Public Help Sought to ID Remains in Suitcase

Investigators are asking the public for help to determine whether the remains discovered in a suitcase among the belongings of a man who recently died are those of his long-vanished wife.

On Wednesday the San Mateo County coroner’s office released photographs of a woman they think is Anne Fitzgerald. They were found in Douglas Fitzgerald’s apartment.

Douglas Fitzgerald, 82, died of lung cancer alone in his Burlingame apartment some days before his body was discovered by a neighbor April 28. County authorities located a niece who had seen her uncle perhaps once in the last 30 years. As she and her daughter cleared his apartment, they found a suitcase that contained skeletal remains bundled into plastic and paper bags.