Woman pleads guilty in baby's death nearly 4 decades after dog found body of newborn girl and carried her back to its home
A Massachusetts woman pleaded guilty Thursday to manslaughter in the death of her infant daughter, Baby Jane Doe, found in a gravel pit more than 37 years ago in northern Maine. Lee Ann Daigle, 58, of Lowell, Massachusetts, was arrested last year after police cracked the case thanks to years of police work and advancements in DNA technology,
Her name was Lee Ann Guerrette when a newborn baby was carried home by a Siberian Husky to a home in Frenchville and police were alerted to the grisly discovery on Dec. 7, 1985.
"I could not believe what I saw. I saw what looked like a little rag doll, but then we saw it was a frozen little baby," the dog's owner, Armand Pelletier, told the Bangor Daily News in 2014.
Detectives tracked the dog's path to a gravel pit where the baby had been born and abandoned in sub-zero temperatures.
The death remained a mystery for decades until Daigle's indictment last year on a charge of murder.
Police said the arrest was the culmination of decades worth of investigative work from dozens of now retired and current detectives who worked on the case, WGME-TV reported.
Today, Maine has a law that allows parents to surrender a child less than 31 days old to approved safe haven providers, including law enforcement officers, medical service providers and hospitals.
Daigle will be sentenced at a later date in Superior Court. Daigle faces up to 20 years imprisonment and up to $50,000 in fines, WGME reported.
