ME - Frenchville, 'Baby Jane Doe', WhtFem Newborn, UP15152, in gravel pit, Dec'85 - *Identified* *Arrest*

[Alleykins]

My sister's ex - in laws are from Fort Kent, and some of the SILs would have been around the same age as Lee Ann.
One of them got pregnant in high school, around 82-84, and didn't tell anyone. Someone in her family finally confronted her when she began showing. She chose to give the baby up for adoption. If a high school student can figure out how to do right by a baby, there's no excuse, none, for an adult not to be able to.

This woman had other options besides murder. And I don't care what she says, or her kids say she said about it. She's had decades to concoct this story. She didn't even attempt to take the baby to the hospital, she just left her like a piece of trash on the side of the road, because she thought she was stillborn because she didn't cry. No one who wanted a baby would have just left it there.
No sympathy here, none.

 

[Alleykins]

Also, have they mentioned who the baby's father is? Cuz, I'm thinking it wasn't the person she was dating at the time, because the article stated they'd only been dating 4 months at the time she gave birth. Which might explain why she did what she did, if the baby wasn't fathered by the man she was with at the time, who I think the article said they eventually married. And he said had he known, he'd have been happy to raise it.

 

[StarrChance]

Also, have they mentioned who the baby's father is? Cuz, I'm thinking it wasn't the person she was dating at the time, because the article stated they'd only been dating 4 months at the time she gave birth. Which might explain why she did what she did, if the baby wasn't fathered by the man she was with at the time, who I think the article said they eventually married. And he said had he known, he'd have been happy to raise it.

I
From this article

Mother Charged With Murder 36 Years After Newborn Was Left In Gravel Pit To Die | Oxygen Official Site

The mother of a newborn baby girl who was abandoned and died in below zero temperatures in a gravel pit in Maine 36 years ago has been charged with her murder.

www.oxygen.com

Kristen and John Daigle told the Press Herald that DNA also showed John Daigle was not the father of the baby, but police provided the family with the name of the man who was; Lee Ann Daigle didn't recognize it. The man is reportedly aphasic after what the paper said is years of drug use and lives in an assisted living facility in Florida.

Lee Ann Daigle told her daughter that she believes she may have been raped on the night of her 21st birthday, which was nine months before she apparently gave birth; she has no memory of the night at all.

 

[UnlicensedPI]

The Press Herald article has a few more details left out in other articles. Notably, "Kristyn Daigle said her mother told her she would have terminated the pregnancy had she known about it." This comment and the ex-husband's comments about being unaware of a pregnancy in the weeks before she gave birth appear to corroborate her story of not knowing.

If her story is true, I can't imagine how terrifying it must have been. To not even know she was pregnant and suddenly give birth to what she thought was a dead baby. I'd probably think I was having a nightmare! It's a surreal situation and probably easier to walk away from as if nothing had happened since the baby appeared to be stillborn. I doubt she would have abandoned the baby if she thought it was alive.

What a horrible situation for everyone involved.

A baby died outside in the cold in 1985. Now police say her mother’s to blame

Maine State Police have charged Lee Ann Daigle with murder in the death of Baby Jane Doe. They say genealogical DNA identified her as the newborn's mother. But her daughter says that she blocked out memory of the traumatic event and didn't know she was pregnant until she gave birth.

www.pressherald.com

 

[Alleykins]

The Press Herald article has a few more details left out in other articles. Notably, "Kristyn Daigle said her mother told her she would have terminated the pregnancy had she known about it." This comment and the ex-husband's comments about being unaware of a pregnancy in the weeks before she gave birth appear to corroborate her story of not knowing.

If her story is true, I can't imagine how terrifying it must have been. To not even know she was pregnant and suddenly give birth to what she thought was a dead baby. I'd probably think I was having a nightmare! It's a surreal situation and probably easier to walk away from as if nothing had happened since the baby appeared to be stillborn. I doubt she would have abandoned the baby if she thought it was alive.

What a horrible situation for everyone involved.

https://www.pressherald.com/2022/06...-murder-in-1985-death-of-abandoned-newborn/[/

Every reason she's come up with about excusing her behavior is classic, right out of Lifetime movies and real news headlines. She's had decades to concoct them. If she'd been a teen, I could buy them. But this was a 21 year old with a few years of real life experience under her belt. And knowing the county like I do, chances are, she had friends who'd had kids, family members who'd gone through pregnancy, like my sister's ex-in laws who lived up there had kids by that time and were her age, that she'd been exposed to. The reality of it was she was pregnant with another man's baby when she started her relationship with the man who would become her husband and she didn't want to give that new relationship up.

And to deliver a baby and leave it, even with the excuse of believing it was dead, and walking into the woods so many feet, means she was hiding it, otherwise, why wouldn't she just leave it right where it fell? She had the wherewithal to do that and drive away. Plus, she had to have the means to detach it. What did she use? Did she just happen to be driving around with a pair of scissors in her car or something sharp? She's going to have to come up with that one. And when she left, there's a pretty good chance she was torn from stem to stern down there and bleeding profusely. If she didn't know what was going on, why didn't she innocently go to the hospital for help for herself. And if you wanted a baby, wouldn't you have taken it to the hospital for help if it wasn't breathing? Screaming for help, even in the middle of nowhere?

Nope, not buying it. Not one bit.

 

[ntt1]

What a horrible situation for everyone involved.

Really all that needs to be said I think.

 

[cvaldez1975]

Also, have they mentioned who the baby's father is? Cuz, I'm thinking it wasn't the person she was dating at the time, because the article stated they'd only been dating 4 months at the time she gave birth. Which might explain why she did what she did, if the baby wasn't fathered by the man she was with at the time, who I think the article said they eventually married. And he said had he known, he'd have been happy to raise it.

there is a post on the previous page that laid it all out and answers your questions. the ex husband was not the father. the math showed the baby was conceived around her 21st birthday and the bio father is in assisted living in FL after a lifelong addiction.

 

[Alleykins]

there is a post on the previous page that laid it all out and answers your questions. the ex husband was not the father. the math showed the baby was conceived around her 21st birthday and the bio father is in assisted living in FL after a lifelong addiction.

Thank you, I did get a chance to read that article since that post.

 

[imstilla.grandma]

Gabriella Vargas is an Investigative Genetic Genealogist who was one of the first researchers to work on the Baby Jane Doe case as an independent contractor for Identifinders International. Vargas says, in cases like this one, the victims DNA undergoes full genome sequencing in an attempt to find any matches against a third party database. The database is primarily made up of at home DNA test results. Colleen Fitzpatrick, Founder of Identifinders International says individuals participation in the database is entirely voluntary.

“Actually the big companies, all the big companies don’t work on forensic cases. But when you test, you can download your own data, it belongs to you. But you can upload it, there’s a third party database called GEDMatch and you can upload your data to do more analysis on a genelogical platform. So that database is made up of people who have done that, who have tested at any of the companies and uploaded it because there’s tools there that we have made for us that aren’t available elsewhere”

Vargas says the amount of time spent researching cases like Baby Jane Doe varies from case to case.

“I worked 14 months on this specific case and I know that others that worked on it after me had also spent a minimum of a few months. I’ve solved cases in an hour, it really varies by the population.”

Vargas went on to say that one of the biggest difficulties in this case was trying to track down Acadian and French Canadian genealogical documentation.

“This baby was also from a highly endogamous population and essentially 98% of these matches all matched each other. The primary population in this specific case was Acadian/French Canadian and so we had a lot of matches, ancestors that were primarily from the Maine area and had migrated from Canada and so finding records was not as easy. I will tell you that the detective on the case, Jay Pelletier, I worked very closely with him, he was amazing and he blew my mind at the documents that he could find that I could not locate myself.”

Frank Bemis of Bemis and Rossignol says the use of your data by at home test companies is protected to a certain degree, but if you choose to upload your data to a third party service, it’s important to read the fine print.

“I think this is something that people are going to be learning that may be available to law enforcement in the future. The information that they’re providing to 23&me, Ancestry.com is probably being utilized in the manner that they expected by those companies however, their alternative use by law enforcement that people didn’t expect and now need to understand that it could implicate them, or could implicate their family members potentially.”

Specific details regarding the Baby Jane Doe case are being kept confidential to prevent compromising criminal proceedings. WAGM will continue to follow this story and provide updates as they become available.

How Your DNA Could Be Used to Help Solve Cold Cases

Forensic Genetic Genealogy has helped close cold cases, including, most recently, the Frenchville Baby Jane Doe cold case. Recently WAGM brought you a new development in that Case on how State Police located the mother, which has raised questions regarding the use of forensic genetic genealogy.

www.wagmtv.com

 

[Nancy Drew RN]

“This baby was also from a highly endogamous population and essentially 98% of these matches all matched each other. The primary population in this specific case was Acadian/French Canadian and so we had a lot of matches, ancestors that were primarily from the Maine area and had migrated from Canada and so finding records was not as easy. I will tell you that the detective on the case, Jay Pelletier, I worked very closely with him, he was amazing and he blew my mind at the documents that he could find that I could not locate myself.”

How Your DNA Could Be Used to Help Solve Cold Cases

Forensic Genetic Genealogy has helped close cold cases, including, most recently, the Frenchville Baby Jane Doe cold case. Recently WAGM brought you a new development in that Case on how State Police located the mother, which has raised questions regarding the use of forensic genetic genealogy.

www.wagmtv.com

They're not just whistling dixie--when I checked out Lee Ann's high school class on classmates, I swear there were maybe five last names for the whole bunch, and two of them were her maiden name and her married name. Extremely confusing just to track everyone's records with such similar names and ages, let alone their DNA. Throw in one or two unexpected paternities (not saying that this was the case, but it does happen), and you've got quite the Gordian knot to pick at.

 

[imstilla.grandma]

The case was among the latest to be closed through advances in genetic genealogy, a process investigators have used in recent years to solve decades-old crimes by crosschecking DNA evidence with ancestry records. While Ms. Daigle’s arrest appeared to answer some questions about the death of the infant, known only as Baby Jane Doe, others lingered, including what would drive a young woman to give birth outdoors, alone, on a freezing night and then leave the infant behind.

Charles Love, a former Maine State Police major who led the department’s detective unit at the time of the Baby Jane Doe investigation, recalls worrying about the mother’s condition when he saw the blood in the gravel pit. In an interview, he said investigators checked hospitals, high schools and colleges within a 50-mile radius of Frenchville, on Maine’s border with New Brunswick, Canada, but nothing turned up.

Ms. Daigle’s daughter Kristyn Daigle, 30, said in a brief interview that her mother did not realize she was pregnant in December 1985. Lee Ann Guerette, as she was known at the time, was only 21. She went on to marry and have two daughters, and she is now a grandmother, her daughter said.

Kristyn Daigle said that she lived mostly with her mother after her parents divorced in 1999, and that the two continue to live near each other.

“My mom has always been a loving and selfless mother,” she said.

Woman Is Charged in Death of Newborn Abandoned in 1985

The cold case, from Maine, was among the latest to be closed using genetic genealogy. As a tool for identifying the remains of infants, and determining who their mothers are, the method is not without controversy.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Alleykins]

Woman to plead guilty in 1985 Maine "Baby Jane Doe" killing

Prosecutors say a baby was born and then abandoned in a gravel pit in 1985

www.wmtw.com

According to court documents, she is expected to plead guilty to manslaughter on Wednesday in Aroostook County Superior Court.

 

[Nancy Drew RN]

Mother pleads guilty in death of baby girl found by dog

“I saw the baby and I couldn’t believe it at first, I thought it was just a little doll, rubber doll that my dog had brought back to the house."

lawandcrime.com

She's plead guilty but hasn't yet been sentenced.