More than two years after her decomposing body was found in the Grand River near Dunnville, the identity of a child known only as “Baby Doe” remains a mystery.
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The discovery in May 2022 rattled the small Haldimand County community and prompted an international search that has thus far yielded few clues as to who the little girl was or how she died.
The best guess, based on the river’s dam structure and water flow patterns, puts Baby Doe into the water not far from where she was found by fishermen at the northeast edge of Dunnville’s main bog island.
How long she had been submerged is still unknown.
“I’ll never forget standing on the riverbank and looking at that little girl’s body. You just can’t unsee something like that,” Det. Insp. Shawn Glassford of the Ontario Provincial Police told The Spectator in a recent phone interview.
“And it makes you work harder to try and find the truth of what happened.”
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From the start, the case of the nameless girl — thought based on teeth and bone makeup to be between 10.5 months and three years old when she died — has been marked by a puzzling silence.
No child has been reported missing locally, and there were no matching dental records on file, suggesting Baby Doe never saw a dentist in her short life.
Investigators combed through a global missing-person’s database, checked with local schools and the Children’s Aid Society, canvassed residents and put the word out to police forces across the continent, all to no avail.
Last spring, the OPP released a three-dimensional facial approximation of what the child might have looked like to “trigger a memory” in someone who knew her or her family, Glassford said.
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The police force also produced a 15-minute video about the case that has been viewed nearly 100,000 times on YouTube since May.
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