Two women tending to a Bedford-Stuyvesant church garden came upon a decomposed head, police officials said.

On Saturday at 6 p.m., members of Brooklyn’s Mount Lebanon Baptist Church were in the garden, at Stuyvesant Avenue and MacDonough Street, when they saw a sea of flies swarming around a black plastic bag from which a stench emanated, police said. The women asked a male neighbor to open the bag. Inside was the head, law enforcement officials said.

Police said they suspect it could belong to a torso that was found Tuesday in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. According to law enforcement officials, that torso was missing a head, hands, feet, and genitalia. An anthropologist from the medical examiner’s office is working to identify the remains in both cases, according to a spokeswoman for the office, Ellen Borakove. The gender has not been determined in either case, Ms. Borakove said.

The office at Mount Lebanon Baptist Church, which is at 230 Decatur St., near the garden, was closed yesterday, but a trustee who answered the telephone, Muata Richards, said he had heard about the incident only that day.

A neighbor of the church, Darlene Coulthurst, stood in her living room last evening looking out the window at the clusters of people snapping photographs at the scene.

“I am appalled,” Ms. Coulthurst, about 50, said, adding, “Someone lost somebody. Just to think someone would do that to someone.” She has lived in the landmark district her entire life. “It was in my backyard,” she said.

Another woman who dwells nearby also expressed shock when hearing the news. “This is only a nice quiet block,” Gail Rodwell said.

A man who has resided in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area since 1948, Charles Zack Taylor, said he heard neighbors talking about the find the day it occurred as well as yesterday, but had thought it was a joke until a reporter called.

“There’s always something strange going here as well as anyplace else,” Mr. Taylor, 84, told a reporter.