Skulls Found at Laguna Beach Home Are Apparently Peruvian Artifacts

A neighbor rummaging in the crawl space of a vacant Laguna Beach house found a pair of long-forgotten skulls--apparently mummified remains from Peru.

The skulls were found boxed in a cache of household items beneath a vacant home on Virginia Way in south Laguna Beach, police said.

The Orange County coroner’s office turned the skulls over to Judy Suchey, a Cal State Fullerton forensic anthropologist, for analysis. Suchey could not be reached for comment, and further details on the age and possible origin of the relics were not immediately available.

Laguna Beach Police Det. Derek Ferguson said the skulls apparently belonged to Ruth Schmidt, the former owner of the house, who died about 15 years ago. The house has been rented out in the years since, he said, but police believe the skulls came from a collection Schmidt had amassed as an amateur archeologist.

“Everything on the surface looks innocent and OK,” Ferguson said.

Schmidt’s son, Berndt Lohr-Schmidt, a lawyer in Hollywood Hills and an unsuccessful L.A. City Council candidate in the 1980s, declined to comment.

“Let Ruth Schmidt lie in peace,” he said.

Ferguson said the skulls were found about two weeks ago by a neighbor who was poking around in the storage area beneath the home.

“They were amongst a bunch of belongings that appeared to be old in nature,” Ferguson said. “There were some old lamps and clothing and books. They’d been there quite some time.”

Ferguson said the neighbor, who could not be reached for comment, displayed the skulls in his home for a short time before his daughter persuaded him to call police. Investigators then contacted Lohr-Schmidt, who told them of his mother’s hobby.

“His mother considered herself an amateur archeologist who traveled extensively in South America and particularly to Peru,” Ferguson said. “She brought back artifacts and relics and the like.”

Beyond the initial shock that comes with finding human remains, even mummified ones, Ferguson said, there wasn’t much of an element of surprise to the investigation of the box’s contents.

“On the outside it had writing stating that they were Peruvian skulls,” he said.