Baby sent in post exhumed as family hopes to solve grisly cold case mystery with DNA

The ‘baby in the post’ has been exhumed almost six decades after his body was discovered at a Darwin post office, in a major development for one of Australia’s most gruesome cold cases.

After almost six decades, one of Australia’s most grisly mysteries is a step closer to being solved.

The remains of the baby sent in the mail have been exhumed, with hopes a DNA match could finally uncover his identity.

Sent to “J Anderson” with a fake return address, the baby was posted from Melbourne on May 3, 1965, sitting at a Darwin post office for eight days until staff noticed a putrid smell.

Inside the seeping parcel, wrapped in newspaper, they discovered the decomposing naked body of a baby with his umbilical cord still attached and a stocking wrapped tightly around his neck.

In June, a former cop who worked on the case revealed on The Missing podcast that he believed the package was meant for former champion AFL player Jimmy Anderson.

Anderson was a Territory sporting icon – named in the AFLNT Team of the Century, playing for the Darwin Buffaloes and also for WAFL club West Perth.

After hearing the podcast, Anderson’s 53-year-old daughter Amelia came forward and said she thought it was her father, offering to supply DNA samples in the hopes of proving the baby was her older brother.

The body of the baby sent in the mail was exhumed from Darwin General Cemetery on Wednesday, with hopes a DNA match could solve a decades old cold case. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

Dozens of cold case detectives, police, council workers and excavators descended on Darwin General Cemetery in Jingili to dig up the baby’s unmarked grave on Wednesday morning.

A previous request to exhume the body was rejected by NT deputy coroner Kelvin Currie earlier this year on the grounds there were not sufficient reasons for it to be “necessary for an investigation”.

But with a possible family member now identified, the coroner ordered the body be dug up for testing.

Detective senior constable with the cold case task force Glen Chatto said the body would be kept at the morgue until a DNA match was made, but could not say if or when that was expected to occur.

“This has been on the radar since 1965, so it’s been an ongoing investigation since then,” he said.

The coroner ordered the exhumation after the daughter of Jimmy Anderson came forward to say she believed the package was sent to her father. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

Detective Chatto said the case was “one of many that we’re working on” as part of national efforts to identify skeletal remains – of which there are 64 in the Northern Territory.

“So early 2000s, there was quite a substantial amount of exhumations made, hence why we’ve got quite a few unidentified human remains at the morgue that we’re trying to identify,” he said.

“But this one was missed in the early 2000s when they dug up all the other ones that were known about.

“Obviously most of these people when they were found, there’s no such thing as DNA. So now we’ve got the technology to deal with it, or to progress them, it’s still a long drawn-out process.

“If you’ve got a missing person in your family, we’re always asking people to come forward if you’ve got familial lineage to provide DNA.”

LISTEN TO THE MISSING PODCAST WITH MENI CAROUTAS