrings so he wouldn't disturb what appeared to be blood spots on the top of the shoe, he said. He took it to the Sheriff's Office, where a deputy concurred that the spatters could be blood, Brandon said.

He remembered hearing "rapid-fire gunshots" two or three weeks earlier from the direction of the gravel pits. A week or so after Brandon found the shoe, he drove into the gravel pits area and found what he thought was a leg bone, but when he called authorities they said it was an animal's and left it there.

Dotson and Dennehy arrived last summer in Waco, about 100 miles south of Fort Worth, on basketball scholarships. Baylor is the world's largest Baptist university with 14,000 students.

Dotson was a transfer from Paris Junior College in East Texas and eligible to play. Dennehy, because of NCAA eligibility rules, had to sit out a year after transferring from New Mexico.

On the basketball court, Dotson's role steadily decreased. By the end of the season, head coach Dave Bliss said he and Dotson agreed that Dotson should play elsewhere, and his scholarship was dropped.

Dotson, a 6-foot-7 junior, had been staying at Dennehy's apartment since he and his wife of eight months separated in April.

Friends of Dennehy's say he told them that he and Dotson had been threatened in the days leading up to his disappearance and that the pair obtained guns. The family of Dennehy, who grew up in the San Francisco area, also said he told coaches he feared for his life.

Bliss has repeatedly said he and his staff were not aware of any threats.

Dotson was arrested Monday after calling 911, saying he needed help because he was hearing voices. An unnamed informant told Delaware police that Dotson told someone that he shot Dennehy in the head as the two argued while shooting guns in the Waco area, according to court documents filed in the case June 23.

After his arrest, however, Dotson told The Associated Press that "he didn't confess to anything."

Information from The Associated Press was used in this article.