Police arrest mother after using forensic genealogy to solve the cold case death of ‘Baby Michael’

Authorities in North Carolina say they have solved a 21-year-old cold case after they tracked down a woman accused of killing her newborn son and dumping his body alongside a road.

Deborah Riddle O’Conner, 54, was arrested on Thursday and charged with first-degree murder, according to the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office.

Investigators allege O’Conner, gave birth to the baby boy, nicknamed ‘Baby Michael,’ before placing him in a trash bag and tossing him from a moving car. 

The infant died of blunt force trauma, the Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.   

On March 3, 1999, a solider saw a plastic bag on the side of Canady Pond Road that he thought contained a doll, reported The Fayetteville Observer.

Instead, he found a dead newborn – not even a day old – with the umbilical cord still attached.

According to The Observer, the infant had a fractured skull, pelvis and spinal column as well as lacerations to his liver and one lung. 

‘We knew the baby was alive when he was thrown out the window,’ former detective Charlie Disponzio, who was first to arrive on the scene, told the newspaper in 2018.  

‘It really hit home when the [medical examiner’s] report came out that the baby was alive when he was born and alive when he was thrown from the vehicle.’ 

The newborn was found dead in a plastic bag on the side of a road in Fayetteville, North Carolina in March 1999. Pictured: Baby Michael’s grave at Hair’s Chapel Freewill Holiness Church in 2004

Authorities determined the baby had been thrown from a moving car and the cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma. Pictured: A plaque honoring Baby Michael in 2009

The solider called police, who searched for the baby’s parents, but nobody came forward.

Detectives named the infant ‘Baby Michael,’ honored for the patron saint of law enforcement officers.  

‘They did not want to bury this child without a name,’ Cumberland Sheriff Ennis W Wright said at a press conference on Friday. 

The Observer reports that a funeral was held for the baby at Hair’s Chapel Free Will Holiness Church on March 30, 1999 and he was buried in the church’s cemetery.

The case went cold until recently when DNA samples were sent to Bode Technology, a forensic genealogy company.

Bode developed a family line for ‘Baby Michael,’ which gave investigators a new pool of suspects.

Detectives used the results to locate O’Conner more than 200 miles west of where the baby was found, according to a news release from the Sheriff’s Office.

When police questioned her, she admitted to investigators that she was the boy’s mother.

O’Conner was charged with first-degree murder just two weeks ahead of the 21st anniversary of the day Baby Michael was discovered. 

She is currently being held at the Cumberland County Detention Center with no bond and is set to appear in court Friday, according to the Observer. 

It’s unclear whether O’Conner has an attorney who can comment on her behalf. 

If convicted, she could face life in prison and possibly the death penalty, the district attorney said at Friday’s press conference.

A break in the case occurred recently when detectives sent DNA to a forensics genealogy firm that developed a family line for ‘Baby Michael.’ Pictured: Then-Cumberland County Sheriff Moose Butler looks out after laying a wreath at the headstone of ‘Baby Michael’ in 2009