Northeast
‘Baby Mary’ mom caught living suburban family life 40 years after leaving newborn to die in woods
Forty years after she left her newborn to die in a wooded New Jersey area on Christmas Eve, Mary Catherine Snyder Crumlich was living a suburban life in South Carolina with her husband and sons, social media shows.
But earlier this month, 57-year-old Crumlich was sentenced to a year behind bars for manslaughter in the death of the infant Mendham Township Police called “Baby Mary” during their decades-long investigation, the Morris County Prosecutor’s Office announced.
Mendham Township Police Chief Ross Johnson told Fox News Digital a DNA profile was established for the baby girl in 2014 and “a lot of great police work” solved the decades-old cold case.
Crumlich was just 17 when she left the child, her umbilical cord still intact, wrapped inside a towel in a plastic bag, which two young boys playing in a stream found and reported to police, the prosecutor’s office said. The death was ruled a homicide after a coroner determined the child had died before she was placed in the bag, police said.
CHILD WHO SURVIVED 47-HOUR ABDUCTION FROM STATE PARK CREDITED FOR AIRTIGHT CASE AGAINST CAPTOR
Mary Snyder Crumlich, 57, had moved from Mendham Township, N.J., to South Carolina, where she was living with her family when she was arrested for manslaughter in the death of her newborn daughter on Christmas Eve 1984. (Cath Snyder-Crumlich/Facebook)
The baby girl’s identity was not known, but the Rev. Michael Drury at St. Joseph Church baptized her, Johnson told Fox News Digital. Each year on Christmas Eve, Johnson said, officers would visit the grave for a memorial service.
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“It became part of our yearly tradition. We didn’t want Baby Mary to be forgotten,” Johnson said on Friday. “[It was] such a horrible act, really senseless in every sense of the word. We wanted to make sure she was remembered every Christmas Eve. … It’s just completely unnecessary. Even in the ’80s, there were so many resources in our area. It didn’t need to go down that way for sure.”
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The Mendham Township’s Police Department chaplain, the Rev. Michael Drury, named the infant Jane Doe “Mary” and baptized her, prosecutors said. Each year, a memorial service was held at her grave on Christmas Eve. (Chris Pedota/NorthJersey.com/USA Today Network)
When a DNA profile was established for the child, her case was reopened by the Morris County Cold Case Unit. With the help of a genealogist, Johnson said, detectives looked for families living in the area who had daughters between 16 and 19 years old and whose racial and ethnic backgrounds matched the girl’s.
“There was never a belief that it was just some random person from out of town,” Johnson said. “The spot was so specific, it would have to be someone from the area.”
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Detectives interviewed dozens of families and chased a litany of tips and theories. Finally, they found a match for Baby Mary’s DNA, an area man who had died by suicide years earlier, in 2009 or 2010, Johnson said.
“It is our firm belief he had no knowledge of this. That’s why his name hasn’t been anywhere,” Johnson said. “We had no evidence that he had any idea that he was the father of that particular child, let alone that Crumlich was even pregnant.
“Maybe he wouldn’t have done that if he knew,” he added. “Maybe if he had a kid, if the kid didn’t die, the story would be different.”
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Through his family, they zeroed in on Crumlich, who had moved to suburban Columbia, South Carolina.
On Facebook, she is pictured attending her son’s baseball games and weddings. Later, she posted photos babysitting her grandchildren.
“I can’t imagine living with something like that. There are consequences.”
She was arrested April 23 last year and charged as a juvenile due to her age at the time of the offense. If she had been convicted as an adult, the prosecutor’s office said, it would have been on a second-degree manslaughter charge.
Law enforcement was unable to refer to her by name until her conviction earlier this month, according to state laws for juvenile defendants. On April 3, Johnson said, Crumlich began a 364-day sentence at Morris County Correctional Facility.
It was not immediately apparent who represented Crumlich in her case.
Johnson said he hopes Crumlich “finds closure on her end” after her prison sentence.
“I can’t imagine living with something like that. There are consequences,” he said. “It’s good to see that she carried on with her life, [but] she lives with this every day to some degree. I’m happy, even for her sake, that we could bring closure to this. The reality is that she left a newborn baby out in the woods. She did that, and we felt it was very important to bring that to justice.”
Johnson said he was “left with more questions than answers” even after the case was resolved.
“I really do hope one day when she gets out of jail she does come public with the whole story,” Johnson said. “But I don’t think that will ever happen.”
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HARTFORD, Conn. (WFSB) – The U.S. Supreme Court said Tuesday it will take up an appeal challenging bans on the AR-15 and other semi-automatic firearms, including the ban in Connecticut and in the Chicago area.
Similar bans are in place in about a dozen states. The case is expected to be heard in the fall.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said the state’s assault weapons ban is lawful and that his office is prepared to fight the challenge in court.
“Connecticut’s assault weapon ban is lawful, lifesaving, and broadly supported. The gun lobby has flooded the courts in states across the country to get an assault weapons case up to this Supreme Court. We are prepared for this fight, and we are going to go in with everything we’ve got to keep these weapons of war off our streets, out of our schools, and away from our families,” said Attorney General Tong.
Copyright 2026 WFSB. All rights reserved.
Many Maine municipalities will open cooling centers this week with the National Weather Service issuing a variety of heat advisories covering the next few days.
The Maine DEP also issued an air quality alert for Wednesday with ground-level ozone expected to reach levels that are unhealthy for sensitive groups.
All of York County, interior Cumberland and Androscoggin counties, and the southern half of Oxford County will fall under an extreme heat warning from 11 a.m. Wednesday to 8 p.m. Friday.
The warning calls for “dangerously hot conditions” that could feature heat index values of up to 110 degrees, with overnight lows only expected to fall into the 70s, according to the weather service’s office in Gray.
The rest of the state — save northern Aroostook, Piscataquis and Somerset counties — falls under a heat advisory from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Wednesday. However, the weather service has also placed much of the state under an extreme heat watch for Thursday.
Heat index values, which measure how hot it feels to the human body when relative humidity is combined with the air temperature, are expected to reach up to 104 degrees during the heat advisory period, the weather service warns. They could reach 110 degrees Thursday, when the extreme heat watch is in effect.
Northern Oxford and Franklin counties, and central Somerset County, can expect a heat index value of up to 99 degrees Wednesday, according to the weather service.
The weather service advises people to drink plenty of fluids, stay in air-conditioned rooms when possible, avoid extended periods in the sun and check up on relatives and neighbors. It also warns not to leave young children and pets in unattended vehicles, as “car interiors will reach lethal temperatures in a matter of minutes.”
Cooling Centers
The Maine Department of Environmental Protection has also issued an air quality alert from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Wednesday along the coast from Kittery to Acadia National Park. The agency warns that ground-level ozone concentrations are expected to reach levels that are unhealthy for sensitive groups.
Ozone levels may reach “moderate levels” further inland, according to the Maine DEP, including in all of Androscoggin and Kennebec counties, as well as parts of Cumberland, Knox, Lincoln, Penobscot, Sagadahoc, Waldo, Washington and York counties.
Elevated ozone levels can pose a risk to children, older adults and people suffering from respiratory or heart diseases, according to the Maine DEP. Anyone exerting themselves outdoors may also experience health effects, which could include coughing, shortness of breath, throat irritation and mild chest pain.
Ozone levels were already climbing in southern New England on Tuesday, according to the Maine DEP, and winds are expected to bring those conditions to Maine on Wednesday.
The Maine DEP recommends that vulnerable populations avoid strenuous outdoor activities, keep windows closed, and circulate indoor air with fans or air conditioners. Those with asthma are also advised to keep quick-relief medication handy.
Particle pollution levels are also expected to be moderate across the state on Wednesday due to wildfire smoke, the Maine DEP said in its announcement Tuesday. Wildfires in Colorado, which have claimed the lives of three firefighters, had burned nearly 90,000 acres as of Tuesday, according to the Denver Post.
Massachusetts
Missing Massachusetts cat miraculously found underneath owners’ new bathtub — after disappearing for 30 hours
You’ve got to be kitten me!
A beloved feline went missing for an excruciating 30 hours in Massachusetts, only to be found in the most unlikely of places — a hole underneath a newly installed bathtub in its owners’ bathroom.
The Kirby family was renovating a bathroom in their Needham home last week when their cat, Fluffy, suddenly vanished, NBC10 Boston reported.
Assuming the snow white kitty had sneakily slipped out the front door while the construction was ongoing, the Kirby family began to fear for the worst after it failed to return home later that night.
Fluffy’s worried owners raced to Staples the following morning to print out missing cat posters and engaged a pet retrieval specialist equipped with a German shepherd to scour the Boston suburb for the cat.
Treats were also left out to lure Fluffy home — but the search came up empty.
“I thought I was never going to see him again,” Melissa Kirby told the outlet.
Thirty hours after the puzzling disappearance, things took a bizarre turn.
“I was upstairs crying and I heard a little meow,” she said.
“I thought at that point I was hallucinating.”
Melissa was left stunned when she saw a “little paw sticking out a hole” in the bathroom floor where a new bathtub had been recently installed.
Her husband, Ed Kirby, frantically called an after-hours plumber, who asked if it was an emergency.
“Yes, this is an emergency. It’s not a leak,” he desperately recalled telling the plumber.
“Our cat is trapped under our tub.”
Photos showed Fluffy peeking its little white head up from the hole it was stuck in.
In under an hour, Fluffy was rescued from the hole, unharmed and unbothered, and reunited with his family.
While it was a miracle that Fluffy wasn’t hurt, the Kirby family said they won’t be taking any more chances on their little escape artist — and plan to install an AirTag tracker on him.
“If he ever gets out again or gets trapped under another appliance,” Melissa Kirby said, “we’ll be able to locate him.”
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