DELRAY BEACH, Fla. – A partially mummified baby, believed to have been born sometime in the 1950s, was found wrapped in newspaper in a self-storage unit, authorities said.
The child's body was fully intact, with hair on its head and "little fat cheeks," said police spokesman Officer Jeff Messer, calling the discovery "spooky."
The remains were found Monday in 1950s-era papers inside a suitcase contained inside a second suitcase.
An autopsy completed Tuesday could only determine the child's sex, Messer said. The body will be sent to a forensic anthropologist to determine a cause of death and whether the child was born alive, a process that could take months.
The storage unit had been rented by a couple in 1996, but the man died several years ago and the woman died in the past year, Messer said.
The body was found by the couple's daughter, who had been told the contents of the storage unit would be auctioned off because the rent had not been paid, police said.
The woman wondered, "Could this be a sibling?" Messer said.
"It's obviously a concern of hers," Messer said. "Based on the condition of this baby, it could really be 50 years old."
Authorities were not immediately releasing the names of the couple or the daughter.
According to investigators, the child was wrapped in a newspaper called the Daily Times dated Jan. 9, 1957. They believe the paper was from New Jersey or New York.
Messer would not say whether DNA was extracted from the child to be compared to the daughter. But he noted "there may have been more than one person who had access to that warehouse."
Investigators were releasing few details. They plan to interview friends and family of the couple to determine if the elder woman was ever pregnant with another child and it was kept "on the hush hush," Messer said.
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