Mother Charged in 36-Year Old “Baby Jane Doe” Death Cold Case!

After 36 years, authorities in Maine have cracked the cold case of the mysterious death of “Baby Jane Doe,” a newborn baby that was found by a dog frozen to death in 1985!

Lee Ann Daigle, 58, was recently arrested by Maine state police outside of her Lowell, Massachusetts, home, putting an end to a nearly four-decades-old mystery.

The case all began after Daigle’s baby’s body had been discovered by a dog that then dragged the body of “Baby Jane Doe” about 700 feet to the dog owner’s home in the Maine town of Frenchville, state police said.

“She kept pounding at the door’s window to get back in,” the dog’s owner Armand Pelletier told the Bangor Daily News, speaking about the then still unsolved case in 2014. “She kept pounding, and after a while, 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.”

The dog was a Siberian Husky named Paca, the local outlet reported at the time.

State police detectives were able to ascertain that the baby had been born alive, and then was heartlessly abandoned in below-zero temperatures at a gravel pit to die an awful death.

“It was so cold, just very, very cold,” Maine State Police Maj. Charles Love told the Bangor Daily News in 2014, “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.”

The medical examiner, back in 85, concluded that the baby girl, who had come to be known as Baby Jane Doe, had lost a considerable amount of blood. The police also discovered what they believed to be a placenta near the gravel pit. Authorities were never successful in their search for the mother of the child for 36 years, though they never gave up hope.

Over the years, advancements in DNA technology allowed police to finally identify Daigle, formerly known as Lee Ann Guerrette of Lowell, Massachusetts as Baby Jane Doe’s mother. She was arrested outside her home on June 13th and brought to Maine, where she appeared in Houlton Superior Court Tuesday Morning on Murder charges.

“On or between December 6th or 7th, 1985, in the county of Aroostook, State of Maine, Lee Ann Daigle, formerly known as Lee Ann Guerette, did intentionally or knowingly cause the death of a human being known as Baby Jane Doe, Date of Birth 12/6/1985 or 12/7/1985 or did engage in congress that manifested a depraved indifference to the value of human life and which in fact caused the death of a human being known as Baby Jane Doe.”

“This case was the culmination of decades worth of investigative work from dozens of now retired and current detectives who never gave up finding answers and justice for Baby Jane Doe,” Maine state police said in a Facebook post announcing the arrest.

Daigle has entered an initial plea of not guilty and is being held at the Aroostook County Jail without bail. Her next appearance will be at Fort Kent District Court on August 8th.