As authorities work to identify a young girl whose body was found on a Massachusetts beach last month, millions of people are immersed in the mystery on social media.
The girl, whom authorities believe was about 4 years old and refer to as "Baby Doe," was discovered on June 25 by a woman walking a dog on Deer Island in Boston Harbor, officials said. Her body had been stuffed into a trash bag and was in the early stages of decomposition.
An autopsy has been completed but a cause of death has not been determined, authorities said.
The Massachusetts State Police, with help from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, posted to Facebook a computer-generated image of what she may have looked like alive.
That image has been viewed close to 50 million times and has been shared more than 600,000 times, state police spokesman Dustin Fitch told NBC News on Thursday.
And many people have posted potential clues. Those leads are being forwarded to investigators with the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, Fitch said.
“The amount of views of this post is a record for us," Fitch told NBC News in an email. "It goes to show the power and reach of social media. This case (unfortunately) is pulling on the heart strings, which I am sure has played a role in having it shared."
An updated image was posted to the agency's site on Thursday to reflect new facts about the girl, including her pierced ears.
“Who she is and where she’s from remain a mystery to us,” Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said in a statement. “We urge anyone with any information on her identity to share it.”
