Officials have filed charges in the almost 40-year-old cold case of a newborn who was found dead in Mendham Township in 1984 later referred to as “Baby Mary,” Morris County Prosecutor Robert J. Carroll said Thursday.
Authorities said the baby’s mother, now 57 years old, was arrested in South Carolina earlier this year and charged in a juvenile delinquency complaint with one count of manslaughter. The woman, whose name was being withheld, was 17 years old and a resident of Morris County at the time of the incident, authorities said.
She is not currently in custody but is being monitored, Carroll said. If found guilty, she could face up to three years behind bars.
The baby girl’s body was found by two boys in a wooded area off Mt. Pleasant Road on Christmas Eve in 1984, according to authorities. Carroll said she was wrapped in a towel and placed inside a plastic bag. Her death was ruled a homicide after a medical examiner determined she had been alive when she was born, and was less than 24-hours-old when she died.
Carroll said DNA of the baby taken at the time of her discovery was later matched to her father, who had died in 2009 before he was identified, and is not believed to have known about the baby. After following “hundreds of not thousands of leads,” investigators finally identified the mother.
“An abandonment of this baby girl is a tragic loss and even after 40 years remains just as heartbreaking,” Carroll said at a press conference on Thursday. “Justice may not take the form the public has imagined all these years, but we believe with this juvenile delinquency complaint, justice is being served for Baby Mary. Nothing can right this terrible wrong.”
The baby’s identity and that of her parents were unknown at the time of the incident, authorities said. She was given the name Mary by Rev. Michael Drury of St. Joseph Church, the Mendham Township Police Department chaplain, who baptized her after she was found.
“Investigators have vigorously…
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