Baby John, Family Heirloom to be Buried Today

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The 18-inch long mummy known as "Baby John" was confiscated by police from the home of Charles Peavey in 2006 after a niece mentioned to day care staff that her uncle was keeping a dead baby at his residence. The Concord, N.H., man kept the mummy on display atop a bureau in his home, offering it various holiday cards and supplying it with a dried fish for a pet.

Peavey believes the baby boy was a relative of his, and the mummy is a family heirloom that has been passed down for 80 to 90 years. While unknown exactly who the baby was, Peavey believes in the folklore that says the remains are of an "illegitimate child of Peavey's great-great-uncle and a woman with whom he had an affair".

While Peavey said he treated the remains with respect, prosecutors in a Probate Court battle in Merrimack County held in 2007 raised concerns about a MySpace page that played the "Addams Family" theme song and contained humored quips about the baby. Peavey claimed the page was created by a niece. "I do not think this is a joke, I've never treated him like a joke", Peavey said. The Judge's ruling ordered that the remains be buried if DNA testing could not prove that Peavey was in fact related.

Testing was performed to determine the cause of death and if the remains were diseased. It was determined that the cause of death was natural and there was no disease. The state, however, declined to spend the $2,000 on DNA testing, which Boston Paternity agreed to conduct free of charge. The testing was unable to prove if Peavey was in fact related.

While hoping to have passed the heirloom down, as has been the case for so many years, Peavey chose not to appeal the court's decision to bury the infant's remains. "Baby John" is scheduled to be buried today, possibly in Concord at the Blossom Hill Cemetery, a place that offered to bury the infant free of charge.