Her baby was tossed from a car 21 years ago. DNA leads to Burke County woman’s arrest.
DNA led to the arrest of a Burke County woman nearly 21 years after her less than day-old baby was placed in a plastic trash bag and thrown from a car onto an Eastern North Carolina road, sheriff’s investigators said.
Hours later on March 3, 1999, a soldier spotted the bag while driving along the road, Cumberland County Sheriff Ennis Wright posted on Facebook Thursday. Cumberland County is home to Fort Bragg. The county seat is Fayetteville.
At first, the soldier thought a doll was in the bag but then saw the umbilical cord attached to the baby boy, according to the sheriff.
Sheriff’s detectives determined the child died of blunt force trauma. Then-Sheriff Moose Butler pleaded for the parents to come forward. When no one did, the sheriff’s office held a funeral and proper burial for the infant they named “Baby Michael,” after the patron saint of law enforcement officers, Wright said.
The service was held March 30, 1999, at Hair’s Chapel Free Will Holiness Church on Duck Pond Road in the county, and Baby Michael was buried in the church cemetery, Wright posted on Thursday.
“It really bothers me that a child was dealt like that, an innocent child that couldn’t defend one’s self,” Wright said at a news conference on Friday.
Despite “many hours, long days, long nights” devoted to the case through the years, investigators at one point “didn’t think we were going to solve it,” Wright said. “But detectives got a lead and followed that lead,” which led to the arrest of 54-year-old Deborah O’Conner, now living in Burke County, the sheriff said.
Wright said Baby Michael’s DNA was sent “for comparison” to Bode Technology, which he said specializes in forensic genealogy services. “The results gave a family line, and it was up to the detectives to narrow the suspect field,” Wright posted.
Twelve days before Baby Michael’s 21st anniversary, Cumberland Countyb sheriff’s detectives drove to Burke County to interview a O’Connor. During the interview, O’Conner told detectives she was the baby’s mother, according to the sheriff’s post.
O’Connor was take into custody, driven back to Cumberland County and jailed on a first-degree murder charge, Wright said.
“This was something personal to this sheriff’s office, very personal,” Wright said at the news conference.”...The sheriff’s office, we don’t give up. That’s what happened here.”