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Season 3 episode 8 of ID's Killer Cases is scheduled to revisit the 1993 Geauga's Child case in an upcoming episode, titled A Mother's Secret, this Saturday, November 19.
Nearly three decades ago, in 1993, two newspaper carriers found the body of a newborn baby in the woods of northeast Ohio's Geauga County. People in the community named the baby Guega's Child and had a proper funeral for the dead child but had no idea where he came from. Authorities received multiple leads and continuously tried to find the mother, but to no avail.
Twenty-five years later, the boy's mother was traced using modern DNA and family genealogy procedures. In 2019, Gail Eastwood-Ritchey, 49, was arrested for the murder of the baby. According to reports, she allegedly abandoned her newborn baby out in the cold along a country road. Gail was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
How was the decades-old case of Geauga's Child solved?
The body of the newborn baby, who would later be known as Geauga's Child, was found on March 25, 1993, by two newspaper delivery men who at first thought it was a doll.
The baby boy was found lifeless in the street with his umbilical cord still intact. He had been attacked by animals and was missing an arm and a leg. As investigators worked to identify the young boy and determine who abandoned him to suffer to death in the freezing cold weather, the neighborhood came together to support them and even gave the baby a proper burial.
Detectives were still attempting to solve the case in 2010, ten years after it was first reported, utilizing cutting-edge DNA testing. They even checked a DNA sample on a database used by law enforcement, but to no avail. By 2013, another ten years had passed since "Geauga's Child" was found, yet nothing was discovered in the case. But the community refused to give up hope.
After 25 years, investigators made a breakthrough in the case and finally revealed the identity of the mother of Geauga's baby, Gail Eastwood-Ritchey, 49, of Euclid. She was immediately arrested on June 6, 2019, and charged with murder in connection with the 1993 incident.
Gail Eastwood-Ritchey was charged with the murder of Geauga's Child
A Geauga County detective identified Ritchey as the child's mother after submitting the baby's DNA to a public genealogy database, building a family tree with 1,400 relatives, and then focusing on Gail, who confirmed the baby was hers. She later confessed to giving birth to a child, placing him in a garbage bag, and abandoning him in the woods.
During the accused's trial, Defense Attorney Steven Bradley reportedly asserted that she delivered the baby at her employer's house, where she worked as a nanny. Ritchey kept her pregnancy a secret from everyone and was unaware of her delivery until she sat down on the toilet. She then put the baby in a garbage bag and kept it in the car's trunk for days before dumping him in the woods.
In April 2022, Gail was found guilty of murdering Geauga's Child at the age of 51. Authorities claimed that she married the baby's father after the incident and had three children with him.
The 1993 Geauga's Child case will feature on Killer Cases this Saturday.
