Long-ago case of “Baby Dawn” is solved by DNA

Kitsap County sheriff’s detectives have solved the long-cold case of “Baby Dawn,” a day-old infant found dead in a trash bag south of Port Orchard nearly 14 years ago.

Recent improvements in DNA technology enabled a state lab to identify the infant’s birth mother, who died in Montana in 2012.

The lifeless body of the little girl was found April 5, 2006 in a plastic trash bag on the roadway shoulder in the 2200 block of SE Bielmeier Road, opposed a mobile home park. She was named “Baby Dawn” by the county coroner because an autopsy revealed she had lived only long enough to see one dawn.

Donors from the community paid for her burial in Sunset Lane Cemetery in Port Orchard.

Tips from the public named two women as possibly mothers, but both were eliminated by DNA testing, said Sheriff’s spokesman Scott Wilson.

The case was re-opened in 2019 as part of routine examinations of cold cases. A DNA sample previous obtained from a 32-year-old woman was sent to the State Patrol Crime Laboratory and resulted in a match, Wilson said. The woman, who lived in Flathead County, Montana, died in 2019.

Because the biological mother is dead, no charges will be filed, the Sheriff’s office said. The cause and manner of the infant’s death has never been determined.

This story was originally published January 15, 2020 at 12:00 AM.