Dead Baby’s Mother Booked for Homicide

Camarillo – The discovery of a dead newborn in a Ventura County strawberry field on May 21, 2012 marked the beginning of a protracted investigation on the part of Ventura County Sheriff’s Homicide Division detectives to locate its mother.

Rosalba Moran

Seven months later, after painstakingly collecting massive amounts of evidence, conducting numerous witness interviews, posting repeated public service announcements, and working closely with VSD Crime Lab scientists, deputies began to close in on their suspect.

More than 100 DNA buccal swabs from area farm workers who had been in the area on the day the grim discovery of the lifeless infant was made narrowed the search to a biological relative of the child’s mother.  Pursuant to “additional interviews and DNA matches”, according to Ventura County Sheriff spokesman Sgt. Ian Laughlin, Rosalba Moran, 20, an Oxnard resident, was identified as the possible mother.  Because she was, at the time of the investigation, a resident of Ventura County’s Todd Road Jail facing unrelated criminal charges, “forensics processed her DNA and confirmed her as the mother of the abandoned baby,” Laughlin reported. “Significant evidence linked Moran to the murder of her newborn,” he added.

Moran was charged with murder and remains in custody on an increased bail of $1,000,000, while detectives remain focused upon finding the father of the deceased child, and urge anyone with information in that regard to contact them at 805-383-8786.

Read more:

Fillmore Gazette: Investigators Make Arrest in Abandoned Deceased Newborn Case

Moorpark Patch: Sheriff’s Dept. Makes Arrest in Infant Death Case