Body exhumed from Oklahoma cemetery as part of cold case investigation

By Alyse Jones

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    CUSHING, Okla. (KOCO) — It’s been 37 years since a newborn baby’s body was found wrapped in a bag on the side of a Stillwater road.

The baby was buried in a Cushing cemetery. His case went cold.

In a cemetery full of headstones marked with names of loved ones who’ve passed, one sits nameless, marked “a little angel known only to God.”

“Everybody deserves a name,” said Sgt. Kyle McCool with the Oklahoma State University Police Department.

It’s been more than three decades since a newborn baby’s body was found, a case that caught national attention.

“They conducted approximately six months of investigations,” McCool said.

But then it went cold, until last year when OSU police got an inquiry asking if the case was ever solved, identifying the nameless newborn.

After a year of asking questions, the baby’s body was exhumed, and forensic genealogy will be used to try to identify him.

“If I can find my grandparents, I can also find someone else,” said Jason Beaman, chair of forensic sciences for OSU.

But the baby has been buried for nearly 40 years.

“I suspect this is probably going to be a yearlong plus project for us. It will take us several months to get a good DNA profile,” Beaman said.

They’ll use what they can to connect family trees and find the baby’s parents.

“We will scourer the archives of obituaries, of World War II draft records, from census records,” Beaman said.

The OSU team leading this project said they’re ready to take it on, to finally get closure.

“OSU, we want to serve the state and especially in this situation, we want to serve the littlest cowboy and make sure they’re not forgotten,” Beaman said.

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