Between 2017 and 2024, three newborns, who turned out to be brothers, were abandoned in London parks. After years of investigation, the mystery remains unsolved and the police seem close to giving up.
The newborns were found by pedestrians in September 2017, January 2019 and January 2024, in parks near East Ham, on the eastern outskirts of London, neighborhoods with an ethnically diverse population, in which elegant Victorian houses and social housing are mixed.
Little Elsa, as the hospital staff who took her in called her, was found on January 18, 2024, less than an hour after her birth, by a man who was walking his dog.
Roman was found on January 31, 2019, in another park located less than two kilometers away.
Wrapped in a blanket, before a snowfall, her cries caught the attention of passersby.
Harry, the first baby, was discovered on September 17, 2017, one kilometer from where Roman was found.
The investigation began in 2017 and intensified after the discovery of the third baby.
But the London police consider that they have exhausted “all leads.”
– A fourth baby? –
Law enforcement knocked on the doors of 400 homes, reviewed hundreds of hours of video surveillance footage and offered a reward of 20,000 pounds (almost $27,000), to no avail.
The main discovery came in June 2025, when DNA testing confirmed that the three babies were brothers.
The investigator in charge of the case, Jamie Humm, stated that he fears that a fourth baby will soon be discovered.
The case raises concern about the fate of the mother.
“As a mother, I wonder how someone can abandon their child,” East Ham resident Charlotte Mallett told AFP, remembering how cold it was the day local television reported Roman’s discovery. Abandonment can be the result of a “forced situation” and “with no other possible way out,” he adds.
For Kevin Browne, a psychology expert who has worked on child abandonment cases, the mother could be a migrant who, in a climate of hostility and increasing expulsions, prefers to avoid any contact with the authorities.
The fact that she gave birth in secret, risking her life and that of her babies, could indicate that she was “terrified,” Brown added to AFP.
“A wonderful girl”
In this case, as “strange” as it is “complex,” “by imagining the circumstances that could have placed the mother in such a situation, one realizes that perhaps she is also in danger,” emphasizes Lorraine Sherr, psychologist and mental health expert at University College London.
Baby abandonment has become so rare that the British government no longer collects statistics. The latest data records eight abandoned newborns between 2008 and 2018 in England and Wales, according to the judge in charge of little Elsa’s case.
In some countries, such as France, a woman can give birth anonymously and immediately give her baby up for adoption.
That possibility does not exist in the United Kingdom, which also does not have “baby boxes”, unlike some states in the United States, which facilitate anonymous abandonment.
Harry and Roman, now eight and six years old, have been adopted.
For her part, Elsa, who is almost two years old, is in a foster family that recently began an adoption procedure.
She is “a wonderful little girl, bursting with laughter and enthusiasm,” according to family matters judge Carol Atkinson, who is following the proceedings.
Authorities hope the three children will maintain ties with each other as they grow older.
But they will probably never know about their parents. “They will retain this emotional suffering throughout their lives,” emphasizes expert Kevin Browne.
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