By Mary O’Keefe

Detectives at Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the L.A. Corners office are continuing their investigation into the discovery of two skeletal remains in the Angeles National Forest over the Christmas holiday.

On the afternoon of Dec. 24, two hikers contacted Los Angeles County Sheriffs after they found a skull in Angeles National Forest at mile marker 19.43. The hikers put the skull in a box and transported it down Angeles National Forest Highway where they contacted law enforcement. The deputies went to the location where the skull had been discovered, but found no additional bones at that time. The location was in the area that Caltrans had been recently working. On Dec. 25, Christmas Day, homicide detectives arrived in the area with forensic units to investigate and about two miles from that location another skull with a partial skeleton was found. The investigation continued through Dec. 26, no other remains had been located, according to a sheriff’s spokesman.

“There was a bullet hole found in one of the skulls. We found most of the upper torso with the second [skull],” said Det. Philip Guzman.

An anthropologist working with the L.A. County Coroner’s office is now in the process of examining the bones.

All indications are the bones were there before the Station Fire.

“We don’t know if they were there just before the fire or years before,” Guzman said.

Detectives are going through all missing person’s reports they have at their department.  They will then contact other law enforcement missing person units, Guzman said.

More information on the remains is expected from the coroner’s office next week.

  Angeles National Forest, bones, human remains, remains