Three chilling clues in mystery of baby Gabriel found in a recycling tip off a busy road as police won’t give up search
THE mystery of how a newborn ended up in a Cambridgeshire recycling centre continues to puzzle detectives one year on.
Staff sorting through plastic and glass at Waterbeach waste management park found the dead boy on the morning of November 29 last year.
Police charged to the scene just off the A10 and an investigation was launched.
The boy, discovered during advent, was named Gabriel by medics, after the angel in the story of Christmas.
Despite a desperate hunt for the boy’s parents, police were unable to find them.
And when no DNA match was found the investigation was closed.
But three chilling clues of where his body may have been dropped, who his family were and how he died, remain.
Where
Cambridgeshire Police previously said Gabriel was likely collected from a household bin before arriving at the recycling centre.
Despite this, the investigation report into the boy’s death, obtained by the BBC, revealed CCTV footage was not detailed enough to identify the exact time Gabriel’s body entered the centre.
This proved a problem.
Almost 900,000 people live in the area serviced by the recycling plant, which process 18 tonnes of waste an hour.
Police managed to narrow their search down to nine trucks that arrived on site two hours before he was found.
Six of these serviced Cambridge and one covered the southern village of Melbourn.
The investigation was complicated as two lorries came from “satellite stations” nearer Peterborough and March.
This widened the window of rounds in various areas between 17 and 28 November, the report said.
In total, the nine vehicles covered 980 streets.
Believing no suspicious activity would be visible and lacking the resources to narrow down the search – police did not knock on a single door or check CCTV at properties in the catchment area.
Who
Police were unable to find a DNA match for Gabriel and media appeals failed to track down any significant leads.
His ethnicity also remains a mystery.
And there were no reports of babies missing from hospitals and local maternity staff flagged no concerns.
How
It remains unclear how Gabriel died and came to be discovered at Waterbeach.
And there were no signs of “inflicted injury or medical interventions”, the report said
But it stressed: “There is no evidence to show that the child’s death was caused by another person.”
With no further lines of enquiry, the case was closed.
Gabriel was “respectfully buried” at an undisclosed location in July, the coroner’s office said.
Det Ch Supt John Massey who fronted the campaign to solve Gabriel’s mystery told the BBC: “This is an incredibly sad and upsetting incident for everyone involved.
“All efforts, including a thorough investigation and appeals, were made to locate the mother of the child to ensure she was safe and to try to fully identify baby Gabriel. However, these were ultimately unsuccessful.”
The coroner’s office said Gabriel was “respectfully buried” in July, but was not able to share the location.