Baby Elsa update: Police narrow down search for parents of abandoned baby to 400 homes in east London

Police have narrowed down their search for the mum of three abandoned newborn babies to just 400 houses in London.

Baby Elsa was found by a dog walker in a Boots carrier bag in freezing temperatures near a footpath in Newham on January 2024.

She was named by nurses after the character in in Disney’s Frozen, and was thought to just be an hour old when she was discovered.

DNA tests revealed she was the sibling of two other abandoned babies – Harry and Roman – found abandoned in 2017 and 2019.

The first baby Harry was found in a bush in Plaistow Park, just more than a mile away from where Elsa was discovered.

His sister Roman was found freezing on a bench in a small children’s park on Roman Road, which is a few minutes walk from where Elsa was found.

The parents of the babies have still not been identified.

Police have gone door-to-door asking residents for DNA samples to see if they are connected to the babies.

They are also contacting people found on the national DNA database who share genes with the mum of the babies.

Elsa, who is now a toddler, has been described as bright girl by detectives who have met her.

In February, East London Family Court was told Elsa had taken her first steps and is ‘developing well’.

Judge Carol Atkinson said the update was ‘astonishing’.

Steven Evans, for Newham Council, said: ‘The social work team reported to me that Elsa is developing well. She has taken her first steps. She is meeting all her developmental milestones.

‘The social worker describes her visits as “the best visits ever”.’

Speaking about how the babies were abadoned, Detective Inspector Jamie Humm said: ‘[The parent] has done so in places where there are no CCTV cameras, and as heavily surveilled as London is, the reality is there’s going to be pockets and areas that are not covered with footage.

‘We can’t be blind to the fact that there may be a fourth (baby), and certainly the passage of time and the cycles of nine months it would take to potentially get pregnant and birth a child, mean that we cannot discount that.

‘That means, again, I’m appealing to the public, because if there is another abandoned child, that child may not be as fortunate as Elsa and her siblings.

‘So we really want the public to understand what we understand about the risk here, and to come forward and speak to us, because it’s that one bit of information that we feel that may open this whole case.’

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