'Baby Doe' identified, had history with child services

"Baby Doe" is likely Bella Bond, a child whose family had occasionally been the subject of neglect complaints before the girl was found dead in a trash bag on a Boston Harbor island, authorities said Friday.

“I don’t have confirmation but there seems to be a tremendously strong sense” that it is Bella, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker said at a press conference. He said the state Department of Children and Families had a case open -- and closed -- on Bella in 2013.

Massachusetts State Police said earlier Friday that her death is "still an active investigation." Forensic testing is needed to make a final identification.

CNN reports that Rachelle Bond, the girl's mother, and her boyfriend, Michael McCarthy, who is not Bella's biological father, have been arrested.

Massachusetts House Speaker Robert DeLeo, D-Winthrop, said he has been briefed on the investigation and that the police are confident in determining how she died.
"They feel they have the perpetrators of this crime," DeLeo said during a news conference.
"It appears as though it was a situation of the boyfriend who was involved and apparently, I think, mother and boyfriend sort of blaming each other in terms of who harmed the child."
Bella's body was found by a woman walking her dog on June 25 in Winthrop, Mass., on Deer Island. The peninsula juts out into Boston Harbor and is home to a waste water treatment plant and walking trails.
The little girl was found stuffed into a trash bag with a zebra-print blanket and wearing polka-dot leggings.
Authorities posted to social media a photograph-like image generated by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children created from autopsy photographs.
Officials from the state's child protection agency said they had contact with Bella twice, for four months in 2012 and three months in 2013. In both cases, officials described the involvement as "support for neglect," and the cases were later closed.
Between 2001 and 2006, the Department of Children and Families terminated parental rights for two of her mother's older children. One of the children was later adopted by her maternal grandmother; the other was adopted by someone outside the family, DCF officials said.
Rhonda Mann, a spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, said the agency has been working with law enforcement for several months in an effort to help police identify the girl.
"Now that we know her name, the story is no less tragic. DCF has not had an open case with this family for over two years, but did have brief involvement with Baby Bella as an infant," she said in a statement.
Because the case involving Bella had been closed, it was not among cases that DCF examined after the discovery of the remains on Deer Island, the agency said.


Source : http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/09/18/baby-doe-massachusetts-boston-harbor/72404296/

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