Mummified baby to be buried

CONCORD, N.H., Sept. 20 (UPI) -- A mummified baby’s body must be buried since the New Hampshire man who kept it on a bureau could not prove it was related to him.

Charles Peavey of Concord told the Concord Monitor he does not plan to appeal and cannot afford the DNA tests he would need to prove that he and “Baby John” are related.

The corpse was featured on Peavey’s Web site, which uses the themes from “The Addams Family” and “The Munsters” and includes a number of macabre items. But authorities only became aware that he was keeping a body at home when his niece talked about it in daycare. Richard Head, a lawyer with the state attorney general's office, said during Wednesday’s hearing that, because of the Web site there were "questions about whether the remains are being treated with the appropriate respect."

Peavey said his family has had the corpse for 90 years and it was originally a stillborn son of a relative several generations back. He said his niece created his page on MySpace as a joke.