A Long Island woman arrested earlier this month for the death of her newborn baby girl 33 years ago allegedly confessed to killing the child and abandoning her body in a bag along a roadside.
A New York Department of Transportation employee found the infant on the shoulder of Route 25 in Calverton on September 27, 1993, the Riverhead News-Review reported. The baby’s mouth was stuffed with paper wads, and the umbilical cord was still attached.
The Suffolk County Medical Examiner’s Office said the baby’s death was a homicide by suffocation.
Denise Reischman Merker, 56, was arrested on February 2 and charged with second degree murder. She pleaded not guilty at arraignment the following day.
Suffolk County Police did not say how they connected Merker to the baby, except to say that genetic genealogy was a “significant factor,” Newsday reported.
Police said they linked Merker to the infant, who was known only as Baby Jane Doe, last year, when she was one of nine unidentified infants whose DNA profiles were added to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons Systems database.
Merker allegedly admitted killing the baby during a police interview, telling investigators, “I did it. I did everything.”
She reportedly told them that she put a paper towel into the child’s mouth “because she was crying.”
Merker was remanded to jail without bond and is due in court again on March 2.
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[Featured image: Denise Reischman Merker/Suffolk County Police Department]