Dead Baby In A Box Came With Auctioned Storage Unit

A Louisiana man got more than he bargained for when he won a storage unit auction this week. That’s because of the macabre bonus that was found among the items inside of the storage unit — the remains of an infant that had died close to 15 years ago. The shocking discovery has also led to the arrest of a 57-year-old woman.

The Advertiser reports that Rebecca Ann Landry has been charged with second-degree murder stemming from the 2001 death of the unnamed infant child. Authorities are apparently convinced that she is the mother of the slain infant, but they are awaiting DNA results that will either confirm or deny this. Reports have made it clear, however, that the woman has confessed that the child died in 2001.

The Advocate shares more details about this tragic case, reporting that Landry had given birth to the child in secret. The woman told authorities that the baby — whose gender has not yet been shared with the public — died several days after it was born in her Lafayette apartment. She then stored the infant’s corpse in a box and hid the box in a self-storage unit that her mother had rented.

For some reason, somebody went at least 52 days without paying the bill for the storage unit — which is the deadline before a unit is auctioned off to the highest bidder. That is how the crime was discovered, which is mind-boggling since Landry had taken the steps to keep this gruesome secret hidden for more than a decade.

This isn’t the first case of it’s kind. In fact, one of the most high-profile cases of matricide was discovered thanks to a self-storage auction in Arizona. Diane Odell killed at least three of her babies over a course of a decade, storing their bodies in a suitcase that she carried with her for many years — until she hid it in a self storage unit in Arizona.

Odell eventually moved to the East Coast, leaving behind the storage unit and the macabre contents, but for some reason, she didn’t keep up with the payments. This left the unit vulnerable to repossession by the facility, which is exactly what happened. In 2003, the unit was auctioned off to one very unlucky man who made the horrifying discovery. By the time the corpses were discovered, they had been mummified inside of the suitcase where they were held since the 1980s.

Is Rebecca Landry the next Diane Odell?

[Photo: Lafayette Parish DOC mugshot]