A 59-year-old Massachusetts woman pleaded not guilty to murder this week after forensic genetic genealogy and DNA recovered from a soda bottle pulled from her trash allegedly linked her to the 1985 death of a newborn boy found naked in the woods of Mansfield, Massachusetts, a case that had gone cold for nearly four decades.
Dianne Curry Peck appeared in Bristol County Superior Court in Fall River on Tuesday to face the charge. The infant, known for 41 years only as "Baby Boy Doe," was discovered on January 26, 1985, by a father and son who had been hunting rabbits in the Mansfield woods. They noticed footprints in the snow and followed them to the child's body.
The case sat dormant for decades. No suspect was ever named. Then, in 2022, Bristol County investigators partnered with the FBI and state authorities to reopen it, armed with a tool that didn't exist in 1985: forensic genetic genealogy. That technology, applied to the baby's preserved DNA, eventually pointed investigators toward Peck. A soda bottle retrieved from her household trash provided the confirming match, Fox News Digital reported.
Kenneth Martin, a former Massachusetts State Police trooper who was assigned to the Bristol County District Attorney's Office at the time, described what the hunters found that January day to WCVB.
"It was naked, lying on its back; the umbilical cord was still attached to the baby."
A medical examiner determined the infant had likely been in the woods for only about 12 hours before being discovered. That detail matters. Peck allegedly told investigators she gave birth on January 20, 1985, six days before the body was found. Prosecutors argued in court that her stated timeline is inconsistent with the condition of the baby's body and the freezing temperatures at the time.
If the child had been outdoors for less than half a day, someone placed that infant in the woods on January 25 or 26, not January 20. Prosecutors have not publicly offered an alternative timeline for the birth itself, but the gap between Peck's account and the physical evidence is one of the sharpest points of contention in the case.
Peck allegedly admitted to investigators that she had given birth in the back seat of her ex-boyfriend's car. She was 17 at the time, a student at Mansfield High School. She allegedly told police she handed the baby to her ex-boyfriend because he said he knew someone who would adopt the infant.
She also allegedly claimed she believed she had given birth to a girl, not a boy, and that she never spoke to the ex-boyfriend again.
That ex-boyfriend died in 2020, according to the FBI. He cannot be questioned. His name has not been publicly released. No evidence cited in the case suggests anyone else knew Peck was pregnant at the time, not family, not school officials, not medical providers.
The absence of a living witness who could corroborate or contradict Peck's version of events leaves investigators relying heavily on forensic evidence and the timeline discrepancies prosecutors flagged in court.
The reopening of the case in 2022 brought modern investigative tools to bear on evidence preserved from the Reagan era. Forensic genetic genealogy, a technique that cross-references DNA profiles against genealogical databases to identify family connections, allowed investigators to narrow the search to Peck.
To confirm the link, investigators obtained a soda bottle from Peck's trash. The DNA recovered from that bottle allegedly matched the baby's profile. The specific database or methodology used has not been disclosed, nor has it been publicly clarified whether the bottle was collected as abandoned property or under a warrant.
These details may surface as the case moves forward. For now, the DNA match is the backbone of the prosecution's case against a woman who, for 41 years, was never publicly connected to the dead infant found a short distance from the high school she attended.
Baby Boy Doe was never identified in life. But Mansfield did not let him disappear without notice. The Mansfield Police Department and former New England Patriots quarterback Steve Grogan paid for the baby's funeral in 1985. The child was buried with a name no one could give him and a community's grief that outlasted the investigation.
FBI Boston Special Agent-in-Charge Ted Docks spoke to reporters outside the courthouse after Peck's arraignment. His words carried the weight of a case that had haunted investigators for more than four decades.
"Few cases are more heartbreaking than one involving a newborn baby, allegedly abandoned and left to die in the woods by his mother, deprived of the care, love and protection every child deserves. For 41 years, this child was known simply as Baby Boy Doe. He entered this world with limitless promise, but was denied the most basic right to live."
Peck has pleaded not guilty. Her attorney has not been publicly named in connection with the case, and it is unclear whether her legal team has commented. The Bristol County District Attorney's Office has also not publicly responded to media inquiries about the case beyond what was presented in court.
Several questions remain open. The specific degree of the murder charge has not been disclosed. No explanation has been offered for what happened to the infant between the alleged birth date of January 20 and the discovery on January 26, a six-day window that the medical examiner's 12-hour estimate makes difficult to reconcile with Peck's account. And the circumstances under which Peck was interviewed and allegedly made her admissions have not been detailed.
The prosecution's argument rests on a collision between old-fashioned physical evidence, a baby's body in the snow, an umbilical cord still attached, footprints leading nowhere, and 21st-century forensic science that reached across four decades to connect a discarded soda bottle to an abandoned child.
Cold cases are, by definition, failures of their moment. Evidence degrades. Witnesses die. Memories blur. The ex-boyfriend who Peck says took the baby is gone. The hunters who found the body are unnamed. The trooper who responded is retired. The infant never had a chance to grow old enough to speak for himself.
What forensic genetic genealogy offers is not a time machine. It cannot restore what was lost in 1985. But it can do something that eluded every investigator who touched this case for 37 years before the reopening: it can put a name next to the evidence and force an answer in open court.
Peck now faces that reckoning. She has denied guilt. The DNA, the timeline, and the condition of a newborn left in freezing woods will have their say, too.
Baby Boy Doe waited 41 years. The least the system owes him is a trial that gets it right.
