New twists in basement babies case as woman is identified

[mike r]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/09/new-twists-in-basement-babies-case-as-woman-identified.html

New twists in basement babies case as woman is identified

The woman poses in front of a shining Dodge roadster, squinting into the sun. She wears a snow-white fur stole around her neck and an uneasy smile on her face, as if she isn’t accustomed to being photographed. Police say she was the owner of the steamer trunk that last month was found to contain the mummified remains of two babies, wrapped in newspaper from the 1930s. On Thursday, police identified her –- a move that puts them closer to solving a case that has puzzled detectives here and transfixed mystery-lovers across the world.

Janet M. Barrie was a private nurse who worked for a Los Angeles couple from the 1930s to the 1960s. The couple, a dentist and his wife, lived in the same MacArthur Park apartment building where the trunk was discovered. When the dentist’s wife died in 1964, Barrie married her former employer. It is unclear whether the children belonged to Barrie, the wife of the dentist, or someone else, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said at a news conference Thursday.

“You are able to speculate as well as we can,” Beck said. Detectives working on the case say they have contacted Barrie’s nieces and nephews, who live in Canada, to ask for DNA samples to see whether it matches the DNA of the babies, whose carefully wrapped bodies were stowed in two leathers doctor’s satchels at the bottom of the trunk kept in storage at the Glen-Donald apartment building.

Coroner’s officials have not determined the cause of death of the babies, one of which was a fetus, and the other of which was a newborn. Ed Winter, spokesman for the coroner’s office, said on Thursday that a team of two pathologists and one forensic anthropologist had found no obvious signs of trauma. Winters said investigators are waiting the results of a toxicology report, which may come back in the next few weeks, and a DNA test, which will determine whether the babies were related to each other. The trunk had been sitting unclaimed in storage at the apartment building for decades, according to the building manager, Gloria Gomez...