The children's section of the Resurrection Cemetery in Clinton has been host to weeping parents and relatives mourning lives cut short.
On Friday morning, there were no crying families, just solemn Prince George's County police detectives who gathered to pay tribute to an infant girl found dead March 22 in Lake Artemisia in Berwyn Heights.
Two fishermen discovered the infant's body in a plastic bag. Police have ruled her death a homicide.
"The detectives want to make sure people know she wasn't abandoned," said police spokeswoman Capt. Mistinette Mints. "She wasn't just left to die out in the elements."
During the funeral, Department Chaplain Steve Rhoads spoke to the more than 20 police officers who gathered.
"You named her, you made her something other than a piece of flesh put into the ground in a little white box," he told investigators. Detectives in the homicide unit named the baby girl Mary Rose Darerca after a saint who was also the sister of St. Patrick.
Lead detective Steve Campbell recalled his first case involving the homicide of a baby, in which the mother's boyfriend was eventually charged with the death.
"You get that first case and you're hoping you don't get another one of those," Campbell said.
Abandoned infant cases are not only the saddest to investigate but also among the most difficult to solve, said Detective Kelly Rogers, an investigator on the case.
"There's so much secrecy with these and there's almost never witnesses," she said.
This is the third such funeral Rogers has attended.
"It's become a kind of sad tradition. We don't want the baby to be forgotten about," Rogers said. "She's got a family somewhere who didn't even know she existed."
Darerca is the fourth infant whom the Prince George's County Police Department's homicide unit has held a funeral for and named. In November, police held a funeral for an hours-old infant abandoned by her mother and found in a Langley Park field Oct. 12. Detectives named her Maria Del Pilar after the patron saint of Zaragoza, Spain.
Also buried in the cemetery are an abandoned baby found in Oxon Hill in 2004 and an infant found in Riverdale in 2006.
"We have room for one more [plot], and I pray we don't ever have to fill it," Rogers said.
Rhoads, the chaplain who led Friday's service, emphasized Maryland's Safe Haven Law. Enacted in 2002, it allows mothers to abandon infants up to 10 days old in the care of a responsible adult at a police station, fire station or hospital without fear of prosecution.
"Mothers don't need to do this," Rhoads said.
In the case of Darerca, police can't yet release the exact details of how the infant died because the information could be used to rule out suspects during interviews, Mints said.
Campbell said that according to the state medical examiner's office, the infant could have been in the water for up to two months. Campbell said he needs the public to call in with tips as he has only received one, an unrelated crime solvers tip.
Mints said police can assume the mother was young and scared, but investigators can't know the mother's age for certain.
Rogers said the suspect could be anyone.
"It doesn't even have to be the mother," she said. "We just really keep our minds open."
At the close of the funeral, a bagpiper began playing as the officers, only brought into the Darerca's life through her death, each carefully placed a pink rose on the small white casket.
They then walked away from a pile of flowers so high it looked as if it could tumble over.
Police are looking for information about the infant found March 22 in a Berwyn Heights lake or her mother. Call the homicide unit at 301-772-4925. Contact the department anonymously at 1-866-411-8477 or text "PGPD (plus the message)" to CRIMES (27467). There is a cash reward for the tip that leads to an arrest and indictment.
To donate money toward purchasing a headstone for the infant, call the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 89 at 301-952-0882
E-mail Elahe Izadi at eizadi@gazette.net.
