Crimes against children feel especially heinous, no matter when they occur. But when they are left unsolved with what feels like no final resting place to honor their short lives, it seems downright heartbreaking. When it comes to five children who were reportedly killed by their own mother almost 100 years ago, officials are close to giving them the dignity they deserve.
Two skulls found in a medical museum’s archives were supposed to be reunited with the remains of their siblings. However, Cambria County officials are bewildered after discovering the three bodies they believed to be buried in a county-owned cemetery are actually missing.
Between 1925 and 1932, an unmarried and reclusive Stella Elizabeth Williamson in Gallitzin, Pennsylvania, strangled her five children. It wasn’t until after her death in August 1980 that the world learned what she did through a sealed letter. Written in 1960, Williamson confessed to the murders and told officials the bodies were in a trunk in her attic. It was evident the five kids were strangled, four of them newborns and one that was between 8 and 12 months old. Police took the remains as evidence.
Recently, two of the babies’ skulls were found in the archives of Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum. The medical history and science museum was founded in 1863. The mummified heads were found during an audit of the 35,000-item collection that began three years ago.
The skulls ended up at the museum as part of a donation from the late forensic analyst Dr. Halbert Fillinger in 1999. The two babies’ remains found in the museum still had nooses around their necks from their murders.
Cambria County Coroner Jeff Lees was notified of the discovery and hosted a somber press conference to address the matter. Originally, Lees wanted to exhume the bodies of the three other children and bury the siblings together. But the plan hit a snag. When workers went to exhume them, the bodies were not in the spot where they were recorded as having been buried. They spent an entire day looking for the remains.
“This is a heart-wrenching case to go through, but it’s in my belief and my heart that I have to do the right thing here, and that’s what we’re going to do. These babies were buried 45 years ago in what they believe is a pine box,” Lees said.
The two skulls will now be buried in the same area the three other siblings were believed to be laid to rest.
