The Sun Herald (Biloxi, Mississippi)
December 8, 2007 Saturday
Mystery of lost child lingers: Baby Jane would be 25
Dec. 8--PASCAGOULA -- For 25 years, Jackson County Sheriff's deputy Virgil Moore has been hunting for clues to help identify an 18- to 24-month-old girl who drowned but was never claimed.
Moore calls her Baby Jane, a name selected after he and his late wife, Mary Ann Moore, asked to adopt her body so they could provide her a Christian burial. She's also called Delta Dawn on the Web site of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
At 2 p.m. today, Moore and others who first investigated the case, as well as two Alabama women who've taken an interest in the girl, are paying tribute to her at a graveside prayer vigil followed by a memorial service at Bethel Assembly of God.
Moore is hoping someone might read about the girl and finally call in information that could unravel the mystery surrounding Baby Jane's death.
"I have an 8 x 10 picture of her at my house," Moore said. "Every day, I look at that picture and wonder who she is. She was a beautiful baby. I fell in love with the baby after she died. Somebody somewhere has got to know something."
It was cold day Dec. 5, 1982, when a truck driver called the Jackson County Sheriff's Department to report he'd seen a body floating face down in the Pascagoula River off Interstate 10. The driver said the body appeared to be that of a woman wearing a checkered shirt and blue jeans.
Former sheriff's deputy Paul Murphy got the call and went to the area the driver mentioned, but found no body.
He decided to continue the search, stopping first at a nearby bridge overlooking the Dog River near Franklin Creek. What he saw hit him hard.
There on the banks of the Dog River was a blonde curly-headed child, still clothed in a pink-and-white checkered dress and wearing a diaper. She looked just like Murphy's daughter. So much so, in fact, that the first thing he did was call the Sheriff's Department to get someone to check on his daughter.
"That's just how close she looked like my daughter," he said. "I thought it was her."
Murphy got confirmation his daughter was OK as the investigation rolled on. Deputies started following the leads they had. One lead was a report of woman seen clutching something and walking along the Interstate some time before the baby's body was found.
The Sheriff's Department sent search teams out to dredge the Pascagoula River but an adult's body wasn't found.
Detectives continued their investigation, checking on other reports, including one report of a visibly shaken woman holding a baby at a truck stop in Grand Bay, Ala., and talking to truckers. From there they chased other leads, even checking reports of information out of California. Then the case went cold. No one seemed to know anything and there was no record at the time of a missing adult and child.
Moore and Murphy continued to follow leads, but nothing ever came up to help identify the girl.
All the two men knew was the baby was found with 10 percent of their lungs filled with murky water. Her death was ruled a drowning, though strangulation could not be ruled out.
Over the years the two men developed their own theories on the case. Moore remembers talking to a woman who showed up at the Sheriff's Department after Baby Jane was found, asking for help. She later told Moore she'd just given her baby away to some men. Moore questioned the woman but she said the child she'd given away was boy.
Moore still wonders if the woman might have been the child's mother.
Murphy has another theory: The woman seen clutching something and walking along the Interstate was the child's mother. Maybe, he said, the baby died in her mother's arms and she panicked, throwing the baby over the bridge into the water before realizing what she'd done and then took her own life, jumping in the Pascagoula River.
Though search teams dredged the river, Murphy points out it's not inconceivable to think the search teams couldn't find the mother's body. Maybe, he said, her body was trapped under something in the water or swept away in the tide, never to be seen again.
But those are just theories, and the two men are hoping a new focus on the case will bring new details.
Whatever happened, Moore and Murphy aren't alone in trying to find out who Baby Jane is.
Auburn, Ala., resident Lynn Reuss started taking a look at missing-persons cases after her own grandmother disappeared in 1997; she was found dead about three months later in the Chattahoochee River around Fort Mitchell, Ala. As it turned out, her grandmother had suffered a brain aneurysm and somehow ended up in the river and drowned.
Reuss said when she started reading about Baby Jane, whom she refers to as Delta Dawn, she decided to make it her mission to try to help identify the baby girl.
For three years she's worked with another Alabama woman to collect signatures on a petition they're going to send to "America's Most Wanted" to see if they'll do a story on the case.
Like Moore and Murphy, Reuss said she has one thing in mind for today.
"I want to honor her memory," she said. "And maybe in the process, we'll bring more interest back to the case so hopefully... someone will see this and somehow help to get this solved. We want to give her back her identity. She deserves a name. It's just that simple."
If you go
What: Gravesite prayer vigil at Jackson Memorial Park on Ingalls Avenue in Pascagoula.
When: 2 p.m. today, followed by a 3 p.m. memorial service honoring Baby Jane at Bethel Assembly of God, 2105 Martin St., Pascagoula. The public is invited.
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What's next
Jackson County Sheriff's deputy Virgil Moore is planning to talk to officials at the state crime lab to see if it would be possible to get a DNA sample from Baby Jane.
DNA testing wasn't available to law enforcement 25 years ago when Baby Jane was found off Interstate 10 on the banks of the Dog River near Franklin Creek in Jackson County.
If the state crime lab says it is possible to gather some DNA, Moore says he plans to check with the courts to see if he could get a judge to sign an order to exhume Baby Jane's body for testing.
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