POLICE have made a major breakthrough in the desperate hunt for the mother of three abandoned babies.
The search has been narrowed down to around 400 homes as police close in on their target and ask locals for DNA samples.
PAThe Boots bag in which baby Elsa was found abandoned on a freezing cold night[/caption]
PABaby Roman, the second of the siblings, was found in 2019[/caption]
Named Harry, Roman and Elsa, the three babies were discovered just a few miles apart from each other in 2017, 2019 and 2024.
After the first discovery, cops immediately launched a probe to find the mother of the children and have since made a breakthrough.
Officers have been knocking on several doors around East Ham and Plaistow in Newham, in their hunt for the mother.
They believe the person who abandoned the three babies lives in one of the 400 homes they’re visiting in the area.
The kids were all dumped in areas with no CCTV coverage making it hard for police to track whoever abandoned them.
Officers are asking people in their search area for voluntary DNA samples and urging anyone with information to come forward.
The years long search has seen a £20,000 reward offered for information and a full DNA profile of the mother established.
Despite these efforts the mother of the three babies remains unidentified and police have said they cant narrow down the possibility of a fourth baby being found.
Speaking to the PA news agency, Detective Inspector Jamie Humm, the case’s senior investigating officer, said the investigation had been “comprehensive and thorough.”
He added that police must conclude that whoever abandoned the children “did not want to be found.”
Simon JonesPlaistow Park where Harry, the first of the three babies, was discovered[/caption]
PAHarry was found wrapped in a white blanket in 2017[/caption]
He continued: “They’ve done so in places where there are no CCTV cameras, and as heavily surveilled as London is, the reality is there’s going to be pockets and areas that are not covered with footage.
“We can’t be blind to the fact that there may be a fourth (baby), and certainly the passage of time and the cycles of nine months it would take to potentially get pregnant and birth a child, mean that we cannot discount that.
“That means, again, I’m appealing to the public, because if there is another abandoned child, that child may not be as fortunate as Elsa and her siblings.
“So we really want the public to understand what we understand about the risk here, and to come forward and speak to us, because it’s that one bit of information that we feel that may open this whole case.”
Baby Elsa was discovered wrapped in a towel inside a Boots shopping bag in January last year, left abandoned on the junction of Greenway and High Street South in East Ham.
Elsa was sadly discovered in sub zero temperatures with nothing but a towel to keep her warm.
At just an hour old and with her umbilical cord still attached Elsa was saved by a dog walker who wrapped her up warmly.
Roman was found a short distance away in a play area off Roman Road in 2019.
Again, Roman was found in freezing cold temperatures with little to keep her warm.
Harry was the first baby to be found, discovered wrapped in a white blanket on Balaam Street, Plaistow in 2017.
Simon JonesLocal man Mahmad Eshan near where baby Roman was discovered[/caption]
PA:Press AssociationPolice discovered the three babies just miles away from one another[/caption]
Senior investigating officer Jamie Humm has said he believes the mother is “in danger.”
He said: “In any police investigation you make your tactical decisions around hypotheses, and the hypothesis that, as senior investigating officer, I believe is most likely, is that the mother of these children is vulnerable, is in danger, and is in a position where they feel that they are unable to come forward for whatever reason.
“We are treating mum as a victim in this case, and we are on standby to support her with everything she needs.”
Investigators from the National Crime Agency (NCA) have been supporting the police investigation.
Residents in the 400 houses currently being looked at are under no obligation to provide DNA samples.
Noel McHugh, national senior investigating officer adviser for the South East at the NCA, said that it was a miracle the babies survived the conditions they were abandoned in.
He added that the case was “deeply troubling” but that it was “solvable and detectable”
He said that the answer “is in the community.”
Detective Superintendent Lewis Basford, strategic investigative adviser for the operation, said that the latest inquiries would provide “a lot of information to follow” which could take “weeks and months to process.”
But he added that the investigation “will never stop.”
He said: “Police won’t give up, and we will follow all the lines of inquiry we can to try and find them and answer the questions as to why.”
Family court proceedings related to Elsa are ongoing while her siblings, Harry and Roman -not their real names – have already been adopted.
East London Family Court has previously ruled that Elsa’s birth cannot be registered.
No final decision has been made about her care because of the ongoing investigation.
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