A middle-aged woman was seen denying she had anything to do with the 1997 murder of a baby dumped by a statue – before suddenly slumping into her chair and confessing that she was indeed to blame for the terrible crime.

The remains of the child have been known as Baby Moses since the 1997 discovery under the Moses Statue in Albany’s Washington Park in upstate New York.

His death had remained unsolved for 28 years until local woman Keri Mazzuca was bought in for questioning based on newly discovered DNA evidence.

Authorities in the city have released the clip of her interrogation, captured last September, in which she suddenly confessed that the child belonged to her and claimed that he had died in a bathtub during childbirth.

In the clip Mazzuca can be seen inside a police interrogation room being questioned by two detectives. She is shown a picture of the remains and recoils at them.

After being informed during the questioning that the DNA testing on the child’s remains had been connected to her family, Mazzuca agreed to give her DNA for further analysis. 

Mazzuca initially told officers that neither she nor any of her relatives were pregnant at the time of Baby Moses’s death. 

Less than an hour later, however, she stunned investigators by admitting that she was the mother and responsible for what had happened. 

The detective had told her that they would be able figure out if she was the mother via her DNA, which prompted her admission. 

In the clip, she can be heard saying: ‘I did it’, the lead detective asks her: ‘You did it?’, to which she repeats her admission. 

When asked what happened, Mazzuca says: ‘I got pregnant. I had the baby. I gave birth in my bathtub, the baby died. I didn’t know how to get rid of it.’

She continues: ‘I put it in a towel, in my car. I carried it out like it was groceries.’

Mazzuca told officers that she had given the remains of the baby to a stranger in the park and had not been responsible for burning them. 

The detective tells her: ‘Keri that doesn’t make sense. You did not hand this baby to a random person. That didn’t happen.’

She then confesses to also setting the baby on fire, saying: ‘It was dead. It was dead.’

The detective pushes back on her story, saying an autopsy carried out discovered that the baby had been breathing telling her the boy didn’t die of natural causes.

Mazzuca can then be heard confessing that she suffocated the child by putting him in a bag, saying she couldn’t remember if she had smothered him. 

In February she pleaded guilty to a manslaughter charge and was sentenced last month to 25 years in prison, news10 reported. 

Prosecutors said that Mazzuca, who was 25 at the time, smothered the child before taking him to the park and setting it on fire.  

Prior to her sentence being handed down, Mazzuca addressed the court saying: ‘I did a horrible, unimaginable thing and I live with remorse and regret

‘I am a great mom. I’ve lived a law-abiding life, and I hope you use your discretion to go toward the lower end.’

FBI researchers had been able to identify one of the child’s relatives a few years ago after analyzing its DNA. 

The genetic evidence led investigators probing the death to Mazzuca’s doorstep. At the time of the death she had lived just a few blocks from the park.

DNA from trash outside her current address confirmed that a woman inside was Baby Moses’ biological mother, officers had said. 

The horrifying scene of her child’s final resting place was discovered by park workers in 1997: A partially charred blue pillowcase with burned matches scattered on top. 

When they nudged the bundle with a shovel, it revealed the lifeless body of a newborn baby boy. 

The shocking discovery sparked a manhunt that would last nearly three decades. As leads went cold, the city of Albany refused to let ‘Baby Moses’ be forgotten.

They even ‘adopted’ the infant, naming him Moses Washington after the park statue near where he was found.

He was laid to rest in a white casket and his grave was marked by a headstone topped with a marble lamb, the epitaph reads: ‘Citizen of Albany, child of God’.