How can THREE babies be abandoned in the world’s most surveilled city? Police set to stop search for parents as trail goes cold

It’s the heart-breaking story that moved hardened detectives to tears.

Three babies separately abandoned in plastic bags in freezing temperatures in near identical circumstances several years apart.

For years detectives have desperately tried to trace their mother after DNA tests revealed that incredibly all three children were siblings.

Now, as the two year anniversary approaches of the discovery of the last child Elsa, police are preparing to close the case.

It follows a unique investigation which has taken officers across Britain and abroad using familial DNA analysis to contact possible relatives.

Officers are ready to concede defeat after going to extraordinary lengths and exhausting hundreds of lines of inquiry, the Daily Mail can exclusively reveal.

The investigation initially started in Plaistow, east London, after a newborn baby, named Harry by medical staff, was found wrapped in a white blanket in a bush in September 2017.

Two years later Baby Roman, later found to be his sibling, was found in the same area in freezing temperatures in January 2019, wrapped in a white towel in a shopping bag.

In January 2024, a dogwalker discovered a third baby just an hour old who had been left in a Boots shopping bag in temperatures dipping to -4C.

She was named Elsa after the character in the Disney movie Frozen because of the sub-zero conditions she was found in, but like her siblings, Baby Elsa also survived against all the odds.

Fearing that it may not be long before a fourth child was discovered, police vowed to do ‘everything possible’ to find the children’s mother.

Detective Inspector Jamie Humm and his team of 15 officers started by scouring 450 hours of local CCTV, but they found no trace of either parent.

Police believe the infants were abandoned near the Greenway, a footpath in Newham built over a sewage pipe, because there was no CCTV there.

‘How can you have the most surveilled city in the world and someone drop three babies off without being identified?’ Detective Humm said.

‘It was chosen, I would argue, as a fairly optimum location of making sure the babies were found relatively promptly whilst also giving the mum the most opportunity for a covert entrance and exit.

‘It is a footpath – there are no shops, there was no dash cam footage from passing traffic, no doorbell camera.

‘So, from that point in your investigation, you are effectively looking for a ghost, someone who’s been and gone without ever having left a trace.’

Scotland Yard asked the National Crime Agency (NCA) for assistance and a geographic profiler narrowed the potential location of the mother to an area with 400 houses, based on ruling out other routes where there was more CCTV.

Detectives then analysed the properties, considering whether the occupant could be a parent based on a DNA profile of the mother they compiled from genetic analysis of the three children.

Met and NCA officers then started the painstaking process of knocking on doors asking people to volunteer DNA samples.

Officers also drew up a long list of people who were potential relatives based on partial matches from records on the Police National Computer.

Detectives drove around the country following potential leads as far as Scotland, Wales, East Anglia, Birmingham and the Cotswolds, even tracing the family tree of people who had died.

‘We travelled the absolute length and breadth of the country’, Detective Humm recalled.

‘We would visit a person and explain that they had come up as a potential DNA match from police arrest records five years ago.

‘Then we had to ask for their mum and dad’s name and other siblings to get their DNA, it was very challenging.’

But detectives found that people were willing to help once they realised the purpose of the visits.

‘We were pleasantly surprised with the support we received. It was a wholly unique case that really tested us.

‘But now there is a question of drawing the line because the lines of inquiry that we’re now considering present us with a much lower likelihood [of finding the parents].

‘Hope is dwindling.’

Detective Superintendent Lewis Basford, who leads the Metropolitan Police on public protection, said: ‘At times it has felt like we were close, familial matches were strong, they had connections to the area, but each time it turned out not to be them.

‘We knocked on over 100 houses. Every time we had a potential match we had to explore all of that person’s family which would generate new lines of inquiry.

‘We felt like we needed to do absolutely everything we could.’

Now police are nearing the end of that trawl, with a review due in January to decide whether to close the case.

Mr Basford said: ‘I now think that the mother may have gone abroad. She may have been forced to leave the area; she may be being controlled.

‘If someone comes forward with new intelligence we will investigate, but we have exhausted pretty much everything we can do.’