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july 11 1963 jackson county oregon a suspicious bundle is found by a local fisherman
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at the keene creek reservoir when the fisherman opened up the blankets he got the shock of his life
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right away knew there was something wrong and went to local law enforcement and reported it
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and that was when they found this concealed body of a of a young child an investigation is immediately launched
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to find the little boy's family baby boy doe name known only to god police finally run out of leads the case
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goes cold this is the story of baby boy doe also known as the boy and the bundle
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his name and his background remain unknown for nearly 60 years until finally he is identified through the
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science of genetic genealogy i'm nancy grace this is bloodline detectives [Music]
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1963 a summer day in jackson county oregon a local man out fishing with friends at the keene creek reservoir
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he notices a suspicious bundle lying half submerged in the water the fisherman who was out with his
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family he ended up snagging and bringing up this bundle when he reeled it in and he looked at it
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and he opened it up the shock of his life there was a baby a child this little body was discovered wrapped
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in blankets and then wrapped in a homemade quilt it was also bound with wire and then
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weighted down with some weights he alerted the oregon state police i believe through a local fire resource in
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that area the oregon state police took an initial statement from him and notified the jackson county sheriff's
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office the bundle removed from the reservoir an autopsy very carefully performed
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he was taken to a funeral home for that examination just based on facilities that were available at the time
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i think everyone in that room was probably horrified because as you're unwinding this wire
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you see this homemade quilt which is just such a personal object and you unfold that and there's another blanket
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and you unfold that and then there's this child probably quite unrecognizable
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at that point based on how long he'd been there there was an aqua blanket there was a
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patchwork quilt there were many windings of wire different kinds of wire to hold
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the bundle together and inside the bundle were some iron molds used in mining to weight the body down
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they could find no damage to the child's skull they could find no broken bones in the child's body
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there was no indication that the child had been hit or there was some kind of injury left
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marks on the body he was wearing some little trainer shoes he was wearing corduroy pants he had a
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red and white striped shirt on and they were good quality clothes so it made them think that the little boy
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didn't come from perhaps like an impoverished family or a transient family he seemed to be well
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cared for investigators now try to establish the identity of the little boy using
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every tool they know at the autopsy they couldn't determine who he was there was no missing child in
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the area that matched his description they thought he might have died of natural causes and then
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a parent disposed of him in this way of course there's the possibility that he died in an accident or
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was murdered and then he was hidden away investigators were able to take footprints and they
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sent those to the fbi and the fbi was able to check the hospitals all over the country for
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those matching footprints if you could get that footprint and compare it to the birth certificate footprint you might be
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able to get a match investigators believe the boy might be from the local area all the residents had to be interviewed
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what did they know had they seen anything had they heard anything were they aware that a child was missing they
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would put out flyers literally posting them on a tree so that people would be aware that there
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was a child who had been found police make some progress in identifying some of baby boy doe's clothing
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they did discover that some of the clothing came from jcpenney they talked to shoe store owners and found out about
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the shoes that the little boy was wearing but unfortunately that style of shoe was sold up and down the west coast
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so again not something that they could use to help pinpoint exactly where did this child come from
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and who might have bought the shoes the clothing that he was wearing would have been considered more high-end
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clothing for the time so you know being in a rural area not a lot of people would have access to clothing
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like that investigators also try to find out more about the weight that anchored the tots
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little body in the reservoir they were so thorough in their investigation talking to so many people
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in the mining industry that they found the exact type of mold listed in a catalog and it cost 1.25 they knew the
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exact model of the mold the police took these iron objects to the mining companies around
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oregon and around medford nothing i think a lot of people would think about it as if this was my child
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or if this was a child that i was involved in their life you know this would not be what i would want for
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my family or what i would like to see for my family not what i want in my community
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police go after every lead that comes in and even get help from top officials at
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the fbi there was a letter signed by j edgar hoover who was the head of the fbi in
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washington d.c where he was sending out requests to police agencies for information
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there is incredible interest in the outcome of this case as we see next on bloodline detectives
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investigators are confident that they will discover the identity of baby boy doe
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jackson county oregon july 1963 police investigating the discovery of a taut boy's body at king creek reservoir
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that summer the case is known locally as the boy in the bundle the community obsessed with the
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sheriff's office solving the case i think initially they believed it was going to be a local child
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at a certain point they were working any missing children leads for for that time frame
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investigators lose their initial confidence the case of baby boy doe goes cold and no one's working the case and then
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you look at the date and that was during the time of the kennedy assassination and it was all efforts on
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that the materials were put away in a box and then not discovered until later when
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they decided again to do another sweep for cold cases the community and the investigators did
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organize a burial for the child he was buried at hillcrest memorial cemetery baby boy doe
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name known only to god 45 years after baby boy doe was found dead bundled submerged in a reservoir
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his case reopens there at jason county sheriff's detective colin fagan had found some
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boxes full of old files and he asked an investigator named jim tattersall to look through those
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and jim tattersall found this case of the king creek boy as they called it at the time and said here's one where it's
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the body of a small child that was discovered in king creek reservoir and nobody has been able to find the
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identity yet they decided to exhume the child's body and extract dna it looked like a crime and while maybe
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there was some innocent explanation the affidavit that they submitted to the judge said
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this appears to be a crime it is probable cause to issue a warrant for the exhumation of the body
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they went to the cemetery they made a scheduled appointment with all of the investigators that were on the case
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at that point the medical examiner was there and they simply knew exactly what plot he was in they took all of the dirt
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away got his casket out and then proceeded to do a second examination on him the immediate question
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what will be the condition of baby boy doe's body when he is exhumed will his remains be
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in any shape that would allow an extract of a dna sample for testing this body was placed in an embalmed
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situation where once you open that casket it should be well preserved this body had deteriorated
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we were able to re-examine the skeleton we were able to apply new resources to it forensic anthropologists took part in
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that who are experts in bone development congenital defects body structure body composition
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there was a sample that was taken from his upper thigh bone and that was sent to the university of north texas
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center for human identification and they provided dna analysis and processing to us and they created
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or concluded with a dna profile from him his entire dna profile was uploaded into
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the national dna system and began to search against missing people and there was never an
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association at that point dna wasn't as widely used so a lot of dna databases in the country were
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basically just databases of criminals investigators get assistance from a very unlikely source
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two local dentists had a new 360 degree imaging machine so they took the child's
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skull there and also with the help of an anthropologist who helped to rebuild the
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skull they were able to reconstruct the skull and get good images of that anthropologists will usually reconstruct
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faces just for a visual examination and a visual cue to try and determine really
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what this child looked like the dentist said that there were some facial characteristics
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with the skull that were consistent with down syndrome and so at that time that became another
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source of information in the case now for the first time investigators finally put a face
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to baby boy doe they provided this three-dimensional illustration or composite if you will of
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this little guy's facial features and it was something that we had never had
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before this composite of this little toddler is so personal and you can see that he was a little person he was a
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little guy it makes it hit home quite a bit more to see his face and to see his facial characteristics
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dna databases at that time mostly fill with convicted felons so the search for a match for baby boy doe comes up empty
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investigators now try circulating the new face they have for baby boy doe hoping it sparks a lead
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[Music] time kind of works in our favor in that people that may have known something at
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the time didn't want to say anything didn't want to be involved typically those reservations will go
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away and we'll get more information from them so this was an effort to solicit more of that information and
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maybe give folks something tangible to look at that went on a national basis out to law
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enforcement agencies and through the media it was a black and white image it didn't
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have really any defining characteristics other than structure when folks think of
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other people familiar people loved ones typically they'll say oh he had brown
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hair he had blonde hair it was really distinct because it was white or he had green eyes
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the case of baby boy doe the boy in the bundle haunts investigators they now turn to advanced forensic science to try
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and solve this mystery that's next on bloodline detectives jackson county oregon 2008 police
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reopened the cold case of a tot boy a child found in a reservoir half submerged in water in 1963
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baby boy doe's tiny body wrapped tightly in a blanket with metal wire and weighed
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down with cast iron molds a 3d reconstruction is made from skull fragments and a picture emerges of what
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this baby boy doe may have looked like in life there were tips that were coming in
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about who this little guy could potentially be none of them were leading anywhere and so i think it was very
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frustrating to the detectives that were working on it at that point just as it had been extremely frustrating to those
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detectives who had worked on it in 1963. investigators have another suspicion about baby boy doe
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they very carefully examined this 3d model baby boy doe's physical features lead investigators to believe the top
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boy may have suffered from a congenital health defect this child's head was flattened
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not a traumatic injury but just an ordinary flattening which was the result of a congenital
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birth defect all children are vulnerable and some are even more vulnerable and i know for the investigators definitely
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it just created even more of a desire to find out who this little boy was and what had happened to him
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more dna samples are obtained from the boy's femur bone these samples submitted to existing dna
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database in the hope of a breakthrough they exhumed the body and they were able to get dna out of
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that to try to search for any sort of match at that point i think everyone expected that the the dna would
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be a hit but the dna does not find a match the case goes cold yet again in order for something to hit or
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associate genetically to each other you have to have something to compare it to finding something new to do with a case
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this old with so few resources or so few tangible leads was next to insurmountable
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then investigators get a tip from a very unusual source it showed up on facebook a drawing of a
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little boy who was anywhere between one and three and i just said oh my gosh that boy looks like a williams syndrome
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baby she thought that this child looked very similar with the facial characteristics
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that her child did and so she gave the investigators that tip i found out that the case was out of
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oregon in the county and emailed the police department there and asked if they could pass it along to whoever had
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this case right now the sheriff received the tip and he passed it on to me said hey see what you
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can do with this and that's when i started making phone calls police reach out to the oregon state
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police medical examiner i suggested to the investigators that we take the dna sample that we already had
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and do a completely innovative dna technique on it a new type of dna testing is now
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available it's called phenotyping phenotyping is looking at locations in the genes
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with that dna profile to look specifically at the location that determines eye color
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the location that expresses skin color it's significantly more sophisticated in
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the characteristics that it pulls it looks at more genetic markers within that dna than a dna sample say for codis
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would look at they look at very specific markers and fewer of them the phenotyping results were amazing
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because it really confirmed a lot of what our investigators had first thought when they created the new composite
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based on those factors even though it was a very similar picture to the black and white composite that had been
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constructed it gave it a much more real feel he was of northern european ancestry and
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so he was either very fair or fair in his skin color he had hazel or brown eyes which was something we had never
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known before so great piece of information he had dark blonde to light brown hair so again information
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we had never had that now we have those might seem insignificant as far as characteristics but to investigators at
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this point that was a huge jump in the investigation because now we could go to that existing
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illustration and we could put color on it and we could give him even more of an identity
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this new technology opens the case up to possibly using forensic genetic genealogy
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investigative genetic genealogy is really a way to find genetic connections between people
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we have the ged databases and what they permit us to do is to take the sample of dna from a victim
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or the deceased or somebody involved in the crime run that sample through the genealogy
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the ged data and determine who are the relatives of the child that's the way
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we solve cases on these unidentified cases in oregon is we look at the familial connection
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investigators now enlist cc moore one of the leading scientists in dna genetic genealogy
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when she and i first started talking on some of the other cases that we had worked on
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it just struck me how committed she was to these cases her commitment to our cases
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was so apparent sometimes we try to work on a case and the dna is very challenging and it looks
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questionable as to whether we will be able to use investigative genetic genealogy so i was very concerned that
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the dna might be too degraded or too contaminated on this case but because of whole genome sequencing
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and our bioinformatics scientists we were able to do so and i was so thankful because this was a case that was
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incredibly compelling to me and i could tell how much dr vance and the investigators cared about it and really
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needed to make this identification investigators discussed the findings of cece moore's research
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would the mystery of baby boy doe's identity finally be solved jackson county officials and
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investigators our medical examiner personnel were all there and cece was there to provide us the information that
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she had found and on page two of her report she gives a theory and it's in bold and it's in italics
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it was amazing i could not believe how much information she was able to to glean and the the things that she was
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able to find i think we all wanted to scroll to page two at the very beginning but she's very
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methodical about the way she explains things and when we got to page two and we saw
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that bolded paragraph and it documented the grandparents of who this little boy was and then her
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theory we were blown away bloodline detectives hopeful their teamwork along with the new science of
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genetic genealogy can finally solve the mystery who is baby boy doe that's next on bloodline detectives
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2021 jackson county oregon police investigating the 1963 cold case of a murdered infant baby boy doe the
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tots body carefully wrapped in a blanket and put in the king creek reservoir his
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identity goes unknown for nearly 60 years but now investigators hopeful that recent dna
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technology breakthroughs will help them search for very distant family members leading to one that may give the boy in
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the bundle back his real name numerous investigators and detectives have retired without solving this case
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so we were cautiously optimistic when i first received the match list on this case it was not very promising i
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had a around 100 centimorgan top match which is a good match it's maybe a second cousin once removed or a third
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cousin but i didn't have a lot of supporting matches many of the other matches were very distant and so i was
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concerned that it was going to be very challenging to identify this little boy she was able to
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link fourth and fifth generation relatives and then through birth records death records
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driver's licenses other historical public documents was able to narrow down a very
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small window of people that would have been associated with this child i was finally able to narrow it down to
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three sisters that i believed likely one of those was going to be this little boy's mother but i really couldn't get
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it any further and then something very important happened in january 2021 and that is
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that the owners of ged match made the decision to allow unidentified remains or jane and john doe cases to be
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compared against the entire database which is about 1.5 million people that was the critical piece that we
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needed you know nobody was going to come up with tips especially after 58 years when that happened
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we received a first cousin level match to this little boy investigators now have the breakthrough
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they've been waiting for all these years when that report came out and cece was
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telling us that she had found his family and then her theory about the fact that
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his name was stevie crawford i was ecstatic i don't typically reach out to the
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matches in these cases but when somebody so young dies there are often no records that i am
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able to access to find that this person ever existed we all knew then exactly what everyone's
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role was at that point our investigators need to keep investigating they need to
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keep talking to the people that had been involved from the very beginning and now they had
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names and phone numbers and addresses of people that may be this little boy's
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relative i reached out to the manager of that profile who was the wife of the first
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cousin of this little boy and she was very interested in helping with this case she was immediately deeply impacted
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by it police began interviewing family members to build a picture of what may have
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happened to stevie crawford back in 1963. she started reaching out to their more
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immediate family members and asking if there had been a little boy that had disappeared when he was a toddler and
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she pretty quickly heard a story about a little disabled boy that had existed and that had lived
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in oregon for a very short time and then had disappeared one woman actually stated that
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she remembers stevie she remembers playing with him she remembers holding him she was the daughter of stevie's
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mother's second husband so they were children together she was a little older than him here's this woman
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who remembers him remembers that he was disabled but loved him dearly so that's
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a wonderful human connection that we now have said she came home from school every day
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and held him and really loved him that is one thing that really warmed my heart and made me feel a lot better
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about this whole case that he was loved and then one day stevie was there and one day stevie
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wasn't there and they never talked about it his mother and her new husband had moved up to the pacific
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northwest area for a very short time and that when they came back to their home town that they no longer had him with
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them genetically we need to confirm who this little boy is because interviews can only do so much we wanted
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to confirm exactly who he was so a half brother emerges from all the family history
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and the police started questioning the half brother what do you remember did you have a half brother oh yeah yeah
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i i was a child and and my mother had had this child and and and so he was funny what do you mean he
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was funny well he had down syndrome tell us some more the police said well one day
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my mother traveled a lot and she would go to all these places and she would take my my my
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brother with her and she came back and she says we don't have to worry about
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stevie anymore as their investigation and questioning goes on investigators get more
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information about stevie crawford's background a picture of a very troubled family begins to emerge
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we know that the mother of this little boy had a very rough childhood in and of herself she had seen her mother kill her
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father the grandfather had been abusive and the grandmother said she had killed him in self-defense
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stevie's mother had dealt with this horrible tragedy and i think that led to her living a very
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unstable life here's this poor girl who's seen so much trauma and violence in her life
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she goes on and has a series of marriages she had a lot of children that she ended
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up not raising herself some stayed with their father some went to other relatives and so
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what happened to stevie is not that surprising when you look at this entire family
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in context investigators search for any information any public record they can find about
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stevie crawford i was told a very specific place where the family thought he could have been
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born which was not oregon and i was communicating that to the investigators and then they were immediately taking
00:31:39
that information and finding more information and lo and behold they found the name
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and they found the birth record really i think detectives put the lid on the case
00:31:55
when they found his birth certificate which really confirmed that he did exist he was born his name was stephen
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alexander crawford and he was the exact age that we thought he should be the birth certificate confirmed
00:32:10
everything that cece moore had been able to research and find it tied all those together and made it
00:32:18
all one piece investigators must now obtain a dna sample from one of stevie's blood
00:32:27
relatives to confirm his identity and he says i would be happy to have you collect dna and do a
00:32:36
confirmation test with my dna compared to this little boy's because i believe i am his half brother and so
00:32:44
that was completed we collected his dna parabon nanolabs again processed that dna and did what was
00:32:52
considered a kinship inference analysis so that's again looking at connectedness between the dna from our
00:32:59
little boy and the dna from this adult man who they think is a half brother dna lab results provide solid proof
00:33:10
police can finally confirm the identity of baby boy doe is stephen alexander crawford
00:33:19
the results were conclusive it showed that this man was indeed a half-brother of stevie crawford
00:33:27
and that information really just sealed the genetic picture for us the press release came into the office
00:33:36
and it said we broke this cold case from 1963 and i looked at the just the amazing
00:33:46
chain of events that they had gone through it finally happens investigators accomplish the unbelievable they
00:33:56
identify little stevie crawford after nearly 60 years but as we see next on bloodline detectives they've got a lot
00:34:05
of questions about how this tiny tot ends up dead in keene creek reservoir jackson county oregon 2021 a dedicated
00:34:28
team of detectives and scientists identify a little boy tied down and left in a reservoir
00:34:36
60 years ago they now know the tot's name stevie crawford but what they want to know is
00:34:43
who put stevie in the reservoir if there's more to the story we want to know what that is
00:34:53
if there was an accident that took place if there's a credible history to um to assign to the death where it could
00:35:03
have been a natural circumstance you know we want to rule all those things out and if you know if if the worst
00:35:10
happened to stevie you know we want to make sure that those people are brought to justice
00:35:15
obviously it's very disturbing that someone didn't take the time to report what had
00:35:21
happened and definitely didn't take the time to make sure he had a proper respectful burial
00:35:29
stevie crawford's remains were found in a very remote location and one could speculate why that is
00:35:37
perhaps they didn't want him to be found perhaps it was just a beautiful location
00:35:42
where a little boy could lay to rest mothers cry they spend a lifetime crying over their lost child
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not here we didn't talk about it anymore since the half-brother we're not going to have
00:36:00
to worry about stevie anymore said the mother and never mentioned it again there was no crying
00:36:08
there was no wailing and lamenting about the loss of a child every mother's worst nightmare didn't
00:36:17
happen here a lot of people don't have the resources to bury their loved one to get them
00:36:24
a marker that type of thing and this is not something that necessarily means they didn't care about that individual
00:36:32
it was common that children with you know mental delays cognitive issues you know down syndrome
00:36:40
other syndromes were institutionalized and they were taken and just put in homes and that was just how it went back
00:36:47
then it's really speculation about what her life is like at that point but it
00:36:52
had to have been very very hard the case of stevie crawford affects everyone involved in this investigation
00:37:04
these cases are all very very near and dear to my heart and i want the best for them i want the best
00:37:11
for the families that are missing them and i want the best for the investigators
00:37:16
that have tried so hard to find a resolution for these cases but we're just not there yet
00:37:23
it makes me think about the care and how the health was for special needs children back then and having all the
00:37:32
medical advances that we've had to help save these kids that couldn't have been saved
00:37:37
back then the painstaking work of investigators and scientists and the advances in
00:37:44
forensic science give little stevie crawford back his name it was such a remarkable
00:37:54
sequence of events each one of those little pieces you know led to where we're at today
00:38:01
they never stopped wanting to find his identity and provide answers to any family that might be out there and as it
00:38:10
turned out there was family that loved stevie and wondered what had happened to him and so their quest really was very
00:38:17
important i feel as if we can bring resolution to so many more cases based on the success of this one
00:38:28
investigators still wonder if there can be any finality in a case like little stevie crawford's where so many
00:38:37
questions remain unanswered [Music] it would have been really nice to interview firsthand
00:38:47
those folks that were directly involved and you know discover what exactly happened
00:38:53
unfortunately time has not allowed for that when you talk to families about closure
00:39:00
they always shake their head and they say no nothing's closed i feel now that i can
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turn a corner i can start to grieve i can start to plan i can start to reflect from those family members that knew him
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i think he was a sweet little boy i think he was very lovable and i think he loved
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very deeply he could have died of natural causes he was not a healthy little boy and this family just may not
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have had the resources to bury him the way he should have the way we all wish that he had been
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his family members remembered playing with him when he was a tiny boy the community never forgot about him
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so regardless of what may have happened to him he was never forgotten nobody stopped
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fighting for him everybody wanted answers [Music] it took more than half a century
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it took 58 years but it was worth it the case of little stevie crawford touches so many of our human emotions
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on one hand the picture of human frailty a special needs child an abused mother who can't cope with a
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baby boy like stevie it's also the picture of the strength of the human spirit
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the strength demonstrated by hundreds of people led by bloodline detectives whose
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own humanity and perseverance simply want to save the spirit of the little boy in the bundle
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i'm nancy grace thanks for joining us on bloodline detectives [Music] [Music]
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you