Mendham Township Police Department
The woman is not being named as she was a juvenile at the time of the infant’s death, which makes this a “really unique case,” Mendham Township Police Chief Ross Johnson tells PEOPLE.
The case began on Christmas Eve in 1984, when two boys found a “deceased newborn” in a remote wooded area in Mendham Township, N.J., Morris County Prosecutor Robert J. Carrol said at thepress conferenceon Thursday.
She was found in a plastic bag wrapped in a towel with her umbilical cord still attached to her. The death was ruled a homicide at the time, according to a press release from the Morris County Prosecutor’s Office.
The mother was identified earlier this year with the help of DNA technology and on April 24, she was formally charged with one count of manslaughter as a juvenile delinquent.
She was arrested in April, and appeared before a judge in court in New Jersey. She was subsequently released and is being monitored, Johnson tells PEOPLE.
Even though the mother was identified and charged in April in South Carolina,she had to come to N.J., an extradition process that took months, Johnson says.
The prosecutor said at the press conference that the father was 19-years-old at the time of the child’s death, and he passed away in 2009. The mother was 17-years-old, according to the press conference.
Even though the case was being followed throughout the years, it was the subject of renewed focus in 2014 as the 30th anniversary of the child’s death was approaching, authorities said.
“About two years ago, the DNA evidence started becoming important,” Johnson tells PEOPLE. “About a year ago, we were able to identify some people and eventually the father.”
Once they knew the identity of the father, they tracked down leads and through further investigation, and identified the mother, he says. Both the father and mother were in school at the time of the death, and lived in Morris County, Carrol said at the press conference.
source: people.com
