Almost four decades ago, two boys reported to police that they'd found the body of a baby in a secluded, wooded part of New Jersey on the morning of Christmas Eve in 1984. Responding officers found the newborn girl's body, with the umbilical cord still attached, wrapped in a towel and placed inside a plastic bag off a road in Morris County's Mendham Township, and she became known as "Baby Mary." Now, authorities say they know what happened to her, CNN reports. According to the prosecutor's office, "new technology, law enforcement networking in three states, and old-fashioned police work" was used to identify the infant's mother, who is not being named because she was 17 years old in 1984, CBS News reports.
The baby's mother is now charged with manslaughter after a juvenile delinquent complaint was first filed against her in April; the medical examiner determined the infant was alive at birth and when she was abandoned, but died within 24 hours of her birth. There is no evidence the baby's father, who was 19 when the baby was born but died in 2009, even knew the baby's mother was pregnant or ever found out she'd given birth. "The death and abandonment of this baby girl is a tragic loss and even after nearly 40 years, remains just as heartbreaking," the Morris County prosecutor says. For the past 35 years, a remembrance has been held at the child's gravesite every Christmas Eve. (More New Jersey stories.)
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