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Mass. woman charged in 1985 murder of Baby Jane Doe in Aroostook County

Lee Ann Daigle
Maine State Police
Lee Ann Daigle

A Massachusetts woman has been charged in the cold case murder of a newborn baby in Aroostook County 36 years ago.

On Monday, police arrested 58-year-old Lee Ann Daigle of Lowell, Massachusetts, in connection with the death of Baby Jane Doe, who was abandoned in a gravel pit during freezing weather in the town of Frenchville before being found Dec. 7, 1985.

Daigle formerly went by the name Lee Ann Guerrette. Maine State Police say Daigle was the baby’s mother. They cited advances in DNA testing and genetic genealogy technology as helping close the decades-old case.

Daigle was indicted by an Aroostook County grand jury on one count of murder and arrested without incident outside her home in Massachusetts, according to police. She was then brought to the Aroostook County Jail in Houlton.

The baby was first discovered after a dog dragged her less than 700 feet back to his owner’s home. Detectives then traced the dog’s path back to the site where the baby had allegedly been born and abandoned, according to Shannon Moss, spokesperson for the Maine Department of Public Safety.

While the case once seemed potentially unsolvable to the many detectives who had worked on it, it came together in the last two years due to the work of Detective Jay Pelletier of the State Police Unsolved Homicide Unit and Detective Chad Lindsey of Major Crimes Unit North, police say.

“This case was the culmination of decades worth of investigative work from dozens of now retired and current detectives who never gave up finding answers and justice for Baby Jane Doe,” Moss said. “Detectives Pelletier and Lindsey have chased every lead and spent countless hours working and following new leads that helped identify Baby Jane Doe’s mother.”