Hot on the trail of "Baby Doe"

UPDATE: Baby Doe was identified on September 18, 2015 as Bella Nevaeh Amoroso Bond, aged 2. Her mother and her mother's boyfriend (not Bella's father) are currently in custody.  

Reconstruction of "Baby Doe"

The body of a little girl was found on Deer Island, Massachusetts on June 25, 2015. Her little body along with polka-dotted leggings and a zebra-print blanked was concealed in a garbage bag and abandoned alongside the rocky shore of the island, days before a woman walking her dog made the gruesome discovery.

The child was likely white with possible Hispanic/Latino ethnicity and was at a mere three-to-five years old when she died. Nobody knows how, since all examinations and toxicology tests have been fruitless to finding the reason why this healthy-appearing girl died at such a young age. Some speculate murder. Others ponder the possibility that it was an accident. We might never know.

Nobody knows who she was or who abandoned her body, yet new forensic testing has uncovered a strong lead as to where she came from. Speculation that she could be from anywhere in the world were soon narrowed down to one area - Boston.

Forensic palynology tests indicated that the girl, nicknamed as "Baby Doe," was from the area she was found in. Traces of pollen from trees found in Boston as well as soot led to this conclusion. Such a big break could mean that the wild goose chase to finding her identity could end soon, as authorities have a much smaller area to look.

"Baby Doe" may have been seen alive at various times and places in Massachusetts, as witnesses have claimed to see a child matching her description in parks, stores and laundromats. On each occasion, a different adult has been accompanying the potential match, one was a woman in a burka, indicating links to the Middle East, and a white, overweight woman with sandy-blond hair.

Riley Sawyers remained unidentified for a month after her body was found in 2007.

This is not the first high-profile case of an unidentified child to break the hearts of this country. This, by far, is arguably the biggest, as social media continues to surge about this little girl, but many other cases have occurred in the past. There's Riley Sawyers, also known as "Baby Grace," whose remains were unidentified for a month after they were found in a bin in the Galveston Bay in 2007. Anjelica Castillo, previously nicknamed as "Baby Hope," was discovered in 1991 and identified in 2013 as the daughter of a pair of illegal immigrants. In these two cases, family members were responsible for the deaths and concealment of the bodies. They represent how quickly -- and slowly -- a child could remain unidentified.

The case of "Baby Doe" could go either way, yet I remain optimistic, as new technology has since made seemingly unsolvable cases open-and-shut.

If you have any information about this case, please contact:

National Center for Missing & Exploited Children: 1-800-THE-LOST

Suffolk County State Police Detective Unit: (617) 727-8817

Massachusetts State Police: (508) 820-2121

Winthrop Police Department: (617) 539-5806

The Hunt With John Walsh 1-886-THEHUNT 

Text GIRL to 67383 or call this hotline (617) 396 - 5655