Cops ID Owner of Trunk With Dead Babies

Name Janet Mann Barrie, Peter Pan link ruled out
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 3, 2010 1:41 AM CDT
Updated Sep 3, 2010 5:42 AM CDT
LA Cops ID Owner of Trunk With Dead Babies
Janet M. Barrie, who immigrated to the US from Scotland in the mid-1920s, is seen in this photo released by the LAPD.   (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

Police investigating the mummified remains of two babies wrapped in newspapers from the '30s and found in a Los Angles basement have made a breakthrough: The trunk the bodies were found in belonged to Scottish-born nurse Janet Mann Barrie, investigators say. She was employed for decades by George and Mary Knapp, the couple who owned the apartment where the trunk was found, until she married George months after Mary's death in 1964.

One of the bodies was a fetus and the other baby appears have been carried to term, say investigators, who haven't been able to establish a cause of death. Barrie—who is not the relative of Peter Pan author James Barrie earlier considered a person of interest—died in Canada in 1992 and is interred with the Knapps in Los Angeles. Police have contacted several of her relatives, who have agreed to give DNA samples, the Los Angeles Times reports, as they try to determine if the babies belonged to Barrie, Knapp, or someone else.
(More Los Angeles stories.)

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