DNA technology — an application more of science fiction than forensic science 50 years ago — could help solve a five-decades-old cold case.

On July 2, 1970, the body of a white newborn girl — less than 1 week old — was discovered near a dirt road in southwestern Mercer County, barely more than a stone's throw from the Ohio border.

An examination of the remains indicated the baby died of exposure. She received medical care, likely at a hospital, before her brief life ended.

Authorities tried in vain to find her mother or any kin. She died without a name — buried in a small Styrofoam cooler in an unmarked grave.

But the mystery of her death lived on. It's been so long that Hickory Township — the municipality where her body was found — has since been renamed Hermitage.

Now, however, authorities said they could be close to providing her with two long-denied rights — an identification and justice.

To that end, they hope to first identify the mother.

“We are here (July 1) to announce a new development in the search for her identity and to speak to the person who placed her there,” said Joel Ristvey, deputy chief of the Hermitage Police Department.

Ristvey made his announcement in a two-minute video released to the media and posted on the department's Facebook page.

The July 1 communiqué was not just made to pass on the latest information, but as a plea to the mother to come forward.

Ristvey's personal message to her: “Help us understand.”

“I want to give you this opportunity to come talk to me, to give you the chance to explain to your family and friends before the DNA results come back,” he said in the email and video.

Ristvey declined further comment when reached by telephone at the police department last week.

“What we put out is the only thing we can release at this time,” he said, “What we gave out is what we gave out.”

When pressed why he would not take questions, he refused to answer.

While the video does not offer any details about the “new development” in the investigation that Ristvey cited, he expressed hope that it could lead to solving the case.

“First, due to recent advances in DNA technology, we now believe we will be able to identify this baby and her mother and father. We will be initiating this process shortly and are optimistic we will obtain positive results,” he said in the video message.

“Second, we would like to speak from the heart to the person who laid the baby down off Lynnwood Drive, in what was then Hickory Township, near Swamp Road — now Broadway Avenue (state Route 760) — at the Taylor Sand Banks parking area, 50 years ago.”

A delivery man happened upon the fully-clothed body, which was dressed in a diaper, T-shirt and one-piece suit, according to investigators.

The newborn's umbilical cord was intact with a metal clip on it, Mercer County District Attorney Peter Acker said Wednesday.

The body — no more than five days old — was in “excellent condition,” he noted, meaning the baby had not been dead long before the remains were found. There also was no trauma on the body.

The remains were taken to the pathology lab at then-Sharon General Hospital. Later, when no one claimed the girl and efforts to find her mother — or family — proved futile, she was buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Sharon.

The case languished and grew cold. The unnamed baby, however, was never forgotten. The case was never closed.

“Every police department has unsolved homicide cases and you never forget them,” Acker said. “You hope that at some point a break will come and you'll be able to solve the case and to prosecute people who should be prosecuted for crimes.”

Like with all cold cases, the newborn's case came up for periodic review. With the improvements in DNA technology over the past 50 years and the availability of federal funding for such testing in homicide cases, investigators decided to move full speed ahead in hopes of cracking the case.

Acker got a court order to exhume the baby's body from Oakwood Cemetery in Sharon between six weeks and two months ago.

Among those present at the exhumation was Acker, three senior Hermitage police officers, three FBI agents and Dennis Dirkmaat, a forensic anthropologist at Mercyhurst College in Erie. Eight forensic graduate students from Mercyhurst also were there.

The Styrofoam cooler holding the remains was carefully placed in a larger plastic storage container and taken to Mercyhurst's forensic science lab for possible DNA extraction.

That effort was unsuccessful, Dirkmaat said Wednesday, due to the condition of the remains.

Also turned over for DNA testing in the case, Mercer County Coroner John Libonati said Wednesday, were preserved tissue samples collected from the newborn during her autopsy in 1970.

It was not immediately known if any DNA was extracted from those samples.

Acker said if any DNA material was obtained, it was to have been sent to a pair of labs — at the University of North Texas and Parabon NanoLabs in Reston, Va., which provides various DNA-related services, including genetic genealogy.

Acker and Libonati acknowledged they did not know if any DNA samples were sent to those labs.

The investigators' hope was the labs in Texas and Virginia could take any extracted DNA and try to develop a profile of the mother and/or father for testing purposes.

Should a profile be obtained, it could be entered into a number of public genetic genealogy databases as well as the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, the national database maintained by the FBI, to possibly gain a match.

Ristvey, in his video, offered an emotional appeal to the mother or father should they still be alive.

“The DNA will tell us who placed the baby there that day, but it won't tell us why. It won't tell us the emotions you must have struggled with that day; the pain you must have experienced,” he said.

“It won't tell us why you initially rendered care, but then couldn't care for her any longer. It won't tell us the turmoil you've felt inside ever since. It won't reveal the number of times you considered coming forward, but were too scared.

“It won't tell us the family and friends you've created in the time that has passed. It won't tell us all the good you've done.”

He also offered what seemed to be a final lifeline to the person or persons responsible.

“I want to give you this opportunity to come talk to me, to give you the chance to explain to your family and friends before the DNA results come back,” Ristvey said. “Please come speak to me before the DNA does.”

Acker said it was far too premature to even discuss possible prosecution. Under state law, the only crimes for which there is no statute of limitations are murder and voluntary manslaughter.

“We have to identify the mother first, and hopefully once we do that we will discuss with the mother the circumstances of this tragedy,” he said.

“Then and only then will we make a determination as to what if any prosecution should occur.”