news

He discarded his baby in a bin. But he hasn't been charged.

Little Janna Rivera has been missing for almost two months.

Her father, Jeff Fairbanks, is the only person of interest in the case, according to police.

He claims he threw the three-month-old’s body into a dumpster after finding her dead. But police haven’t been able to find the girl’s tiny body, FOX59 reports.

Janna Rivera. Screenshot: FOX59.

“Putting Janna in a trash receptacle, you hear it on the news all the time. I remember thinking to myself, ‘what kind of a person does that?’,” he said.

“But, those are different situations. Those are people trying to get rid of their babies. I wasn`t trying to get rid of my baby. My baby was already gone.”

Fairbanks said noticed Janna was not breathing in the bed beside him in the early hours of May 28.

Police reportedly believe he rolled over and smothered the girl in his sleep – a claim he vehemently denies.

Jeff Fairbanks. Screenshot via FOX59.

He says he “freaked” after seeing the limp baby with blue lips. With his partner at work and his two children downstairs, Fairbanks says he wrapped the lifeless girl in a blanket and put her in his car because he “didn’t want anyone to see her like that”.

Fairbanks told FOX59 he drove around his hometown of Indianapolis with his dead baby in tow for eight hours, drinking and becoming increasingly suspicious of others.

ADVERTISEMENT

“While I was driving, I was crying and praying. Completely lost. I remember looking over at a person next to me at a stop light and thinking what they must be thinking. ‘Do they know?’” he said.

See the interview here (post continues after video):

He eventually returned to the apartment block where he lived and placed his lifeless baby – still dressed in a diaper and shirt and wrapped in a blanket – into a bin.  He told his partner what happened later that night and she called police the following morning.

But police have tirelessly searched the bin, the local landfill and several stormwater ponds with no sign of the baby Jana – finding only her blanket at the landfill.

Police told the news station the father was the only person of interest in the ongoing investigation. He has not yet been charged with any crimes.

“I don’t feel like I did anything wrong. I reacted the way I reacted because it was so horrifying,” Fairbanks said.

But the whereabouts of his baby girl’s body remains a mystery.

For more crime stories, try these:

A mother who killed two of her children and kept them in the freezer ‘doesn’t regret a thing’.

Renea Lau is far more than just another statistic. This is her story.

‘Chillicothe’s missing women’ began disappearing a year ago.

Adrian Bayley will likely die in jail. And we are all safer for it.