HAUNTING

Minnesota Woman Abandoned Two Newborns Found Dead Near Mississippi River Four Years Apart: Cops

A baby boy was found dead on the shores of the river’s Lake Pepin in 2003, officials said, four years after a little girl was discovered floating in a boat harbor.

A woman linked by DNA to two babies found separately in Mississippi River waters four years apart has been arrested in connection to their deaths, Minnesota authorities said Monday. Jennifer Matter, 50, was charged with second-degree murder in the 2003 death of a boy found by four teenage girls on the shores of Lake Pepin, a large body of water on the river. The newborn still had an umbilical cord attached, and it was wrapped around his body, according to a criminal complaint. Matter told investigators she remembered leaving the newborn on a beach, hoping that someone nearby would find him, the complaint said. She also admitted to abandoning a second child, a newborn girl, in the Mississippi River in 1999. Despite DNA evidence confirming that Matter was indeed the mother of a dead infant girl found wrapped in a towel and floating in a boat harbor along the river that year, no charges had been filed in that case as of Monday night. “Charges may be amended or added at a later time as more evidence comes to light,” Goodhue County Attorney Stephen O’Keefe said.