WTVM Editorial 01/25/23: Persistence solved the case
OPELIKA, Ala. (WTVM) - It was a case we followed for 11 years, the case of a missing girl found dead, whose identity was unknown.
Police and forensics experts never gave up on the 6-year-old girl they called Baby Jane Doe, even when the clues were almost non-existent.
The Opelika Police Department deserves accolades for their incredible persistence over more than a decade to finally give Jane Doe a name and to bring her accused killers to justice.
Skull and bones were all that were left of the girl we now know was Amore Wiggin when they were found in 2012.
She was in the sole custody of her father, living in an Opelika mobile home, at the time her partial remains were found.
For years, investigators kept the case alive, running down thousands of tips and never giving up in their fight to identify the anonymous young girl.
Opelika police worked with multiple forensic experts and DNA companies, who each contributed to the painstaking work of identifying Amore.
The kind of research that turned the tide was a type of genealogy used to identify biological parents of adopted babies.
The little girl who died from abuse suffered numerous broken bones, many of which had healed before being broken again.
It would have been understandable if Baby Jane Doe had never been identified because the odds were very low that she would be identified, but they weren’t zero.
Solving this disturbing case of murder by child abuse was possible because of the pledge by investigators to never give up.
The police said they considered Baby Jane Doe part of their family.
Police, the scientific community, and even the media kept the case alive, never forgetting Amore and always updating viewers on any new break in the case.
Baby Jane Doe’s journey from an unknown victim to a well-known true crime case, shows us the great dedication of law enforcement.
That’s especially true when it comes to the most vulnerable among us: Children like Amore Wiggins.
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