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Newborn's body found at Macon County landfill

Autopsy shows baby girl was killed

By Lisa Majors-Duff
Jackson County law enforcement agents are assisting Macon County officials with an investigation surrounding the discovery of a female newborn at the Macon County landfill.

Autopsy findings Tuesday showed the child was alive at birth and was most likely intentionally suffocated, according to published reports. The autopsy was conducted at Winston-Salem's Bowman Gray School of Medicine.

Jackson County law enforcement have been called upon to assist with the investigation due to the shared use status of the landfill. Hundreds of pounds of trash from both Jackson and Macon counties are transported to the facility on Lakeside Drive near Franklin daily. But even this fact does not narrow the investigation, said Capt. Pat Taylor of the Macon County Sheriff's Department, since anyone could have left the body in dozens of locations before it was taken to the landfill.

"It could have come from anywhere," Taylor said. While all of Macon County's solid waste disposal sites are staffed, Jackson County continues to transport waste from unmanned sites in Glenville.

A few leads in Jackson County have been followed up to no avail, Taylor said.

"We're just trying to think of everything, everywhere there are a lot of girls," she said. The investigation so far has covered Western Carolina University, all high schools in Western North Carolina and northern Georgia, all area Departments of Social Service and health departments.

"Right now we're walking in the dark," Taylor said of the investigation. "But it's going to come from someone calling in." A similar incident was recently resolved when Winnie Leigh Jumper of Cherokee was found guilty in the death of her newborn. The male child was found in a bag under a rock in March 1998 by a Cherokee sanitation employee.

Anyone with information concerning the case is asked to notify the Macon County Sheriff's Department at (828) 524-2811 or the Jackson County Sheriff's Department at 586-8901. Especially important could be information regarding any female who may have been pregnant but is no longer and does not or cannot account for a child, said Taylor.

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