36 Years After Newborn Found Dead In Subzero Temps, MA Woman Arrested

LOWELL, MA — A Lowell woman has been arrested in a 36-year-old cold case in which a dog found a newborn baby dead in rural northern Maine and carried the body to its owner’s home.

On Dec. 7, 1985, a Siberian Husky named Paca carried the newborn by her head about 700 feet to its home in Frenchville, Maine. The Aroostook County town has about 1,000 people and sits near the Canadian border.

“She kept pounding at the door’s window to get back in,” the dog's owner Armand Pelletier told the Bangor Daily News in 2014. “She kept pounding, and after awhile, I went to go look, and I could not believe what I saw. I saw what looked like a little rag doll, but then we saw it was a frozen little baby.”

Lorraine Pelletier recalled it was about 30 degrees below zero that night.

Maine State Police said Wednesday that investigators tracked the dog’s path back to where the body was left. They learned she was born and then abandoned in subzero temperatures at a gravel pit.

“It was so cold, just very, very cold,” Maine State Police Maj. Charles Love told the Daily News. “I was not the first officer on the scene, but I was one of the earliest. I was walking the scene, trying to gather information. It was so quiet in that gravel pit, and it appeared that a vehicle had driven in, as the tracks were very clear in the snow. Right near them were plainly a set of dog tracks. I turned and followed those paw prints right back to the house, where it had dropped the baby right by the door.”

After decades of investigative work, state troopers said they identified 58-year-old Lee Ann Daigle, formerly Lee Ann Guerrette, as the newborn's mother, thanks to advancements in DNA and genealogy technology.

Daigle was indicted on a murder charge by an Aroostook County grand jury. She was arrested outside her Massachusetts home without incident Monday and was brought to Maine that morning.

She was held at the Aroostook County Jail in Houlton.