An Anchorage woman has been charged with murder nearly seven months after her 4-month-old child died while in her care, Anchorage police said Monday.

A grand jury indicted Raena Miranda, 27, last week on charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide after a months-long investigation that began last April, when her baby boy was discovered dead, police Lt. Dave Parker said.

"Basically, it took them a long time to get to the point where they were ready to charge because they had a whole lot of medical testing to do to eliminate any other possibilities for the child's death," Parker said. "It was an extremely difficult investigation, and it involved a great many medical experts."

After responding to a call in the 300 block of Pauline Street in Muldoon on April 14, police learned of the death of 4-month-old Julian Miranda and later determined the child had died as the result of "severe abusive neglect," he said.

Police would not release further details, nor would they elaborate on what "severe abusive neglect" meant, citing concerns that doing so could taint the jury pool. Parker said such neglect could include things like failure to feed a child or not getting a child proper medical care.

"The feeding issue would be one of those," he said. "The child died of severe, abusive neglect. Abuse would be like a head injury or something like that -- that's not neglect. That's direct, physical abuse. ... It was due to neglect that the child had died, which is terrible because, as you understand, that kind of thing is basically reversible anywhere along the way."

According to court records, Miranda has no criminal history in Alaska.

She was arrested Thursday and booked at the Anchorage jail with bail set at $25,000 cash and a third-party custodian requirement.