For decades, Charles Peavey's family has passed down what he admits is a most unusual family heirloom: the tiny corpse of a mummified baby whose mysterious history has been filled with legend. But Peavey, 41, of Concord had never considered the keepsake a problem until the Concord police learned of the remains last week and took them for testing.
The state attorney general's office is investigating the infant's age, origin and cause of death to rule out homicide. It seems unlikely that Peavey will face criminal charges, but the investigation has him worried.
Of all the stories surrounding the mummy's birth and death, Peavey favors the one that says he's an ancient relative - the stillborn son of a great-great uncle. He calls the mummy "Baby John."Through DNA testing, a forensic anthropologist will be able to determine whether that theory is plausible.
"I've always treated him as a family member," said Peavey, a cook at a Hooksett restaurant who spends his free time tracing his family history. "And I'll be disappointed if he's not."
Karen Huntress, a prosecutor with the state attorney general's office, wouldn't discuss the investigation. But Peavey said he was told the forensic tests could take months. The police left Peavey with one photograph of the mummy and the various gifts his family and friends have given it: ceramic angels, antique marbles, a quartz candle holder and a dried but once-living beta fish. (It was supposed to be the mummy's pet.)
"My friends at work say that even though this is not weird to me, I have to understand that it is weird to other people," Peavey said. "But for me, it's something tangible to hold on to from my great-great uncle."
Other mummies
While it's certainly unusual for mummies to turn up, it's not unheard of. In 2001, a mummified baby was found inside a storage locker in a Toronto apartment. Investigators believe that when the baby died in 1985, just after being born, its mother couldn't part with it.
In 2002, someone itemizing an estate in Connecticut opened a cedar hope chest and found a mummified infant wrapped in a blanket. Investigators determined the remains are 50 years old and the child of a woman who had never married, according to The New York Times. Despite its age, the baby had retained its form, although its skin was dried, withered and brownish.
The Peaveys' mummy looks much the same, even though it is believed to be much older. Peavey said the mummy first belonged to his great-great Uncle John Peavey, who was born in Ashland in 1850. By the family's estimate, the mummy is 80 to 90 years old.
Its brownish skin has dried tightly around its bones, and it looks almost skeletal. Its arms are bent in a bit. Peavey guesses that is from the bunting the baby was wrapped in after death. Its mouth hangs open, probably because the jaw eventually relaxed. Peavey said he believes the baby is male because its genitals were once at least partially intact. Whenever Peavey handled "Baby John," he wore gloves to protect its skin.
Ron Beckett, the co-director of the bio-anthropology research institute at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, has analyzed mummies all over the world and said with the right conditions, bodies can mummify naturally. The process does not require the organ removal and elaborate procedures associated with ancient Egyptian mummies.
"For decomposition to occur, you need water, and we are about 70 percent water," Beckett said. "If that water is gone quickly, you are a mummy."
Being wrapped in a blanket, as Peavey's mummy was, helps quickly wick away moisture from a body, Beckett said. That, along with dry conditions, like a cold attic in winter or the drying sands of Peru, can mummify a body. "How well (a body) is mummified depends upon how fast the drying process was,"he said.
Peavey and his family know nothing definitive about the origin of their mummy. After Peavey's great-great uncle died in Manchester in 1947, it was found among his things, wrapped in a bunting and tucked inside a box. On top of the box, there was a circle of shells and these words: "Sacred to the memory of our little Hawaiian home across the sea."
Peavey knows his great-great uncle never married, traveled the globe and was an eccentric collector who told tall tales. That's made it harder to determine the mummy's history, he said.
Peavey's cousin heard the mummy was from Egypt. Another relative said it was from an island. Two versions say the child was Hawaiian. One relative heard the mummy was found in a Hawaiian cave. Peavey sticks with the story his late father told him.
Before he died a decade ago, Charles Peavey Sr. told his son that his great-great uncle had been in love with a Hawaiian woman who was carrying his child. The woman died during childbirth, the story goes, and the baby was delivered stillborn.
After the great-great uncle's death, the box with the mummy went to Peavey's Uncle Harry Peavey in Manchester for a while, and then eventually to Peavey, about 1999. Peavey had heard about the mummy but had been told it was lost or broken into bits. When he found it at his uncle's house, in a box under a day bed and in one piece, he asked his aunt if he could photograph it.
"She said, 'Do you want it?'"Peavey remembered.
When Peavey got possession of the mummy, he also got a copy of a 200-year-old ledger of life on the Peavey family farm in Newington. It's nothing more than a list of what was picked and sold when, but like the mummy, the ledger connected Peavey to his past. That's big for someone as passionate about family history as Peavey is.
"You hear about something all your life and then you finally get it,"he said.
Now Peavey is wondering if he'll get the mummy back.
The inquiry begins
The police learned of the mummy several days ago, when Peavey's 4-year-old great-niece was overheard saying something troubling at a local day care: "A girl was picking on her," Peavey said, "and she said, 'Be careful. My uncle's a killer. He has a dead baby.'"
Day care staff didn't know what to make of it, so they spoke to the girl's mother and notified the police. When the police visited the mother at her home, the officers saw a photograph on the kitchen table that troubled them, Peavey said. It depicted a living infant (Peavey's great-nephew) next to the mummy.
When Peavey heard the police were concerned about the mummy, he called them himself.
The Concord police referred calls for this story to the state attorney general's office. But Peavey said the detectives asked him about the mummy's history and said they needed to take it for further investigation. If the mummy shows signs of disease or appears to be the victim of murder, Peavey knows he will not get the mummy back.
There does not appear to be a law forbidding the possession of a mummy, unless the mummy is fairly recent and that of an Egyptian and Native American, according to James Deem, a mummy researcher. Even if Peavey's mummy is Egyptian or Native American, it's too old to violate those laws.
There are a few laws governing the handling of corpses and deceased newborns, but those seem unlikely to apply. It is a misdemeanor to conceal, remove or destroy a corpse. It's a felony to knowingly conceal the death of a newborn. It's also illegal to disturb or destroy a gravesite. Again, given the age of Peavey's mummy, the statute of limitations on those offenses would have expired.
Murder does not carry a statute of limitations, but there doesn't seem to be suspicion that anyone in Peavey's family is responsible for the death. The forensic anthropologist is expected to be able to determine cause of death and more.
Beckett said X-rays of the mummy's skeleton and teeth can reveal the baby's age because teeth appear at predictable ages. The closure of a baby's soft spot also discloses clues about its age. So do the fusions at the ends of long bones because, like teeth, they fuse at predictable ages, Beckett said.
X-rays can also tell scientists about the mummy's health.
Beckett said if the child was ill, calcium deposits in the long bones will indicate when his growth was "arrested." If the child survived an illness, the bones will still grow but leave the "arrest lines" that X-rays will reveal. Likewise, an X-ray can pick up fracture patterns if bones have been broken and allow scientists to tell whether the injury was caused before, near or after death, Beckett said.
Whatever the tests turn up will be more than Peavey knows now. He can't wait. "This will put to bed a lot of questions," he said.
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Source: http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs ... /604220323
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