DNA testing was used to solve a Colorado cold case centered around the death of an infant girl more than two decades ago.
In 1996, fishermen found the body of a newborn baby in the Arkansas River.
"The autopsy revealed it was a live birth, and that the child was alive when she was born," said Pueblo County Sheriff Kirk Taylor. "The autopsy designated the case as a homicide."
But the case quickly grew cold after that initial determination.
The child was buried under the name of “Baby Hope” at Mountain View Cemetery. Years went by without answers, though the sheriff's office said detectives would "periodically" dust off the file and make another attempt at finding the child's mother. The attempts came to nothing -- until early last year.
"Based upon some new scientific and forensic technology, Detective Butterfield from the sheriff's office was able to team up with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation Forensic Lab and utilizing some relatively new techniques, some of which you're familiar with, there was a 'Baby Faith' case up in Fort Collins last year, some of the same technology that was utilized in this case," Taylor told reporters in a news conference Monday. "Detective Butterfield resubmitted DNA that we had taken from Baby Hope and was able to work with CBI to identify some possible parents in the case."
When investigators began interviewing some of those people last fall, one woman refused to provide DNA.
