Who Is 'Baby Doe'? Toddler Girl Found Dead In Boston Identified By Police As Bella, Investigation Continues

“Baby Doe,” the toddler girl found dead in a bag this summer on the shore of Deer Island, Massachusetts, was identified by police Friday as Bella, the daughter of Rachelle Bond of the Mattapan neighborhood of Boston, the Daily Beast reported. Police were questioning Bond and her boyfriend, Michael McCarthy, who the Daily Beast said have been named persons of interest in the case.

Bella's body was found June 25 when a woman walking her dog spotted it in a trash bag. The woman who found the 30-pound body burst into tears before contacting police, who had been searching for answers ever since.

Authorities weren’t immediately able to identify who the girl was, eventually making a computer-generated image of the girl’s face. Two weeks after the image was released, and after 40 million views, police had received more than 200 leads. None of them led to determining the girl's identity.

Police searched Deer Island for days trying to find clues that might lead to the girl’s identity, but nothing came up. All they had to go on was what she was wearing — polka-dot leggings and a zebra-striped blanket and the fact that she had brown hair and brown eyes.

No fingerprints were available, and her skin was damaged by the tide, the Boston Globe reported. The only lead police had for a while was the fact that she lived in an urban area, which they concluded after pollen samples were collected that matched plants often seen around Boston.

The breakthrough police needed came when someone close to the child’s family contacted police, according to the Daily Beast. The person told police that after noticing Bella was missing, he or she asked the toddler's parents where she was. When the person asked, the parents said the Department of Children and Families had taken Bella away.

Reports have come out that Bella did live in the Mattapan neighborhood of Boston but that nobody had seen her in months. On a Facebook page belonging to a Rachelle Bond, it shows the mother doting on her daughter Bella, shown in photos opening Christmas presents.

Nobody has been charged in the case yet. Police have said the investigation is ongoing. Investigators will need to do forensic testing to make the final determination as to Baby Doe's identity, the Boston Globe reported.