The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia has uncovered a decades-old mystery involving two unidentified infant skulls found during a routine audit of its human remains collection last November, as reported by The Daily Mail.

Museum staff made the discovery while cataloging materials from its library storage area, which houses over 6,000 anatomical specimens.

Notes found with the skulls pointed to a chilling case from the early 1980s, in which an elderly Pennsylvania woman, Stella Williamson, admitted on her deathbed to hiding the bodies of five infants in a trunk in her attic.

The case received national attention at the time but faded from public memory over the decades.

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Williamson, who passed away in 1980, lived in Gallitzin, Pennsylvania. She was described in newspaper accounts as a quiet, religious woman who had lost a leg to diabetes and was known in her neighborhood for spending time on her porch, interacting with children.

She lived alone, never married, and was referred to in local reports as a "spinster."

Her secret came to light after authorities discovered a note following her death. “I want to make things right if anything should happen to me,” the note read.

“In the attic in an old trunk you will find babies I had to [redacted] 30 years [ago] or more.” The note included spelling errors and incomplete statements, but its message was clear. Williamson confessed to concealing the bodies and asked for forgiveness.

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She said the unnamed father bore no responsibility and implied she had remained single because of the guilt she carried.

Following her death, authorities recovered five decomposed infant bodies from her attic. At least three were determined to have been murdered, and forensic examination at the time revealed evidence of possible strangulation.

The children were estimated to have died between 1927 and 1933. Four were believed to be only weeks old, while one had likely lived for nearly a year.

The remains were transported to Philadelphia for further analysis. However, due to advanced decomposition and limitations of forensic technology at the time, no definitive conclusions were reached, and the case remained unsolved.

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The remains were buried in sealed coffins in 1980, but records indicate those coffins were never opened again—raising questions about how two of the skulls wound up in the museum’s collection.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the skulls may have been transferred by Dr. Halbert Fillinger, a former forensic pathologist, but no documentation has been found confirming how or when the skulls were added to the museum’s archive.

They were neither displayed nor cataloged for research, and museum officials believe they remained wrapped in old newspapers for decades before being rediscovered.

Officials say the discovery sheds new light on the long-dormant case but offers little resolution. “It’s going to remain a mystery, unfortunately,” former Cambria County coroner John Barron stated in 1980. “There are some things we’d all like to know, but they’re buried with the people.”

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