ERIE COUNTY, Ohio (WJW) – The FOX 8 I-Team is trying to help investigators solve a cold case mystery involving a baby who died nearly 40 years ago.

“This case has been open and in the forefront of a lot of minds in this area,” Erie County Sheriff Paul Sigsworth said Tuesday.  

On June 2, 1982, a worker at an Erie County campground made a tragic discovery. The worker found a newborn infant dead.

“She was found in a portable toilet at the Huron River Valley Campground the Wednesday after Memorial Day in 1982,” Sigsworth said. “She was taken for an autopsy and it was determined she was born alive and then died.”

Sheriff deputies have been investigating the case for just about four decades, but so far no arrests have been made.

“I think there were like two or three different descriptions of who could have been the mother but all were pretty vague,” the sheriff said. “Not everyone who was at the campground had to register, so it was difficult to determine who was there that weekend.”

The sheriff said some people at the campground reported that they saw a young woman who was pregnant but no one knew her name.

Sigsworth said due to new advances in DNA technology, the baby’s remains were exhumed in 2013 and 2019. Investigators  say they were hoping to obtain DNA so they could build a genetic profile and possibly find the infant’s biological parents.

“We were not able to do that. We tried,” Sigsworth said. “So now we are kind of at a standstill. The investigators when this happened put a lot of time into this trying to identify who the mother may have been but they were just never able to do that.”

Detectives now hoping the child’s mother or another relative will decide to come forward so they can finally give a name to a beautiful baby girl.

“We want her to have her name,” the sheriff said. “We would like her to rest in peace as time goes on with her real name on her headstone.”