October 17, 2025

All are invited to Oct. 25 funeral and burial of infant found in Indianapolis park

Criterion staff report

A public funeral service and burial will be held on Oct. 25 for the remains of an infant discovered last month in Brookside Park in Indianapolis. The service will take place at 1 p.m. in Mt. Vernon Chapel at Washington Park East Cemetery, 10612 E. Washington St., in Indianapolis, followed by a graveside burial service in the Baby Garden, in the far northeast corner of the cemetery.

All are invited to attend to honor the life and dignity of the abandoned baby.

The service and burial were organized and will be officiated by Linda Znachko, founder of the ministry He Knows Your Name. According to its website, the ministry “exists to honor every child with a name in life, and dignity and honor in death.”

On Sept. 1, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department received a call from a passerby who noticed the infant remains—later identified as female—in Brookside Park.

A Sept. 2 press release from the Marion County coroner’s office stated that tests were “underway to establish whether the remains represent a fetus that was not viable outside the womb [or in utero] or an infant that may have been born alive. These determinations are highly complex and require several types of examinations before conclusions can be drawn. … However, we do know that the remains were at least 30 weeks gestational, based on visual development at exam.”

The release noted that there were “no signs of blunt force trauma or external injury that would have directly caused the death.”

Burying the dead is one of the Church’s seven corporal works of mercy—a work in this case made even more meaningful as the Church in the United States celebrates Respect Life Month in October. †

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