This is such a weird story. But apparently, the skeletal human remains we first heard about in January that were discovered inside a building on UC Berkeley's Clark Kerr Campus were actually found almost two years ago, and no one told the police.
It's odd enough for construction workers to happen upon some extremely degraded human remains in a long-shuttered building. But as the Berkeley Scanner reported this week, the workers told the university about the discovery way back in June 2021 when it happened.
According to an anonymous construction worker who spoke to the Berkeley Scanner, a UC Berkeley facilities supervisor was informed about the discovery, and UC Berkeley police were alerted, but then nothing further happened.
EXCLUSIVE NEW DETAILS: Contractors who found skeletal remains in an abandoned UC Berkeley building two years ago say they told a Cal supervisor about it — but he never told police. The bones were hidden in a crawl space marked by an ominous message.https://t.co/7noqg33vq9
— The Berkeley Scanner (@BerkeleyScanner) June 12, 2023
"When we turned it in, we were expecting a couple weeks to go by, that someone would go check it out and investigate," the contractor tells Berkeley Scanner. But time went on, and reportedly the unnamed supervisor said something to the effect of "I don't want to open that can of worms" with regard to alerting authorities about the body.
The remains were found beneath part of Building 21 on the Clark Kerr Campus — a set of buildings south of the main Berkeley campus, which historically had been home to the California Schools for the Deaf and Blind, and became part of the UC campus in 1983. Building 21 has been slated for demolition.
The story has some creepy details, too, that point to some likely foul play. According to the contractor, the remains appeared to be hidden. The bones were found inside a boarded-up crawlspace in a building that had likely previously been home to squatters, or at least temporary trespassers. And the remains were underneath "an old couch" or a mattress, and there was an ominous message scrawled on a wall in the crawl space that said something about "payback" for some individual.
The contractor tells the Berkeley Scanner that he waited throughout 2021 and 2022 without any word or update from the university, and he emailed the facilities supervisor in December 2022 after seeing construction workers back at the site at Building 21 — with the remains, presumably, still in that crawlspace. After not hearing back, the contractor went to Alameda County authorities with the news.
UC Berkeley sent an email to students in January about the "skeletonized" remains, which they said had likely been there for many years.
The Alameda County Coroner's Office has apparently been investigating — the case is under a "press hold" currently, that office says — and a community member told the Berkeley Scanner that they witnessed non-uniformed law enforcement in the area in February, some of whom were possibly FBI.
The facilities supervisor is no longer working at UC Berkeley as of May, the Berkeley Scanner reports.
Previously: Creepy: 'Skeletonized' Remains Found In Long-Shuttered Building on UC Berkeley Campus
Photo: Google Street View
