Woman arrested in 1988 Wyoming newborn homicide cold case

A newborn found in a culvert near Happy Jack Road and McKinney Drive has finally produced a named suspect, but the arrest of 57-year-old Eva Martinez does not end the story. It begins the hard part: turning a 1988 infant death into a first-degree homicide case that can survive court scrutiny nearly four decades later.

Deputies responded on February 28, 1988, after a report of a deceased newborn in Laramie County, Wyoming. The baby boy had been wrapped in a blanket and was described as white or Caucasian, with brown hair, blue eyes, and a weight of 6.5 pounds. An autopsy found air in his lungs and stomach, showing he had been born alive. Investigators also found no evidence of injury, birth defects, or disease. In the days that followed, detectives canvassed hospitals, schools and Francis E. Warren Air Force Base, hoping to identify the child or the mother who had recently given birth, but the trail went cold.

That changed in 2021, when the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office partnered with Othram in The Woodlands, Texas, and submitted evidence for forensic re-testing. Othram used forensic-grade genome sequencing and identity-inference methods to generate new leads, and the case was later described as the first publicly announced Wyoming case to use that pipeline. A DNASolves fund tied to the case sought to raise $5,000 for testing and research. Investigators said those leads eventually pointed them to Martinez, with help from agencies including the Wyoming State Crime Lab, the Laramie County Coroner’s Office, the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation and the Weld County Sheriff’s Office.

The DNA work gave prosecutors a powerful lead, but it still has to hold up as evidence of guilt, not just family connection. Court-record reporting said the Wyoming State Crime Lab completed DNA comparisons on January 20, 2026, and that the maternal relationship was 1.97 million times more likely than an unrelated person. In an April interview, Martinez reportedly told investigators she was never pregnant around that time and denied abandoning the baby. Those statements, the preserved evidence and the 1988 autopsy now sit at the center of a case that will have to prove what happened to the infant and who was responsible.

Martinez was arrested on June 10, 2026, and charged with first-degree homicide, a charge that carries the possibility of life imprisonment. The culvert near Happy Jack Road has now yielded a suspect, but the old question from 1988 is still the one prosecutors must answer in court: how did a born-alive newborn end up there, and who is legally responsible for his death?