Another Urban Legend Come to Life?
Dateline: 05/11/00
By David Emery
Reuters reported on May 10 that drug smugglers in the Gulf Arab region had abducted a small child, murdered her and stuffed her hollowed-out body with codeine in order to transport the drug into an Arab country. The horror story was attributed to Abdul Rahman Naser al-Fardan, identified as the head of the police drug squad in Sharjah, one of the United Arab Emirates.
The report said a woman carrying the body of the child was caught and arrested at an unnamed airport. According to Fardan, an airport official became suspicious "when he tried to play with the apparently sleeping child."
Sound familiar? It should. The story of the drug-stuffed baby has been circulating for more than 25 years as an urban legend.
It appears at first glance that the urban legend has come to life. At second glance, there's reason to doubt it.
Consider the fact that the news story doesn't report investigated facts, it reports what a police official allegedly said. Consider the paucity of detail. Consider how much it resembles the following news story published in the Washington Post in 1985:
MIAMI–A federal undercover agent talks about the case of the baby who did not move. An attendant on a flight from Colombia to Miami became suspicious and called U.S. Customs agents to have a look. They discovered that the baby had been dead for some time. Its body had been cut open, stuffed with cocaine and sewn shut.
The Post retracted that item five days later because it couldn't be substantiated. In a follow-up story, a customs official said he had heard the tale told as far back as 1973, but to his knowledge it had never been confirmed.
Consider, lastly, that folklorists and journalists have tracked this legend for many years and have likewise been unable to uncover factual evidence to support it. Miami crime reporter Edna Buchanan once wrote: "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." (From The Corpse Had a Familiar Face, Random House, 1987.)
More Details Surface – More Reasons to Doubt
The anecdotal origin of the Gulf version of the story was reaffirmed in a lengthier item appearing in the May 10 edition of the Guardian, a British newspaper. Like Reuters, the Guardian cited as its source the Gulf News, where it had been reported that Fardan (the narcotics official) mentioned the smuggling incident not in the context of an investigation, but in an anti-drug speech given to Zayed University students the day before.Note that this is the typical context in which the legend is repeated – dire warnings about the threat ruthless drug traffickers pose to society.
No corroborating evidence was given, yet the Guardian reported Fardan's statement as fact, as did Gulf News and Reuters. Did they unwittingly lend credence to a false rumor? Quite possibly. As Edna Buchanan noted 13 years ago, "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."
As more evidence comes to light (or not), we will hopefully find out soon whether an urban legend has indeed come true, or if the list of disgraced publications who have bitten on this tall tale has simply grown longer by three. 
Sources and further reading:
Drugs Smuggled in Baby's Corpse
Our report on Internet versions of this legendEdna Buchanan on the 'Dead Baby'
Excerpts from her 1987 bookGirl Killed to Act as Drug Mule in Gulf
Guardian news story, May 10, 2000
