Evidence, Not of Crime, but of Forgetful Paleontologist

In the darkness beneath a Palos Verdes Estates house, workers expected to find pipes in need of repair. Instead, they found a room and old bones in need of a final resting place.

The room reminded Tom Montague of something from another time--a bomb shelter, maybe, from the 1950s. It held a supply of bottled water, cots that folded down from the wall, a fan and a radio.

Then the workers saw the bones: two jawbones, a leg bone and vertebrae, scattered beneath the cot.

“It almost looked like it was a place where someone was imprisoning someone,” said Montague, a general contractor whose workers were renovating the house when they made the discovery. “It was spooky.”

He contacted the homeowner, then took the bones to the Sheriff’s Department. Investigators soon surrounded the house with yellow crime scene tape.

“It was very creepy,” said Mark Johnson, a guest staying at the house, who learned of the bones after arriving home Thursday night. “They said, ‘We’re here regarding the human remains.’ ”

But already, the mystery was being solved. Investigators assured Johnson that the bones were old, predating the current ownership.

“Our homicide detectives concluded there is no crime associated with the bones,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Cruz Solis. The bones, he said, “were brought to the location by a previous resident. The remains were discovered over 40 years ago. They’re believed to be of Native American origin.”

A previous owner of the house apparently had a deep interest in paleontology, Montague said. Neighbors remember that he spent time studying Native American bones and his house often was cluttered with bones.

Apparently, when he sold the house, he neglected to take the bones in the underground room, and they remained and were passed down as the house changed hands.

The current owner of the house declined to be interviewed. But Fredric Monk, who sold the house to him two years ago after living there for 11 years, said the bones were there when he arrived. He didn’t know they were human, he said.

The man who collected the bones is now deceased, he said.

The Sheriff’s Department turned the bones over to the Los Angeles County coroner, Solis said. A forensic anthropologist will date them and determine if they are Native American.

“If they’re ancient bones, they’re usually turned over to a Native American association for reburial properly and according to their beliefs,” a spokesman for the coroner’s office said.

That organization, the Native American Heritage Commission in Sacramento, researches and finds those believed to be the nearest descendants of the deceased. The descendants then conduct a burial.