Archive for August, 2010

Trunk possibly belonged to a nurse, or a relative of the author of “Peter Pan.”

This Jean M. Barrie, seen in the 1918 edition of Lyceum

Who was Jean M. Barrie, the woman whose steamer trunk stored for decades in the basement of a Los Angeles apartment building contained the mummified remains of two babies?

That’s the question investigators were mulling Thursday, two days after the babies — wrapped in newspapers from the 1930s — were discovered when the basement was being cleared out. As the county coroner began an autopsy on the bodies Thursday, Los Angeles Police Department detectives were left to sift through a crime scene that also is a time capsule.

Inside the trunk, police found a fur wrap, a flapper dress, a beaded purse and a bundle of blank medical test forms.
The medical forms, detectives said, point them in the direction of a woman named Jean M. Barrie, who lived in the area and may have worked as a nurse. She was born in San Francisco in 1916. Detectives said they found postcards in the trunk addressed to a Jean M. Barrie from a brother, Thomas, in San Francisco.

LAPD sources said one of the biggest challenges will be to determine whether a crime was committed. Detectives from the LAPD juvenile division’s abused child section are hoping medical tests can determine whether the babies were stillborn, aborted or subjected to trauma.

Detectives also are considering other leads, including the possibility that the trunk may have belonged to a different woman — also named Jean M. Barrie — who was a well-known storyteller and performer at the time.

This Jean Barrie apparently lived in the Midwest and on the East Coast and was a relative of James M. Barrie, the author of the children’s book “Peter Pan.”

Several clues point in this woman’s direction. A copy of “Peter Pan” was found inside the trunk Tuesday along with a membership certificate for the Peter Pan Woodland Club, a Big Bear resort.

But it’s unclear whether Barrie ever lived in Los Angeles. An ad in the 1918 edition of Lyceum Magazine shows a stern-faced Barrie in a decorative lace and velvet dress. The ad hails her as a “Reader of Plays and Miscellaneous Programs.”

Gloria Gomez, manager of the Glen-Donald apartment building near MacArthur Park, said the trunk had been sitting in storage, unclaimed, for decades. On Tuesday night, Gomez and building resident Yeming Xing broke the lock with a screwdriver to see what was inside.

They found books, postcards, a beautiful crystal bowl and two leather doctor’s satchels. Inside each satchel was the body of a baby. Each was swaddled in a blanket and wrapped in a faded, 1930s-era Los Angeles Times newspaper.

Xing, who discovered the first body, said Wednesday that it appeared to be a fetus.

“It looked like a baby, but it didn’t have any shape to it,” she said. A USC geneticist, Xing said she believes the baby had been miscarried or possibly had been aborted.

John Medford, a resident at the building, also thinks the bodies may be linked to illegal abortions.

“It was kept secret for 74 years and my theory is that this rolls back the cover on a cruel, tragic and unjust time in America for women,” Medford said. “Ending pregnancies this way would have been commonplace. This was business as usual in all social strata.”

A team of coroner’s investigators, including a pathologist and an anthropologist, will use DNA, toxicology and other tests to determine how the babies died, while detectives try to piece together the life of the woman who kept their bodies tucked carefully among her possessions.

andrew.blankstein@latimes.com

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times

Roger Marsh
examiner.com
Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:46 CDT

Not every Ozzy Osbourne fan was watching the stage while the entertainer sang “Suicide Solution” in Devore, CA, August 14, 2010, according to testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.

One fan looked toward the Little Dipper and watched a triangle UFO flying “higher than any conventional aircraft.”

“The shape was triangular with rounded tips,” the witness stated. “The color of the craft was a pale gray. The middle looking on edgewise was slightly rounded and thicker in the middle, which held 3 round lights in a line strobe-like. Colors were green, yellow and pinkish purple. The lights were like a strobe that blinked and flashed 3-5 times before it disappeared behind a tree that it fit behind.”

“The color of the craft was a pale gray. The middle looking on edgewise was slightly rounded and thicker in the middle, which held 3 round lights in a line strobe-like. Colors were green, yellow and pinkish purple. The lights were like a strobe that blinked and flashed 3-5 times before it disappeared behind a tree that it fit behind.”

Witnessing a UFO while watching an event is reported occasionally. We wrote about a February 18, 2010, sighting: Image: UFO hovers over Arlington’s Cowboys Stadium.

The following is the unedited and as yet uninvestigated report filed with MUFON. Please keep in mind that most UFO reports can be explained as something natural or manmade. If California MUFON investigates and reports back on this case, I will release an update. Please report UFO activity to MUFON.com.

CA, August 14, 2010 – Ozz Fest UFO seen over Devore. MUFON Case # 25107.
This is a report I received from my daughter whom I shall refer to as Bink. She wishes to remain anonymous.

During the concert Ozzy was playing the song Suicide Solution and the audience was looking at Ozzy. Bink glanced towards the Little Dipper at the time.

A UFO appears away from the stage while everyone (she assumes) was watching towards the stage away from the UFO.

This is the report directly. I collected the report as it was fresh in her mind.

The shape was triangular with rounded tips. The color of the craft was a pale gray. The middle looking on edgewise was slightly rounded and thicker in the middle, which held 3 round lights in a line strobe-like. Colors were green, yellow and pinkish purple. The lights were like a strobe that blinked and flashed 3-5 times before it disappeared behind a tree that it fit behind. Bink said the distance was up higher than any conventional aircraft. The craft made no noise but it flew horizontally then flew up then hovered then shook as it left. Bink recognized that it was unlike anything she had ever seen before and she seen it as it was (a weird UFO). She has never seen anything like this before and it was the first thing she said to me when she got home that night with her Dad who didn’t see a thing. She said “Guess who just saw a freaking UFO” were her words exactly.

14-time Emmy winning investigative journalist George Knapp and Above Top Secret blow the lid of the Ruby Pipeline in Nevada, where the Bureau of Land Management is systematically rounding up and killing PROTECTED wild horses, all for the benefit of our friends at British Petroleum. Please share this story.

BP Killing Our Wild Horses–With Our Government’’s Help!

Recently, I noted that Iron Maiden’s current touring show features a spacey, sci-fi back drop, as though the stage was on a moon base. Not only that, but the tour shirt features the band’s mascot planting an Iron Maiden Union Jack on what appears to be the surface of the moon, as the fiendish character is surrounded by little green EBEs. The new album, The Final Frontier, drops next week. In the meantime, check out this astounding video–sort of a cross between Indiana Jones and Alien. And just because the planet blows up at the end, doesn’t mean it’s neccessarily ours!