When 76-year-old Stella Williamson died of natural causes in Gallitzin, Pennsylvania on August 25, 1980, a sealed letter was found among her belongings. Written in the early 1960s, it was a confession: ‘In the attic in an old trunk you will find babies I had… How I got away with it I don’t know but I did.’ Investigators followed the letter to the attic, where they found the mummified remains of five infants, all under one year old, wrapped in newspapers dating from 1925 to 1933.
Examination by forensic experts including Dr. Halbert Fillinger and Dr. Wilton Krogman determined that at least three of the infants had been strangled, ligature material still present on their necks. The cause of death for the other two, believed to be newborns, was never conclusively established. Williamson, remembered by neighbours as kind and churchgoing, had kept her secret for more than half a century. The case resurfaced decades later when two of the infant skulls were mysteriously discovered at a Philadelphia museum.
