What led police to Baby June's mother? Arrest report offers new details
WEST PALM BEACH — Deputies say Arya Singh arrived at the Boynton Beach Inlet with a baby girl in tow and returned home empty handed. Before she left the beach, she searched the internet for what might await her daughter in the ocean depths below.
“What lives in the Boynton inlet” the 25-year-old typed into Google. It was 9:45 p.m., and the sun had set hours ago. She clicked on a YouTube video next: “Why is the Boynton Inlet so treacherous?”
Singh combed through sites that host livestreams from video cameras in search of any aimed at the inlet. Finding none, investigators say she left the beach and her unnamed baby in the water behind her.
New details contained in Singh’s arrest report reveal how detectives with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office linked the mother to Baby June, the newborn found floating facedown in the ocean by an off-duty firefighter on June 1, 2018.
Deputies arrested Singh, now 29, and charged her with first-degree murder Thursday. She told investigators she believed the infant was born dead.
Baby June:Mother of infant found dead off Boynton Beach Inlet found, charged with murder
Brittany Christoffel became lead detective on the case after it grew cold, and she watched from the front row of the jailhouse courtroom Friday as Judge Ted Booras ordered Singh be held without bail in the Palm Beach County Jail.
Christoffel, in conjunction with the sheriff department's forensic lab, used a public genealogy database to find the infant's father, who the department has neither named nor pressed charges against.
According to Singh's arrest report, the father first met Singh when the two attended Santaluces High School in Lantana. He told detectives Singh informed him during the summer of 2018 that he had gotten her pregnant, but she'd "taken care of it." She refused to speak more about it, he said, and eventually, he stopped asking.
The father pointed detectives in Singh's direction. Deputies began surveilling her on July 29 and swiped a coffee cup she threw away, according to the arrest report. The DNA on its rim confirmed that Singh was the mother of Baby June.
Deputies said they obtained a warrant to search through her location data, which placed her at the lifeguard stand at the Boynton Beach Inlet at 9:35 p.m. on May 30 — two days before the infant was discovered. By 10:06 p.m., Singh had left.
She searched for "Boynton inlet" and "Boynton beach news" 33 times over the next hour, and 574 more times over the next month, according to her arrest report. In that time, she read 64 articles about Baby June's discovery and the deputies' pleas for information.
One of the articles mentioned DNA as a possible clue that could link authorities to the child's parents. Singh searched "CODIS DNA," referring to a nationwide DNA database used by law enforcement to solve crimes, after opening that article. She searched her own name next.
Upon her arrest Thursday, Singh told Christoffel that she hadn't known she was pregnant until she delivered the baby in the toilet of a hotel bathroom May 30, 2018.
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Deputies believe Baby June — so named because she was found on June 1, 2018 — was dead by the time they say her mother placed her in the water. She died by asphyxiation, Christoffel said.
Singh was a security guard at Lynn University in Boca Raton from July 2021 until the time of her arrest.
"We were shocked to learn about the charges against Ms. Singh and have ended her employment," a spokesperson for the university wrote in an email to staff Thursday.
She has no other children and no criminal history, Christoffell said. Singh's attorney, Michael Salnick, declined to comment after Friday's proceedings. Singh is scheduled to appear next in court on Jan. 17.
Hannah Phillips is a journalist covering public safety and criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hphillips@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: How did police find Baby June's mother? Arrest report offers new details
