Officials exhume body of newborn, found in 1989

Officials with Kenosha County Medical Examiner's Office and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children work together to exhume the remains at a Town of Randall cemetery (Jason Arndt/The Report).
Officials with Kenosha County Medical Examiner’s Office and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children work together to exhume the remains at a Town of Randall cemetery (Jason Arndt/The Report).

Authorities hope DNA could lead to suspect

By Jason Arndt
Staff Writer

A newborn boy found dead in the Town of Paris has remained nameless since 1989, and on August 4, authorities spent more than three hours exhuming his remains from a Town of Randall cemetery.

The hope is that DNA extracted from the infant could give the boy a name and lead to the person of interest in case, who could still be in the area, according to the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department.

Baby John Doe, who is one of 14 outstanding Kenosha County cold cases, is the first exhumation in the department’s history.

“This is something that our department has never done and it is not something that is done very often,” said Sgt. Eric Klinkhammer of the Sheriff’s Department. “In Kenosha County, for criminal purposes, we have not exhumed a body as a Sheriff Department.”

Thursday’s exhumation created issues at St. John’s Cemetery, where the boy has been buried since 1989, including finding the correct remains and required use of a map.

Trappers discovery
In 1989, trappers found Baby John Doe underneath the Des Plaines River Bridge, just east of Highway 45 near Highway N in November, according to a press release issued that year.

The autopsy revealed the boy, who weighed seven pounds and was 21 inches long, had been the victim of homicide, an in turn, sparked an emotional plea from then-Sheriff Allan K. Kehl.

“Our intention is to locate the mother of this child to complete our investigation and to ensure that another child will not grow for nine months and be allowed to experience life for a brief moment,” the 27-year-old news release stated.

Additionally, the release challenged members of the community to find the mother or acquaintances with knowledge of the situation.

“If anyone knows of a neighbor, co-worker, or anyone who was pregnant and due to deliver in late October or early November, and is no longer pregnant and no longer has the child, please call the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department,” the 1989 release stated.

Despite the emotional plea and investigation, the homicide found its way into the cold case files, getting periodically checked.

At an August 4 news conference, Klinkhammer declined to disclose the cause of the baby’s death, adding the detectives first involved in the case were thorough and followed every lead.

“There was a thorough investigation completed. That investigation obviously came to a dead end,” he stated. “All of our cold cases are periodically reviewed by our detectives and this one was one of the few that we have actually gotten to be able to work on again.”

Decades of waiting
Along with 1989 Baby John Doe, 13 other cold cases have been placed on the Kenosha County website, where authorities received a tip about a year ago.

“We put our cold cases on our website and we received a tip from somebody that thought this case was solved,” Klinkhammer stated at the news conference. “We received information from that person that led us to the person of interest.”

The tip, he said, was strong enough for authorities to dig away at gravesite at St. John’s Cemetery in the Town of Randall for more than three hours on the humid Thursday morning.

“It is a good enough tip to get us to this point,” said Klinkhammer, who confirmed the person of interest involved might still be in the area, watching the story unfold.

“I would assume that they are watching,” he said. “We think that person is (in the area), yes.”

But, Klinkhammer declined to state whether the person of interest has a DNA sample at the State Crime Lab or if they have a past criminal record.

Following Thursday’s exhumation, forensic anthropologist Dr. Rick Snow of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was expected to examine the remains at the Kenosha County Medical Examiner’s Office.

From there, the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification will receive the remains, where they will extract DNA.

The process, Klinkhammer said, “could take months.”

While authorities await results of both exams, authorities encourage anyone with information about the case to come forward, calling by the Sheriff’s Department or CrimeStoppers.

“We would like them to contact us if somebody has information,” Klinkhammer said.

Those with information can call the Sheriff’s Department Detective Bureau at (262) 605-5102 or anonymously at Crime Stoppers at (800) 807-8477 or (262) 652-656-7333.

After full examination, officials plan to return the baby to the cemetery.


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