The parents of a dead newborn baby found dumped in a trash bag in a dumpster in Mississippi over three decades ago have finally been arrested for the baby’s death.

Andrew Carriere II and Inga Johansen Carriere, now both 50 years old, are facing first-degree murder charges in connection with the death of the baby girl who was found inside a dumpster in Picayune, Mississippi, in April,1992.

Louisiana State Police said in a statement that the baby’s cause of death was perinatal asphyxia caused by smothering and have classified the case as a homicide.

On April 17, 1992, a farmer found a dead newborn baby girl wrapped in a towel inside garbage bags behind what was once a pizza shop in Picayune, police said.

According to the autopsy report, the baby had probably been born that morning, three weeks premature, and had only lived for a few minutes before getting smothered.

Detectives from the Bureau of Investigations in Mississippi reopened the case in August 2021 and asked Louisiana State Police and Picayune Police Department for their help a few months later.

According to the statement, detectives were able to develop fingerprints and DNA profiles from the preserved evidence of the cold case using advanced technology.  They identified the baby’s parents as the Carrieres, who had been living in Louisiana at the time of the child’s death.

Kate Stegall, a Louisiana State Trooper, said that police believe the murder happened in Louisiana, which was why the Louisiana State Police were the ones to issue the arrest warrants.

She also said that the evidence, combined with the parents living in Louisiana at that time, pointed to the crime being committed in the state.

The charges bear witness to the dramatic developments in DNA processing over the last 30 years since the 90s when it was still a relatively new science.

According to Stegall, the fact that the police department held on to the evidence for the last 30 years was remarkable, and that if they had discarded it, the case would have remained unsolved.

Inga Carriere was arrested at her Avondale, Louisiana home on February 28, and police arrested Andrew in Galliano, Louisiana, on March 9.

Mrs. Carriere’s public defender, Paul Fleming, Jr., said that preliminary investigations suggest that the baby was born stillborn which would mean that there was no homicide involved.

The mother and father of “Baby Doe,” as some called the newborn, are scheduled to appear before a judge on March 21.