Fun_People Archive
14 Dec
ULOTD - (Urban Legend Du Jour) - Edna Buchanan

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Sat, 14 Dec 96 19:11:39 -0800
To: Fun_People
Subject: ULOTD - (Urban Legend Du Jour) - Edna Buchanan

Forwarded-by: Fressola@aol.com
From: http://www.urbanlegends.com/drugs/dead_baby_cocaine_smuggling.html
Forwarded-by: stevet@eskimo.com (Steven Thornton)
From: _The Corpse Had A Familiar Face: Covering Miami, America's
Hottest Beat_ by Edna Buchanan (New York: Random House, 1987), p.157:

"The stories about drugs in Miami are also larger than life. So many are
true that even the myth of the dead baby has become accepted as modern
Miami-American folklore.

"Let's get this straight right here and now: There is no cocaine-stuffed
dead baby, at least at this writing.

"The dead baby resurfaces frequently, reported as fact in otherwise
responsible and prestigious -- and some not so responsible and prestigious
-- publications. It has appeared on the front page of _The Washington Post_,
in _Life_ magazine, and in the _National Enquirer_.  The story, with minor
variations, is that an alert customs official, or airlines employee on a
Colombia-Miami flight noticed that a baby in the arms of a woman passenger
did not look well. Closer scrutiny revealed that the baby was dead and its
body stuffed with high-grade cocaine in an attempt to smuggle the drug into
this country.

"The dead baby is reported at least once a year. Each time, I am one of the
many reporters assigned to check it out. It is fiction. It did not happen.
I have laid the dead baby to rest so often that I can now see its poor
little pasty face in my mind's eye."

Edna Buchanan is a crime reporter for the _Miami Herald_.

© 1996 Peter Langston