More than 50 strangers attended the baby's funeral. Police searched for his mother among them.
Theresa Bentaas has been charged with first-degree murder, second-degree murder and manslaughter and booked on $250,000 bail.. By Meagan Flynn Meagan Flynn Morning Mix reporter Email Bio Follow March 11 at 6:21 AM From far away it looked like a bottle of red wine had been spilled along the icy gravel, an image Lee Litz would not soon forget.
The crime would become infamous in Sioux Falls, only the second homicide in the small city in 1981 and one of only a handful of cold cases that would remain unsolved for years, frustrating detectives as all the leads dried up. In the immediate aftermath of the baby’s death, the community mourned him as if he were its own child, the Argus Leader reported in 1981. They gave him a name, Andrew John Doe.
Police arrested the baby’s biological mother, Theresa Bentaas, on Friday after DNA and genetic genealogy identified her as the suspect, Detective Michael Webb said at a news conference. She was charged with first-degree murder, second-degree murder and manslaughter and booked on $250,000 bail. An attorney for Bentaas could not be immediately located.
“I know it sounds cliche, but we don’t quit on these,” Webb said. “We don’t forget about these cases. We never do. About 10 years ago, we started taking a new look at this case to see what we could do, given advancement in technology and DNA.” He had learned of a new DNA initiative at the University of North Texas, where forensic experts could extract DNA from unidentified victims’ bones. The university agreed to help Webb with the Baby Andrew case, as it came to be known in the newspapers.
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