Amateur Sleuths Have Pet Theories About the Mystery of ‘Judy’

Los Angeles has always loved a mystery. Judy is the latest.

Dozens of amateur sleuths surfaced Tuesday to offer clues and hunches about the identity of the cremated remains found in a small cedar chest on a lawn in Silver Lake during the weekend. The chest bore a brass plaque reading “Judy” and listed her birth date as Dec. 9, 1967, and death date as May 25, 1980.

“The phone has been ringing off the hook,” said Los Angeles Police Detective Doug Evans. “Everybody’s calling in with ideas. This seems to have touched a chord in people.”

Tucked into the chest had been an old box of slightly worn crayons, and it was first suspected that Judy was a child who died at age 12. Dozens of people have called police and journalists to say they had pets buried in cedar chests identical to the one found in Silver Lake. “The ashes of my dog, Moon, are in the exact same box,” said Alice Bucci of Los Feliz. “I’m sure it’s a dog.”

Evans said he is looking at both possibilities.

A spokesman for the Los Angeles County medical examiner-coroner said the remains have been determined to be those of a mammal, but that further distinctions have not been made.

Identifying someone only by his or her first name in Los Angeles County is not easy.

There was once space in the county recorder’s office for shelves of oversized ledgers that listed deaths by date. Though computers are far more compact, officials say there is not enough space in them to allow searches by first name or date. The coroner told police that they have old records in storage, but that they could take weeks to retrieve.

A spokesman for Childrens Hospital called The Times to say that it had no deaths of any children named Judy in May, 1980. No girl named Judy appeared in Times obituaries in late May, 1980.

The Dictionary of First Names defines Judy as “a pet name for Judith.”

“Need a list of all the dog names in the city of Los Angeles?” asked Steve Harvey, who writes The Times’ “Only in L.A.” column. From under his desk, a current list of the city’s 203,148 licensed dogs includes 77 named Judy. Earlier this week, one of them, a terrier, died.

“We have Judy here now,” said Mark Stein, manager of the Cal-Pet Crematory in Sun Valley, one of the area’s largest and oldest crematories for pets, whose records go back five years. He said he sells hundreds of the small cedar chests each year and, for $15, adds an engraved brass plate like Judy’s.

Stein said he buys the chests from Blair Cedar Novelty Co. in Missouri. “That would be our (model) No. 56,” said Carl Tidgren of Blair, who said the company has manufactured thousands of boxes for pet crematories around the country.

He said the chests have never to his knowledge been used for human remains.

But, if Judy indeed was a pet, why were the crayons tucked into the box?