During construction work, sometimes very unusual finds happen that make everyone seriously break their heads. One such case, sad and mysterious, occurred in 2016 in San Francisco, California. While remodeling the old garage, the workers found a strange object, which, upon closer examination, turned out to be a children's coffin of an extraordinary design.
A metal object, similar to a large figured casket, was pulled together with rusted bolts and it became possible to determine what it was only by unscrewing them. Bolts secured a sheet of metal that covered two thick glass windows. Looking inside the box, the workers were dumbfounded - inside was the body of a little blonde girl, almost untouched by decay.
Erica Carner, the owner of the garage, called the coroner's office to report the find. The arriving police specialists demanded to open the coffin and, with some effort, the builders managed to drill out the screws that secure the lid. Those present saw the body of a child in a white dress, with a purple nightshade flower in her hand and a bindweed wreath in her blond hair.
There were no details inside the coffin that would help identify the body. The body was examined, described and photographed, after which the experts issued a protocol, placed a metal coffin with the child in a wooden box and … left it to the owner of the garage. As it turned out, according to the law, if the corpse is not criminal and the relatives are unknown, then the responsibilities for burial are assigned to the owner of the land on which the body was found.
But how did the coffin with the little deceased end up under the garage? There was nothing surprising in this phenomenon - the building stood on the territory that was once occupied by the largest cemetery in San Francisco - Odd Fellows Cemetery. A large city graveyard was closed for burials back in 1890, when the rapidly growing metropolis came close to the extreme graves.
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Over time, the cemetery began to interfere with local residents and in 1923 it was decided to liquidate it. Some of the bodies were taken away by relatives for reburial, while most of the remains were exhumed and buried in mass graves. Obviously, the coffin with the girl was forgotten in the confusion and he remained in the ground, which was handed over to the developers.
The decision of the authorities, according to which Erica was to bury the unidentified child, did not like the woman or her family. Carner bombarded the mayor's office with letters in which she argued that the coffin was under her garage precisely due to an oversight of the authorities in the distant 20s of the last century. But the officials were deaf to her arguments and only answered with standard replies.
Meanwhile, the creepy find continued to be stored in Erica's garage and no one knew what to do with it. In the United States, it is customary to give unidentified bodies standard names - John Doe or Jane Doe. If we are talking about a child, they do not even give a name, but simply call it "baby Doe". But in the case of the girl from the coffin with crystal windows, they made an exception, writing her down in the papers as Eve.
While there was an active correspondence between the unwitting owner of the body and the bureaucrats, the deceased quickly decomposed. The violation of the tightness of the coffin had an extremely negative effect on the state of the corpse and this drove Erica Karner to despair. A child decomposing in the garage and crowds of journalists wanting to photograph him are not exactly what a respectable American woman needs from life.
In addition, Erica, a mother of two, simply broke her heart when her gaze fell on the creepy box. That is why the woman resigned herself to the need to organize the funeral of someone else's child and got down to business. First of all, Erica demanded respect for the deceased, forbidding her to photograph. The woman went around all the neighbors and acquaintances and asked them to delete all the photos of the child from the memory of cameras and smartphones.
Everyone reacted with understanding to Erica's request and the photo of the dead girl stopped flashing on the forums and in social networks. Carner retained one photograph taken immediately after the workers opened the coffin. She gave this picture to her artist cousin, who painted a nice portrait of the child.
The master did an excellent job with his work and the portrait turned out to be delicate and, in the opinion of everyone who saw the girl, as reliable as possible. Eve was also renamed Miranda to get rid of the formal approach to this case - this name was invented by Erica's daughter and everyone liked it.
Carner could solve the problem easily and inexpensively by donating the girl's coffin for a standard numbered burial, as an unidentified body. She thought that Miranda was someone's child and that her parents, no doubt, loved her very much. This was indicated by the fact that the body was qualitatively embalmed, well dressed, decorated with flowers and placed in an exquisite and unusual coffin.
The woman really wanted to bury the girl under her real name and the only chance to find out about her at least something was given by a DNA examination. One company offered its services to determine the identity of the deceased, but requested an unaffordable amount for Erica of 20 thousand dollars.
Another chance, generally scanty, was given by archival work. Registration books were kept at cemeteries, in which all burials were recorded. But at Odd Fellows Cemetery, over 29 thousand bodies were buried from 1866 to 1890, and in order to find information in a multivolume with the names and dates of the dead, you had to know at least the number of the cemetery sector and the approximate date of death. This variant was also not suitable for identification.
But he still found a way out - Carner was advised to contact the Garden of Innocence charity, which is engaged in the funeral of abandoned children and the burial of unidentified children's remains. Erica called this company and the very next day a van arrived from the Garden of Innocence and took a box with a crystal coffin and Miranda's remains.
The experts of the organization placed the coffin with the child in the refrigerator and began to act. They organized a team of Miranda volunteers who set themselves the goal of finding out the girl's real name and the circumstances of her death by all means.
First of all, an unusual coffin with glass details was analyzed. Such things are still a rarity today, and 100 years ago they were expensive piece work. After cleaning the item of rust, the volunteers found the brand of the manufacturer - N. Gray & Co. Undertakers. This firm operated in San Francisco 140 to 150 years ago and produced coffins with maximum protection from water and pests.
But the accounting documents of the company, long sunk into oblivion, could not be found, so the case again reached a dead end. As always happens in such cases, the clue was discovered quite by accident - the researchers got the old map Odd Fellows Cemetery, the existence of which no one even suspected. By comparing the site plan of the Carner family's house and garage with this map, the volunteers identified the sector in which they had to look for a clue.
But, as we have already said, archival work, even with a specified burial place, could drag on. The body, which had been in the open air for 10 days and in the refrigerator for several days, was in a deplorable state and it was decided to bury the baby until identification. The cause of death, which could lead to a trace, was impossible to determine due to the state of the body, so a sample of body tissues and hair was taken from Miranda for subsequent DNA analysis.
By the time it was decided to organize the funeral, Miranda had become a real celebrity and dozens of people volunteered to help with her dignified burial. For the child, a beautiful coffin was made free of charge, which contained the iron one ordered by the girl's parents a century and a half ago.
The solemn part of the ceremony was taken over by the public organization "Knights of Columbus", which organized a funeral procession with music. The funeral of little Miranda was attended by 140 people, that is, probably more than a century and a half ago.
The funeral took place on June 4, 2016, a month and a half after the discovery of the coffin under the garage floor. The tombstone was provided by the "Garden of Innocence" organization, it is a granite heart with a child-angel carved on it and a short epitaph: "If no one regrets, then no one will remember …".
But the story of Miranda did not end there - work on her identification continued. And so, on August 23, 2016, DNA analyzes of tissues were ready. As it turned out, the samples taken from the body were badly damaged by mold. 90% of the DNA belonged to her. But even the remaining 10% was enough to show the triumph of science over time.
First of all, it was established that Miranda's mother was from the British Isles. Analysis of the isotopes of carbon and nitrogen from the child's hair revealed the details of her life. Hair grows slowly, so we managed to find out how Miranda ate during a rather long period of her life.
The study showed that the girl at the time of death could be 2-3.5 years old. In addition, it turned out that in the last months of her life, the girl's body was sorely lacking in proteins, as happens when a person is starving. Comparing this fact with the fragile physique of the child, experts came to the conclusion that Miranda most likely suffered from some kind of chronic disease that depleted her body in the months preceding her death.
While the scientists were studying the DNA, the volunteers also did not sit idly by checking 29,875 entries from cemetery records of the mid to late 19th century. It took over 1,000 man-hours, but the game was worth the candle. On September 25, 2016, a record was found that in October 1876 a two-year-old girl was buried in the surveyed sector, who died as a result of general exhaustion.
Now it became clear that, with a high degree of probability, the real name of Eva-Miranda is Edith Howard Cook and the girl lived in the world for 2 years and 10 months. Finding information about the parents of the deceased was now a matter of technology - their names were Horatio Nelson and Edith Scoufie Cook.
Despite the high probability of coincidence, only a comparison of the child's DNA with the DNA of the descendants of Horatio and Edith could give a 100% guarantee of accuracy. Two descendants were found, but due to the distance of their relationship, the results of the analysis turned out to be ambiguous and it was difficult to judge by them about the correct identification of the body.
The search result could only be clarified by comparing the girl's DNA with her maternal relative. Alas, no women were found in the Cook family, and the only descendant through Edith Scoufie Cook was a certain Peter Cook, 82 years old, who lived in the small port city of Napa in California.
The man turned out to be the grandson of his brother Edith Cook (Miranda-Eve) and the analysis showed a coincidence of 12.5%. Despite such a modest figure, given the degree of kinship and a century and a half, this meant complete confidence that the girl's exact name was determined. In May 2018, a new tombstone appeared on the girl's grave with the inscription:
Thus ended the story of a little girl from a crystal coffin, who had practically no chance of regaining her name, but got it thanks to caring people.