Detective Superintendent Lewis Basford, who acts as a strategic investigative adviser for the operation, said that “traditional” policing methods had not yet produced a result
Investigators are pulling out all the stops to locate the mother of three babies abandoned in London over a span of seven years. The police have narrowed their search to just 400 households in East London, specifically around East Ham and Plaistow, where two of the three infants were found, and are requesting voluntary DNA samples from locals to aid in finding the mother.
The case dates back nearly eight years when the first child, known as Harry, was discovered in 2017. His sisters, Roman and Elsa, were subsequently found nearby in 2019 and 2024.
The Metropolitan Police’s efforts are bolstered by a specialist team from the National Crime Agency (NCA), which includes geographical profilers and behavioural investigative advisers.
Noel McHugh, the NCA’s national senior investigating officer adviser for the south east, spoke to PA news agency about the case, describing it as “very solvable” with answers “in the community”. However, he acknowledged the “always a possibility” of a fourth child being abandoned while the mother remains elusive, reports Bristol Live.
He said: “It is deeply troubling when any child is abandoned, and it is a miracle that they survived, bearing in mind they were deposited in cold weather.”
“There is always a possibility that there could be another child. However, we are doing everything that we possibly can to work through the information, the intelligence that is before us, to understand it, and that is why they (the police) are working on this really focused area.”
He added: “There could be somebody out there who holds a small piece of information that they would assume that someone else has phoned in or many people would have made that phone call, and we would just ask them to have the confidence and trust to make that phone call, because your one call could make a huge difference to this investigation.
“The police and NCA would rather have 20 phone calls on the same matter than no phone call, and that one person can make a huge difference.”
When questioned about why the mother of the children had not yet been found, nearly eight years after Harry was discovered, Mr McHugh responded: “I can understand how that may appear to people. London has nine and a half million people, there is CCTV, and in certain areas it is saturated.
“But you are as good as the camera being in the right place, at the right time, and the camera recording. In that particular area, the officers have exploited every opportunity that is available to them.”
In a heartbreaking series of events, three children were abandoned in areas of East London not monitored by CCTV, prompting police to scour hundreds of hours of footage to find their mother. Elsa was discovered in a reusable shopping bag, wrapped in a towel on January 18 last year, at the corner of Greenway and High Street South in East Ham, during bone-chilling weather.
Her brother Roman was found under similar chilling conditions in a play area off Roman Road, Newham, in late January 2019, as snowfall and icy temperatures took hold of the city. Their sibling, Harry, was located swaddled in a white blanket in Balaam Street, Plaistow, back in September 2017.
National Crime Agency experts have helped police deduce that the individual who left the children, potentially a parent, likely travelled from one of the 400 homes currently being canvassed by officers.
Detective Superintendent Lewis Basford, serving as a strategic investigative adviser for the case, expressed that despite exhaustive “traditional” policing efforts, including media appeals and a £20,000 reward, they’ve yet to see results, leading to concerns that the mother may not be able to come forward of her own “free will”.
He also acknowledged that while DNA requests are “quite intrusive”, the response from the community has been overwhelmingly positive. Reflecting on the lack of progress despite public appeals, he said: “We’ve done the appeals, we’ve not managed to progress with that. She hasn’t come forward.
“We have to also consider, has she got the free will to come forward herself? And that’s why actually rejogging the memory of the global community, doing the next steps as we are now, which can be seen as quite intrusive, are because we have to consider the second option, that she hasn’t got that free will.”
DS Basford emphasised that the police “won’t give up” in their efforts to locate the mother, with information gathered from door-to-door inquiries set to be analysed over the forthcoming months. He said: “I think the degree and the levels of investigation that we’re going to on this, for me, is always about preventing future harm to future children.
“If it’s not in this case where we find mum, and we don’t find her in the next weeks or months ahead, I hope it also demonstrates to other mothers who may consider this, or fathers, around abandonment, that actually there is help out there.
“Police won’t give up, and we will follow all the lines of inquiry we can to try and find them, and answer the questions as to why.”
DI Jamie Humm, the lead investigator in the case, described the abandonments of three siblings as “almost entirely unprecedented”, but the fact that all were left in areas not covered by CCTV suggested that the mother “did not want to be found” and was “a victim”.
He said: “We feel that the answers are in this local area, around E6, East Ham and Plaistow, and it’s that member of the public that comes forward that can hopefully give us the answers to make sure that mum is safe and can give the three abandoned children the answers around what happened to them that led to them being abandoned.”
He went on to say: “While there has been incidences of babies being abandoned by mothers who are relaxed about being found, if that’s what it came to, in this case, the fact that it was done in a way that was designed not to be found is highly, highly unusual, and for three siblings is almost entirely unprecedented.”
He added: “The hypothesis that, as senior investigating officer, I believe is most likely is that the mother of these children is vulnerable, is in danger, and is in a position where they feel that they are unable to come forward for whatever reason.
“We are treating mum as a victim in this case, and we are on standby to support her with everything she needs.
“So the mum or people close to the mum could come to us in confidence because we recognise that there was likely to be a high level of distress and, of course, physical need from the birth of those three children.”