KC Unsolved: After 36 years, detectives still want to know who left Baby Jane Doe for dead

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (KCTV) - It’s been nearly 36 years to the day since a newborn, known only as Baby Jane Doe, was found dead in a KCK park. With just three months left until he retires, Detective Stuart Littlefield is determined to solve the case and give Baby Jane a name.

Revisiting the case

October 10, 1988, was a Monday. It was here, just outside Rosedale Park, where a group of men found a baby girl lying just a few feet off the side of the road:

There were no cell phones in 1988, so the men had to go to the nearest gas station and call for help.

Police arrived at the scene and found the baby wrapped in a white towel with a white blanket, her umbilical cord still attached.

With no traceable family or identification, the girl was nicknamed “Baby Jane Doe.”

The medical examiner’s office determined that Baby Jane had been dead for about 10 hours by the time she was found. It’s believed she was born that same day. The reports say she died of exposure, but it’s unclear if she died before or after she was left by the road.

One thing is clear—she was not stillborn.

Standing right about where Baby Jane’s body was found, Littlefield said he believes her parents left her there because it was a secluded section of the road.

“I believe that they drove into the park far enough that they couldn’t be seen from either intersection and they got out and they placed the baby on the ground and they drove away immediately,” he said.

Still, he’s missing the information he needs to finally close this case.

The Investigation

Littlefield has been a cold case detective for the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department since the unit was formed nearly three years ago. He said of all the cases they’ve investigated, this one is different.

“We have examined over 50 cold cases so far and, in all of those, we have had families who have advocated for those victims. This child has no family. This child has nobody to advocate for her but us.”

The best evidence they have is the DNA left behind on Baby Jane’s towel and blanket, both of which are still in KCKPD’s possession. But to match Baby Jane’s DNA to her parents, they need a name. Unless her parents were arrested for violent crimes, their DNA would not be in the system.

“If we can get somebody to come forward and give us the identity of a person that they think may have had a child in 1988 or somebody they knew that was pregnant and then suddenly wasn’t, then we can follow up from there,” Littlefield said.

The cold case detective has several theories about what happened, but none of them can be proven until someone steps forward.

For one, with all the apartments and houses around Rosedale Park, Littlefield feels confident that Baby Janes’s parents lived nearby. He also believes that the way the newborn was found suggests the parents may have been remorseful about their choice.

“They could have thrown it in a dumpster,” he said. “To lay a baby out like that, I believe they hoped that somebody would find it. I believe they hoped the child would get a decent burial.”

As a father himself, Littlefield feels compelled to Baby Jane even after all these years and find the truth.

“I don’t agree with the way they did it. There are other options and we know about those now. But in desperate situations, people do desperate things,” he said. “I’m not here to judge them. My job is simply to find the truth.”

Unfortunately, the clock is ticking.

“I am retiring in less than three months, and the one thing I want to do before I retire is give her a name,” Littlefield said.

If the investigation is not concluded before he retires, Littlefield plans to stay close to the cold case unit and along everything he knows.

New Laws

At the time of Baby Jane’s birth, safe place laws didn’t exist and parents with unwanted babies had few options. Decades later, there are now laws on the books that allow a parent to surrender a baby without fear of arrest.

In Kansas, an infant up to 60 days old can be given to an employee on duty at a police station, sheriff’s office, law enforcement center, fire station, city or county health department or medical care facility. You must hand the baby to a person, not just leave it behind, and the baby cannot be harmed.

This law is relatively new, only going into effect in 2019.

In Missouri, you can surrender a baby up to one year old to a law enforcement officer, a firefighter, an EMT, or to staff at a maternity home, hospital, or pregnancy center. This law is older than Kansas’s, hailing from 2002, but was still enacted well over a decade after Baby Jane’s birth and subsequent abandonment.

Anyone with information on Baby Jane’s case is urged to email KCKPD’s cold case unit at [email protected] or you can place an anonymous call to the TIPS Hotline at 816-474-TIPS.

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