TORONTO -- The mummified remains of an
infant found wrapped in a package and buried beneath the floorboards of a Toronto home faces days of examination before anything can be confirmed about its life and death.
Robert Kinghorn, 37, discovered the
body Tuesday night wrapped in a floral blanket and brittle newspaper dated September 15, 1925, under the attic floorboards in a neighbourhood home he was renovating for a couple who bought the property last month.
"I cut through the paper, opened it and saw little toes and fingers and then said to myself, ''Oh no, that''s not what it is.'' I looked closer and looked at what it was. Disbelief left me and reality set in," he said Wednesday outside 29 Kintyre Ave.
Mr. Kinghorn, the father of three children, stood smoking a cigarette with a trembling hand
yesterday. As he spoke to reporters, his nine-year-
old son Justice stood by his side. He said he called the infant "
Baby Kintyre" because he needed it to have a name.
"I have a four-month-old baby, and it was about the size of my baby. It looked like a dried-up baby. It''s skin was leathery, brown. I could see a thigh bone, shin bone and all the five toes. And all the fingers on the hands," he said shaking. "It''s upsetting. For a child to be put in a damn hole, no burial. It''s wrong. Eighty-three
years stuck in a frickin'' wall."
Police said the body, either a fetus or young baby, was transported to the Hospital For Sick Children early yesterday afternoon to undergo X-ray testing into the cause of death, including any possible diseases. Two pathologists will conduct an autopsy at the chief coroner''s office in Toronto today but results of the post-mortem are not expected for several months.
"The results might send us down the right path," said Detective Debbie Houston, noting that the date of the newspaper the child was wrapped in doesn''t mean it was the date, or even year, of its death.
The City of Toronto Archives list Wesley and Della Russell as the property owners between 1919 and 1941. The Canadian Press reported Mr. Russell, a post office clerk, died in 1939, leaving Mrs. Russell alone. Two years later, the woman was admitted to Toronto''s Ontario Hospital under the Mental Hospitals Act.
Kintyre Avenue is a hushed leafy road lined with snug Victorian homes that have all "been well loved," said Anne-Marie Aikens, a neighbour whose home backs onto number 29.
"The families that live here come to stay here for a long time, except in this house. This house, it''s had quite a number of owners and it was just bought at the end of June." From her backyard, Ms. Aiken watched Mr. Kinghorn lift the body.
"I thought, there''s no way, this can''t be happening. There can''t be a baby in a wall," Ms. Aikens said. "I couldn''t believe it was an 80-year-old baby because the baby clearly had skin and hair. I just couldn''t believe that it wouldn''t be a skeleton."
The former nurse waited up as long as she could for the coroner Tuesday night.
"I just had this need to see the baby respectfully removed." In the end, Ms. Aiken fell asleep.
Bruce Bell, a local historian, floated several theories about the infant yesterday, drawing on the social mores of the 1920s.
"There was a whole other set of rules that were going on at that time," Mr. Bell said. "How many other babies'' bodies are locked away in attics from 75, 80 years ago when it was easier for people to get away with things like that? Forensics was not what it was, people didn''t talk like they do today and a lot of babies were also dying of disease."
The historian recalled the instance, about six years ago, when construction workers chanced upon an infant''s body while they were laying a drainage pipe in an alley behind his downtown condominium. Mr. Bell said investigators estimated the corpse was at least 100 years old. He surmised the baby could have been discarded from a local brothel, common in the neighbourhood, today the city'one of the many impoverished families who squatted under the area''s wharfs.
"I can''t fathom murder ... I want to think it was natural," Mr. Kinghorn told reporters yesterday. "I seen the body and I said a prayer. Then I stopped and said, ''God bless those parents because if they did anything wrong to you, they''re probably dead and will be judged now.''"
Mr. Kinghorn spent most of yesterday back at work patching the hole where he had found Baby Kintyre. "When I opened it up, I could smell that smell. You never forget it."
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