A cold case that haunted Johnson County for nearly a quarter century has finally landed a prison term. A North Texas woman was sentenced yesterday to 20 years behind bars after she pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the 2001 death of a newborn girl found beside a rural road. The infant, known for years only as “Angel Baby Doe,” was discovered wrapped in a jacket with her umbilical cord still attached and was later found to have bled to death after not receiving prompt medical care.
Shelby Ann Stotts of Covington entered her guilty plea earlier this week, and a Johnson County jury handed down the maximum 20-year sentence, Johnson County District Attorney Timothy Good said, according to CBS News. Good called the verdict long-awaited justice for the child after more than 24 years of work on the case, which included emotional victim-impact testimony and statements from local officials who had pushed to keep the file from gathering dust.
How the child was found
The baby’s body was discovered in November 2001 in a roadside ditch off Briaroaks Road between Alvarado and Burleson, wrapped in a jacket and still attached to her umbilical cord, according to a news release from the Texas Attorney General’s Office. A medical examiner determined the infant had been born alive, then died from blood loss after not receiving timely medical care. With no name and no mother identified, the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office took to calling her “Angel Baby Doe” as investigators chased leads that repeatedly went nowhere.
DNA work cracks the cold case
In June 2021, the sheriff’s office turned to advanced DNA techniques, sending forensic evidence to Othram, where genomic sequencing produced a usable profile that genealogists then used to track possible relatives, according to DNASolves. That genetic trail, combined with follow-up work by the Attorney General’s Missing Persons and Cold Case Unit, ultimately led investigators to Stotts, who was arrested in 2024, as reported by The Dallas Morning News. Authorities say the evidence showed the child was alive at birth and that Stotts abandoned her.
Family reaction…