Why the mystery death of a tragic tot has never been solved – 60 years after the baby’s remains were first discovered

A former detective has revealed why a decades-old cold case was linked to a well-known AFL player. He claims it’s only a matter of time before the ‘baby in the mail’ mystery is solved.

Northern Territory police are still investigating how a boy’s body ended up in a Darwin post office on May 11, 1965.

The decomposed and naked body was found wrapped in a pile of newspapers after staff noticed a foul odor coming from the package.

The umbilical cord was still attached to the baby, while a stocking was tight around his neck.

The package was addressed to the Darwin Post Office, intended for someone named J Anderson.

The return address claimed it had been sent by a man named JF Barnes of 2 Woodridge Avenue in Mentone, in Melbourne’s south-east – an address that investigators soon discovered was fake.

In 2023, former Detective Denver Marchant, one of the original investigators, suggested the WHERE Crime Australian podcast ‘The Missing’ that J Anderson may have been former Aussie Rules player Jimmy Anderson.

After hearing the podcast, Jimmy Anderson’s daughter Amelia Anderson, then 53, came forward to offer a DNA sample.

A coroner gave police permission to exhume the baby’s unmarked grave at Darwin Central Cemetery in November 2023, and they managed to take a DNA profile from the skeleton.

For a few months the case seemed tantalizingly close to resolution.

However, in February 2024, police confirmed that the baby’s DNA did not match Ms Anderson’s sample.

Marchant, 84, who now lives in Queensland, told Daily Mail Australia that obtaining the baby’s DNA was still a “small victory” for the cold case team.

A coroner had rejected an earlier request to exhume the remains, “without any appreciation of what DNA can achieve.”

So Mr. Marchant took the Hail Mary by suggesting Jimmy Anderson’s name in an effort to get things moving again.

He knew Mr Anderson personally before he died in 2017, and in 1965 there were only a handful of J Andersons in Darwin.

“You could count them on one hand, and I guess two fingers,” Marchant said.

“I mentioned Jim Anderson because he may or may not have been related, but that turned out not to be the case.

‘The reason behind my publication was that I knew that permission had not been granted for the excavation. It got to the point where I had to stick my nose in, and it worked.”

A DNA match was the “only chance” to reach a conclusion in the case, he said.

‘It could take another ten, fifteen or twenty years, I don’t know, but sooner or later it will come up somewhere.

“I think it’s the only key to unlocking it, unless someone makes a deathbed confession, and the chances of that are very slim.”

Mr Marchant left the Northern Territory Police in 1995 and now lives an active retired life in Hervey Bay, fishing and doing office work at his local shooting range.

He insists the case doesn’t haunt him, but says it would be nice to see it closed in his lifetime.

‘It will be hard work, because there is a good chance that the perpetrator, the person who killed the child, has been dead for a long time. But either way, you would get results.”

The Northern Territory Police cold case team had done a good job, he said, and it was time for their counterparts in Victoria to take over.

“It’s a Victorian case, it’s a Victorian murder – because the child was murdered, there’s no doubt about that.

‘No ligature would be necessary if the child was stillborn. That ligature was placed there for a reason. The child was breathing clearly.”

A Northern Territory Police spokesperson said their investigation was ongoing.

‘Northern Territory Police do not close cases until we are confident that all investigative options have been exhausted in identifying remains.

‘At this stage the community can be assured that we are pursuing all avenues to identify these remains.’

A Victoria Police spokesperson said: “There is no change from our perspective and the matter remains with the NT Police.”

Anyone with information can contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.