Authorities said the baby girl known publicly as Baby Jane “Grace” Doe was found in Pine Island Pond in March 2025 and her death is now being treated as a homicide.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Authorities have charged a 26-year-old woman with reckless second-degree murder after investigators said a newborn girl found floating in Pine Island Pond last year was killed by her mother, ending an 11-month case that had drawn public attention across Manchester.

The arrest shifted the case from a broad public mystery to a homicide prosecution centered on a single defendant. Attorney General John M. Formella and Manchester Police Chief Peter A. Marr said Hepay Juma of Manchester was arrested Feb. 26 in the death of Baby Jane “Grace” Doe, the name used publicly for the infant after her body was recovered on March 27, 2025. Officials said the exact circumstances of the baby’s death remain under active investigation, but prosecutors now say they have enough evidence to allege that Juma caused it under circumstances showing extreme indifference to human life.

The case began on a Thursday afternoon nearly a year earlier. Manchester police said officers were sent to Pine Island Park off Brown Avenue at about 4 p.m. on March 27, 2025, after a report of a body in the water. Responding officers found what appeared to be a newborn infant in Pine Island Pond. State and local investigators quickly labeled the death suspicious, and the attorney general’s office joined Manchester police in the inquiry. In the early weeks, authorities released few details beyond the location, the baby’s sex and the fact that the child was newborn. Senior Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Chong Yen later said investigators believed the infant’s body had been placed in the pond sometime between March 25 and March 27, 2025. Police appealed for tips, raised reward money and repeatedly asked the public for help as the case remained unsolved through the spring, summer and fall.

That long public silence appears to have been deliberate. Officials did not describe in public how they identified Juma as the child’s mother, nor did they disclose the baby’s cause of death in the arrest announcement. What they did say was legally important. The charge is reckless second-degree murder, which in New Hampshire means prosecutors are alleging a death caused recklessly under circumstances manifesting an extreme indifference to the value of human life. In public remarks reported by local television, Chong Yen said the arrest means investigators now consider the case a homicide and believe Juma caused the baby’s death. He also said the infant was newborn, while declining to discuss how many days or weeks old she may have been. Those gaps leave many of the underlying medical and forensic details unknown for now, even as the state has moved ahead with a murder case.

The investigation had carried an unusual public profile before the arrest. Manchester police and others had used the name Baby Grace in public appeals, and a funeral was held for the baby in May 2025 after no parent had been publicly identified. The case became one of the city’s most closely followed death investigations, in part because of the place where the child was found and in part because of how little officials were willing to say while the case was developing. Pine Island Park is a public area, and the image of a newborn floating in a pond stayed with residents long after the first police tape came down. Authorities stressed more than once that the location where the baby was found did not necessarily mean the mother lived nearby, a sign that investigators were considering a wider universe of possible leads before they made an arrest.

The legal process moved quickly after the arrest. Officials said Juma was taken into custody Feb. 26. The next day, according to local court reporting, she waived arraignment in Manchester’s district court, was held without bail and reserved the right to revisit bail later. A probable cause hearing was set for March 5. Public records reviewed for this story do not describe a plea to the murder charge, and the attorney general’s office said only that the investigation remains active. That leaves open major questions likely to shape the next phase of the prosecution, including how the state will describe the baby’s death in court, what evidence ties Juma to the child and whether additional charges could follow. For now, the state has taken the first major procedural step by moving the case from investigation to formal prosecution.

The human weight of the case has been visible from the start. Before the arrest, public attention focused on the baby more than any suspect. She was a child with no publicly known family story, found in a pond and then given a name by the community and investigators handling the case. After the arrest, that public focus turned sharply toward accountability. Law and Crime reported that authorities said the child “was discarded,” language that underscored how prosecutors view the conduct behind the charge. Yet even with an arrest in hand, officials have offered only a narrow public account of what happened in the hours before the baby entered the water. The result is a case with a powerful image, a named defendant and a still-limited factual record as it heads into court.

For now the case stands at the early prosecution stage. Juma has been charged, the baby’s death has been publicly described by the state as a homicide, and the next milestone is the probable cause hearing and any later court filings that explain the evidence in greater detail.

Author note: Last updated March 25, 2026.