What Killed Babies Whose Skeletons Were Found in Steamer Trunk Will Remain an Unsolved Mystery

Property manager Gloria Gomez points to the instruction booklet of a steamer trunk Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2010 in Los Angeles. Gomez and the property owner found two infant skeletons, wrapped in 1930s newspapers, inside the trunk when they were cleaning out the basement of an apartment building. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Since their mid-August discovery, investigators have been working to piece together what happened to the two infants whose skeletons were stowed in a steamer trunk left in the basement of a Westlake apartment building for nearly 70 years.

Clues found in the trunk led detectives to determine the trunk belonged to Janet M. Barrie, a twice-married Scottish immigrant who lived and worked in the Westlake area, but moved to Canada in the 1980s, where she eventually died.

Today the Los Angeles County Coroner's office has announced that they have determined the brother-and-sister skeletons, one a fetus and one a full-term infant, were Barrie's biological children. There was no sign of trauma, and toxicology reports were inconclusive. Unfortunately, though, their findings end there. As the LAPD remarks in their release issued today: "The entire story will probably never be known."