Experts Search for Clues to Identities of 3 Bodies Found at Storage Firm

Forensic experts began the grisly task Thursday of trying to identify three corpses found decomposing in a rental unit at a Northridge storage facility, while police had few clues to determine who they are or how they got there.

Investigators presume the victims were murdered, but fear that the trail of a killer may have grown cold.

The bodies, which coroner’s investigators tentatively identified as those of two men and a woman, were discovered Wednesday by police investigating complaints of a foul odor coming from a U-Haul company public storage room shortly after the room’s contents had been sold at auction.

The bodies had been rotting in two steamer trunks and a cardboard box for more than a year, authorities believe, and were so nearly liquefied that their race and age could not be determined. Some said the cause of death may never be known; autopsies could be performed as early as Friday.

“It is being treated, of course, as homicide,” said Officer Rigo Romero, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman.

Working through the night and into the day, police searched through the cluttered rental unit, filled with a nauseating stench, in the building in the 18100 block of Parthenia Street.

So far, they said, they have found no wallets or any other indications of who the corpses were or who placed them in the large trunks and the box and then wrapped them in black plastic sealed with silver duct tape.

When they tried to track down the man who had last rented the storage unit, police said, they found a trail of fake identities, addresses and other useless information.

“The things that we have found seem to be fictitious; addresses and those sorts of things,” said Lt. Al Moen of the robbery-homicide division. “We don’t have anticipation of any arrests any time soon.”

For now, authorities said, they hope to solve the mystery by determining the identities of the corpses, perhaps through dental records, and interviewing their friends and associates.

The bodies were discovered after Ed Zaharoff of Los Feliz bought the contents of the abandoned storage unit sight unseen for $2,300 at an auction Wednesday and began removing the items. “I was hoping maybe expensive artwork or a nice antique piece,” Zaharoff said. But, alarmed by the smell coming from one of the trunks, he called police.

After patrol officers found what appeared to be human remains in one trunk, the other trunk and the box were shipped to the Los Angeles County coroner’s office, where they were opened and found to also contain bodies, Romero said.

Police said there is little they can do until they receive the results of the autopsies. But they cautioned that the bodies are in such an advanced state of decomposition that it may be impossible to obtain fingerprints, although teeth and dental work should have survived.

Zaharoff said U-Haul refunded his $2,300.