After mom's death, son finds dead baby stored in family freezer after mistaking box for wedding cake

ST. LOUIS (FOX 2) - A Missouri man cleaning out the freezer of his recently deceased mother made a grisly discovery Saturday night when he found the mummified body of an infant -- who he believes might be his sister -- in a box that for decades he thought held a wedding cake.

Adam Smith, 37, had been living with his mother inside her St. Louis apartment to care for her before she died of cancer. After her death, he decided to clean out the residence she called home for years.

Smith was going through the freezer when he found a box that had been in the freezer since he was a kid. He told Fox2 St. Louis that his mother always told him not to touch it and he assumed it was a frozen wedding cake or something sentimental.

With his mother gone and the cleanup under way, he opened it.

"There was a pink blanket, baby blanket, and when I reached down and touched it I could feel a foot," Smith said, adding he "could see the baby's head with hair -- hair was still attached to it, smooth."

He called police who are investigating what they consider to be a suspicious death.

Smith said he thinks the body might be that of his older sister and remembers his mother talking about losing a child at birth. He was also told by a relative that she gave birth to twins, one of whom she gave up for adoption and one of whom died.

Smith will have to wait for the autopsy results to confirm that it's his sister.

"Who absolutely keeps their own child in a box for this long and never talk about it," he said. "I just have so many thoughts and it's just insane. I have to wait for the autopsy to see if that baby ever took a breath and I can not help it to think she might have done something to it. I just can't help it."

Smith said the discovery may have come too late, and he worries he'll never get closure regarding the infant's death now that his mother is gone.

"I'm 37 and it has been in my freezer for 37 years and I was always told it was a wedding cake top," Smith told KSDK. "My mom has always been secretive about things, about life."

Information from FOX News was used in this report.
This story was written in Detroit