How the mystery of the girl from the crystal coffin was revealed

During construction work, sometimes very unusual finds happen that make everyone seriously break their heads. One of these cases, sad and mysterious, occurred in 2016 in San Francisco, California. When remodeling an old garage, workers found a strange object, which, on closer inspection, turned out to be a child's coffin of an extraordinary design.

A metal object, similar to a large shaped casket, was pulled together with rusty bolts and it became possible to determine what it was only by unscrewing them. Bolts fixed a sheet of metal that covered two windows made of thick glass. Looking inside the box, the workers were taken aback — inside lay the body of a small blonde girl, almost untouched by decay.

Erica Karner, the owner of the garage, called the coroner's office and reported the discovery. The police specialists who arrived demanded to open the coffin and, with some effort, the builders managed to drill the screws that fastened the lid. Those present saw the body of a child in a white dress, with a purple nightshade flower in his hand and a wreath of bindweed in his 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 drew up a protocol, placed the 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 burial duties are assigned to the owner of the land on which the body was found.

But how did the coffin with the little dead woman 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 churchyard was closed for burials back in 1890, when the rapidly growing metropolis came close to the extreme graves.

Over time, the cemetery began to interfere with the locals at all, and in 1923 it was decided to liquidate it. Some of the bodies were taken by relatives for reburial, and most of the remains were exhumed and buried in common graves. It is obvious that the coffin with the girl was forgotten in the confusion and it remained in the ground, which was handed over to developers.

The decision of the authorities, according to which Erica had to bury the unidentified child, did not like either the woman or her family. Karner bombarded the mayor's office with letters in which she proved that the coffin was under her garage precisely by the oversight of the authorities in the distant 20s of the last century. But the officials were deaf to her arguments and only responded 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 USA, 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. Violation of the tightness of the coffin had an extremely negative effect on the condition of the corpse and this drove Erica Karner to despair. A child decomposing in a garage and crowds of journalists wanting to photograph him is not exactly what a respectable American woman needs from life.

In addition , the Erica, a mother of two children, was simply heartbroken 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 take pictures. 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 photos of the dead girl stopped flashing on forums and social networks. Karner kept one photograph taken immediately after the coffin was opened by the workers. She gave this picture to her cousin, an artist who painted a good portrait of the child.

The master coped with his work perfectly and the portrait turned out to be gentle and, in the opinion of everyone who saw the girl, as authentic as possible. Eva 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.

Karner could solve the problem easily and without much expense by handing over the coffin with the girl's body for a standard numbered burial, as an unidentified body. She thought that Miranda was someone's child and her parents, no doubt, loved her very much. This was evidenced 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 anything about her was given by DNA examination. One company offered its services to determine the identity of the deceased, but requested an unaffordable sum of 20 thousand dollars for Erica.

Another chance, generally scanty, was given by archival work. Registration books were kept in cemeteries, in which all burials were recorded. But over 29 thousand bodies were buried at Odd Fellows Cemetery from 1866 to 1890, and in order to find information in a multi-volume book with the names and dates of the deceased, it was necessary to know at least the number of the cemetery sector and the approximate date of death. This option was also not suitable for identification.

But there was still a way out — Karner was advised to contact the Garden of Innocence charity organization, which deals with the burial 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, which took away a box with a crystal coffin and Miranda's remains.

The organization's experts placed the coffin with the child in the refrigerator and began to act. They organized a team of volunteers "Miranda", who set a goal to find out the real name of the girl at all costs and find out the circumstances of her death.

First of all, an unusual coffin with glass details was subjected to analysis. Such things are still rare today, and 100 years ago they were a piece of expensive work at all. After cleaning the item from rust, the volunteers found the brand of the manufacturer — N. Gray & Co. Undertakers. This firm worked in San Francisco 140 — 150 years ago and produced coffins with maximum protection from water and pests.

But they could not find the accounting documents of the company, which had long since sunk into oblivion, so the case again reached a dead end. As always happens in such cases, the clue was discovered quite by accident — an old Odd Fellows Cemetery map fell into the hands of researchers, whose existence no one suspected. Comparing the plot plan of the Karner 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 be delayed. The body, which had been in the open air for 10 days and in the refrigerator for several days, was in a deplorable condition and it was decided to bury the baby before identification. The cause of death, which could lead to a trace, was impossible to determine due to the condition of the body, so Miranda took a sample of body tissues and hair 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 decent burial. A beautiful coffin was made for the child for free, which contained an iron coffin ordered by the girl's parents a century and a half ago.

The public organization "Knights of Columbus", which organized a funeral procession with music, took over the solemn part of the ceremony. 140 people attended the funeral of little Miranda, 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 gravestone was provided by the Garden of Innocence organization, it is a granite heart with an angel child carved on it and a brief epitaph: "If no one regrets, then no one will remember...".

But Miranda's story did not end there — work on her identification continued. And so, on August 23, 2016, DNA tests 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. The analysis of carbon and nitrogen isotopes from the child's hair allowed to find out the details of her life. Hair grows slowly, so it was possible to find out how Miranda ate for quite a long period of her life.

The study showed that the girl could have been 2-3.5 years old at the time of death. In addition, it turned out that in the last months of her life, there was a catastrophic lack of proteins in the girl's body, as happens if 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 scientists were studying DNA, the volunteers also did not sit idly by and checked 29,875 records from cemetery registration books of the middle and end of the XIX century. It took more than 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 who died as a result of general exhaustion was buried in the surveyed sector.

Now it became clear that, with a huge degree of probability, Eva Miranda's real name is Edith Howard Cook and the girl lived in the world for 2 years and 10 months. Finding information about the deceased 's parents was now a matter of technique — their names were Horatio Nelson and Edith Scoufi Cook.

Despite the high probability of a match, 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 were ambiguous and it was difficult to judge the correctness of the identification of the body by them.

It was possible to clarify the search result only by comparing the girl's DNA with her maternal relative. Alas, no women were found in the Cook family, and the only descendant along the line of Edith Scoufi 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 the brother of Edith Cook (Miranda-Eve) and the analysis showed a 12.5% match. Despite such a modest figure, given the degree of kinship and a century and a half of time, it meant full confidence that the exact name of the girl was determined. In May 2018 , a new tombstone with the inscription appeared on the grave of the girl:

So ended the story of a little girl from a crystal coffin, who practically had no chance to get her name back, but got it thanks to caring people.