A California sheriff’s office confirmed two separate death investigations after a dead infant and human remains turned up just miles apart on the same morning.
Story Snapshot
- Deputies found a dead infant near Struve Road in Moss Landing around 8:30 a.m. Saturday.
- About 90 minutes later, a county worker found human remains on Old Stage Road, several miles away.
- The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office says the two cases are not believed to be connected.
- No names, causes of death, or details have been released as the investigations continue.
- The area has a history of unexplained infant deaths, including a 1994 case solved decades later.
Two Grim Discoveries In One Morning
Someone found the body of an infant at about 8:30 a.m. Saturday in the 100 block of Struve Road, an unincorporated stretch of north Monterey County near Moss Landing. Firefighters and paramedics responded and confirmed the baby was dead at the scene. The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office quickly opened an investigation into how the child died.
Less than two hours later, deputies got a second call. A county employee found what looked like human remains in the 400 block of Old Stage Road, several miles from the first scene. That discovery, reported at 9:55 a.m., triggered a completely separate response from the sheriff’s office.
Sheriff’s Office Says Cases Are Not Linked
Investigators moved fast to knock down speculation that one person or crime tied the two scenes together. The sheriff’s office stated plainly that “the two deaths are being investigated separately and are not believed to be related”. That distinction matters, because same-day discoveries in the same rural county can easily spark rumors the facts do not support.
A separate CBS Bay Area report backed up the timeline on the infant case, confirming that fire crews were sent to Struve Road around 8:30 a.m. and declared the baby dead on arrival. The county’s own coroner’s division confirmed it is handling the human remains investigation on Old Stage Road as its own case.
Even with two confirmed statements, the sheriff’s office has released very little else. Officials said only that both matters were under investigation as of Saturday afternoon and asked anyone with information to come forward. No names have been released. No cause of death has been announced for either case. There is no word yet on whether the remains found on Old Stage Road belong to an adult, a child, or how long they had been there.
A County With A Painful History
This is not the first time Monterey County has dealt with the death of an infant under murky circumstances. In 1994, the partial remains of a two- to three-day-old baby boy were found along a road in Prunedale. That case sat unsolved for three decades until DNA technology identified the mother, Pamela Ferreyra, who was arrested in 2024 and later convicted.
PRESS RELEASE – Monterey County Sheriff’s Office Detectives Investigating Two Separate Incidents of Human Remains Found –
The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office is currently investigating two separate incidents of human remains that have been found in two different locations.
On… pic.twitter.com/9mZ9yfkO7p
— Monterey Co Sheriff (@MCoSheriff) August 1, 2026
That cold case is a reminder that early scene details rarely tell the whole story. Forensic science can take years to catch up to a crime, and rushing to connect unrelated tragedies does families and investigators no favors. The sheriff’s office has been careful this time to separate the two cases publicly rather than let assumptions fill the gap.
For families in Monterey County, the back-to-back nature of these discoveries is unsettling regardless of whether the cases turn out to be connected. Parents deserve answers, and so does the public, especially when a child’s death is involved. Law enforcement has an obligation to move quickly, follow the evidence, and be transparent once the facts are confirmed rather than let a case go cold for thirty years like the last one did.
An arrest has not been made in either case, and no one has been named a suspect. These remain open investigations, and the sheriff’s office says it is still gathering evidence. Anyone with information has been asked to contact investigators directly as the case develops.
Sources:
nypost.com, youtube.com, cbsnews.com, usatoday.com, mcso.countyofmonterey.gov
