Brother, Sister Among Those Questioned in Discovery of Infant Remains

Aug. 25, 2009— -- It was a gruesome discovery -- the skeletal remains of two infants shoved under a mobile home in a rugged, rural area near Fort Worth, Texas.

Authorities are now trying to find out not only how they got there, but when. Given the size of the bones, they are also unsure of the children's ages, saying they could be anything from miscarried or aborted fetuses to young babies born alive.

The findings were eerily similar to infant remains that were found nearby last year, but remain unidentified.

There have been no children of that size reported missing in the area, Tarrant County Sheriff's Office spokesman TerryGrisham said.

Grisham told ABCNews.com today that investigators have interviewed the mobile home's last known residents, a brother and sister who lived in the rental property for the last three or more years, but had since moved out.

It was the owner's son, Justin Southern, that found the remains on Sunday.

He told the Associated Press that he noticed the containers while cleaning on the property, owned by his father, Rex Southern. He said he immediately thought of the remains his father found on the property last year.

"That thought just flashed in my head, and I thought, 'Surely Lord, no — please' and I jerked that trash bag open," Southern said. "It's overwhelming. It's sad someone could even think about doing that to a baby."

So far, he said, the two have been cooperative, but "it's hard to say" whether they were involved with the infants' bodies.

"They said they knew nothing of it," Grisham said.

If the medical examiner is able to determine how long the bodies had been under the home, he said that may be true. DNA samples will be taken from the remains, Grisham said, and both the brother and the sister have agreed to submit samples.

Infant Remains Found Last Year Similar to Recent Discovery

Investigators are hitting a road block with past tenants, Grisham said, because the Southerns did not keep formal records of who was living on their property. None of the tenants signed leases, he said, and just paid the Southerns a month at a time.

Grisham described the property as about five acres in a low-income area of Tarrant County -- home to Dallas, Fort Worth and several affluent suburbs. The county's motto is "The perfect mix of cowboys and culture."

Not a formal neighborhood, the Southerns put a handful of manufactured homes on the property and rented them out.

The home where the remains were found are about three inches off the ground, Grisham said. One set of remains was found in a plastic bag that had been placed into a box, the other in a sealed plastic, Tupperware-type container, he said.

Rex Southern found infant remains in a suitcase that was overgrown with brush while dumping leaves in a spot away from the homes last year.

Rex Southern had to use a knife to cut open the suitcase, Grisham said, and called police once he found the bones.

"He found bones that were consistent with what was found on Sunday," Grisham said.

DNA samples were taken from that infant, but "at the time, there was nobody to try and match it to," he said.

The medical examiner's office was never able to determine how the baby died or whether it had been born alive.

"Bones of an infant two days before it's born pretty much look like the bones of an infant two days after it was born," Grisham said.

Chemical tests on the remains found Sunday are underway to determine whether the remains decomposed naturally or were fueld by some sort of accelerant, Grisham said.

If the remains were determined to have been from miscarried, aborted or stillborn fetuses a crime may not have been committed, though Grisham noted that "you could do it a lot more honorably or respectfully." It is only illegal to dispose of a corpse in such a manner and a corpse by definition is someone who had once been alive.

But with three sets of remains found on the same property, "we're real suspicious," Grisham said. "It's a very strange coincidence at this point."

The Associated Press contributed to this story.