Two arrested 30 years after baby’s body found in trash on NC’s Outer Banks, cops say

A couple has been charged 30 years after a baby’s body was found in the trash on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, police said.

Scott Gordon Poole, 54, and Robin Lynn Byrum, 51, were arrested by the Alexander County Sheriff’s Office last week and charged with “concealing birth of child,” which is a felony, the Nags Head Police Department said Monday.

Police said additional charges are possible “pending further investigation.”

On April 4, 1991, officers were called to East Tides Drive in Nags Head after someone reported discovering human remains in a trash can rack, according to a news release from the Nags Head Police Department. Officers arrived to find the body of an infant “who appeared to have been deceased for some time.”

Police said the body had decomposed to a point that they couldn’t determine the sex of the baby on the scene.

The Pitt County Medical Examiner’s Office in Greenville later determined that the baby’s cause of death was “blunt force trauma to the face” and asphyxiation, according to police.

“Over the years, Nags Head’s police investigators have examined and re-examined evidence in the case, working to find who was responsible for the heinous act,” the police department wrote on Facebook.

In 2019, police opened another re-investigation into the case and sent the baby’s rib bone for a forensic analysis at a lab in Texas. The lab used DNA from the bone to “conduct a genealogical profile” — which pointed officials to a family living in North Carolina, police said.

“Further investigation and DNA analysis by Nags Head Police led to a married couple living in Taylorsville, North Carolina, and known to have been living on the Outer Banks around the time Baby Doe was found,” police said.

Taylorsville is about 64 miles from Charlotte and about 360 miles west of Nags Head.

“The tragedy of this child’s death and the manner in which his body was disposed of is compounded by the fact that, until now, no one has been found responsible for this incredibly heartbreaking act,” Nags Head Police Chief Phil Webster said. “But through the hard work of Nags Head Police investigators and our law enforcement partners in the case, those who did this will be held accountable for a death that has remained unsolved for three decades.”

Poole and Byrum were booked into the custody of the Alexander County Sheriff’s Office under a $250,000 bond and have since been transferred to the Dare County Detention Center, according to police.

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