As Electric Forest Attendees Search for Answers, Law Enforcement Insists Deceased Newborn Case ‘Will Be Solved’

This article contains disturbing and sensitive material.

It was 7 a.m. on Sunday, June 28, as quietly majestic as Midwest summer mornings get.

The sun had been up for 50 minutes, rising through a blue sky and casting a golden glow over the many rows of tents at Electric Forest’s VIP camping area, called Good Life. The name felt apt as the leaves of the tall trees surrounding the area rustled in a way that made them appear to shimmer, heightening the dreamy afterglow formed by a long night of dancing and very little sleep.

The wind in the trees was the only sound as day spread over the festival and surrounding woods and farmlands of Rothbury, Michigan, which for most of the year has a population of less than 500. At one Good Life campsite, a few people continued the party, huddling on inflatable couches while the occasional sleepy-faced attendee walked by en route to the bathroom.

In other words, the scene at the electronic music festival was normal and idyllic — until it wasn’t. When a cleaning crew entered the Good Life porta-potties for a scheduled morning cleaning at around 7:50 a.m. ET, a member of this team discovered the body of a dead newborn. (Women’s porta-potties in the Good Life area are in trailers that each contain five bathroom stalls and two sinks. There are several such bathroom trailers in Good Life camping, and it’s not currently clear in which trailer the body was found.)

The placenta and umbilical cord were still attached to the baby, the sex and race of which has not been made public. Authorities would later announce that the infant had been viable and born alive. The woman who’d given birth to the baby had slipped away from the scene, and her identity remains unknown.

Suddenly, a widely beloved electronic music festival became a crime scene, with the devastating news compounded by another death the following day, when the body of Electric Forest 2026 attendee Jerard Jackson, 28, was found in a wooded area near the festival site in what authorities say was an apparent suicide.

On Sunday morning, as investigators from the Michigan State Police arrived and attendees started asking questions, “we just stated that it was an ongoing investigation,” says Lt. Pat Agema, the public information officer for the Michigan State Police. “We didn’t want to put out what it was at that time.”

And so Electric Forest 2026 — which for the prior three days had been a swirl of music and whimsy for many of its roughly 40,000 attendees — continued under a veneer of normalcy as investigators began unraveling arguably one of the most disturbing incidents to ever happen at a major American music festival. As if in response, that evening a thunderstorm pierced a weekend of perfect weather and forced attendees to temporarily evacuate the site. While gates eventually reopened, the vibe had shifted towards somberness for those who knew what had happened. Many grappled with how to keep having fun, and if fun was still appropriate.

“You could feel a dark cloud settle over the final day around noon, when news of what had happened really started making its way into local media,” says a longtime Electric Forest goer who spoke to Billboard on the condition of anonymity. “At the same time, a lot of people simply weren’t aware. Many attendees were disconnected enough that it took time for the information to spread across the festival grounds. For some, it didn’t fully register until Sunday night — or even Monday after they had already left.”

On Sunday evening, Lt. Agema laid out the facts on X. “The Michigan State Police continue to investigate the discovery of a deceased neonate found Sunday morning in the camping area at the Electric Forest festival,” he wrote. “Investigators are asking for the public’s assistance. If you were in the area and observed anything unusual, or if you have information that you believe may be relevant, we encourage you to come forward. We appreciate the public’s cooperation and ask that people avoid speculation on social media out of respect for the investigation and those affected.”

By this time, social media had already exploded with speculation as Electric Forest regulars and people just learning about the event as the story broke internationally wondered not only what happened, but how something so horrifying even could. Commenters wondered if the situation was due to a cryptic pregnancy (which happens when a woman doesn’t realize she’s pregnant until she starts giving birth), or if the baby had been stillborn, grasping for scenarios that might make it make more sense. Nearly a month after the incident, many details are still unknown, and no arrests have been made.

For the days leading up to and during the festival, the @ElectricForest Instagram account posted images of fans dancing in the forest, pride flags waving, fireworks lighting the sky, headliners like GRiZ and Sammy Virji going for it onstage. The account’s final post of the weekend was a screenshot of the tweet from the State Police with a caption stating, “Forest Family, it causes us so much pain to have to share this difficult news with you. Michigan State Police continues to investigate this tragic event if you can assist in any way. HQ is heartbroken and knows that our Forest Family is as well.”

Comments on this post were disabled, and nothing else has been posted to the account in the month since. Electric Forest organizers and staff — the festival is now co-presented by AEG and Insomniac Events, neither of which were able to comment for this story given that it’s an ongoing investigation but did direct Billboard to law enforcement — are by all accounts grief-stricken, a feeling shared by many attendees.

“This has been rough, really rough, for a lot of people,” says the longtime Electric Forest goer. “I think most people are simply trying to understand what happened. How did this happen? How could something like this have occurred in the first place? The loudest voices are often the ones at the extremes, but I believe the vast majority of people are just looking for answers.”

Lt. Agema assures that law enforcement is actively running down leads. “This is high priority,” he says. “We have multiple detectives from every state police post working on this, because the tips are coming in and being distributed to where [potential suspects] are living. I couldn’t even begin to guess how many detectives are currently working on this case.” (On July 10, police announced that a Muskegon woman had been questioned about the case but was then eliminated as a suspect.)

The FBI, brought into the case given its ability to investigate across state and international borders, has offered a $15,000 reward for information that, it says, leads “to the identification, arrest, and conviction of the individual or individuals involved in the death of the infant.”

While Lt. Agema can’t currently disclose further details given the active investigation, he says that “behind the scenes there’s always forward motion. I know there’s a lot of concern, and we’re not going to forget about this. It might take time. It might not be tomorrow, next week, or next year, but this will be solved.”

There’s a precedent for his confidence. In 2024, Michigan police announced that they’d made an arrest related to a dead newborn found in June of 1997 at a campground toilet an hour outside of Mackinaw City in the state’s Upper Peninsula. The woman who’d given birth to this baby was identified with investigative genetic genealogy, which compares DNA from crime scenes with DNA samples uploaded to the internet by people working on their family genealogy. The process can take weeks or years.

“I truly believe this investigation will be solved through forensics if it’s not solved through somebody coming forward and stating what they know,” says Lt. Agema. “Because I believe there is someone, or multiple people, who know what occurred.” He encourages anyone with information to contact the FBI tips line or submit information through 1-855-MICHTIP and says that “there’s a lot of information that’s coming in.”

As the investigation continues, some are asking what could have been done to prevent the incident, with the consensus being that the answer is effectively nothing, given that one cannot give a pregnancy test to every woman entering the site, nor would anyone think there’d ever be a reason to. Lt. Agema says the situation is a function of timing rather than a reflection of Electric Forest itself, saying that “there have been other incidents where babies have been located, but it happening within the festival made it a festival story. If you think about it, [the birth] could have happened before or after [Electric Forest].”

While others wonder how anyone could abandon a newborn anywhere, at any time, Agema notes that Michigan’s Safe Delivery law states that an unwanted child can be dropped off at a public service facility (like a fire station, police headquarters or hospital) within 72 hours after the birth. “You do not have to give any information,” Lt. Agema says. “You don’t have to give health history, or your name. It’s all confidential, and there are no consequences, but it does have to be given to somebody that’s on duty in uniform.”