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Second Autopsy Postpones Baby Bella Bond's Funeral

EVERETT (CBS) - The headstone says "Our Special Angel". David DiFilippo, who owns Woodlawn Memorials in Everett has been working on it since the 3-year-old once known as Baby Doe was finally identified.

"There should be some recording that the person lived," he said. "I just didn't want her to lie in an unmarked grave. I mean she was discarded like trash."

His donation now sits and waits, since relatives have been told the Medical Examiner is doing a second autopsy. While the girl's mother and boyfriend face charges in Bella's murder, relatives tell WBZ the case against the couple is changing.

Her burial plot has already been marked, with her name and picture quietly added to her great grandmother's stone in a Winthrop cemetery. But DiFilippo feels she deserves more.

"I wanted to make it more personalized like you know, she mattered. Rather than just seeing her name at the bottom. It was an afterthought on the monument," he said.

Bella Bond quilt
Quilt made for Bella Bond by Deborah Larson (WBZ-TV)

Advocates who spent the summer helping search for Bella's identity on social media, are now making sure she'll be enveloped in the love they wish she'd seen in life. They've had a quilt made from swatches of fabric sent from across the country.

"I received some from Florida, as far west as California, Georgia, Tennessee, New York, Vermont, Maine," said organizer Deborah Larson. "There's little poems and blessings on there for her that we want her buried with, so she's like a part of us."

Larson's group, which has a Facebook page called Justice for Bella Bond Amoroso, is organizing other ways to memorialize her. They're planning a playground, a statue on Deer Island where Bella's body turned up last June, and a program in her name to donate supplies to children in state custody.

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