Search for infant body called off

MAYFIELD, Sanpete County — The body of an infant reportedly dumped at a landfill has been given up for lost.

The Sanpete County Sheriff's Office last week called off the search for the body, a search that had been ongoing for several weeks.

"We decided we've given it our best effort and covered the area, so we decided to bring it to a close," Sgt. Greg Peterson said on Monday.

"We searched the main area where the landfill officials said had the highest probability of trying to locate it. They went through it for weeks, and they just were never able to locate the body," he said.

The effort to find the body began on April 24, when police were notified that a teenage girl had given birth to a stillborn infant a couple of weeks earlier, which she had then deposited in a garbage Dumpster that was later hauled to the landfill.

Two deputies and two county road workers sifted through trash at the landfill each day for about a month. "Not the most pleasant of jobs," said Peterson, who himself took a rotation at the landfill. "We gave it the best effort we could."

Searchers used mail and newspaper scraps to determine whether they were getting close to trash from the time and location the body had been disposed. "We were hitting really close to the dates. And we were finding a lot of stuff from the north end, but I don't know if any of the officers came across anything from that particular town or not."

With the sheriff's investigation closed, the case is now in the hands of the Sanpete County Attorney Ross Blackham.

"I'll make a review of the case and facts and the evidence and make a decision about what to do about any charges given the fact that we don't have a body from the landfill," Blackham said on Monday.

Charges could include desecration of a body, even though the body itself is unavailable.

"We'll make a decision about possible charges within the next 10 days," Blackham said.

E-mail: john@sanpetemessenger.com