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Mother gave birth at a gas station and left her baby to die in a trash can; decades later, unexpected evidence led to her arrest

When Christine received a letter in the mail from a flavored-water beverage company asking her to participate in a survey for a free gift card, she thought nothing of it and sent back her survey answers to the company by mail. Within no time, she discovered that the beverage company did not even exist and that her mail had actually reached the hands of detectives.

The post office box that Christine sent her mail to was actually rented by the detectives, who deliberately sent her bogus mail to receive a response back from her. Then, investigators used Christine’s saliva from the envelope’s seal to check whether her DNA matched with a baby boy, born more than 23 years ago and buried with the name Baby Boy Doe.

The DNAs were a match, providing the cops with all the evidence they needed. Without Christine’s knowledge, she had voluntarily given her DNA and given the police evidence to prove she was the one who left her newborn baby to die in a trash can over two decades ago.

The infant was abandoned in 1997, and the case had remained unsolved for 23 years. Back then, Christine was 27 years old and had given birth to her son in the bathroom of a gas station before leaving him to die. Although the security camera captured footage of a woman leaving the gas station on November 18, 1997, investigators weren’t able to identify her until the cold case was reopened by detectives in 2018.

After entering the baby’s DNA into a genealogy website called GEDmatch, they found that it matched with an individual who they believed would likely be a close relative to the child’s mother. Months later, in March 2020, there was another breakthrough in the case when Christine herself entered data on the website, making herself the prime suspect in the case.

After Christine, now 50 years old, fell for the fake mail about a survey that detectives had sent, she was soon charged in connection with abandoning her baby in the trash, and covering him with garbage.

As she spoke about what happened all those years ago, Christine told the police that her pregnancy was unplanned, and that she kept it a secret from her friends and family. “The father of her child reacted negatively when she told him she was pregnant,” court documents revealed. On the night of her son’s birth, Christine was riding with a friend and had asked them to stop at a gas station when she began having cramps.

“Christine said that she went inside and delivered the child in the restroom,” court documents said. “She said that the baby dropped into the toilet, where she left him for several minutes. Christine said she panicked and placed the baby in the trash can, covering him with other debris inside. Christine said that ‘in her mind’ she did not believe the baby was alive. However, she conceded that she did not check the baby for vital signs.

 

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