Mom arrested in baby’s death 23 years later, thanks to DNA genealogy site, WA cops say

With a piece of clothing, perhaps a towel, wrapped around her waist, a woman hurried into a convenience store and went straight to the bathroom.

It was the night of Nov. 18, 1997, and a witness who had opened the door for the woman told Seattle police that she later she heard a baby cry.

About 15 minutes after she entered the bathroom a surveillance camera showed the woman leaving without the baby, who’d been discarded in a trash can, according to court documents released Friday.

Two days later police were called to the store, where the baby was found dead, A blood clot from the placenta was on the victim, the documents say, which would prove to be a key piece of evidence in the case.

Now, 23 years later, DNA evidence has helped police identify the woman as Christine Warren, 50, of Seattle. She was arrested Thursday after a judge “found probable cause for murder in the second degree,” Casey McNerthney, a spokesperson for the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, told McClatchy News in an email.

Prosecutors are reviewing the case and expect a charging decision to be announced Monday.

Officers had responded to a call about a baby that was dead in a convenience store’s restroom trash can on Nov. 20, 1997, according to a news release from Seattle Police Department.

The baby had been born alive and detectives began investigating the case as a homicide.

DNA from “the placental blood clot attached to” the victim was recovered at the crime scene and analyzed in 1998, but investigators couldn’t find any matches in the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab’s database, according to documents from the prosecutor’s office.

Surveillance video from the convenience store provided investigators with a description of the woman and while there were many potential leads found over the years, none led to a suspect, Q13 News reported.

Detectives began reinvestigating the case in 2018, when investigators began using DNA from public geneaology databases to compare with crime scene DNA.

Investigators “received Warren’s DNA from a mailing,” which matched the suspect’s DNA profile that had been found at the crime scene.

Officers arrested Warren Thursday following an interview where police say she admitted that she gave birth in the restroom and discarded the newborn in the trash. She was booked into the King County Jail Thursday and a judge set her bail at $10,000 Friday, according to McNerthney.

This story was originally published March 12, 2021 at 11:24 AM with the headline "Mom arrested in baby’s death 23 years later, thanks to DNA genealogy site, WA cops say."