Renovator uncovers mummified infant
Renovator Bob Kinghorn got the shock of his life when he found a mummified infant wrapped in newspaper dated Sept. 12, 1925, in a house he was working on last night.
"You always hope to find something in walls – coins, antiques – but never a baby," he said as he stood in front of the home on Kintyre Ave., near Broadview Ave. and Queen St. E., late last night.
Kinghorn, 37, who lives two doors away from the three-storey, semi-detached Riverdale area home, was about to drill a hole through a ceiling joist for wiring when he noticed a bundle of newspaper he first thought was insulation in a second floor bedroom of the empty home about 8 p.m.
He said he and a co-worker had noticed a strange smell in the room, but didn't realize what it was until he pulled the package out from the wall.
"When I opened it up, it exposed the child," he said.
The infant, which he estimated at about four months of age, was in a fetal position wrapped in a bundle of old newsprint and he could see tiny toes sticking out.
"It looked the size of my four-month-old," he said, while running his fingers through his hair, still in disbelief at what he had found.
After getting a search warrant, a police forensic team and body removal crew entered the home at about 11:30 p.m.
Kinghorn said when he opened the package, he realized what it was and the date leapt off the page at him.
He said it was a Toronto newspaper, but he didn't know which publication.
"It's so sad. But it's a good thing the baby can be put to rest," Kinghorn said.
"Wow, 1925. Maybe she had a baby she had murdered. Who knows what the story behind this is?" he mused.
Kinghorn said paramedics who came to the scene said it looked like the infant had a crushed hip.
The mummified infant's remains will be examined at the Centre for Forensic Science and the case will be investigated by the homicide squad.
Labels: weird crime
posted by Joseph O'Brien at
1:14 p.m.
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