Buyer of Storage Unit’s Contents Finds Remains of Three Bodies

The unclaimed contents of a Northridge storage room were sold sight unseen Wednesday, and the buyer was startled to learn after opening the unit that he had bought the decomposing remains of three long-dead bodies.

Late Wednesday night, coroner’s deputies found two more bodies in a room in which they had earlier found a single body, said Dep. Coroner Dan Aikin.

The winning bidder in an auction at the U-Haul rental and self-storage facility in the 18100 block of Parthenia Street noticed a foul odor emanating from the room and alerted authorities about 11 a.m., Los Angeles police said.

Inside a trunk in the roughly 6-by-9-foot basement storage room, police found a body, so decayed that neither its sex nor race could immediately be determined, officers said.

The trunk and two other large boxes found in the room were taken to the coroner’s office, although police believe that only the trunk contained a body or body parts, said Detective Tom Broad of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Devonshire division.

Lt. Al Moen of the robbery-homicide division said the storage company’s paperwork indicated that the remains had been locked away for more than a year.

Officers would not identify the buyer. They also declined to say who had rented the storage room, and how long ago it had been acquired.