Child's Body Stolen From Cemetery

This mystery began with a gruesome discovery Sunday, when two fisherman along the Passaic River in Clifton, New Jersey spotted a partially-submerged plastic bag.

"Since fishing was so slow, they waded out and pulled it in and were highly surprised to find a young child's body in the plastic bag," said Stamford Police Captain Richard Conklin.

The medical examiner in New Jersey determined that the young child was a 2-year old girl who had been buried at Woodland Cemetery in Stamford in 2007 after dying of a medical condition.

Stamford police were back at her grave site Monday.

They dug up the grave and found the coffin had been tampered with, but the grave site didn't look disturbed.

"The ground looked intact and looked natural, so this isn't recent that this has happened," Captain Conklin said.

The body ended up in a New Jersey river that's been called an open dumping ground. The Passaic River is nicknamed the "River of Death" after five bodies have been pulled from it this year alone.

Stamford police are trying to determine when the body was stolen from the cemetery and why. Those are the questions Stamford police are trying to answer for a family that is now grieving for their baby girl all over again.

"The parents had no reason to believe the child wasn't in the ground and they seemed to be quite shocked when we delivered that information," Conklin said.
 

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