After leaving her newborn to die in a wooded area in New Jersey on Christmas Eve forty years ago, Mary Catherine Snyder Crumlich had been living a suburban life in South Carolina with her husband and sons. However, earlier this month, Crumlich, now 57 years old, was sentenced to a year behind bars for manslaughter in the death of the infant known as “Baby Mary.” Mendham Township Police Chief Ross Johnson credited the breakthrough in the case to a DNA profile established for the baby girl in 2014, which led to the resolution of the decades-old cold case attributed to great police work.
At the age of 17, Crumlich left the newborn, with her umbilical cord still intact, wrapped inside a towel in a plastic bag, which was eventually discovered by young boys playing near a stream. The death was determined to be a homicide after a coroner found that the child had died prior to being placed in the bag. Despite the baby girl’s unknown identity, she was baptized by Rev. Michael Drury at St. Joseph Church and memorialized by officers at her grave every Christmas Eve as part of a longstanding tradition to ensure she was not forgotten.
With the establishment of a DNA profile for the child, the Morris County Cold Case Unit reopened the case and, with the assistance of a genealogist, began searching for families in the area with daughters aged 16 to 19 whose racial and ethnic backgrounds matched the baby’s. Detectives interviewed numerous families and chased various leads before eventually finding a match for Baby Mary’s DNA in an area man who had passed away by suicide years before. The man was believed to have had no knowledge of his paternity, leading investigators to focus on Crumlich as the birth mother.
Crumlich was arrested in April of the previous year and charged as a juvenile due to her age at the time of the offense. She began serving her sentence of 364 days at Morris County Correctional Facility on April 3. Law enforcement was prohibited from referring to her by name until her conviction due to state laws regarding juvenile defendants. Johnson expressed his hope that Crumlich would find closure after her prison term, acknowledging the lifelong consequences she must live with for her actions. He also mentioned his curiosity about the whole story behind the case and speculated that Crumlich may never fully disclose the details, despite his desire for more answers.
As Crumlich begins her sentence, law enforcement officials and community members reflect on the tragic event that occurred forty years ago and express relief that justice has been served. The resolution of the case after decades of investigative work and public remembrance of Baby Mary each Christmas Eve stand as a testament to the commitment of law enforcement to seek justice for victims of crimes, no matter how much time has passed. While the full story may never be known, the closure brought by Crumlich’s conviction offers a sense of justice for the innocent baby girl who was tragically abandoned and left to die.
