WASHINGTON TWP., N.J. (KYW Newsradio) — Federal and local investigators are making a renewed push to solve an almost 40-year-old cold case of a baby girl in South Jersey.
On Dec. 4, 1986, police were called to a dumpster behind Paisano’s Pizza at the Towne Center shopping plaza on Ganttown Road and Route 42 in Washington Township.
There, they found a seven-pound white baby girl, with dark hair and dark eyes, wrapped in a silver plastic trash bag and a Serengeti beach towel decorated with a black and white leopard looking over an African Plains scene with a reddish-pink sky in the background.
Police say a local pig farmer was looking through the dumpster for food scraps for his stock and found the infant before calling authorities.
The coroner ruled the death a homicide by asphyxiation and said they believed the baby was likely born, killed and discovered that same day.
Investigators believe the child’s mother was pregnant in late summer and through the fall of 1986.
Detectives hope those pictures jog someone’s memory about who the infant, or mother, may be.
If you have any information, even just a little bit, officials urge you to call the following numbers:
Detective Captain Tim Breen at 856-589-0330
GCPO Major Crimes Captain Staci Lick at 856-384-5500
FBI Philadelphia Office at 215-418-4000