Who is Miranda? The mystery of the young blonde who has remained perfectly preserved and still holding a red rose inside a small coffin for 145 years under a house in San Francisco

A team of investigators has identified a young woman found buried in a coffin in San Francisco’s Lone Mountain neighborhood a year ago
announced today.

The girl, nicknamed “Miranda Eve” by researchers, has been identified as Edith Howard Cook, who died on October 13, 1876 at the age of two.

Edith, the second daughter of Horatio Nelson and Edith Scooffy Cook, is listed as having died of “marasmus,” a term used to describe severe malnutrition and emaciation.

Researchers said today that the emaciation could have been caused by a number of things, but was most likely linked to an infectious disease.

The young woman in a hermetically sealed metal coffin was unearthed last May in the backyard of John and Ericka Karner’s home by a contractor doing remodeling work.

Edith was reburied at Greenlawn Memorial Park in Colma last June, but a team of researchers set out to identify her.

The area where the Karner house was built was known to have been part of the Odd Fellows Cemetery, which accepted burials from 1865 until about 1902.

Most of the bodies in the cemetery were exhumed and moved to Greenlawn in the early 1930s, but Edith was left behind for unknown reasons.

Investigators were able to tentatively identify her through a search.
from cemetery records and then confirmed the identification through a DNA match to a living relative, Peter Cook.

Bay Area resident Peter Cook is Edith’s great-nephew and a direct descendant of her older brother, Milton H. Cook.