Written by: K. Bishop
Published April 5, 2023 @ 7:40 PM ET
Clarke County (February 24, 2023) – University of Georgia police used DNA technology to track down the mother of a newborn who was stabbed to death and abandoned in a campus bathroom in 1996. In February of this year, officers received confirmation that DNA from the suspected mother’s relative was a familial match to the baby.
Police, who christened the baby Jonathan Foundling, named Kathryn Anne Grant as the child’s mother and as the person responsible for the baby’s death. Grant died by suicide in 2004.
Janitors found baby Jonathan’s body in a trash can while cleaning an Oglethorpe House restroom on January 9, 1996. A trail of blood led them from a toilet to the trash can where the baby’s body was left. The eight-pound baby boy was born and stabbed to death the day before.
During their recent investigation, officers discovered Grant’s academic history showed signs she was struggling during her pregnancy, and she left the university shortly after the baby’s birth and death. Grant was enrolled in a pre-veterinary program at UGA at the time.
According to reports, investigators used baby Jonathan’s DNA and located a pair of brothers who were potential paternal matches to the baby through Othram Labs. Jonathan’s father was eventually identified as a man employed at Fort Stewart and living in Richmond Hill. The father provided police with the last name of a woman he thought could be baby Jonathan’s mother. That woman was Grant.
To positively identify Grant, who is now deceased, as the baby’s mother and possible killer, police located her brother in Savannah and served him with a search warrant for his DNA. Grant’s brother was a “one-hundred percent family match.” A newly identified family member said he was certain if his sister had been pregnant, she would have concealed the pregnancy from their parents.
Officers now consider the case closed.