A St. Louis man made a disturbing find while cleaning out the freezer in the home of his deceased mother. Adam Smith moved into his mother's house to help care for her after she was diagnosed with cancer. Following his mother's death, he began the process of cleaning out her home.
When he got to the freezer, he pulled out a box that had been stuffed in the back for his entire life. His mother said it was a cake topper, but she told him never to open the box. When Smith opened the cardboard box, he expected to find the cake topper from his mother's first wedding cake, or maybe some money she had stashed away. Instead, he was shocked to find a frozen baby wrapped in a pink blanket.
"It still had skin, hair, and everything," Smith told KSDK. "It was mummified."
He immediately called the police, who are investigating the case as a "suspicious death."
Smith says that his mother lost a child before he was born, though she rarely discussed the sensitive subject. He reached out to his estranged father, hoping to find out some information about the baby.
"He told me my mom was pregnant on their first date and that the next time he saw her, she wasn't," Smith told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Smith gave police a DNA sample and is hoping the autopsy can shed some light on what happened to the child.
"Even as she was on her deathbed, she never told me what was in that box," he said. "That's what makes me think maybe she did something to this baby and didn't want to tell anyone because she was afraid she would get in trouble."