MEYERSDALE --Three weeks ago, a neighbor found 3-year-old Alyjah Leydig wandering barefoot, blocks from his home and ready to cross busy Route 219.

The neighbor recognized the boy and tried to take him home, but no one was there. Instead, the neighbor took the child to a nearby home and contacted state police in Somerset.

A state police trooper turned the child over to his maternal grandmother, Brenda Bradshaw, about an hour later and that was the end of the incident.

Two days ago, Alyjah and his 5-year-old brother, Anthony, were found dead in the unlocked but latched cedar chest on the second floor of the rented home they shared with their parents, Nathan Leydig and Heather Baker, and an older brother, Andrew, 6.

Investigators are trying to determine how the Leydig brothers ended up in the chest undetected until their bodies were found by their parents early Wednesday morning.

Baker apparently went to sleep on the first floor before the boys Tuesday night and Leydig went to bed about 2 a.m. Wednesday when he returned home from work. Neither checked on Alyjah and Anthony during the night until they were found in the cedar chest, according to police.

Neither Leydig nor Baker was available for comment yesterday, said Baker's father, Craig.

Leydig has a violent history. He served 18 months in jail in 1995 and 1996 for several violent crimes, including an incident in which he threw a quarter stick of dynamite at the home of Meyersdale Mayor John Kamalsky, according to Somerset County Common Pleas Court records.

Neighbors of the family in Meyersdale, and former neighbors in Somerset, where Leydig, Baker and their children had lived until they were burned out of their home about a year ago, said the three boys frequently wandered the streets alone, sometimes naked, and had little adult supervision.

"This hurts me, but it doesn't shock me," said Judy Wadding, who lived next door to the Leydig family for two years in Somerset until the fire last Nov. 3 that destroyed their duplex. "Those dear, dear little kids. It's a doggone shame."

Neighbors said the Leydig and Baker home was often the scene of raucous parties that stretched into the early morning, while the children wandered around the first-floor duplex and the neighborhood. Wadding said she once saw one of the Leydig boys during a late night party standing naked on a kitchen table, piling up beer cans.

The neighbor's discovery of Alyjah three weeks ago on a Meyersdale street was not unlike similar instances that occurred in Somerset. Early last year, Somerset police had to return Andrew to his home after a neighbor found the boy about 2 a.m. outside his window, sitting on a curb crying.

It was shortly after that incident that the county's Children and Youth Services stepped in and took the children from Leydig and Baker, Wadding said. Baker was more attentive to her sons after they were returned to her a few weeks later, but within a short time, the boys were wandering the neighborhood again, Wadding said.

Shortly after 9 a.m. last Nov. 3, Somerset firefighters arrived at the duplex at 129 W. Race St. and found the first floor engulfed in flames, according to a police report of the incident. An investigation later determined the fire had started on a mattress in the boys' room, but Somerset police were never told the origin.

Leydig told police and a state police fire marshal he didn't know how the fire began and said he, Baker and the boys were asleep when it started. Andrew told police the "fire monster" started the blaze. The fire destroyed the duplex and the remaining structure was demolished Monday.

It was after that fire that Leydig and Baker returned to their hometown of Meyersdale, living first with Baker's mother before they moved into the rental home on High Street.