Seattle police use genealogy website, arrest woman in 1997 death of baby found in trash can

SEATTLE — More than 20 years after a newborn baby was found dead in a Seattle trash can, police have arrested a woman in connection with the suspected homicide.

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According to KIRO-TV, Seattle police on Thursday arrested the 50-year-old woman, whose name has not been released, after using a genealogy website to link her to the case. She is being held in the King County Jail and is scheduled to appear in court Friday, the news outlet reported.

In a news release, police said the infant’s body was discovered Nov. 20, 1997, inside a trash can at a Lake City gas station. Medical examiners said the infant had been born alive, according to the release.

“The 23-year-old case captured headlines at the time as police sought to identify a woman seen on the gas station’s surveillance cameras,” the news release read. “While police received leads at the time, they were unable to identify the woman. However, investigators were able to obtain DNA evidence from the scene. This evidence was entered into the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab’s database, but they did not find a match.”

In 2018, police investigating the case “obtained information from a public genealogy website and found a woman who was both a possible DNA match and fit the description of the woman seen on the gas station’s surveillance footage,” according to the release. Undercover investigators obtained a sample of her DNA, which matched a sample in the crime database, the news release said.

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Cox Media Group