Can you imagine finding out years later that your granddaughter was murdered? Can you imagine what baby Jane went through when she was thrown from a bridge on either December 3 or 4th?
It was the year 1982, and the state was Mississippi. A young girl between the ages of 18 to 24 months was found in the Escataupa River in the weeds close to Moss Point. At the time, there was not a name for this little girl, so they called her Baby Jane. Her body was recovered within 36 to 48 hours of her death. The cause of death was drowning. Jackson County Sheriff's Office thought that she had been smothered and then thrown from a car off of I-10 while she was still alive.
What had led up to this is still unknown.
Prior to her body being found, there was a sighting of a mom holding a daughter on December 3rd walking along I-10 close to truck scales near the Alabama state line. According to a slew of truck drivers that passed her, they said they saw a woman who looked distressed and they had tried to stop to help her, but she refused to help. This could've been baby Jane's mom Gwendolyn Mae Clemons. Allegedly, she was carrying a female toddler with the liking of baby Jane, and she had no shoes on at the time.
A truck driver reported an adult body sighting to the Jackson County sheriff's office when he was driving. The underwater search unit went looking and they failed to locate an adult body, but found skeletons of another body while down there. In addition to the underwater search unit, helicopters, and boats helped out as well.
What was sad at the time was that they didn't have a name for this little girl. The local newspapers tried printing a potential picture of what this little girl looked like, but sadly, there were no major leads from their post.
In order to give baby Jane a respectable funeral, she was adopted by a local deputy and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Virgil Moore. They had received local donations from businesses and baby Jane was buried at the Jackson County cemetery while having a Christian funeral. There were around 200 people that attended. Four police officers were her pallbearers. There were no relatives because at the time they did not know the identity of this little girl.
What the Jackson County Sheriff's Office found out was that Gwendolyn Clemons had divorced baby Jane's dad and was on her way with her new boyfriend to Florida to start a new life with her daughter. The last time they had all been seen was around Thanksgiving time in 1982.
With the physical examination, they had noticed that baby Jane had strawberry blonde hair, was about 25 pounds, and had no signs of being malnourished. Again, they summed it up that she was still alive when she was thrown from the bridge into the river. She had drowned from inhaling murky water.
Years after her burial, they had decided to exhume her body and take DNA samples. The investigators had put her DNA into the national missing and unidentified persons system, and advancements were made to show facial reconstruction. Even though they were lots of different pictures, it helped with the DNA sequencing which is a nucleic acid sequence that determines the four bases of Ademine, Guanine, Cytosine and Thymine. This was the order of Nucleotides in the DNA. In addition, they used Genetic Genealogy in order to figure out the identity of baby Jane. Forensic genealogists collected information to make a picture of what they thought baby Jane looked like before her death. More research was done and performed by Othram Inc., which is an American corporation that works with law enforcement out of Houston. Also, they had sent DNA samples to the University of Texas. Here, baby Jane's DNA was put into a national clearinghouse for missing people database. It was to help identify the dead across the United States and to connect the DNA from baby Jane to a family. There they found that baby Jane was connected to a family out in Missouri.
There really weren't any suspects, but they were looking at the boyfriend of baby Jane's mom. Unfortunately, he had died, so they could not question him.
The investigators went to meet with the family in Missouri and ended up meeting with baby Jane's grandmother and aunt. The Clemon's family was unaware of what had happened to baby Jane and they realized the name of baby Jane was actually Alisha Heinrich. Obviously, this was a very emotional day for the Clemon family, but the family ended up being very pleased to know that the case was still being worked on. He gave them closure and hope that they would find the killer of Alisha's death.
The investigators will still be searching for answers and will continue finding the truth about who is responsible for Alisha Heinrich's murder. If you have any information, please contact the Jackson County Sheriff's Office at 228–769–3036.
Written By: Heidi
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