Author Topic: DELTA DAWN: WF, 1-2, found in river near Escatawpa / Moss Point, MS - 5 Dec 1982 *Alisha Ann Heinrich*  (Read 275 times)

Akoya

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 8173
    • View Profile
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Alisha_Heinrich

Alisha Ann Heinrich, previously known as "Delta Dawn" and "Baby Jane" was a formerly unidentified child murder victim whose body was found in Moss Point, Mississippi in December 1982. The child — aged approximately 18 months — was partially smothered before she was thrown alive from the eastbound Interstate 10 bridge into the Escatawpa River, where she ultimately drowned. Her body was recovered between 36 and 48 hours after her death.[2]

On December 4, 2020, investigators announced that Heinrich had been identified via genetic genealogy research.[3] Heinrich and her mother, 23-year-old Gwendolyn Mae Clemons, had been missing since approximately November 24, 1982, from Kansas City, Missouri.[4] Clemons is believed to be the distressed woman seen carrying the infant on December 3 of the same year, close to the location where Heinrich's body was discovered.[1][5] Although a witness reported seeing an adult female's body in the same river, no further remains were ever recovered; Clemons is still considered a missing person.[6][5]

Prior to her identification, Heinrich was known as both "Delta Dawn" and "Baby Jane" due to her sex, her age, and the fact her body was discovered at daybreak close to a delta of the Escatawpa River.

Interstate 10 bridge
According to numerous witnesses, in the early hours of December 3, 1982[7] a female toddler was seen in the area of Moss Point, Mississippi, in the company of a young adult female presumed to have been her mother and who had been carrying this toddler in her arms. These sightings had occurred on both Mississippi State Highway 63 and, later, the National Interstate 10, close to the state border of Alabama.[8][9][10][7] The woman carrying this child had been wearing a blue plaid shirt and blue jeans, and was last seen walking west along Interstate 10, close to the truck scales at the Alabama-Mississippi border sometime between midnight and one o'clock in the morning of December 3. Reportedly, this woman had been in an acute state of distress, but had ardently refused any offers of help from passing vehicles. These eyewitness reports subsequently given to investigators would further be corroborated by accounts from a woman who had been monitoring CB radio conversations between truck drivers early in the morning of December 3, and who stated to investigators numerous truck drivers had been raising what she termed a "boatload of hell" regarding an obviously distressed woman walking along Interstate 10 with a barefoot, coatless female toddler in her arms and who had repeatedly refused any offers of assistance from passing vehicles.[6][11] It is believed that the toddler in this woman's company may have been the victim subsequently recovered from the river.[7]

Discovery
Within two days of these sightings, at approximately 7:00 a.m. on December 5, a truck driver called police to report having sighted the body of an adult female floating face-down close to a bridge spanning the Escatawpa River along Interstate 10. The woman had been clothed in a blue plaid shirt. This truck driver immediately reported his discovery to the Jackson County Sheriff's Office, and a sheriff's deputy immediately responded to the scene of the truck driver's sighting; finding no body floating in the general area of the river in which the body had been sighted, this deputy decided to continue the search, expanding the geographical search radius of the river as he did so. Shortly thereafter, he discovered the body of a small blond-haired child lying partially submerged and face up in the weeds close to the bridge.[6][12] Authorities quickly determined the child had been thrown from the bridge into the general area where her body was subsequently found, and that this child's body was unlikely to have been that sighted by the truck driver, as the section of the Escatawpa River where her body was discovered had been heavily infested with weeds, thus making a sighting of any body in this section of the water very difficult for passing motorists.[9]