Mystery solved: Arrest made in death of newborn whose body was found off Boynton Beach inlet

The baby girl died the same day she was born. She was dead when her mother took her to the beach and let her wash away in the sea, authorities say.

Except she didn’t wash away. A day later, an off-duty firefighter found her body floating off Boynton Beach Inlet. Detectives had no idea who she was or how she had gotten there, so they nicknamed her “Baby June.”

Four years later, the baby remains nameless, but her mother has been charged with first-degree murder, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office said Thursday.

[ RELATED: Newborn found floating near Boynton Inlet likely drifted from Broward, detectives say ]

Sheriff’s detectives arrested Arya Singh, 29, as she made her way home from her job as a campus security guard about 5:30 a.m. Thursday. She eventually acknowledged disposing of the baby, but said she did not know at the time whether the baby was alive or dead, said Detective Brittany Christoffel, who led the investigation. Singh said she never named the baby.

The arrest comes over four years after the baby was found that day in June. For detectives, it marks the first case closed by the Sheriff’s Office using a new, genealogy-based investigative technique, and the conclusion of a mystery that at one point seemed impossible to solve.

“We finally can lay this baby to rest,” Christoffel said at a news conference announcing the arrest. “There’s been a lot of question marks surrounding her death. And now we have an idea of what happened to her. And so we can finally lay her down.”

For Singh, Thursday was only the beginning. She is being held without bond in Palm Beach County jail, and will face trial in Palm Beach County court. If convicted, she would a maximum of either life in prison without the possibility of parole, or the death penalty.

In the months after Baby June was found, Palm Beach County detectives searched for the infant’s identity, combing through the birth records of approximately 700 babies in Broward and Palm Beach counties. They did not find her.

[ RELATED: Death of newborn found floating near Boynton Inlet ruled a homicide ]

Tips flooded in, but none were “fruitful or relevant,” said Steven Strivelli, a captain at the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office and member of the Special Victims Unit.

At the time, detectives believed the baby was born in a hospital. What else could explain the heel prick, the fact that her umbilical cord was cut?

They would later realize that they were wrong.

The case eventually went cold, and the Cold Case Unit took over. This time, instead of tips, the Crime Lab took DNA from the baby to search for potential relatives. They used a genealogy website to piece together the baby’s family tree, the same methodology used to find the Golden State Killer. It was the first time that the Sheriff’s Office had used that technology. Baby June became the pilot case.

The practice, known as forensic genetic genealogy, has advanced rapidly in recent years.

“When I was a working detective, you were lucky if you got fingerprints,” said Sheriff Ric Bradshaw. “And then you were lucky if somebody could match them. So it’s a whole new world, as far as technology is concerned.”

Since the 2018 arrest of the Golden State Killer, the method has likely helped solve more than 500 cases, and that’s a conservative estimate, said Dr. Claire Glynn, a professor at the University of New Haven and director of its Graduate Certificate in Forensic Genetic Genealogy.

The technology itself isn’t new — it’s the same method used to find distant relatives on some genealogy websites — but it is when applied to law enforcement investigations.

“It’s really come on in leaps and bounds in the last four, four and a half years,” Glynn said. She added, “All you have to do is turn on the TV and you hear of another case.”

Investigators input DNA from the unidentified person into the genealogy website to find a match, then search along the family tree for candidates who fit the profile they are looking for.

In the case of Baby June, a match came back in the form of a first cousin once removed. Through the cousin, the lab discovered that June’s great-grandparents matched someone’s grandparents. The search led to June’s father.

“Essentially, you reverse-engineer the families,” said Julie Sikorsky, who led the Crime Lab investigation.

Detectives spoke with the father, who told them that he hadn’t known he had a child, but that he had a girlfriend around the time June was born. She had told him she was pregnant and that she had “taken care of it,” so he thought she meant that she had an abortion, Christoffel said.

He submitted a DNA test to prove he was the father. Then, detectives began to build a case against Singh without her knowledge.

They obtained a search warrant for her phone records and GPS location in the days leading up to June 1, 2018, and found that she had visited Boynton Beach Inlet on May 30.

Her Google search history showed that she had searched for “Boynton Beach Inlet,” and had seen the first articles about her baby being found there, officials said. Detectives obtained a “covert DNA” sample from a piece of garbage that Singh had discarded. It matched Baby June’s.

“We came to the conclusion that she’s the mother and that she was solely responsible,” Christoffel said.

Singh told detectives that she had given birth alone, in a hotel bathroom. When detectives had confronted her Thursday morning, she did not confess at first. But after a few minutes, she did, Christoffel said.

Singh was a student at Florida Atlantic University at the time the baby was born, studying psychology. Singh told detectives the baby landed in water, and she thought it had passed out. The Medical Examiner confirmed that the baby had died by asphyxiation before she was found floating in the inlet.

Singh took the baby to the inlet because she didn’t know what to do with her, Christoffel said. When detectives confronted her Thursday, she was “very nervous,” worried about herself and her future.

In order to obtain a first-degree murder charge, prosecutors with the Palm Beach County state attorney’s office will have to prove that Singh killed the baby, and that it was premeditated.

“The death of baby June was a terrible tragedy for our community four years ago,” said Dave Aronberg, the Palm Beach County state attorney, at the news conference. “Today is a good day for justice.”