A man in Missouri was shocked and surprised to find a baby’s body inside his recently deceased mother’s freezer.
37-year-old Adam Smith revealed he grew up knowing about the white cardboard box in his mother’s freezer his entire life. He assumed it held a wedding cake topper or another memory that his mother was holding onto, he told CNN. He says his mother never discussed the box or what was inside it. But one week after her death, Smith says he is struggling to understand how she kept a dead baby to herself all these years.
Smith called police early Sunday morning and reported finding a dead infant in the box. St. Louis police said they are investigating the discovery as a “suspicious death” pending an autopsy and asked the public for tips. The white cardboard box was wrapped in garbage bags, Smith told CNN.
It was “the size of a boot shoe box” and it had been in his mother’s freezer for as long as he can recall, he said.”I remember being curious as a small child. I remember trying to grab a stool and rip through the plastic,” Smith told CNN.
“Other than that I never touched it.”
The box traveled with his mother to four different homes in St. Louis, Smith said, including the apartment on Magnolia Avenue where she lived for 25 years until her death, CNN reports. After she was diagnosed with lung cancer in January, Smith said he moved in with her to help care for her until she died on July 21. But it was early on Sunday morning when Smith said he went into the freezer to get a water bottle and decided to open the box.
“I still believed the box contained a wedding cake topper. That’s just what I assumed,” Smith said.
After cutting through the plastic and opening the box, Smith saw a pink fleece baby blanket and reached inside. He said he felt a foot and little toes and after the blanket unraveled a little bit, he said he saw a baby foot. As he tucked the fleece back inside, he saw the hair of the infant, he said.
“The baby looked clean. There was no blood on it, looked like a newborn baby,” Smith recalled. “From what I could see the skin and everything was intact.”
Smith immediately called the police and an investigation is pending. But Smith has been left with even more questions and theories about who the baby may have been. He shared a memory from when he was seven or eight years old.
“All she told me was ‘my first born Jennifer would have been 21 years old today,'” Smith said.
He believes the infant in the freezer could be Jennifer; if so, that would mean the infant died about 50 years ago.
“Who absolutely keeps their own child in a box with this long and never talks about it?” he said to CNN affiliate KTVI.“I just have so many thoughts. It’s insane.”
