Thief Tossed Away a Greater Treasure--a Box That Held Love

Someone, somewhere, loved Judy.

Enough to tuck into a corner of a small cedar chest that contained her ashes a small packet of crayons with worn points. Enough to fix onto the personalized box a brass plate engraved with her first name, “Judy,” and the day she was born, Dec. 9, 1967, and the day she died, May 25, 1980.

Over the weekend, a retired woman who lives in Silver Lake went out to water her lawn and noticed the small box at the corner of the retaining wall in front of her home. At first, she thought it was a toy. An old box of crayons made in China was tucked beside it, after all, along with a plastic bag of what she thought were small white aquarium pebbles.

Then, she and her husband took a closer look.

They came to the chilling realization that the plastic bag they held in their hand probably contained the cremated remains of a girl named Judy who had lived 12 years, 5 months and 16 days.

“Being a mother, I suddenly felt what a mother must feel,” said Helen Duran, who found the box in the 1300 block of Manzanita Street. Duran said she and her husband have lived in the area for nearly 50 years. She could not recall a young neighborhood girl dying.

“We surmise the box was put there by someone leaving a residential burglary,” said Los Angeles Police Detective Doug Evans. “But with the limited amount of information available to us, it is difficult, if not impossible, to identify Judy.”

The Los Angeles County recorder’s office revamped its computer system a few years ago, a spokesman said, and needs a last name to search for a death report. The Los Angeles County medical examiner-coroner’s office does not keep records of deaths by date, either. There is no way of knowing whether Judy ever lived in Los Angeles. Or, for that matter, whether Judy was a human being or a pet.

Evans said the bag’s contents will be analyzed by forensic experts. In the meantime, he said, police agencies are being contacted to determine whether anyone has reported human remains missing.

Whoever left the small chest in Silver Lake apparently pried open a small brass lock on the chest as if, perhaps, expecting to find jewelry inside. The person also apparently opened the plastic bag, but probably did not tamper with what appears to be crushed bone and ash.

“I know it was probably a thief that put it there,” Duran said. “But I felt a certain amount of care was taken in the way the things were placed there. As if someone realized what he had, and wanted it to be found.”