Bloodline Detectives - Season 2, Episode 20 - The Boy in the Bundle - Full Episode | Forensic Files

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

On June 11th, 1963, a man fishing in Oregon reels in the body of a toddler. The child had been wrapped in blankets and weighed down by iron molds.

A compelling new True Crime series, hosted by preeminent legal analyst and renowned former prosecutor Nancy Grace, that explores the advanced form of familial DNA testing.

Brief Summary

The episode details the identification of Baby Boy Doe as Stevie Crawford, revealing a tragic story of neglect and mystery surrounding his death.

Key points

The Discovery of Baby Boy Doe. A fisherman finds a suspicious bundle in a reservoir, leading to a shocking discovery.
The Case Goes Cold. After initial investigations, the case of baby boy doe goes cold for decades.
New DNA Technology Offers Hope. Investigators use advanced DNA techniques to reopen the cold case and seek answers.
A Troubled Family History. Stevie's mother had a traumatic childhood that impacted her family life.
Family Connections Revealed. A half-brother emerges, providing crucial information about Stevie's past.
Breakthrough in Cold Case. Investigators finally identify little Stevie Crawford after nearly 60 years.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

His name and his background remain unknown for nearly 60 years.

The mystery surrounding baby boy doe.

1:08WatchJun 1, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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