A coroner says autopsies on three sets of infant skeletons found in a Reading woman's apartment revealed little about their deaths.
X-rays of the nearly full skeletons of the infants had no sign of bone injuries, Berks County Coroner Dennis Hess said Sunday.
But he says the lack of organs makes it hard to tell if the infants were born alive.
Investigators searching the apartment of Michele Kalina on July 29 found two skeletons in a cooler and a third set of bones in a cement block.
It was Kalina’s husband, Jeffrey, and her 19-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, who found the remains in a closet in the family’s apartment on the 700-block of Court Street last month, reports the Reading Eagle.
Hess says further forensic investigation could provide answers in the next couple of weeks. He says DNA tests will reveal whether they were the nursing assistant's children.
"We'll know from the DNA whether they were hers or someone else's," Hess said. "I'll guarantee they were more than a month old, but in a week or two we'll know for sure."
Kalina has been charged with three counts of abusing a corpse and is being held on $5 million bail.
District Attorney John T. Adams said the results of the forensic and DNA tests will decide what direction the investigation will go, reports the Reading Eagle.
