CHEYENNE — A 57-year-old Cheyenne woman has been arrested on suspicion of first-degree murder in the death of a newborn baby boy found discarded near a Laramie County intersection 38 years ago.
Eva Martinez would have been 18 on Feb. 28, 1988, when Laramie County Sheriff’s Office deputies responded to a call at Happy Jack Road and McKinney Drive just southwest of the boundary for F.E. Warren Air Force Base, the LCSO says in a Wednesday report announcing the resolution of the cold case.
Martinez was arrested Tuesday, the agency reports.
The newborn baby — who became known as Baby John Doe — was “abandoned, unclothed, deceased … discovered near the roadway,” the report says.
“An autopsy concluded that the baby was a fully developed, full-term, 6.5-pound baby,” according to the report. “The autopsy found no evidence of significant injury, congenital anomaly, or disease.”
It also was determined that the baby was born alive and remained alive for “an amount of time due to air being in the baby’s lungs and stomach,” the report says.
However, at the time the cause and manner of the boy’s death were undetermined.
Over the next 38 years, the LCSO continued to investigate the death as a potential homicide and “followed up on numerous leads.”
Along the way, technology advanced and the agency continued to use DNA testing in an attempt to identify the baby’s parents, efforts that “proved unsuccessful,” the agency reports.
A break in the case came in 2021 when the LCSO partnered with Othram Inc., a laboratory that specializes in forensic genetic genealogy.
“Othram’s work on the case identified several individuals who were potentially related to Baby John Doe, which helped further the investigation,” the LCSO report says.
That led to the identification and arrest of Martinez.
The Laramie County Coroner’s Office and Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation also helped resolve the case.
This is a developing story and will be updated as more information is available.
Greg Johnson can be reached at greg@cowboystatedaily.com.
