“Baby Mary”'s mother has been sentenced to just under a year in jail, nearly 40 years after she left her newborn daughter inside a plastic bag in a North Jersey park, prosecutors said Thursday.
Mary Crumlich, 57, of South Carolina, was sentenced to 364 days in the Morris County Correctional Facility, followed by two years of probation, the Morris County Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.
The infant, dubbed “Baby Mary,” was found abandoned near a stream along Mount Pleasant Road in Mendham Township on Christmas Eve in 1984. She was wrapped in a towel inside of a plastic bag, her umbilical cord still attached, officials said.
The baby was alive when she was abandoned, police said at the time.
“This disposition has been years in the making, across generations of law enforcement who have demonstrated a relentless commitment to justice for Baby Mary,” Morris County Prosecutor Robert J. Carroll said.
Police used “old-fashioned police work,” pared with DNA-testing technology, to identify the infant’s father decades after her death, Carroll said. Investigators used that match to track down Crumlich. Law enforcement in New Jersey, Florida, South Carolina and the FBI were involved in the cold case in recent years.
The infant was baptized posthumously by the Rev. Michael Drury of St. Joseph Church in Mendham Township and nicknamed “Baby Mary.” Drury and local police have held a Christmas Eve memorial service for her annually.
“I’m proud we can ultimately bring justice to a baby girl, needlessly abandoned in the woods on a cold winter night,” Mendham Township Police Chief Ross Johnson said.
Crumlich, then Mary Snyder, was 17 and attending school in Morris County at the time of the baby’s death, officials said. The child’s father died before he was identified by investigators through DNA, and officials do not believe he was aware of the child’s birth or death. His identity has not been released.
Crumlich pleaded guilty in February to a juvenile complaint of manslaughter in connection to her daughter’s death. It would have been a second-degree offense had she been charged as an adult.
Crumlich was not identified when she was arrested in September 2023 because of her age at the time of the crime. However, her name was released Thursday by prosecutors under a statute that allows for the release of identities of people charged as juveniles if they are convicted of high-level crimes.
Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a subscription.
Katie Kausch may be reached at kkausch@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @KatieKausch.
