Infant skeletons wrapped in 1930s newspapers found in Los Angeles apartment basement trunk

Infant skeletons found in Calif. basement trunk

LOS ANGELES — A property manager who found two infant skeletons in a Los Angeles apartment basement says she was panicked after unwrapping a bundle of old newspapers and finding the remains inside.

Gloria Gomez says she and her friend found the skeletons Tuesday after forcing the lock on a 4-foot tall, unclaimed steamer trunk in the basement of a 1924 building.

Gomez says the trunk was labeled with the name “Jean M. Barrie” and contained several papers inside with her name on it.

She says the babies were wrapped in white sheets and 1930s copies of the Los Angeles Times. She says one set of remains appeared to be a newborn and the other looked like an embryo.

Gomez says she called 911 after finding the bodies.

The coroner’s office is investigating.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Two infant skeletons wrapped in 1930s newspapers and placed in doctor’s bags have been found inside a trunk by workers cleaning out the basement of a 1920s Los Angeles building that’s being converted to condominiums, police said.

The skeletons, believed to be decades-old remains of fetuses or infants, were discovered late Tuesday in a trunk also containing personal letters and ticket stubs from the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games.

Police are awaiting results from the coroner’s office and have promised their own investigation.

“We’ll put detectives on this case for the long term,” police Chief Charlie Beck told the Los Angeles Times. “We’ll try to reconstruct the circumstances based on what the coroner tells us, based on the history of the residence and based on science. We have many more tools and technology available to us than before, which may allow for identification of the victims and closure to any family members.”

The remains were found in the four-story brick building near MacArthur Park, just a few miles west of downtown Los Angeles. One skeleton was wrapped in a 1933 issue of the Los Angeles Times and the other was in a 1935 issue of the newspaper.

Coroner’s officials will try to determine how the babies died, check missing children reports and try to find relatives and neighbors who might know what happened.

According to the property manager’s website, the Glen-Donald building has been used in a national DirecTV commercial, for the television show “Quarter Life” and a small, independent film project.

The building’s interior has solid mahogany woodwork throughout, a grand style lobby and a ballroom in the basement, along with storage, and two period elevators that serve the building, another website said.

The building is being converted from a co-op building to one with condos. There were 94 units when it was a co-op.