GREENVILLE, S.C. (WSPA) – After 29 years, Greenville Police have arrested a woman they believe abandoned her newborn baby, who was found dead in a cardboard box in a wooded area in 1990.
Brook Graham, 53, is charged with homicide by child abuse.
Investigators named the baby Julie Valentine. She was found by a man picking flowers for his wife for Valentine’s Day on Feb. 13, 1990.
A man who says he is the father of the baby known as Julie Valentine told 7News that he and Graham were married by common law at the time. He did not want to be identified.
The man said investigators traced the box to him during the initial investigation in the ’90s. “So they [investigators] say, ‘We found the box with the baby…'” he told 7News. They asked him if he had the box and he said he didn’t know.
He said he didn’t hear from them again until a few months ago when detectives asked him for a DNA sample. He said he swabbed his cheek, and Thursday was told the baby was his.
Asked how the news made him feel, he responded with one word: Terrible. He said he did not know that Graham was pregnant or had the baby.
He told 7News, “I feel stupid. And I ask her…what happened?” He said Graham “acted like she didn’t know.”
The man said he and Graham had two other daughters together but separated in 1997.
Family friends of Graham’s told 7News that the baby known as Julie Valentine would have been the couple’s middle child.