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Christmas Eve, 1931. Superior, Arizona. While driving through the desert, a couple named Ed and Julius Stewart experienced a flat tire and pull over to a remote spot.

They soon discover an abandoned newborn baby girl inside a hat box and turn her over to the authorities.

When the child's family cannot be located, she is adopted out to a couple whose identities are kept a secret from the public.

Over 50 years later, a woman named Sharon Elliott is shocked to learn that she was the mysterious hat box baby.

But in spite of her best attempts to uncover her past, the identity of Sharon's real family and the story of how she wound up in the desert remain unknown.

After that, the trail went cold.

Hello everyone and welcome to our newest episode of the trail went cold. I'm your host Robin Warder and that voice you just heard narrate our opening was our latest contest winner Jonathan Burrows.

As you probably know, we now have a recurring monthly contest where our listeners can earn a chance to recite the opening narration for one of our podcast episodes.

Jonathan won our monthly drawing last month and did an amazing job, so a big thanks to him. If you haven't already entered this contest, I will be sharing more details about how you can do so at the end of this episode.

Anyway, throughout the month of December, the trail went cold has been covering some cases which took place around Christmas time, but since today will be our final episode before Christmas, I've decided to do something a little different from the norm and cover a rather upbeat mystery.

Well, as upbeat as a podcast about unsolved cold cases can possibly get.

There are some tragic elements to this story, but it is strangely inspiring at the same time, and most importantly, there is no violent crime here.

And considering that our final episode before Christmas last year was the disappearance of the solder children, this story is practically a hallmark movie by comparison.

Today, we will be exploring the saga of the hat box baby, an abandoned newborn baby girl who was discovered inside a hat box in the middle of the Arizona desert on Christmas Eve.

The girl would be adopted out and go on to live a very good life as Sharon Elliott until she finally learned her origin story over 50 years later.

Of course, Sharon then wanted to find out who her real family was, but never uncovered any conclusive answers, and there is debate about whether Sharon's story was a true Christmas miracle or an elaborate setup.

This was featured as a lost love segment on unsolved mysteries exactly 28 years ago today, and while you don't normally never see me feature a lost love case on the trail in cold, this story is so intriguing that I'm willing to make an exception.

However, before we get started, just a quick reminder that the trail in cold is a weekly podcast, which is currently available for download on several platforms, including iTunes, Stitcher, and Google Play music.

So if you like this podcast, be sure to subscribe to it, and please leave us a rating or review to help spread the word.

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