Where's Boris Karloff or Vincent Price when you need em? Newslink

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

2 skeletal remains of babies, a mysterious trunk, and… Peter Pan?:eek:
Mystery evolves in LA.

Inside the bag was a small bundle wrapped in Los Angeles Times newspapers from the 1930s. Xing unpeeled the newspapers and shrank back in horror.

The doctor’s satchels contained the mummified remains of two babies.

The trunk appears to have belonged to a woman named Jean M. Barrie.

Among Barrie’s possessions was a membership certificate for the Peter Pan Woodland Club, an upscale resort in Big Bear that offered guests swimming pools, skating ponds and hunting preserves.

Detectives are examining Barrie’s apparent interest in Peter Pan, especially considering that she shared the last name and initials with the book’s author, James Matthew Barrie, who died in 1937. Records show a Jean Barrie who worked as a nurse and lived about three miles from the Glen-Donald apartment building, which is at the corner of South Lake Street and what is now James M. Wood Boulevard, in 1933.

Lost boys, indeed! 30 years lost.

well gang, it looks like we’ve got something a lot more mysterious than a wallet sealed into a wall, this time.

Suggestions, Junior G-Men?

[Push_You_Down]

link to an article.

[needscoffee]

@Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor

2 skeletal remains of babies, a mysterious trunk, and… Peter Pan?:eek:
Mystery evolves in LA.

Inside the bag was a small bundle wrapped in Los Angeles Times newspapers from the 1930s. Xing unpeeled the newspapers and shrank back in horror.

The doctor’s satchels contained the mummified remains of two babies.

The trunk appears to have belonged to a woman named Jean M. Barrie.

Among Barrie’s possessions was a membership certificate for the Peter Pan Woodland Club, an upscale resort in Big Bear that offered guests swimming pools, skating ponds and hunting preserves.

Detectives are examining Barrie’s apparent interest in Peter Pan, especially considering that she shared the last name and initials with the book’s author, James Matthew Barrie, who died in 1937. Records show a Jean Barrie who worked as a nurse and lived about three miles from the Glen-Donald apartment building, which is at the corner of South Lake Street and what is now James M. Wood Boulevard, in 1933.

Lost boys, indeed! 30 years lost.(…)

Nearer to 80 years.

[Northern_Piper]

An update: the police have tracked down some relatives of Miss Barrie in Vancouver, British Columbia, and are hoping to use DNA samples from the relatives to test the babies to see if they were Miss Barrie’s children. Other speculation is that they may have been from her employer and his wife in Los Angeles:

Vancouver holds key to L.A. mystery.

In 1985, Barrie moved to Vancouver to spend her final years living with her sister, Isobel Holmes, who has also since died.

By that point, Lizarraga said, Barrie’s memory was failing and she was not in great health. He said it is likely that Barrie simply forgot about three trunks that were left in the basement of the apartment building. Two of the trunks were empty. The third contained the bodies.

“Now, where did I leave those bodies?”

[Marley23]

@Northern_Piper

An update: the police have tracked down some relatives of Miss Barrie in Vancouver, British Columbia, and are hoping to use DNA samples from the relatives to test the babies to see if they were Miss Barrie’s children. Other speculation is that they may have been from her employer and his wife in Los Angeles:

Vancouver holds key to L.A. mystery.

In 1985, Barrie moved to Vancouver to spend her final years living with her sister, Isobel Holmes, who has also since died.

By that point, Lizarraga said, Barrie’s memory was failing and she was not in great health. He said it is likely that Barrie simply forgot about three trunks that were left in the basement of the apartment building. Two of the trunks were empty. The third contained the bodies.

“Now, where did I leave those bodies?”

At least she didn’t leave them in the window seat.

[davidm]

@Northern_Piper

…Vancouver holds key to L.A. mystery…

According to police, she started working as a private nurse for dentist George Guy Knapp and his ailing wife, Mary Downs Knapp, in the 1930s. Records show the Knapps did not have any children.

The Knapps had bought three units in the apartment building, two for them and one for Barrie.

Barrie married George Knapp in 1964, shortly after his wife died, police said. He was 86 and she was 67. George Knapp died four years later.

Odd that the Knapps, a married couple, bought two units for themselves. Also odd that they bought one for his employee, who he just happened to end up marrying shortly after his wife died.

This sounds like there may have been an “understanding” between the Knapps. In the 1930s divorce would have been a huge scandal, especially for a practicing professional. This is pure speculation, but perhaps Mary Knapp agreed to maintain the marriage, at least on paper, in exchange for George Knapp keeping her in her own apartment. All of this due to an affair with Barrie.

Assuming that’s correct then it’s not a great leap to assume that Dr. Knapp performed illegal abortions on Barrie to avoid the scandal of unwed motherhood. He was a dentist so abortions would be outside of his field, but I’d imagine that many 1930s abortions were performed by people with no medical background at all.

[davidm]

Too late to edit, but I intended to add that I think the Peter Pan stuff is a total red herring. Given the name, it’s conceivable that she was some relation to the author, but it seems unlikely she joined a country club because of it.

Even if she did think something like “Oh look, a country club named ‘Peter Pan’ and I have the same name as the author of that book. Wouldn’t it be clever if I joined?”, I have a hard time seeing how it would bear any relation to the whole business about aborted fetuses.

[Jackmannii]

I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up,
No sir,
Not I,
Not me,
So there!

[davidm]

@Jackmannii

I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up,
No sir,
Not I,
Not me,
So there!

I get the point of the symbolism - aborted fetuses - “never grow up” - I just think that it’s coincidental and really has nothing to do with the mystery.

I also think that it’s sort of a semantics game. Obviously when James Barrie wrote about never growing up he was talking about eternal childhood, not death, but I do admit that the accidental symbolism adds an interesting edge to the story.

[Ranchoth]

I remember catching part of a documentary that featured a visit to the National Museum of Health and Medicine—the “closed stacks” archive had something similar, discovered in a woman’s possessions at a boarding house after she’d died. It was something like five mummified newborns (maybe more?), wrapped in newspapers, tucked in a steamer trunk. They were able to tell from the dates on the papers how far apart the babies were born—it was like a couple of years between each.

Damned if I can find a reference to the exact exhibit online, though.