The grisly discovery of three infants’ bodies in Minnesota has an Iowa tie. The bodies were found wrapped up in old trunks by relatives of a woman who died four years ago. That woman, Cherie Herzog, was an Iowa native, born in Cresco, raised near Fremont Township. She later moved to the Twin Cities and died in 1999 at the age of 70. Family members going through her belongings this week found the babies, said to have been dead for at least ten years. Since it’s said that Herzog collected things from other family members who died over the years, and it’s possible she, herself, had never looked in the trunks. Anoka County, Minnesota, Sheriff’s captain Robert Aldrich is leading the investigation:Aldrich says they’ll “try and determine how these remains, who they were, how they ended up in these particular trunks, suitcases, could be an immense undertaking.” The next step in unraveling the mystery may be D-N-A testing to see if the babies are related to the family or to someone else. Authorities also admit that it could take months to determine causes of deaths or identities, if they can at all. Aldrich says “We know that this property passed through the hands of that person who died here in ’99, but we don’t know how those things came into her possession. So we’ll have to go back as far as we can and try to identify any family members, neighbors, friends, [and] acquaintances who can help us reconstruct that whole scenario.” Captain Aldrich says investigators are stunned at what he calls an unusual and eerie case.He says “Investigators do a lot of investigation into death, and homicide, [and] investigations into children’s sexual abuse. But this is different than all those things. So it’s a whole new set of emotions to deal with I think, and thought processes. There isn’t even a template for doing this kind of investigation.”
