Father of Baby Found Dead in East River Is Jailed in New York

NEW YORK — Five days after the body of his 7-month-old son was found floating in the East River, James Currie stood in a Manhattan courtroom, charged with concealment of a human corpse.

Currie flew to Thailand the day after the body of his son, Mason Saldana, was discovered — but he was quickly returned to the United States. On Friday, he was brought before Judge Suzanne Adams of Manhattan Criminal Court.

A prosecutor, Shawn McMahon, told the judge that there was “essentially irrefutable proof the defendant threw his infant son into the East River,” adding that Currie fled the country shortly afterward, “ending up literally on the other side of the world.”

Currie, handcuffed and wearing a white jump suit and blue sneakers, was ordered held without bail. After the proceeding, his lawyer, Norman Williams Jr., told reporters: “Everybody needs to keep an open mind and not convict this man until there is evidence that he did something wrong.”

The heartbreaking story began Sunday when two visitors from Oklahoma strolling along the East River in Manhattan spotted a tiny body floating in the water near the Brooklyn Bridge. A criminal complaint that was made public Friday offered new details of how the police tracked Currie’s movements and cited statements he is said to have made in response to worried text message from Mason’s mother.

The police said that Currie, 37, a cleaner for the New York City Transit Authority, went to the Bronx home of Mason’s mother to pick up the boy on Saturday afternoon. Surveillance video showed that Currie and the baby entered his apartment in Co-Op City soon afterward, the police said, adding that Mason was alive at that time.

But the police said they believed that Mason was dead when Currie left his apartment at 1:30 p.m. the next day. A detective wrote in the criminal complaint that Currie was wearing a backpack across his front like a chest harness baby carrier, adding that a blanket covered “a large bump approximately the size of an infant.”

“There does not appear to be any movement beneath the blanket,” the detective, Ohmeed Davodian, added.

Soon after the video showed Currie leaving his home with the backpack, Currie’s MetroCard was used to board a bus in the Bronx and then to enter a subway station at 23rd Street in Manhattan, the complaint said.

Mason’s body was found around 4 p.m., and MTA records showed that Currie’s MetroCard was used at 4:06 p.m. to enter the Chambers Street subway station, about a half-mile from the river. Surveillance video showed that when he entered the station, “he does not have a baby with him, he does not have an infant’s chest harness with him, and he does not have the blanket that was previously covering the bump on his chest,” the complaint said.

Mason’s mother told the police that she became worried after Currie did not drop him off at day care on Monday. She sent repeated texts to Currie, then called 911 and told the operator that she had seen news reports about a baby found in the river and feared that it was her son. The mother has not been identified by the authorities.

Currie landed in Bangkok shortly after 6 p.m. Wednesday, according to the complaint. Davodian wrote that Currie respond from Thailand to text messages from Mason’s mother, telling her that “the good news” was “we will never see each other again.” According to Davodian, Currie added that he was outside the United States and that Mason’s mother “will never see” her son again.