Sunday, March 23, 2014
FRENCHVILLE — 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.”
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?
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.
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.”
MUCH MORE>>
http://www.sunjournal.com/news/2014/03/23/what-happened-baby-jane-doe/1508776
