Mystery Deepens as Autopsy Fails to Reveal Why & How an Entire Family Died in California

A couple and their one-year-old daughter as well as a dog belonging to the family were found dead in Northern California.

Autopsies completed on a Northern California couple and their baby daughter failed to reveal what could have caused their death.

An entire family - John Gerrish, his wife, Ellen Chung, their daughter, Miju, and their dog - were found dead on a hiking trail near Hite’s Cove in the Sierra National Forest this week.

Experts did not find any visible damage on the bodies and suggested that the cause of death was the fumes of toxic algae that filled the abandoned mines in the area.

"Investigators have considered whether toxic gasses, toxic algae and carbon monoxide from abandoned mines near in the area may have contributed to the deaths," Fox News cited Mariposa County Sheriff's spokeswoman Kristie Mitchell as saying. "We're not focusing on one specific cause at this point," she said. "There's just still so many that we can't rule out. We've looked at lighting strikes in the area. We've looked at storms… the weather, animals. We're looking at the entire area as a whole."

According to reports, the family took a walk along the hiking trail accompanied by their dog. A family friend reported the family missing Monday after they hadn't return from the one-day hike, and Gerrish, who was a software engineer, hadn't showed up at work.

The police said that the family died under "strange" and unexplained circumstances, in connection with which an additional investigation was launched.

“This is a very unusual, unique situation,” Mitchell was quoted by the KTLA as saying. “There were no signs of trauma, no obvious cause of death. There was no suicide note.”

Currently, the Mariposa County Coroner is awaiting toxicology results from the bodies, which could take several weeks.