Delta Dawn

Physical examination An autopsy performed on the child's body revealed that someone had attempted to smother her before she had entered the river, although the child had still been alive when she had entered the water, having inhaled murky water from the river into her lungs, thus indicating she had ultimately died of drowning. The official cause of death would be certified as drowning due to her having inhaled water upon impacting the surface of the river. The girl wore a pink and white Cradle Togs checkered dress, decorated with three flowers on its front, along with a diaper. (Mary Ann Moore would name the then-unidentified child "Baby Jane," the name currently inscribed upon the child's granite grave marker within the Jackson County Cemetery.) and Delta Dawn was buried beneath a flat granite marker with a ceramic vase. Her grave bears the inscriptions "Baby Jane" and "Known Only To God".

On the 25th anniversary of the funeral of Delta Dawn, a memorial service in her honor was held at the Bethel Assembly Church.

Investigation Extensive searches were conducted to find the body of the woman seen floating face-down within the Escatawpa River on December 5; equal efforts have been made to locate and/or identify the acutely distressed woman seen walking along Interstate 10 carrying a barefooted child in her arms on December 3, should the body sighted by the truck driver actually not have been hers.

Prior to the Jackson County Sheriff's Department's formal announcement of the identity of Delta Dawn as Alisha Ann Heinrich, the previously unknown woman accompanying the child upon the eastbound Interstate 10 bridge was theorized to have been responsible for her death in a suspected murder-suicide, although this theory is now in doubt.