(JACKSON COUNTY, Miss.) Feb. 19 -- The case of "Baby Jane Doe" has been kept alive by detectives and deputies who simply wont let it go. The child's body was found floating in a river off Interstate 10, in Jackson County Mississippi on a cold December morning in 1982. It's a case that still baffles investigators 25 years later.
Jackson County Mississippi detectives believe Baby Jane Doe was thrown off the Interstate 10 bridge into the Escawtawpa River. "The child most likely was alive when it was thrown over because there's no blunt force trauma," Detective Mick Sears tells NBC15's Jame Gordon.
The child drowned, starting a 25 year mystery. Virgil Moore, the original investigator, has taken on the task of not only finding out who killed the baby girl, but has become the girl's surrogate father, first arranging for her burial and since then, tending to her grave. He says: "As the marker says, 'Known only to God.' What I'd like is for us, myself and all the people here, is to know who this baby is."
The night before Baby Doe's body was found reports came in that a woman holding a baby was seen walking along I-10 near the Alabama-Mississippi state line. A truck driver who was interviewed at a nearby truck stop told investigators he offered to help the woman, but she refused.
The next day, there was another call. A truck driver heading east on I -10 said he saw a body floating near the west bound lane off a bridge on the Escawtawpa River. Paul Murphy, the deputy on call, says: "And I stopped in the middle of the first bridge there to get out and looked over and there was the baby."
Searchers looked for another body, possibly that of the baby's mother, but nothing was ever found.
Now, 25 years later, the focus is on the truck driver who called saying he saw the baby's body. Among the many questions is, why did the truck driver wait until he was miles away to make the call.
Detectives say they are getting closer to tracking down that truck driver, but they realize it could be just another dead end. According to Captain Sears, "We just want to try and go over his statement that he made back then, that was, which of course back then was not a very good statement."
This past December, folks in Jackson County marked the 25th anniversary of the little girl's death and they continue with their vow to give the baby a name and to find justice for her.
If you have any information which could help officials find the answers they seek regarding the Baby Jane Doe case, contact the Jackson County, Mississippi, Sheriff's Department.
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