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Chapter 1: What is the story behind the abandoned baby found in Suffolk?
Tortoise Investigates.
You wouldn't just drop it off in the middle of the countryside. And hope for the best.
There's obviously something fishy about the story. So the story didn't ring true, but we couldn't quite work out why for ages.
Yeah, it didn't really wash.
I'm sitting round a table with my sisters. We're drinking tea and going over a memory from when we were kids. It's something we've been through so many times over the years.
We were like, why did you stop? Because she was driving. We said, what made you stop to look what it was? Because she said it was in a plastic bag.
You see, this is a story my family can never quite put to rest. Maybe every family has one of these. It's that thing that always comes up when you're together. Someone mentions a name, a place or a particular memory and there you all go again. The story gets told and retold, details are debated, bits get embellished, and over time, it becomes family folklore.
We talk about it over the years, and we're like, it's so weird, and we used to guess where it was on that road. But the thing is, this isn't our story. It belongs to someone else.
The six-pound, three-and-a-half-ounce baby is doing well in hospital after being dumped in an orange and white plastic bag around mid-morning yesterday.
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Chapter 2: How do family memories shape the narrative of abandonment?
She what? How do you find a baby? We'd talk about it occasionally.
That evening, we watch the six o'clock Anglian news. Our big boxy telly lived on a tall chest of drawers and I had to crane my neck a bit to see it.
When you saw the baby, I mean, what did it look like?
Very happy. It was gurgling, smiling.
No one knows how the baby came to be there, but we feel like detectives because we're close to this story. We actually know the woman who found the baby. She's our friend's nanny. And now, there she is, being interviewed on TV.
Its feet and hands were bluish, but it was perfectly happy. Very sweet.
So what did you do after you got into the car?
Well, I dropped my jumper around it by this point because I knew that you had to keep babies, you know, keep them warm. Drove all the way down the road again just to turn around and sort of sped back and thought the gardener's going to be at home. He'll know what to do because I didn't know where to go next.
The newsreader tells us that the midwives at the hospital give the baby a name, Heather. For years, we focus on that day, that grassy verge, the baby. Over time, the story of the Suffolk foundling is rubbed so smooth by years of retelling, I can no longer get a firm grip on it.
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Chapter 3: What led to the investigation of the abandoned baby case?
Lies always come out, don't they? Skeletons are always going to come out eventually. I'm Lucy Greenwell, and from Tortoise Investigates and The Observer, this is Foundling. Episode 1, On The Verge.
On The Verge
Did you sort of start imagining who your mum and dad might be? Did you build up little fantasies about the kind of people they might have been at any stage?
You always hope that it was this lovely love story, that they just couldn't be together. You just wish any family and anyone from any adoptive background, you always hope and wish that it was some beautiful love story, that it was just unfortunate.
Whenever I tell this story to friends and I explain that I've tracked down the abandoned baby, they're amazed.
I've got this huge mass of curly hair and that's always been in the back of my mind. I instantly thought I'd have someone at the end of, you know, if I ever did find them, that would have a huge mass of curly hair.
Over the years, we referred to the baby as Heather, the name she was given by midwives. But when I start asking around in the local area, it turns out a few people know her new name and it doesn't take too much detective work to track her down. So, meet that abandoned baby girl, Jess. She's now 38 years old, has big eyes, a huge smile and that distinctive curly hair.
So these are the newspaper cuttings that... I wasn't the prettiest of babies, but there's a little crocheted dress with crocheted booties. Oh, there you are. When I first got into hospital.
Looking quite alert. Yes. It's just a photo and underneath it says, Baby Heather, will she ever know her mother's identity?
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Chapter 4: What challenges did the police face in solving the case?
And then I just kind of said, oh, I wonder, I did wonder a little bit about my adoption, as Laura knows about hers now.
Laura is Jess's older and also adopted sister. A few weeks earlier, Laura had found out about her own birth parents.
And being dad, just naturally said in a Suffolk accent, oh, bloody hell, he said, I always hoped that your mum would be here when you asked that question because it's not so straightforward as your sister.
Then and there, in the car, he tells her that she was found abandoned and that no one knows who her birth parents are.
And then we kind of sat there in the car, in the car park of B&Q, and I just sat sobbing. I didn't think, well, you wouldn't, but it didn't ever cross my mind it would be something like that. And I instantly felt very little again. I felt really young because it felt like it was too much information.
Most of us have an origin story, how we arrived into the world, who was there, what was said. Jess has assumed that she has one too, just like her sister, Laura. But from this moment on, she's aware of a void, a complete blank where her beginning should be. And that not knowing, it's tough.
I instantly felt, well, you do, you just instantly feel rejected. Like, you feel that you can't, that you're not really wanted. Although I've had this incredible upbringing where I was so wanted, so loved. Why didn't that person want me? And I felt like I didn't even want to know anymore because it kind of ruined... Yeah, that that perfect childhood suddenly had something else laced in it.
Yeah. Yeah. Do you want to pause for a bit? For me, it kind of, it did, it broke my little world of this perfect little family that I'd been brought up in. Jess tells me her parents reassure her that nothing's changed, that she's still the same person.
They were constantly trying to tell me, you know, you're a good person, you know, and as much as anyone tells you that, you don't feel like you are. Like, you feel like your roots are bad. You're, like, rotten. Um... You've come from someone that can discard a baby and have no thoughts or feelings about that.
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Chapter 5: How did Jess's upbringing influence her search for identity?
There's no official record for foundlings to uncover. No paper trail. When she's 22, Jess decides she wants to see the place where she was found. So she sets off with a friend, armed with those newspaper cuttings.
I said, but I'm not 100% sure where the road is. So we might have to just knock on a few doors and hope for the best.
She tells me she remembers feeling intrigue, but also dread, because until now, it's all felt very abstract. But by going to the spot where she was left, she's hoping she might glimpse some clue, something that might explain why she was abandoned.
So we kind of just drove around looking for little lanes.
In the cuttings, it's variously described as the side of a quiet road, a lonely roadside verge, or the side of a lane near Ipswich. One article gives a more detailed description of how the lane runs between two small villages and how there's a field on one side and a wood on the other.
but it's hard to be certain where the place is there are just so many back lanes near by so many fields so many clumps of woodland and with no other distinguishing features to go on they don't manage it they can't quite figure it out But by now, they've got the bit between their teeth. They spot a bungalow nearby, set back behind a thick privet hedge, and they knock on the door.
This lovely little lady, who'd lived in the village all her life, instantly welcomed us in with a cup of tea and a piece of cake.
There are a lot of what-ifs in this story, and this is one of them. What if Jess hadn't knocked on this particular door, where a woman called Jean lived? Because with Jean, Jess had struck gold.
And she couldn't be more excited because she just remembers every last detail. She said it was such a hoo-ha. You know, there was so many police around in the village and then obviously the rumours start flying around that there was a baby left down this road. And we all couldn't believe it. We just couldn't believe it.
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Chapter 6: What emotions did Jess experience upon learning her origin story?
Well, for Jess, it's the exact opposite. The mirror image, in fact. She almost memorialises this verge because it's the place where she believes her life begins. She once sent me a photo of it with a heart emoji. The fact that it's beautiful, and it really is, it matters to her. But being at the verge that day has another effect. It alters how she feels about the fact that she was abandoned.
It makes her feel something more like anger.
Of all the places you could have left me, you've left me somewhere that nobody goes, like, unless you were local to that village, like, nobody goes down that lane. Why would you think anyone would have picked me up from there?
She's thinking perhaps whoever left her there didn't necessarily want her to be found.
It wasn't even a road, it's a track. So that in itself is difficult to stomach because it's so remote.
And for the first time in all these years, she says it strikes her that if she hadn't been picked up that morning, she might not have survived. As Jess leaves the Verge and says goodbye to Jean, Jean repeats her theory that only someone local could have known about that lane. And then she drops one more vital clue.
She said, I've got my suspicions. And she said, well, there was a couple of nannies in the village. She said, and they weren't from around here. She said, I'm sure one of them has something to do with it.
For the police, this is an old case, long forgotten and largely mothballed after Jess was adopted back in 1988. But I reckon there must still be a case file somewhere. I begin making some inquiries of my own, and I send off a request to Suffolk Constabulary, asking to see any paperwork they have about the investigation. And while I wait, I try to track down the police officers who were involved.
Their names aren't on social media, so I trawl the electoral register looking for addresses. It seems they all still live in Suffolk, and I end up driving round the county, parking in unfamiliar streets and posting letters through front doors. I assume it's going to be straightforward, that they'll be amused, flattered even, to dust off an old and puzzling case. But I'm wrong about that.
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Chapter 7: What clues did Jess uncover about her birth parents?
You know. I know you don't.
Neither of us wants that. Yet several former police officers seem genuinely concerned that my reporting of this story may have a real life effect, a fresh criminal investigation. All of a sudden, the stakes feel much higher. I check in with Jess. She's still certain that she wants to tell her story and to try and find answers to the questions she's been asking for years.
I write again to all the retired police officers, assuring them that neither Jess nor I are looking to reopen the case, that we're not seeking new evidence. But they don't change their minds. Eventually, I find a fourth former police officer. Initially, he says no, but after thinking it over, he agrees to talk because, he tells me, Jessica deserves some answers.
In his retirement, Oldwyn Jones sits on the committee of a village hall, and so we meet there. He's a former detective chief inspector at Ipswich Police Station. He's a tall, polite man with glasses and salt-and-pepper hair.
It happens very rarely in Suffolk. In my experience, unfortunately, the baby's more likely to have been found dead than alive. It was a rarity to find the baby alive.
Babies are abandoned intermittently, but more often than not, it's their lifeless bodies that are later found. Of the four babies abandoned in Suffolk in 1987, Jess was the only one found alive. What would you have been looking for when you went to The Verge?
Well, obvious things, to get the feel of the place where it's been left and trying to weigh it up, why would you leave a baby there?
Aldwyn Jones visits the place where Jess was discovered just a few hours after she'd been taken to hospital.
It's always good practice to go and visit the scene of any major crime. But there could be things forensically that may have been available, such as tyre tracks or footprints.
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Chapter 8: How does Jess's journey reflect on the broader issues of abandonment?
There's something else that arrives with the documents, some new press cuttings. These ones were written by a young reporter just starting out on the local paper.
I'm Terry Hunt. I was the editor of the East Anglian Daily Times newspaper between 1996 and 2017. When the baby was found in 1987, I was working in the newsroom at the newspaper.
Terry Hunt still remembers the call coming in.
I looked round the newsroom and the newsroom was empty. Even in 1987, we didn't run on lots of staff. I didn't have any option, really. We had to go out. So I grabbed a photographer and we headed out. I think there was one policeman standing there.
How would you describe what it looked like, that place?
Just very, very lonely. Very lonely, even for Suffolk, very lonely. Which made me think... It was strange. There was a bit of muddled thinking on behalf of whoever left it there. That was my initial thought. I don't know what the thinking is. Why didn't the person who left it leave it somewhere where they knew it was going to be found?
Everyone, the journalists, the police, even us young kids, though we can't quite put our finger on why, we all think there's something strange about this story.
Most babies are abandoned often in places where they can be found readily. Public toilets, public libraries, hospitals, near police stations, that's always been the pattern of abandoned babies.
That's interesting. So there was something unusual from the get-go?
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