In December 1982 a little girl’s body was found in the Escatawpa River near Moss Point, Mississippi. For decades she was known as Delta Dawn or Baby Jane; in 2020 genetic genealogy identified her as Alisha Ann Heinrich, about 18 months old when she died. Alisha’s autopsy determined she had been partially smothered and then thrown from the Interstate 10 bridge while still alive; she drowned and her body was recovered 36 to 48 hours later.

Alisha and her 23-year-old mother, Gwendolyn Mae Clemons, had been reported missing from Kansas City, Missouri, around Thanksgiving 1982 after leaving with Gwendolyn’s boyfriend. Witnesses in Moss Point later saw a distressed woman in a blue plaid shirt and jeans carrying a young child near the bridge; the woman refused help. A truck driver’s report of an adult woman floating in the river prompted the search that recovered Alisha. Gwendolyn’s body has never been found; her fate remains unknown. The boyfriend who returned to Missouri alone has been treated as a person of interest but is now deceased, and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department continues to investigate.

Did anyone in the area at the time recognize the description of the woman seen near the bridge or have memories of sightings that could help explain what happened?