They'll be no more holidays or show-and-tells for "Baby John," the mummified baby displayed on Charles Peavey's bureau until the police confiscated it last year. A probate court judge yesterday said state officials can bury the infant's decades-old remains because Peavey hasn't proven his claim that he and the mummy are kin.

Peavey, 42, of Concord, has 30 days to appeal that decision, but he said yesterday he won't.

"I'm just washing my hands of it," said Peavey, who said he skipped the court hearing because he can't afford the DNA tests needed to prove kinship. "I'm disappointed it came to this."

Lack of DNA wasn't the only concern raised by attorney Richard Head of the state attorney general's office. Equally troubling, Head told Judge Richard Hampe, is Peavey's MySpace page, a campy collection of haunted houses, skeletons and references to Baby John.

The online site opens with The Addams Family's," familiar theme song: "They're creepy and they're kooky, mysterious and spooky . . . " Next is The Munster's theme song. The page also includes sayings like, "Children shouldn't play with dead things." The website, Head told the judge, raises "questions about whether the remains are being treated with the appropriate respect."

Hampe looked at printed-out images from the site but limited his comments to DNA. He said without proof of kinship, state law requires that he insure that the infant's remains were released to a funeral director for burial.

And so apparently ends the long and unlikely tale that began in April 2006, when Peavey's young niece inadvertently told her day care staff that her uncle had a dead baby in his home. The Concord police investigated the girl's comment, found the mummified baby in Peavey's apartment and took it for testing.

Peavey told the police then that "Baby John," as family members called him, had been a family keepsake for nearly 90 years and was believed to have been the stillborn child of a great great uncle. Family and friends gave the mummy cards at the holidays and even a dried pet fish. "Baby John" was a family heirloom, Peavey said.

But Peavey let the police take the mummified remains, he said, believing they'd be returned with answers about the baby's age and origin. He was disappointed on all counts.

The authorities determined that the baby likely died of natural causes, not foul play, at birth or shortly after. And they confirmed that the remains are decades old. But they didn't test the mummy's age or origin, and they told Peavey that state law prevented them from returning the remains to him unless he could prove he was next of kin.

Their only choice by law, authorities said, was to release the baby to a funeral director for burial.

In May, Peavey and another relative went to probate court to challenge that position and filed a petition seeking return of the mummy.

"It's one of the few things from our family past that we have left," Peavey wrote in the petition. "And when I pass on, I was looking forward to passing it on to another family member, to keep some of the history for future family members."

Peavey and his family were scheduled to argue their position in probate court yesterday. When the family didn't appear, Hampe was concerned they'd confused the date and allotted them 30 days to appeal. But Peavey said he and his family decided Tuesday night not to attend.

The judge's ruling disappointed him, but not nearly as much as Head's references to the MySpace page.

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