Gloria Gomez stepped eagerly into the basement of the once-grand Glen-Donald apartment building near Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park on Tuesday afternoon, hoping to find some treasures in three large trunks that someone had left there in storage decades ago.
The first two trunks were empty. Using a screwdriver, she broke the lock on the third. Gomez, the building’s manager and an amateur antique collector, was giddy over what she found in the former ballroom: a gleaming crystal bowl, stacks of beautiful books, including a copy of “Peter Pan,” and two leather doctor’s satchels.
Inside the bag was a small bundle wrapped in copies of the Los Angeles Times from the 1930s. Xing unpeeled the newspapers and shrank back in horror. Inside the satchels were the mummified remains of two babies. The women immediately called police, who are now trying to unravel a mystery worthy of Raymond Chandler.