Race against time to find mother of three abandoned babies as police go door-to-door

Police in a race against time to find the vulnerable mother of three abandoned babies have narrowed their search down to just 400 homes.

Detectives are treating the mystery woman as a victim who is in danger and may feel unable to come forward after giving birth at least three times without medical help. Subsequent DNA

Officers have been door-knocking addresses in a targeted area of East Ham and Plaistow in east London, in an attempt to find her. All three children were abandoned in spots not covered by CCTV, and Det Insp Jamie Humm said it is vital the mother is found.

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He said: "In any police investigation you make your tactical decisions around hypotheses, and the hypothesis that, as senior investigating officer, I believe is most likely, is that the mother of these children is vulnerable, is in danger, and is in a position where they feel that they are unable to come forward for whatever reason.

"We are treating mum as a victim in this case, and we are on standby to support her with everything she needs." The first baby, Harry, was found on 17 September 2017, over a mile from where Elsa was left near a footpath and cycleway in Newham. He was left in a bush, wrapped in a towel in Plaistow Park.

Sixteen months later, his sister Roman was discovered wrapped in a towel, inside a shopping bag, on a freezing evening on a bench by a dog walker in the small children's play park, in Roman Road.

The babies were initially named by emergency services staff who came to their aid - they have all since been changed.

Experts believe that the person who abandoned the children, who may or may not have been their mother, could have travelled from one of the 400 properties targeted. Police have been asking the residents in the area for voluntary DNA samples and for anyone with information to come forward.

Investigators have been able to establish a f she remains unidentified.

In June, Judge Carol Atkinson ruled that the media could report the familial link between the three children, who are black, as well as other details, following an application by the PA news agency and the .

The court was previously told that Elsa's birth cannot be registered, and no final decision made as to her care, because of the ongoing investigation. Roman and Harry have already been adopted.

Mr Humm said that the person who abandoned the children "did not want to be found". He added: "They've done so in places where there are no CCTV cameras, and as heavily surveilled as London is, the reality is there's going to be pockets and areas that are not covered with footage."

He continued: "We can't be blind to the fact that there may be a fourth (baby), and certainly the passage of time and the cycles of nine months it would take to potentially get pregnant and birth a child, mean that we cannot discount that.

"That means, again, I'm appealing to the public, because if there is another abandoned child, that child may not be as fortunate as Elsa and her siblings. So we really want the public to understand what we understand about the risk here, and to come forward and speak to us, because it's that one bit of information that we feel that may open this whole case."

The police investigation has been supported by a specialist team from the National Crime Agency, which includes geographical profilers and behavioural investigative advisors.

Residents of the 400 houses are under no obligation to provide DNA samples, and the NCA is helping to shape the questions that police ask members of the public on the doorstep. Agency investigators have also been deployed alongside Metropolitan Police officers during the house-to-house inquiries.

Noel McHugh, national senior investigating officer adviser for the South East at the NCA, said that the case was "deeply troubling" and that it was a "miracle" the children survived because of the conditions in which they were abandoned.

But he said that the case had some "really unique signatures" which made it "solvable and detectable", adding that the answer "is in the community". He added "We need the public, and with nearly every crime the public are the ones who assist and thread that crime together in solving it. It is never the police or NCA on their own."

Detective Superintendent Lewis Basford, strategic investigative adviser for the operation, said that the latest inquiries would provide "a lot of information to follow" which could take "weeks and months" to process, but that the investigation "will never stop".

He said: "Police won't give up, and we will follow all the lines of inquiry we can to try and find them and answer the questions as to why."