Garfield Baby Doe

On May 15, 1988, a young girl walking near a creek bed near 18489 Madison Avenue in Castro Valley discovered the lifeless body of a baby boy in a paper bag. He was wrapped in a blue Garfield cartoon T-shirt. There was a red nylon cord around his neck. "Garfield Baby Doe", as the baby was nicknamed, appeared to have been born only two or three days before he was found. There was blood and tissue on the T shirt.

The attending pathologist determined that the baby had been born alive and strangled to death. The baby was given the name "Richard Jayson Terrance Rein" in honor of the pastors and vicars of the St. Leanders Church in San Leandro where the baby was subsequently buried.

The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office conducted an investigation and revisited the case several times over the next 32 years. In 2005, an STR profile was developed using DNA extracted from the blood on the T shirt. By comparison with DNA from the baby, the blood was determined to have come from the baby’s mother. The profile was uploaded to CODIS, but there were no hits.

In the summer of 2019, the sheriff’s office reopened the case and began working with the FBI and Barbara Rae-Venter to identify the baby's mother. A SNP profile was developed by DNA Solutions and uploaded to GEDmatch and FTDNA. Using investigative genetic genealogy techniques, Lesa Lopez was identified as a suspect.

Lesa lived not far from where the baby's body was discovered. DNA from surreptitiously obtained discarded trash from Lesa Lopez was compared against DNA from the blood on the T-shirt and was a match, confirming Lesa Lopez was the mother of Garfield Baby Doe. Lopez was arrested and confessed to the crime on July 23, 2020.