SerpApi.Org
DANBURY — The investigation that led to Dominique Harrison’s recent arrest in the 2018 death of her newborn son answered one of the case’s biggest mysteries, but several others remain unresolved.
Harrison, 28, of Danbury, was charged with murder with special circumstances June 18, following a lengthy and complex investigation into the discovery of the human remains of a baby at the City Carting & Recycling Center in Stamford on Oct. 16, 2018.
Documents filed in state Superior Court in Danbury shed light on the steps investigators took to identify Harrison as the newborn’s mother and establish probable cause for her arrest on the class A felony charge nearly eight years after the baby’s death.
While the court filings answer longstanding questions about the case, they also highlight others that remain unanswered.
What we know
A lead helped crack the case
After years without a viable lead in the case, Harrison’s arrest warrant says a break finally came in October 2023, when police received information indicating the baby found at the Stamford recycling facility may be a descendant of a family in the Danbury-Bethel area.
Detectives spent the next two years using genealogy research, DNA comparisons and forensic testing to narrow the family tree, and eventually identified the baby’s father. The warrant says his relationship to the child was confirmed through DNA analysis of a cigarette investigators saw him discard while surveilling him in Danbury in November 2025.
After identifying Harrison as a woman the man dated in 2018, the warrant says investigators surveilled her, collected a drinking straw she discarded in December 2025 and submitted it for DNA analysis. A state lab report came back three months later, indicating the DNA profile from the straw was “consistent with Harrison being a biological parent of the newborn,” according to the warrant.
Harrison provided conflicting accounts
After initially denying ever having a child, court documents say Harrison admitted giving birth in October 2018 and told investigators she hid the pregnancy from her family and the child’s father.
Harrison told police she delivered the baby alone in a bathroom at her Prince Street home, said it cried and that she cut the umbilical cord, wrapped the newborn in a blanket and handed him to “a friend” to take to Danbury Hospital, according to her arrest warrant.
The friend, however, told investigators he transported a crying newborn to the hospital in 2021 — not 2018 — and police determined Harrison had given birth to another son in April 2021. Detectives obtained records showing that child was surrendered to Danbury Hospital under Connecticut’s Safe Haven law and later adopted.
Harrison claimed to have confused details from her pregnancies and proceeded to repeatedly change her story about the son she reportedly delivered on Oct. 12, 2018 — first claiming he was stillborn, then saying he cried after birth but that she later found him submerged in bath water.
She later told detectives she left the newborn in a wooded area near Backus Avenue before later putting him in a dumpster behind a building in that area. Harrison initially said the baby was dead when she later returned for him, but then acknowledged he was moving when she put him in the dumpster, her arrest warrant says.
Investigators concluded Harrison knew the newborn was alive when she placed him in the dumpster and believed she had made a “deliberate effort to mislead detectives in their homicide investigation” by providing different, inconsistent accounts of her pregnancies, according to court documents.
Harrison’s 2018 baby had “injuries to his head … consistent with massive crushing death,” according to a search warrant affidavit, which says he was “killed … when he and the contents of the dumpster were loaded into a recycling truck’s hopper, then compacted with the recycling truck’s compacting blade.”
Harrison gave birth at least three times
Following her arrest last month, Harrison told detectives about another son she birthed in 2019 — one who a search warrant affidavit says remains “unaccounted for.”
A search warrant affidavit says Harrison told police “knew that she was pregnant around September 2019 based on an examination at Planned Parenthood” and claimed to have dropped the baby off at Danbury Hospital after delivering him in a bathroom at her home one night in November 2019.
While investigators confirmed she visited Planned Parenthood in September 2019 and had been “considering adoption,” the affidavit says they found no record of the baby being brought to Danbury Hospital.
Confronted with that discrepancy, the affidavit says Harrison changed her story and claimed to have wrapped the newborn in “a white ‘Snoopy’ blanket” and placed him in a wooded area behind her home after his birth.
Harrison told the detective the baby was alive when she left him but was dead when she returned to the wooded area the next morning, according to the affidavit.
After replacing the blanket she originally wrapped him in with a different “Snoopy” blanket, Harrison said she put the deceased newborn’s body in a green recycling dumpster near the front of her residence.
Harrison told the detective she kept the blanket she originally wrapped the baby in inside a purple medium-sized plastic bin in the basement of her home. Court documents show investigators executed a search warrant for the blanket on June 18, 2026.
An affidavit associated with the warrant says Harrison claimed to have washed the blanket but told the detective there might still be a small amount of blood on it. Court documents say the blanket seized from Harrison’s home was sent to the Department of Public Safety Forensic Science Laboratory in Meriden for DNA testing and other forensic analysis.
Court documents say investigators determined the same man who fathered Harrison’s first baby also likely fathered the child she gave birth to in 2019.
An ongoing investigation could result in additional charges
Assistant State’s Attorney Mary-Caitlin Harding said during Harrison’s June 23 arraignment that an ongoing investigation could result in “very serious” additional charges against her.
While the nature of the investigation has not been disclosed, search warrant affidavits filed in state Superior Court in Danbury indicate a focus on Harrison’s 2019 baby. If or when additional charges will actually be brought against Harrison, however, is not yet known.
What we don’t know
Where did the investigative lead that cracked the 2018 newborn death case come from?
The warrant does not detail how, or from whom, investigators obtained the October 2023 tip that resulted in the identification of the 2018 baby’s biological father and, subsequently, Harrison. The existence of the lead also raises another question: Did someone know — or later learn — that Harrison had been pregnant and share that information with police?
Was the father of Harrison’s 2018 baby ever interviewed?
The warrant for Harrison’s arrest says DNA established the identity of the father to the baby born in October 2018, but it doesn’t mention him being interviewed by investigators.
What happened to the 2019 baby?
It’s unclear from the currently available court documents whether investigators have been able to corroborate Harrison’s final account of what happened to the 2019 baby, or otherwise determine what happened to the child. The documents also don’t mention the results of forensic testing on the Snoopy blanket seized from her home or whether that testing has been completed.
Harrison is being held at York Correctional Institution on a $2.5 million and next scheduled to appear in state Superior Court in Danbury for a pretrial hearing on July 24.
