Corpse in Barrel Is a High-Desert Mystery

Three days after finding a decomposed corpse in the garage of an elderly Yucca Valley couple, San Bernardino County authorities said the body is so decayed they cannot yet determine its age or even its gender.

A preliminary autopsy Monday was unable to determine the identity or cause of death of the person whose body was discovered in a 55-gallon barrel sealed inside a wooden crate in the garage of the couple, who died in a fire last month, authorities said.

Robert H. Shaw, lead supervising deputy coroner for San Bernardino County, said he hoped tests performed today and Wednesday would help identify the corpse. “For now, it is an unidentified ‘Doe,’ ” he said.

The body was in the garage of Virginia Beiser, 85, and Robert Adams, 84, who died March 15 in a house fire that investigators determined was ignited by a cigarette Beiser was smoking in bed.

Legal aides and a cleanup crew hired by an attorney representing Beiser’s estate found the crate while going through the couple’s possessions Friday afternoon.

The first person to see the body was Robyn Berry, a secretary for the law offices of Ira N. Tuck, the attorney for Beiser’s estate. She said the discovery was made as she, a paralegal and three other workers were looking through the home, documenting everything before selling the property.

“At first I didn’t believe it was a body,” she said Monday. “It was very macabre.”

The crate that contained the cardboard barrel was extremely sturdy and difficult to open, Berry said. But the barrel, in which the body was curled in a fetal position, was disintegrating and opened easily, she said.

Shaw said the body was intact but “mummified.” He said the coroner’s office had requested that a forensic anthropologist and a dentist examine the body today and Wednesday, in hopes of determining the identity through fingerprints and dental X-rays.

Tuck said he knew very little about Beiser except that she was the widow of an ophthalmologist. He said he had yet to find any relatives and didn’t know what relationship Beiser had with Adams, except that he was listed as the first executor of her estate.

Their high-desert home is a small stucco structure on a dirt road, surrounded by cactuses, rocks and Joshua trees. Although she and Adams had lived there at least five years, neighbors said they knew almost nothing about them. Several neighbors said Beiser rarely left home and was visited regularly by a private caregiver.

Berry said the caregiver was among those who found the body in the barrel.

Neighbors said news of the discovery was unsettling.

“It makes you wonder what was going on,” said Spencer Jones. “I’ve heard of these things before in the big city ... and sometimes it happens here in the sticks.”