LAFAYETTE, La. – Baby Jane Doe, a newborn who was found abandoned in a trash can in Louisiana, has been dead 25 years.

But the Iberia Parish Sheriff's Office never gave up on finding out what happened to the child who died of hypothermia in Jeanerette on Jan. 24, 1994, outside a car wash.

Detective Scott Hotard with the sheriff's office cold case unit on Wednesday arrested 50-year-old Sonia S. Charles of New Iberia in connection with the death, according to a release from sheriff’s Maj. Wendell Raborn.

Charles was the baby's mother, the sheriff's office said. She would have been about 25 years old when Baby Jane Doe was found.

Hotard reopened the cold case when new leads were developed, Raborn said. The Acadiana Criminalistics Laboratory re-examined the evidence and developed a DNA profile. That profile was matched with someone who had a familial relationship to the child in a combined DNA index system, according to Raborn.

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The laboratory was able to match Charles through DNA as the mother of Baby Jane Doe.

The coroner at the time said the 6-pound baby was alive when she was abandoned with the umbilical cord and placenta still attached, according to The Daily Advertiser archives. She was sucking her thumb when she died.

Temperatures reached in the low 40s the day Baby Jane Doe was found.

More than 200 people turned out for the baby's funeral. A memorial was held one year after her death.

"It's important we don't forget what happened to Baby Doe," then-Jeanerette Police Capt. Kerry Davis said in a Jan. 11, 1995, article. "This little girl has no family to mourn her death. We (the department) and the people of Jeanerette have taken her death to heart and I think it's important we come out and show her we care."

Several witnesses were hypnotized in an effort to find the baby's mother, according to Advertiser archives.

Charles was booked into the Iberia Parish Jail. She faces a first-degree murder charge.

Bond has not yet been set.

Follow Ashley White on Twitter: @AshleyyDi.