I emailed a Medical Examiner friend:
Hi Doc,
...You are familiar with the 1980 Gallitzin, Pa. "babies in the attic" case? I just read a paper by a Penn State PhD candidate who wrote that there was in the house "the odor of decomp, still unmistakable in 1980, leaking from the attic." My question to you is, "Is that reasonable?" The mummified remains of five infants, all under one-year of age, murdered between 1923-1933, individually wrapped in newspaper, stuffed in a trunk, kept in the attic of a big old three-story house: is it reasonable that they'd still be stinking up the house in 1980?Her response:
I think that there probably would still be an odor when you’re close to the remains, but I don’t think that it would smell up the whole house.
