Author Topic: BABY JANE DOE: F, newborn, found in Frenchville, ME gravel pit - 7 December 1985 *ARREST*  (Read 196 times)

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A full-term newborn girl was delivered and left to die at a Frenchville gravel pit. A Siberian Husky named Paca discovered the infant's frozen body and carried her to its owners home, less than a quarter of a mile away. The infant's umbilical cord was still attached.

Investigators established that the baby was born at the gravel pit on an access road near the intersection of Route 1 and Pelletier Avenue. The baby was abandoned in temperatures that fell to 30 degrees below zero. Experts state that she could not have lived longer than 30 minutes in such temperatures. Based upon tire tracks found at the scene, investigators believe the car was small. They do not know if the mother drove herself or was driven but boot prints were found in the snow with blood. Investigators suspect that the mother may be Canadian.

It is unknown where the infant's remains are today.

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Akoya

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https://identifyus.org/en/cases/15152

NamUs UP # 15152


ME/C Case Number: 1985-1123
Aroostook County, Maine
to year old White Female

Case Report - NamUs UP # 15152
Case Information
Status Unidentified
Case number 1985-1123
Date found December 07, 1985 12:15
Date created May 19, 2016 15:23
Date last modified June 01, 2017 08:16
Investigating agency
date QA reviewed

Local Contact (ME/C or Other)

Agency Office of the Chief Medical Examiner
Phone 207-624-7185
Case Manager
Name Lindsey Chasteen
Phone 207-624-7188

Demographics
Estimated age Infant
Race White
Ethnicity
Sex Female
Weight (pounds) 6, Measured
Height (inches) 18, Measured
Body Parts Inventory (Check all that apply)
All parts recovered
Body conditions
Recognizable face
Probable year of death 1985 to 1985

Circumstances

Location Found
GPS coordinates
Address 1 Bouchard Road Gravel Pit
Address 2
City Frenchville
State Maine
Zip code
County Aroostook
Circumstances
A full-term newborn girl was delivered and left to die at a Frenchville gravel pit. A Siberian Husky discovered the infant's frozen body and carried her to its owner's home, less than a quarter of a mile away. The infant's umbilical cord was still attached.

Investigators established that the baby was born at the gravel pit on an access road near the intersection of Route 1 and Pelletier Avenue. The baby was abandoned in temperatures that fell to 30 degrees below zero. Experts state that she could not have lived longer than 30 minutes in such temperatures. Based upon tire tracks found at the scene, investigators believe the car was small. They do not know if the mother drove herself or was driven but boot prints were found in the snow with blood. Investigators suspect that the mother may be Canadian.

Fingerprints
Status: Fingerprint information is currently not available

Clothing and Accessories
No clothing or accessories

Dental
Status: Dental information / charting is currently not available

DNA
Status: Sample available - Not yet submitted

Images
There are currently no images available for this case.

Akoya

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http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1067ufme.html

Case File: 1067UFME
The Doe Network





Unidentified Female

Date of Discovery: December 7, 1985
Location of Discovery: Frenchville, Aroostook County, Maine
Estimated Date of Death: Same day
State of Remains: Recognizable
Cause of Death: Homicide by exposure

Physical Description
** Listed information is approximate

Estimated Age: Newborn
Race: Unknown
Gender: Female
Height: Unknown
Weight: 6 lbs. 8 oz.
Hair Color: Reddish blonde.
Eye Color: Unknown

Distinguishing Marks/Features: Unknown

Dentals: Not available.
Fingerprints: Not available.
DNA: Unknown
Clothing & Personal Items
Clothing: None.
Jewelry: None.
Additional Personal Items: None.

Case History
A full-term newborn girl was delivered and left to die at a Frenchville gravel pit. A Siberian Husky named Paca discovered the infant's frozen body and carried her to its owners home, less than a quarter of a mile away. The infant's umbilical cord was still attached.

Investigators established that the baby was born at the gravel pit on an access road near the intersection of Route 1 and Pelletier Avenue. The baby was abandoned in temperatures that fell to 30 degrees below zero. Experts state that she could not have lived longer than 30 minutes in such temperatures. Based upon tire tracks found at the scene, investigators believe the car was small. They do not know if the mother drove herself or was driven but boot prints were found in the snow with blood. Investigators suspect that the mother may be Canadian.

It is unknown where the infant's remains are today.

Investigating Agency(s)
If you have any information about this case please contact;

Agency Name: Maine State Police
Agency Contact Person: Troop F
Agency Phone Number: 800-924-2261 or 207-532-5400

Agency Name: Maine State Police
Agency Contact Person: Criminal Investigation Division III
Agency Phone Number: 800-432-7381 or 207-941-4071

Agency Case Number: Unknown
NCIC Case Number: N/A
NamUs Case Number: Not listed
Please refer to this number when contacting any agency with information regarding this case.

Information Source(s)

Maine State Police
Bangor Daily News Archive

Akoya

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http://bangordailynews.com/2014/03/...-doe-still-haunts-maine-couple-investigators/

After nearly three decades, the case of Baby Jane Doe still haunts Maine couple, investigators

By Julia Bayly and Jen Lynds, BDN Staff
Posted March 21, 2014, at 3:43 p.m.
Last modified March 22, 2014, at 4:58 p.m.

FRENCHVILLE, Maine — Although a little over 28 years have passed and retired Maine State Police Maj. Charles Love has long since put away his badge and gun, he can still remember the sights and sounds on that December morning after the child he would know only as Baby Jane Doe was born and subsequently abandoned in a Frenchville gravel pit.

Baby Jane Doe has been at the center of a cold case ever since a dog named Paca first discovered the newborn and carried her back to the home of its owners, Armand and Lorraine Pelletier, less than a quarter mile away.

“It was so cold, just very, very cold,” Love recalled from his home in Winthrop recently. “I was not the first officer on the scene, but I was one of the earliest. I was walking the scene, trying to gather information. It was so quiet in that gravel pit, and it appeared that a vehicle had driven in, as the tracks were very clear in the snow. Right near them were plainly a set of dog tracks. I turned and followed those paw prints right back to the house, where it had dropped the baby right by the door.”

Three decades and countless hours of investigation later, the case still has more questions than answers.




Who was the mother? What circumstances led her to that gravel pit to deliver — and then abandon — her own baby on Dec. 7, 1985?

Why did no one ever come forward with information on a woman who had been pregnant and then suddenly childless?

Where did the mother go after the birth, and how did she avoid being seen?

A frozen little baby
“In this case and like in so many old cases, there are people who are aware and want to see the truth come out,” Sgt. Darren Crane with the Maine State Police major crimes unit, said recently. “Every once in awhile a phone call or other information comes in, and we work it.”

Crane is now the lead investigator on the case.




At the time, then Maine State Police Detective Arnold Gahagan was the lead investigator. Now retired, Gahagan declined to comment for this story, given the open status of the cold case.

At some point in the early morning hours of Saturday, Dec. 7, 1985, a woman delivered a full-term baby girl on a gravel pit access road near the intersection of U.S. Route 1 and Pelletier Avenue in Frenchville and then drove — or was driven — away, leaving the infant behind as temperatures dipped well below zero.

That’s where Paca, a Siberian Husky belonging to the Pelletiers, became the catalyst for the investigation that followed.

At the time, the Pelletiers lived on what was called Bouchard Road, roughly 700 feet from the access road.

“This is something you don’t forget,” Armand Pelletier said during a recent interview from the couple’s home in Bangor.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” Lorraine Pelletier said.

Armand Pelletier recalled how that morning he had let the family dog out and, not long after, Paca was back at the sliding glass door, trying to get their attention.

“She kept pounding at the door’s window to get back in,” Armand Pelletier said. “She kept pounding, and after awhile, I went to go look, and I could not believe what I saw. I saw what looked like a little rag doll, but then we saw it was a frozen little baby.”

Lorraine Pelletier remembers “a cute little girl with reddish blond hair” that they were later told weighed 6 pounds, 8 ounces.

“It was 30 below [zero] that night,” Lorraine Pelletier said. “What [officials] told us was she could not have lived more than 30 minutes.”

The Pelletiers believe the cries of the infant or its scent led Paca right to her.

“Paca carried her so carefully by her head right to our back steps,” Lorraine Pelletier said.

Copies of the state medical examiner’s report were not immediately available, and the current whereabouts of Baby Jane Doe’s body could not be determined. Authorities cited the open investigation and noted that any files associated with the case were not easily accessible due to the amount of time that has passed since the incident.

In 1985, investigators told the Pelletiers that any wounds caused by Paca in no way contributed to the baby’s death.

“There were some wounds in her head, but they were completely superficial,” Aroostook County Sheriff James Madore said on a recent visit to the scene. “The dog did nothing to hurt that little baby.”

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continued


‘We just don’t know’
Madore was a state trooper at the time and remembers responding to the Pelletiers’ call nearly 30 years ago.

“I remember that call coming in that a dog had brought a baby to a home,” Madore said. “It was a baby with the umbilical cord and everything.”

Madore said law enforcement officials were able to track the dog’s path back to the scene of the baby’s birth, where media reports from the time said frozen blood and footprints were discovered.

“I remember it being not far off the road,” Madore said. “It had to have happened when it was dark because it would have been in plain view otherwise.”

It was unclear if the mother was alone at the time, but Madore said evidence at the scene did suggest she may have held on to the hood or trunk of a car while delivering the baby.

“Would someone be able to do that and then be capable of driving herself away?” he said. “We just don’t know.”

While unsure of the number of hours spent on the case, Crane said last week that the initial investigation was exhaustive, despite the fact law enforcement had little solid information.

Love, who was at the time a state police sergeant, agreed.

“We were working with the media, but we really had nothing to feed them because we literally had nothing,” he said. “We were telling people to be on the lookout for people shopping for items that could be used to control heavy bleeding, but that never amounted to anything. At the time, we were very concerned about the health of the mother, the woman who gave birth to the baby. We thought that she would have had to seek treatment somewhere, but again, that didn’t come to anything, either.”

Police questioned a couple who had been spotted in a local department store around the time of the incident, Crane said.

The woman, he said, reportedly had blood on her pants and was acting “distressed.”

Police immediately released a composite sketch of the couple to the media.

Citing the nature of the investigation, Crane could not divulge specifics, but the Pelletiers remember a couple matching that description coming forward and being cleared.

“It turned out the woman was in a department store shopping and had just gotten her period,” Lorraine Pelletier said. “They were Canadians, and they came forward, and they were ruled out as suspects by the police.”

Puzzle pieces
Other than a description of a small car based on tire tracks found at the scene, police had very little evidence, and the trail went cold.

But officials are not giving up.

“Anytime new information comes in that we can work and investigate, that is what we do,” Crane said.

He has no doubt there is someone out there who holds the key to the mystery.

“There are people who care and who want the truth to come out,” he said. “It’s like a puzzle, and we keep trying to put the pieces together, [and] I always believe there is someone out there with the right information and that missing piece.”

Improved technology, including DNA screening, could come into play if the right piece of evidence is discovered, Crane said.

The Pelletiers, now in their early 60s, are left to wonder if that missing puzzle piece is the mother herself.

“Down the road, she may come forward,” Lorraine Pelletier said. “If she was say 20 at the time, now she is in her 50s and she is facing problems, those problems could come from ‘I left my baby to die.’”

And why, the Pelletiers wonder, did she not seek other options?

“We don’t have children,” Lorraine Pelletier said. “We could never have children, [and] what I don’t understand is why if the woman did not want her baby, she did not ring our bell, leave the baby on our steps and just run away.”

Armand agreed, adding softly, “If she had lived, we could have adopted her.”

The Pelletiers moved to Bangor in the summer of 1986, and Paca lived to be 12-years-old, dying of cancer in 1987.

There is no statute of limitations affecting the incident, Crane said, and, if identified, those involved could be facing homicide or manslaughter charges.

“It would be up to the [Maine] attorney general,” he said.

Deputy Attorney General Bill Stokes said Tuesday that the case remains open and is still under investigation. Because of that, all case files and investigative records that are in the possession of the attorney general’s office remain confidential and cannot be released to the public.

“I don’t know if this case will ever be solved,” Madore said. “Some cases are just unsolvable, [but] certainly you have to wonder if there is a woman out there, and if she is still alive, is her conscience bothering her.”

Even though he retired from the state police in 2003 after joining in 1970, Love said the case “is always in the back of my mind.”

“I was just asking one of the Aroostook County detectives about it about a year and a half ago,” he said. “It’s just one of those you always wonder about, how that could have happened and who could have done something like that.”

The years have done nothing to lessen the impact of the incident for the Pelletiers.

“I think of it all the time, especially every December or when we see a husky dog,” Lorraine Pelletier said. “It is something in our life that will never leave us.”

Anyone with information about the case is asked to call the Maine State Police, Troop F, at 800-924-2261 or 532-5400.

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http://kidnappingmurderandmayhem.blogspot.com/2015/01/maines-unsolved-homicides.html

Baby Jane Doe – “A woman drove into a gravel pit in Frenchville, Maine in 1985, got out of her vehicle and proceeded to give birth to a baby girl. She then carried the living baby into the woods and left her there. It was extremely cold, and bootprints were observed frozen into the blood left on the ground. A Siberian Husky later found the infant and carried it home to it’s owner. The infant died of exposure, and was not harmed by the Husky. The mother has never been located, and it is suspected she is from Canada.”

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http://s10.invisionfree.com/usedtobedoe/ar/t17887.htm

Baby Jane Doe
Case date: 1985

Town: Frenchville



A woman drove into a gravel pit in Frenchville, Maine in 1985, got out of her vehicle and proceeded to give birth to a baby girl. She then carried the living baby into the woods and left her there. It was extremely cold, and bootprints were observed frozen into the blood left on the ground. A Siberian Husky later found the infant and carried it home to it's owner. The infant died of exposure, and was not harmed by the Husky. The mother has never been located, and it is suspected she is from Canada.

Criminal Investigation Division III, 106 Hogan Road, Bangor, Maine 04401. (207) 941-4071 or toll free 1-800-432-7381.

http://www.maine.gov/tools/whatsnew/index....ticle-homicides

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Investigators established that the baby was born at the gravel pit on an access road near the intersection of Route 1 and Pelletier Avenue.



Pelletier Ave, Frenchville, ME 04745


Pelletier Ave, Frenchville, ME




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After nearly three decades, the case of Baby Jane Doe still haunts ...

Bangor Daily

Aroostook County Sheriff James Madore was a state trooper when he responded to the call



Aroostook County Sheriff James Madore recalls responding to the Baby Jane Doe case in Frenchville as a state trooper in 1985.


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After nearly three decades, the case of Baby Jane Doe still haunts ...
Bangor Daily News

Armand and Lorraine Pelletier of Bangor sit with their dog Cody holding a picture


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http://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_..._the_United_States#/Aroostook_County_Jane_Doe

Maine

Aroostook County Jane Doe

The body of a full-term baby girl with an attached umbilical cord was found December 7, 1985, in Frenchville, Maine. Her body was found by a dog, which then brought it to its owners. The infant had died within a half hour after her birth, due to extremely cold temperatures. She had been abandoned in a gravel pit. Examiners determined that the dog had not caused injury to the baby.

At the location, bloody footprints were found, believed to have been left there by the infant's mother. Her parents may have been from Canada

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Bangor Daily News
Armand and Lorraine Pelletier of Bangor sit with their dog Cody in their Bangor home.


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The Village of Frenchville (2003)


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https://katv.com/news/nation-world/36-years-later-mother-arrested-for-murder-of-baby-jane-doe-frenchville-maine-infant-child-girl-lee-ann-daigle-guerrette-maine-state-police-frenchville-maine-lowell-massachusetts

36 years later, mother arrested for murder of 'Baby Jane Doe'

FRENCHVILLE (WGME) -- Thirty-six years after the mysterious death of "Baby Jane Doe," authorities announced the arrest of the infant's mother in connection to the case.

The baby girl was found dead in Frenchville, Maine, on December 7, 1985.

Now, Maine State Police said 58-year-old Lee Ann Daigle, formerly Lee Ann Guerrette, of Lowell, Massachusetts, has been charged with murder.

"Over the years through advancements in technology to include DNA and genetic genealogy, Maine State Police were able to identify Daigle as Baby Jane Doe’s mother," police noted in a news release posted on their website.

Police said the case was the culmination of "decades worth of investigative work from dozens of now retired and current detectives who never gave up finding answers and justice for Baby Jane Doe."

Through the years, police said detectives "chased every lead and spent countless hours working and following new leads" that helped identify Baby Jane Doe’s mother.

They added that the infant's body was discovered after a dog found the newborn and carried her less than 700 feet to his owner’s home. The owner said he thought it was a doll at first but realized it was a child.

"State Police Detectives were able to track the dog’s path back to the location where the investigation showed Baby Jane Doe was born and then abandoned in below zero temperatures at a gravel pit in Frenchville," according to police.

Authorities said Daigle was arrested outside her home in Massachusetts without incident on Monday morning. She waived extradition and was later brought to Maine after her arrest.

In collaboration with the Maine Attorney General’s Office, Daigle was indicted by an Aroostook County Grand Jury on one count of murder.

She made her first court appearance Tuesday morning in Aroostook County.

Daigle is being held at the Aroostook County Jail in Houlton.

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Maine State Police said they determined Lee Ann Daigle, of Lowell, Massachusetts, was the mother of a Baby Jane Doe who was found dead in far northern Maine in 1985. (Police photo)