‘It was just horrific’: Woman arrested in 2005 cold case of baby found dead at airport
PHOENIX (KPHO/Gray News) — A woman was arrested in connection to the case of a baby, known as Baby Skylar, who was found dead in the Phoenix airport in 2005.
The desperate search to find who killed Baby Skylar had gone cold for nearly 20 years, but DNA and genealogy led detectives to 51-year-old Annie Anderson in Washington state.
Anderson faces first-degree murder charges and will be extradited to Arizona.
Baby Skylar’s story started on Oct. 10, 2005, at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport.
“There was a businessperson that said, ‘Hey, I’m missing my laptop.’ They notified security and housekeeping and started looking for the laptop, and this is Terminal 4 of Sky Harbor Airport,” said Troy Hillman, a retired cold case homicide detective with the Phoenix Police Department who worked on the case for years.
Hillman said that during that search for the laptop, maintenance workers checked a trash can in a women’s bathroom.
“They ended up pulling something heavy out of the bag, a black bag,” he said. “They found a deceased newborn inside the bag.”
The baby was found in a bag with towels from a hotel chain, but even after searching the three hotels in the area for guest lists and surveillance, Hillman said nobody could find the baby’s mother. Their theory was she boarded a plane and left the state after leaving the dead newborn behind.
“She just literally was welcomed into the world only to be murdered. It was just horrific,” Hillman said.
The medical examiner ruled that Baby Skylar died from asphyxiation, making this a homicide case. Eventually, Hillman’s cold case team worked with Parabon NanoLabs to come up with a composite of what the mom may look like based on DNA collected from the baby.
Even with that information, the case was cold for years.
In 2021, Phoenix police said DNA and genealogy led them to a possible match to Baby Skylar’s mother. In January 2022, they went to Washington and served a search warrant. After they interviewed Anderson, investigators said they confirmed she was Baby Skylar’s mother.
Hillman believes that had the man not lost his laptop that day, Baby Skylar likely would have never been found and had gone to a landfill.
“It was almost divine intervention,” Hillman said.
Hillman said it’s still emotional for him knowing Baby Skylar could have had a chance at life if her mom had just dropped her off at a Safe Haven or hospital.
“That just kind of burns at me to this day. This didn’t have to be this way, and somebody needed to explain why they did what they did,” he said.
Hillman said with the technology they have now, other cold cases will finally be solved.
“If you committed a homicide, you’re probably not going to get away with it. We’re going to keep at it,” he said.
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