Cold Case Murder Arrest: Strangled Newborn Found In Bag

EAST BAY — For 32 years, the true identity of a newborn baby was unknown. Called Baby John Doe by investigators who searched for his mother, he was named Richard Jayson Thomas Rein by a priest at St. Leander Catholic Church in San Leandro where a funeral service was held for the boy. Then he was buried, but never forgotten by the investigators who were determined to find justice for the murdered infant.

The newborn's body was discovered on May 15, 1988, by two children who were walking in Castro Valley. At the top of an embankment near a creek, stashed in the trees and bushes, was a bag. Inside, wrapped in a t-shirt, was a baby boy with his umbilical cord still attached. He had been strangled with a ligature, according to an autopsy. The bag was found by children, described by the sheriff's office as "two young juveniles." News reports at the time say an 11-year-old girl found the baby.

Alameda County Sheriff's Department investigators contacted hospitals following the discovery of the body, but no one showed up for postpartum treatment. They concluded the baby had been born at home because of the umbilical cord.

After multiple appeals in the news media, including distributing photos of the t-shirt that swaddled the newborn, the case went cold. About 200 people attended the funeral for Richard Jayson Thomas Rein in July.

Seventeen years went by with no movement in the case. In 2005, investigators tried their luck with newly developed technology: DNA. They checked for DNA in the stored evidence from the crime scene. The test results produced a DNA profile for a female, presumably the baby's mother. The evidence was entered into the national Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS. There was no match, but the woman's profile remained in the system in hopes that she would eventually be found.

Another decade plus passed. In 2018, investigators had a new tool at their disposal. The Golden State Killer was caught by taking DNA evidence from crime scenes and comparing it to DNA submitted by people seeking to learn more about their genealogy. Suddenly, police departments and sheriff's offices across the nation were employing the technology to re-examine cold cases.

Including the Alameda County Sheriff's Office.

In the summer of 2019, investigators collaborated with the FBI and a private DNA laboratory on the female profile from the Baby John Doe case. It took almost a year, but in June 2020, investigators pieced together information from a family matching DNA database, physical surveillance, and surreptitiously obtained DNA from discarded trash. It all led to an arrest warrant for their suspect: 52-year-old Lesa Lopez of Salida, near Modesto.

Lopez was contacted at her home on July 23. According to the sheriff's office, she told investigators that she had given birth to Baby John Doe. She was 20-years-old at the time, and hid her pregnancy from family and friends.

Lopez has been arrested. She is being held in jail on murder charges filed by the district attorney's office.