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please see the show notes for this
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28-year-old Dora Fronczak was elated when she gave birth to a
healthy baby boy on Sunday April 26 1964,
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in Chicago’s Michael Reese Hospital. Ten months
earlier, in the same ward of the same hospital,
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Dora had gone through labour for the first time.
That child, Dora’s first son, had been stillborn.
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But this time all had gone well. Dora and her
husband Chester named their baby boy Paul Joseph
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Fronczak. Paul weighed seven pounds, two ounces,
and he had an olive complexion and dark hair, just
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like his parents. At around 1:40PM on Monday April
27, Dora lay in her hospital bed, nursing Paul.
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Chester was at work and would
be joining them later that day. As Dora cradled her one-day-old son, a middle aged
nurse walked into the room. She was wearing the
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standard nurse’s uniform of the day - a white
smock dress with white shoes and stockings.
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A white hairnet covered her greying brown hair. In
a calm, authoritative voice, the nurse told Dora:
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“One of the paediatricians wants to
examine your son. I need to take him now.” Dora found it slightly odd that a doctor would
interrupt her baby’s feeding time to perform an
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examination, but assumed they had their reasons.
She handed Paul over to the nurse. He was swaddled
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in a white cotton blanket, and the nurse
held him tightly to her as she left the room.
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Ten minutes later at 1:50PM, a nurse named
Martha Vinson headed to room 4-1-8 to collect
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Paul Fronczak from his mother. Paul had been
taken to Dora for feeding 40 minutes earlier,
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and would be ready to go back to the nursery
by now. When Martha entered the twin room
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that Dora shared with another new mother, she
was surprised to see Paul was already gone.
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“Where’s your baby? I need to take
him back to the nursery,” Martha said. Dora explained that another
nurse had already taken him.
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Martha immediately knew that something
was wrong. She was the nurse assigned to the hospital’s newborn nursery, and
no one else had any cause to take Paul.
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Not wanting to alarm Dora,
however, Martha said nothing. She calmly left the room, then rushed to
notify the hospital’s chief of security.
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Every other staff member in the maternity ward
was asked if they knew who the mystery nurse was.
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A young nurse’s aide said she had seen
the woman hurrying down the corridor with
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Paul ten minutes earlier. Another nurse had
seen her go into a stairwell with the baby.
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It was clear that the woman
had not really been a nurse. Nobody at the hospital knew her identity, and
although she had on the typical nurse’s uniform,
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she wasn’t wearing the white cap that all the
other nurses at Michael Reese Hospital wore.
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Over the next hour, the hospital
was searched from top to bottom. But it appeared that the woman
and Paul Fronczak were long gone.
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This was confirmed when a laboratory assistant
from the hospital’s pathology unit said that he
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had seen the woman exit the building with Paul
in her arms, then walk away down 29th Street.
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At 2:45PM, just over one hour
after the woman had taken Paul, hospital staff called the Chicago Police
Department to report a kidnapping.
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The case immediately went to the top of the
department’s list. Police immediately issued
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an all points bulletin and ordered a door knock
of every property in the ten blocks surrounding
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the hospital. Two lieutenants, six sergeants,
several patrol officers and four detectives
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from the homicide division were all assigned
to the case, along with nine FBI agents.
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The task of notifying Paul’s parents also fell
to law enforcement. Chester Fronczak worked as
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a machinist at a factory, and that morning he
had gone into work as a proud new father. He had
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taken a box of cigars to hand out to colleagues
in celebration of Paul’s birth. At around 3PM,
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the police called Chester’s workplace and told
him over the phone: “Your son is missing.”
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Chester rushed to his wife’s side. The desperate
search for Paul Fronczak had been kept a secret
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from Dora, as hospital staff hadn’t wanted to
alarm her. Chester was the one who had to break
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the news to her. He knelt by her bed and held
her hand as he told her their son had been taken.
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At the same time, technicians
from Chicago PD’s crime lab were dispatched to Dora’s hospital room so it
could be fingerprinted and photographed.
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Investigators questioned Dora, who was distraught. She told them that she hadn’t gotten a good
look at the kidnapper. But she revealed that
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the woman’s visit to her room that afternoon
hadn’t been the first time Dora had seen her.
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Hours earlier at about 9:30AM, Dora had been
giving Paul his morning feed when the woman in
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the nurse’s uniform walked in. She had walked
over to Dora’s bed, and lifted the blue cotton
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blanket that was wrapped around Paul, exposing his
face. She had stared at Paul for a long moment.
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Then she covered him with the blanket again,
and left the room. She never uttered a word.
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Dora’s roommate Joyce remembered that
earlier incident as well, and like Dora, she’d thought the woman was a nurse. She
told investigators that nothing about
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it had seemed strange at the time, except
for the fact that the woman hadn’t spoken.
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Joyce had thought the woman had
a rather cold demeanour, stating: “I didn’t get the impression that she
was a motherly, kindly sort of woman.”
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Multiple other witnesses were able to
provide a detailed description of the woman.
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She was reported as being white, between 35 and
45 years old, about five foot five inches tall,
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and approximately 145 pounds. Her brown hair
was greying and she had a ruddy complexion
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with red cheeks. Other women staying in the
maternity ward had also encountered her.
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Earlier that same morning, she had
entered the room next door to Dora’s, where two expectant mothers were staying. When
they asked the kidnapper what she wanted, she
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told them she was from the hospital’s eye, ear,
nose and throat department. Then she quickly left.
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Another woman who was staying in Room 4-2-5
had also received a visit from the kidnapper.
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The kidnapper had quickly inspected the woman’s
newborn baby, as she had done with Paul Fronczak.
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Not only had the kidnapper spent at least four
hours that day wandering around the maternity
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ward, she had been seen there the day before as
well. One of the hospital’s cleaners said that a
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woman matching her description had approached and
offered to help fold linens. This had struck the
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cleaner as a bit strange. Nurses didn’t usually
help out with the laundry. But she hadn’t thought
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enough of the incident to say anything until
she heard about Paul Fronczak’s kidnapping.
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None of the hospital staff knew or recognised
the kidnapper. But during her time there,
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she’d gained knowledge about the building’s layout
and the schedules of the maternity ward nurses.
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It was evident to investigators that the
kidnapper had been trawling the maternity
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ward in search of an infant to steal. Perhaps
she’d thought that by helping to fold linen,
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she could gain access to the nursery, where all
the babies were kept when not with their mothers.
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When this plan had failed, she’d decided to
take a baby from a hospital room instead.
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They had no idea why she had ultimately
settled on Dora and Chester Fronczak’s son.
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The Chicago Police Department
contacted local taxi companies and asked them to broadcast an alert
to their drivers about the kidnapping.
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When 34-year-old cab driver Lee Kelsey heard
the message, he immediately phoned the police.
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Lee had been parked outside Michael Reese Hospital
on the afternoon of Monday April 27, hoping for a
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customer. The cab stand where he was waiting
had a telephone where bookings came through.
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It rang, and Lee answered it. A woman on the other
end told him she was inside the hospital’s Butler
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Building and needed a cab shortly. Confused,
Lee told her there was no Butler Building.
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The woman clarified by saying she was just
south of the main building and on her way down.
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She would meet him outside when she got there
and told him to, quote: “Look for a nurse.”
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Lee drove around the corner to 29th
street, and waited. Three minutes later, a woman in a nurse’s uniform appeared. She
was carrying a baby swaddled in a blanket.
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She perfectly matched the description of the
kidnapper that would be issued later that day.
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The kidnapper asked Lee to take her south to 35th
street and Union Avenue. He dropped her off there,
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then continued on his way. Lee didn’t
see where the woman had gone after that. He was sure he had picked
up the woman once before.
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On that occasion, he’d collected her at 35th and
Wallace streets, then dropped her at a restaurant.
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He had returned her to the
35th and Wallace area later on. Lee told the police he didn’t have an address for
her, but it seemed that was her neighbourhood.
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Chicago PD dispatched several officers to search
the 35th Street vicinity, but the trail went cold.
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Soon, the entirety of Chicago was
being searched for baby Paul Fronczak. It was the largest manhunt the city had ever seen.
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By the end of the first day, roughly 200 police
officers and FBI special agents had covered
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Chicago’s South Side, searching 600 homes
and questioning more than a thousand people.
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In the days that followed, over 2,600
hospital employees were interviewed and hundreds of registered nurses had
their files examined by investigators.
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Detectives were working off the assumption
that the kidnapper might have been a nurse
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who had lost a child or been unable to have
one. Motivated by the desire to have a baby,
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she had decided to steal a newborn. But
nothing resulted from this line of inquiry.
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Newspapers published police sketches of the
kidnapper, based on witness descriptions.
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The one and only photograph that existed of Paul
Fronczak was also shared. It had been snapped
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shortly after his birth, and showed Paul lying on
a white sheet with his head turned to one side.
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He was dressed in a nappy and a small white
shirt, with an ID bracelet on one wrist.
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A handwritten card on his stomach
detailed his name and weight. It turned out that Paul also had an allergy
that meant he couldn’t have cow’s milk,
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so newspapers published detailed recipes
for a safe formula he could be fed. Hundreds of tips flooded into the Chicago Police
Department and a makeshift FBI office set up at
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Michael Reese Hospital. Some of these were
prank calls. But others seemed promising.
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It was reported that three months earlier, a
woman wearing a nurse’s uniform had entered
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another Chicago hospital. She had started
picking up babies from their nursery cribs,
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and remarked that the facilities there were much
cleaner than the ones at Michael Reese Hospital.
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Soon staffers realised the woman didn’t work
there, and she was removed from the premises.
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Investigators tried to track this woman
down, but she was never identified. One caller said they knew a woman who had
formerly been a nurse in several maternity wards.
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When her ex-husband was given custody of their
children, she tried to burn down his house.
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Another call came in from someone who’d overheard
their taxi driver take credit for the crime.
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A telephone operator listening
in on a call reported hearing something similar from someone else.
But none of these leads went anywhere.
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People reported women they knew who
resembled the sketch of the kidnapper. Other women were reported after
strangers saw them on public transport,
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seemingly trying to conceal infants
they were carrying from view. However, every woman who was reported had an alibi for the
time of the kidnapping. And the mothers seemingly
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hiding their children from sight were actually
protecting them from Chicago’s cold weather.
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Every lead seemed to fizzle out, and
soon investigators stopped sharing as much information with the media,
with an FBI spokesperson explaining:
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“We defeat our own purpose if we let the
kidnapper know what we’re doing to find her.”
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Meanwhile, Dora and Chester Fronczak
were trying their best to cope. Dora remained in hospital, but was moved from
a shared suite to a single room for privacy.
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She kept baby Paul’s photograph in a wooden frame
by her bed. Doctors monitored Dora constantly and
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gave her sedatives at night to help her sleep.
Her room was guarded by police at all times,
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so that journalists and members
of the public could be kept away. The only people permitted to
see Dora were her husband,
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family members, investigators and the
hospital’s Roman Catholic chaplain. As a staunch Catholic, Dora found hope in the
news that masses and convents all over the
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country were praying for the safe return of
her son. She received cards and letters from
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far flung destinations like Russia and Brazil,
from strangers who sympathised with her tragedy.
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But not everyone was kind. At one point, a doctor
from the hospital told Dora she should have known
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that the kidnapper wasn’t a real nurse because
she hadn’t been wearing a cap. He scolded her
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for handing over her baby. His words left
Dora with feelings of guilt and bitterness.
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She had thought she was safe in a hospital and
was angered by his suggestion that it was her
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responsibility to recognise a potential kidnapper.
Dora drew strength from her husband Chester,
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who remained supportive and loving, never
once blaming her for what had happened.
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Two days after Paul was kidnapped, his father
Chester appeared at a press conference at the
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urging of police. He found it difficult to speak and fought back tears as he was asked if
he had anything to say to the kidnapper.
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Quote: “I hope she takes care of the
baby. I plead with her to return him.” The following day, Dora also managed to
issue a public plea via the media. She
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appeared in a wheelchair in the hospital’s
lobby, her eyes red from crying, and stated:
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“All I can say is that this woman must have been
desperate for a baby to do such a horrible thing…
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Take good care of him and see
that he gets enough to eat. He is everything we built our hopes on for
the future… Please, return the baby to us.”
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On Tuesday May 5, just over a week after
her son’s kidnapping, Dora Fronczak was
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discharged from the hospital. She and Chester
were driven home in an unmarked police car.
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The couple lived in an attic apartment of
Chester’s parents’ home. For weeks, Dora
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refused to leave the apartment except to attend
mass once a day. She didn’t want to socialise
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with friends or participate in activities
that had interested her prior to having Paul.
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She wanted to be home when the phone finally
rang with the news that Paul had been found.
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Two FBI agents set up recording
equipment in the den of the house, so they could tape every call that came through.
For 24 hours a day, two agents remained in the
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Fronczak residence and took responsibility for
monitoring the family’s phone at all times.
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They waited for someone to call with a ransom
demand, or some other information relating to
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the kidnapping. But there was nothing. After two
weeks, one of the agents was taken off the job.
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The other remained for another
week, just in case anything came in. But nothing did and after three weeks,
the FBI ended the detail altogether.
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As time wore on, investigators occasionally
received tip offs from the public. A woman who owned a restaurant a couple of
hours west of Chicago noticed a couple come
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in one morning carrying a baby. They asked her
if they could wash the baby and have some milk.
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The restaurant owner said sure,
then asked how old the infant was. “Three weeks, I think,” answered the woman.
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The restaurant owner quickly called the police to
report the strange incident, but by the time they
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arrived at the scene, the couple had driven
away with the infant in a Chevrolet. Although
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surveillance was set up around the restaurant’s
vicinity, the couple were never seen again.
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An abandoned baby found in Georgia seemed like the breakthrough investigators were
waiting for, but the child wasn’t Paul.
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One day, Dora Fronczak received a call demanding
10,000 dollars in exchange for her baby.
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She was to place the cash in a bag and leave it
in the lobby of a particular Chicago building.
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Dora notified the police, who arranged a sting
operation with a female officer disguised as Dora.
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The officer dropped off a bag filled with
newspaper clippings at the building. A young
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woman soon came to collect it. There was no sign
of Paul. Police arrested the woman and quickly
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discovered that she wasn’t the kidnapper. She’d
just conceived of the ruse as an extortion plot.
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Weeks and months continued to pass. Paul
Fronczak’s first birthday came and went
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in April of 1965. By this point, the tip
offs and leads had almost stopped entirely.
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FBI agents working the investigation
were reassigned and detectives moved on to focus on new cases. The kidnapping of
Paul Fronvzak had well and truly gone cold.
00:22:51
Friday July 2 1965 was a warm but slightly
cloudy day in the city of Newark, New Jersey.
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The downtown strip of Broad Street was bustling,
as shoppers moved between the stores that dotted
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the popular destination. High end department
stores were what Broad Street was known for,
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leading to the area being dubbed “Ladies Mile”. One such store was McCrory’s, which sat in a four-storey building on
the corner of Broad and Cedar Streets.
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On the second floor was an expensive restaurant
that was almost as popular as the store itself.
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Buses and trains stopped nearby, making the
area one of New Jersey’s busiest thoroughfares.
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At about 3PM on that Friday, someone pushed
a baby pram up to the entrance of McCrory’s.
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Sitting inside the pram was a little boy
who looked to be just over a year or so old.
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He was wearing a blue suit with a matching blue
cap. The person pushing the boy’s pram parked it
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near the front door of the department store, then
turned and walked away, leaving the boy alone.
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Shoppers and pedestrians continued to pass
by the pram with the little boy inside,
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but didn’t seem concerned by seeing a toddler left
alone. It was two hours before somebody called the
00:24:18
police to report the abandoned child. Whoever
placed the call refused to give their name.
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Sometime after 5PM, officers arrived at the
scene and found the pram with the boy inside
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as described. The child had a runny nose and a
cold. He also had the remnants of a black eye.
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The boy was taken to Newark
Hospital for an assessment, and a detective from the city’s police
department was assigned to the case.
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The boy’s age was estimated to be around 14 months
old. He was 30 inches tall and weighed 20 pounds.
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Aside from the cold and the fading bruise
by his left eye, he was in good health.
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Detective Joseph Farrell was tasked with finding
the boy’s identity. As there were no surveillance
00:25:15
cameras outside McCrory’s department store,
the detective had no footage of the moment the
00:25:20
toddler was abandoned. Nor had any witnesses
come forward to report seeing it happen.
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He knew the rough time frame from when
people had started noticing the boy, but there was zero information
about who had left him there.
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Detective Farrell believed the child had most
likely been abandoned by someone who had wanted
00:25:42
him to be discovered and well cared for. He
hadn’t been taken to a remote area and left
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in a poor condition. Instead the perpetrator
had dressed him nicely and deliberately taken
00:25:55
him to a busy intersection frequented by
wealthy shoppers. Presumably they felt
00:26:01
unable to care for him themselves, so they
had tried to ensure his safety another way.
00:26:09
Detective Farrell ran a series of ads about the
abandoned toddler in New Jersey and New York
00:26:14
newspapers. As well as containing details about
his discovery, they asked anyone with information
00:26:21
about the case to contact police. The ads ran
for a few days, but only one call came through.
00:26:30
It turned out to be unrelated
to the boy who’d been found. Detective Farrell was having no luck
figuring out where the toddler had come from.
00:26:40
He suspected that whoever had abandoned
him wasn’t from Newark at all. Then Detective Farrell remembered the case of Paul
00:26:50
Fronczak, who had been kidnapped from
a Chicago hospital 15 months earlier. The case had made national and international
headlines, so even though the detective
00:27:01
resided almost 800 miles away in a different
part of the country, he remembered it well.
00:27:08
Detective Farrell found a photo of baby Paul
Fronczak, and compared it to one taken of
00:27:14
the abandoned toddler. He also examined photos
of Paul’s parents, Dora and Chester Fronczak.
00:27:22
The detective could see a resemblance. The toddler also looked to be the same age
that Paul would be by now. Detective Farrell
00:27:33
sent a letter to Chicago’s chief of detectives,
officially requesting the Paul Fronczak case file.
00:27:46
Investigators in Chicago were excited
to receive the detective’s letter. In the 15 months since Paul Fronczak had vanished,
they had submitted around 10,000 children to
00:27:57
medical tests in an attempt to see if they could
be baby Paul. All of them had been excluded.
00:28:06
Because DNA wasn’t accessible at the time,
investigators had no way of definitively
00:28:12
comparing Paul Fronczak’s genetics to any other
child. But they could test their blood to see
00:28:18
if that provided any clues. There were between
15 and 20 tests available that gave information
00:28:25
about blood group factors, including blood
type and whether an individual had a presence
00:28:31
or absence of protein on their red blood
cells. By collecting all of these details,
00:28:37
experts could make an educated guess as to whether
one individual could be related to another.
00:28:45
Comparing hand and footprints was another method
of identification, but Paul had been kidnapped
00:28:51
before the hospital had taken his prints.
However, they did have a photo of newborn
00:28:57
Paul that provided a clear view of his left ear.
It was believed that by examining the ridges,
00:29:04
slope and shape of someone’s ear, you
could confirm their true identity. After being found outside the department
store, the abandoned toddler had been
00:29:16
transferred to a private adoption home owned
by a middle aged couple and their daughter.
00:29:22
The couple had nicknamed him Scott. FBI agents
arranged for Scott to have his blood taken and
00:29:30
made a mould of his left ear. Then they waited
for experts to analyse this information.
00:29:37
By March 1966, eight months after Scott was
found, the FBI had reached a conclusion.
00:29:46
Scott was the only child out of 10,000
tested who could possibly be Paul Fronczak.
00:29:53
Adding further weight to this finding was
a letter from an official at the New Jersey
00:29:58
Bureau of Children’s Services, which expressed
their absolute certainty that Scott was Paul.
00:30:08
Dora and Chester Fronczak had tried their
best to move forward in the two years after
00:30:13
their baby was kidnapped. Initially, Dora
had kept a close eye on the time passing,
00:30:19
hoping that the perpetrator would make contact
on a meaningful date. Mother’s Day was two weeks
00:30:26
after Paul’s kidnapping. Then a week after that
was her and Chester’s wedding anniversary. But
00:30:33
these dates came and went with no news of Paul.
Eventually, Dora lost track of time altogether.
00:30:43
In March 1966, one month
before Paul’s second birthday, Dora and Chester filed a lawsuit
against Michael Reese Hospital.
00:30:54
They were accusing the hospital of negligence in
allowing an unauthorised person in the maternity
00:30:59
award. The couple were seeking one million dollars
for “grief, pain, mental anguish, and anxiety”.
00:31:09
Just three weeks after the suit was filed,
the Fronczaks received a letter from the FBI.
00:31:16
It informed them that an unknown male
child had been found in Newark, New Jersey.
00:31:22
Blood testing had indicated it was
possible he was their kidnapped son. The FBI asked the Fronczaks to travel to New
Jersey to identify the child for themselves.
00:31:36
The Fronczaks made the 800 mile
road trip east to New Jersey. Arrangements had been made for them to meet Scott
at the office of the state’s Adoption Bureau.
00:31:47
The couple were ushered into an empty room, and
waited with a caseworker. Then the door opened,
00:31:54
and another case worker walked in with Scott,
who was dressed in a white jumper suit with
00:31:59
matching socks and shoes. Almost immediately,
Dora cried out: “My god! That is my baby!”
00:32:12
Although the Fronczaks recognised Paul as
their son, they still had to legally adopt him,
00:32:17
as there was no way to prove he was biologically
theirs. They had already been pre-approved
00:32:24
and the initial process only took a few
days. Then the reunited family made the
00:32:30
journey back home to Chicago, where a large
crowd of journalists were waiting for them.
00:32:36
Chester and Dora were tight-lipped and gave
little away as they carried Paul into their house.
00:32:43
The next day, they had Paul baptised at
their Catholic Church and the trio began
00:32:48
settling into life together. The fact
that Paul had been returned to them after more than two years seemed
to the Fronczaks like a miracle.
00:32:58
By the end of the year, the family of three was
joined by one more. After 15 months without Paul,
00:33:07
Dora and Chester had made the difficult
decision to try for another baby. When they received word that Paul had been found
in New Jersey, Dora had just become pregnant.
00:33:20
In December 1966, Dora gave birth to another
healthy baby boy, who was named David.
00:33:27
The Fronczaks were finally able
to move forward as a family. Eight years later in December 1974, the Fronczak
family were preparing to celebrate Christmas.
00:33:43
One day, when Chester was at work and Dora
was busy with something, the now-10-year-old
00:33:49
Paul Fronczak decided to snoop around the
family’s house, looking for Christmas presents.
00:33:55
Knowing his parents would hide any gifts
they bought for him and his brother, Paul thought the basement’s crawl
space would be a good spot to check.
00:34:04
He crept downstairs and moved an old sofa that
sat in front of the door to the crawl space.
00:34:10
Then he opened the three by four
foot wooden door and squeezed inside. The crawl space was full of old clothes,
books, and holiday decorations. Exploring
00:34:24
the area on his hands and knees, Paul looked
for anything that looked like a possible gift.
00:34:31
In one corner behind some framed paintings were
several shoeboxes and a hat box. Paul opened them.
00:34:40
All four boxes were filled with old newspaper
clippings and letters. Headlines for the articles
00:34:47
described the search for a stolen baby. One
article featured a photograph of Paul’s parents.
00:34:55
As Paul started to read the articles, he
realised that they were all about him.
00:35:02
He had never been told of his kidnapping,
so the news was shocking and distressing.
00:35:09
Other articles detailed how he had
been found more than a year later, and eventually reunited with his parents.
The letters were mostly from strangers,
00:35:19
sympathising with the family
after Paul’s kidnapping. Later that day, Paul took a handful of the news
clippings and showed them to his mother, asking
00:35:29
if they were really about him. Dora told Paul
off for snooping, before admitting: “Yes, those
00:35:38
are about you. You were kidnapped, we found you,
we love you and that is all there is to know.”
00:35:51
Paul tried to forget the clippings. It was
clear that his parents found the kidnapping
00:35:56
too painful to discuss. Over the years, Paul
grew up, relocated to the city of Las Vegas,
00:36:04
pursued different careers,
and married, then divorced. When he was in his 40s, he began a relationship
with a woman named Michelle. The two got engaged,
00:36:17
and Michelle became pregnant with a baby girl.
Paul Fronczak was excited to become a father.
00:36:26
During one of Michelle’s regular check ups,
her obstetrician asked Paul about his family’s
00:36:31
medical history. The question caused Paul to
confront some suspicions he’d long since buried.
00:36:40
Ever since Paul was a small child,
he’d felt like he didn’t quite belong. After he’d learnt of his kidnapping
more than 30 years earlier, Paul
00:36:48
began to doubt whether he was
related to the Fronczaks at all. He had always felt different to his parents
and brother. He looked very different to them.
00:36:59
Paul had sandy hair and a face with an
angular bone structure with a strong jaw.
00:37:05
His father and brother David shared the same
roundish face with slightly droopy eyes.
00:37:11
David also had the same dark
hair as Chester and Dora. Paul felt isolated in terms of his likes and
interests as well. He was obsessed with music,
00:37:24
which was a passion no one else in his family
shared. Paul was free spirited and slightly
00:37:30
rebellious, where David was more serious and
conservative, like their strict Catholic parents.
00:37:38
Discovering the newspaper clippings in
the crawl space had finally provided some kind of explanation for Paul’s feeling of
disconnection. But when his mother had insisted
00:37:49
that he was their son, Paul knew it would be
futile to question the matter further. Plus,
00:37:56
it didn’t seem like there was any way to know for
sure whether he was really Paul Fronczak or not.
00:38:04
Over the decades that followed, awareness around
DNA and genetics began to spread and DNA testing
00:38:12
became increasingly accessible and affordable.
All of a sudden, it seemed that Paul had an easy
00:38:19
way to find out the truth of his identity. And
now that he was preparing to become a father,
00:38:25
he felt he had an obligation to discover the
truth. Not just for himself, but for his baby.
00:38:33
In 2012, shortly after the birth of Paul’s
daughter, his parents came to visit.
00:38:40
Paul asked if they would be willing
to give him a sample of their DNA, so they could find out once and for all if
he really was Paul Fronczak. Although they
00:38:51
hadn’t discussed Paul’s kidnapping with him in
more than 30 years, Dora and Chester agreed.
00:38:59
Paul pulled out some paternity test
kits he’d purchased from a pharmacy. Dora and Chester both swabbed their mouths
and Paul organised the test kits for analysis.
00:39:12
Not long after leaving Las Vegas, Dora called Paul
to say they had changed their minds, telling him:
00:39:19
“We don’t want the test. We don’t want to know.” But after debating the matter privately for a
couple of weeks, Paul posted the kits to the
00:39:31
testing company’s lab. A couple of weeks later,
he received a call from a company representative.
00:39:39
“We have the test results,”
the representative said. “There is no remote possibility that you
are the son of Dora and Chester Fronczak.”
00:39:56
In 1966, Dora Fronczak had immediately recognised
Paul as her missing son upon meeting him.
00:40:03
But others had always had doubts. Staffers from New Jersey’s Bureau of Children’s
Services had compared Paul’s appearance to
00:40:14
photographs of the Fronczaks. At least one
believed that Paul resembled Dora from the front,
00:40:20
and had the same profile as Chester. This
led to the agency informing the FBI that
00:40:26
they were certain Paul was the missing
child. However, others noticed that Paul
00:40:33
actually bore little similarity to the couple
or the picture of newborn Paul. His hair was
00:40:40
sandy-coloured instead of dark. His face had a
rectangular shape, while theirs were rounder.
00:40:48
The blood tests hadn’t excluded Paul as being
related to the Fronczaks, but nothing about
00:40:54
them had confirmed it either. Investigators had
decided to have the Fronczaks meet the child,
00:41:00
just in case. In private, they admitted that
the child wasn’t the real Paul Fronczak.
00:41:10
A lieutenant from the Chicago Police
Department who’d worked on the original kidnapping case told his family he was
certain the Fronczaks had the wrong child.
00:41:20
The special agent in charge of the FBI’s Chicago
bureau agreed with him. But they felt sorry for
00:41:28
what the Fronczaks had gone through, and knew
they would provide the boy with a good home.
00:41:36
Although Dora Fronczak had seemingly recognised
Paul right away, she would admit decades
00:41:42
later that she’d always had doubts. But she
desperately wanted Paul to be her missing son.
00:41:51
Regardless of whether the abandoned
boy was related to her or not, it was clear that he needed parents. Dora
felt that she and Chester could save him.
00:42:03
She also worried that if they didn’t claim him as
theirs, they might be judged for rejecting him.
00:42:13
After a DNA test definitively proved that
Paul Fronczak wasn’t Dora and Chester’s son,
00:42:19
he was left with several mysteries. Who was he, and how had he come to be
abandoned? And where was the real Paul Fronczak?
00:42:30
Paul decided to go public with his
story, believing it was the best chance he had of answering these questions.
He reached out to journalist George Knapp,
00:42:40
an award-winning television
journalist based in Las Vegas. George agreed to cover the story and in April
2013, his report aired on the local news.
00:42:52
Soon a station in Chicago picked it up,
and within days it had gone national. Paul Fronczak was inundated with interview
requests and messages from viewers all over the
00:43:04
country. One message was from an FBI special agent
who said the FBI would reopen the case. Another
00:43:12
was from renowned genetic genealogist CeCe Moore,
who offered to help Paul trace his true identity.
00:43:22
Working with a team of three other researchers,
CeCe Moore began trying to trace Paul’s heritage
00:43:28
by uploading his DNA to several online
databases. Such databases were typically
00:43:35
used by people interested in tracking their family
trees and finding out more about their ancestry.
00:43:42
CeCe and her team were able to slowly chip away
at the project by identifying Paul’s genetic
00:43:48
relatives who had uploaded their DNA online.
Initially, they only found distant cousins.
00:43:56
They worked on the project for more than a year.
Then, one afternoon, CeCe contacted Paul and asked
00:44:04
him: “What do you think of the name Jack?”
Paul said he liked it. Then CeCe told him:
00:44:14
“Well, that is your name… There’s something else.
You have a twin sister. And her name is Jill.”
00:44:34
Located in South Jersey on Absecon Island,
Atlantic City is New Jersey’s most famous resort
00:44:40
town. Best known for its casinos, beaches, and
iconic boardwalk, the city also has an infamous
00:44:48
reputation thanks to its history of organised
crime. In the early 1960s, married couple
00:44:55
Gilbert and Marie Rosenthal lived in Atlantic City
with their two young daughters: Linda and Karen.
00:45:03
On Sunday October 27 1963, the couple had two
more children. Marie Rosenthal gave birth to a
00:45:12
set of twins, a boy and a girl they named Jack
and Jill. A brief snippet about the births ran
00:45:20
in a local newspaper, as October 27 was also
the birthday of the Rosenthals’ eldest child.
00:45:28
The twins had been born at a
difficult time for the Rosenthals. Gilbert had served in the Korean War about
10 years earlier and suffered a bad injury.
00:45:38
He had returned to the United States with severe
back pain and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.
00:45:45
Marie struggled with raising so many
young children, and turned to alcohol as a coping mechanism. Over time, she
neglected to pay the household bills.
00:45:57
By November 1964, Marie was eight months pregnant
with the couple’s fifth child, Fred. At around the
00:46:06
same time, they lost their home due to missed
mortgage repayments. The family had to move in
00:46:12
with Gilbert’s mother, before later finding a home
in a public housing development. This series of
00:46:19
events led to Gilbert walking out on his family
for six months, returning by the summer of 1965.
00:46:28
Barbara Rosenthal was Marie’s sister-in-law, as
she was married to Gilbert’s brother. Once a year,
00:46:36
she and her husband Leonard would travel to visit
Gilbert and Marie. During some of these visits,
00:46:42
Barbara noticed that Jack and Jill were covered
with small marks that looked like cigarette burns.
00:46:50
Worried that the infants might be victims of
abuse, Barbara spoke to her doctor about it.
00:46:56
He told her to mind her own business. Quote: “You
don’t live with them, keep your nose out of it.”
00:47:06
Barbara’s daughter Melanie was five or six
years old at the time. On the rare occasions
00:47:12
that she met her young cousins, she noticed
that they were always screaming. Their mother
00:47:18
Marie also complained about this, telling her
relatives that the infants cried constantly.
00:47:25
When Melanie spoke to her parents about the twins, they told her that the Rosenthals believed
they were intellectually disabled.
00:47:35
On one visit to the Rosenthals’ home,
Melanie entered to hear the twins wailing.
00:47:42
Unable to see them, she went looking for them
around the house. At the back was a bedroom,
00:47:48
with a closed door. Melanie pushed the door open.
Inside it was dark. Melanie could see a wooden,
00:47:58
crate-like structure that looked like a cage.
Both twins were restrained inside, bawling.
00:48:09
Susan Wohlert was 14-years-old in the
late summer of 1965. She worked regularly
00:48:16
as a babysitter in an Atlantic City public
housing development known as Pitney Village.
00:48:23
One day, an elegant, well-dressed woman
approached her. Susan recognised the woman
00:48:29
as Marie Rosenthal, who lived in a house nearby
with her husband and two daughters. By this time,
00:48:37
the family had left the house they’d lost due
to missed mortgage payments and moved into one
00:48:43
of Pitney Village’s public housing properties.
Susan had seen how Marie doted on her girls.
00:48:51
Marie asked Susan if she could watch her
children that night, as she and her husband
00:48:56
were going out for a special occasion and
wouldn’t be home until the next morning.
00:49:02
Susan agreed and headed to the family’s
two-storey brick row house that evening. Inside,
00:49:09
the home was small but clean and tidy. Marie and
Gilbert Rosenthal were dressed up in their finest
00:49:17
clothes, while four and three-year-olds
Linda and Karen were also well dressed.
00:49:24
Marie gave Susan some details about her daughters’
care, before adding in an offhand way: “Oh,
00:49:32
and the twins are upstairs but you don’t have to
bother with them. Just leave them alone upstairs.”
00:49:40
The couple left, and Susan was left shocked.
She’d had no idea there were more children.
00:49:48
Not feeling capable of caring
for them all on her own, she called her sister and asked
her to come over and help.
00:49:56
While Susan’s sister minded the two older girls,
Susan went upstairs to check on the twins.
00:50:03
The second storey was completely silent. After looking around the hallway at the different
rooms, Susan noticed two closed doors to the left.
00:50:15
Opening the first one, she saw a dark room, dimly
lit by a window that allowed in some of the dusk
00:50:22
light. Next to the window was a crib, with
two toddlers inside. The girl, Jill Rosenthal,
00:50:31
stood and watched Susan silently. Her brother Jack
cowered in a corner of the crib and whimpered.
00:50:39
Both were wearing pyjamas and
their nappies were soiled. Moving closer, Susan saw that the crib’s
sheets were filthy and Jack had a black eye.
00:50:52
He was holding a bottle, but
the milk had curdled inside. As far as Susan could see, there was nothing wrong
with the twins except that they were neglected.
00:51:06
Susan scooped up Jack and held him for a little
while, before cleaning him up in the bathroom.
00:51:12
When she changed his nappy, she
saw he had a rash and blisters. So did Jill. It looked as though neither
of them had been changed in a while.
00:51:24
After bathing the twins, Susan put them
in fresh pyjamas, changed their bedding,
00:51:29
and got them fresh milk. She spent most of
the night comforting them in their room.
00:51:37
When Marie and Gilbert Rosenthal
returned early in the morning, Susan told them how she’d cared for the
twins. Marie was irate and started screaming:
00:51:49
“I told you not to do that! I told you not to go
upstairs, you shouldn’t have gone up there!...
00:51:55
I told you not to bother the twins! Obviously you
don’t listen very well!” Upset, Susan replied:
00:52:05
“I do listen, but they’re just babies!” Then
she ran from the house without being paid.
00:52:16
Susan was scared. She was haunted by the
image of the neglected twins in their crib,
00:52:22
but also terrified that she had done something
wrong. A few days later, a friend of hers who
00:52:29
also lived in the neighbourhood told Susan
that the Rosenthal twins had vanished.
00:52:34
– – – No one seemed to know what had happened to the
two young toddlers in the late summer of 1965.
00:52:44
Their cousin Melanie said that when her family
paid their annual visit that year, they were gone.
00:52:51
Jack and Jill weren’t discussed and Melanie’s
father Leonard told her never to mention them
00:52:57
again. He said he suspected Marie and Gilbert had
killed the toddlers and buried them in their yard,
00:53:04
due to their being intellectually
disabled. Leonard told Melanie that if she ever spoke of the twins to her other
relatives, it would start a family war.
00:53:15
– – – Despite Leonard’s suspicions, Jack Rosenthal was
found alive and mostly well on Friday July 2 1965.
00:53:27
Someone had left him in a pram outside McCrory’s
department store in Newark, New Jersey.
00:53:33
Newark was about a two-hour drive north of
Atlantic City, where the Rosenthals lived.
00:53:40
It was unknown who abandoned Jack at the
store, or where his sister Jill had gone.
00:53:52
Fifty years later, the man who had been raised as
kidnap victim Paul Fronczak discovered he had been
00:53:59
born Jack Rosenthal. Everything that Paul had been
raised to believe about himself suddenly changed.
00:54:08
He discovered that although he’d been brought up
in the Catholic faith, he was actually Jewish.
00:54:15
Most shocking of all was the
revelation that he had a twin sister. Paul had always felt a lack of belonging, but
not the sense that a part of him was missing,
00:54:26
as some people who have been
separated from twins have reported. But now he knew about Jill, he
was determined to track her down.
00:54:37
Paul began reaching out to
his biological relatives. Paul discovered that his older sister
Karen had died in 2010 at the age of 47.
00:54:48
However, there were two surviving siblings and
members of the extended family Paul could contact.
00:54:56
He received a mixed response. Some, such
as his aunt Barbara and cousin Melanie,
00:55:02
were happy to talk with him, though they didn’t
know much about what had happened to him or Jill.
00:55:08
His biological siblings, Linda
and Fred, were more reluctant. Fred said he had no memory of the twins, and
was shocked to even learn of their existence.
00:55:21
As Fred had only been a few months old when the
twins disappeared, his assertion made sense.
00:55:28
When he found out he’d had two more siblings he
never knew about, Fred told Paul: “I feel sick.
00:55:35
If you are Jack, I am so sorry that this happened
to you. And I want to know what happened to Jill.”
00:55:44
The pair initially exchanged a number of
emails and discussed plans to meet in person.
00:55:50
But then Fred suddenly emailed Paul to
say he wanted nothing more to do with him,
00:55:55
and asked Paul not to contact him again. Linda also claimed to have no
memory or knowledge of the twins.
00:56:05
As she was about four-years-old when
they vanished, Paul found this strange. Linda told Paul that their father had been
cruel. The family dynamic she described was
00:56:17
one of dysfunction, with the members having
drifted apart from each other over time.
00:56:23
Like Fred, Linda initially seemed happy to get
to know her long lost brother. Then suddenly,
00:56:30
she stopped answering Paul’s phone
calls and refused to speak to him again. According to the biological relatives Paul
tracked down, the Rosenthal family had a history
00:56:43
of conflict and inter-generational trauma. His
cousin Melanie told him that her father Leonard,
00:56:50
who was Gilbert Rosenthal’s brother, had been
violent and abusive towards her and her mother.
00:56:56
She no longer had a relationship
with her father, but Paul was able to track the now elderly Leonard down to
a hospital where he was awaiting surgery.
00:57:06
During a visit, Leonard initially told Paul
that he’d met the twins a number of times,
00:57:11
but didn’t know what had happened to them. After a while, however, his memory seemed to
return and he described a particular incident.
00:57:24
Leonard and his parents had visited Gilbert
and Marie Rosenthal’s house unexpectedly.
00:57:30
Marie was angered by the surprise visit. When someone asked where the twins were,
she told them they were upstairs sleeping.
00:57:39
One of the family members said they wanted to see
the twins. “I’ll bring them down,” said Marie.
00:57:48
She headed upstairs, then reappeared with the
twins. She was grasping them by their wrists.
00:57:55
Marie descended the stairs with a
twin dangling from each of her hands. Leonard said it was as though she was carrying
chickens by their necks. About four steps down,
00:58:08
Marie deliberately dropped both of the
children. Then she stated: “here are the twins”.
00:58:17
Leonard said that Jack jumped
up and ran over to him. The little boy held on to Leonard
tightly, as though he was scared.
00:58:27
When Paul asked what happened to Jill, Leonard
shook his head and replied: “I don’t know.”
00:58:36
Leonard’s description of this incident reminded
Paul of something he’d heard from another relative
00:58:41
who wished to remain anonymous. This person
had heard that something bad had happened to
00:58:47
the twins: one of them had been dropped
and both had subsequently disappeared. This relative asked Gilbert’s mother once
or twice what had happened to the twins.
00:59:00
She would only say: “We don’t discuss that.” Paul tried to piece together what might have
happened to him and Jill based on the broken
00:59:15
recollections he’d collected. It seemed that the
household he was born into had been an unhappy and
00:59:22
struggling one. Multiple witnesses told him that
his mother Marie Rosenthal had found having so
00:59:29
many young children difficult and drank frequently
as a result. Marie had told one relative, quote:
00:59:38
“Every year I get pregnant and have another baby,
and I really don’t like it.” When they lost their
00:59:46
home and Gilbert temporarily abandoned
his family, Marie’s struggles intensified.
00:59:54
For some reason, Jack and Jill had borne the
brunt of their parents' frustration and abuse.
01:00:00
Some relatives believed or were told the children
were intellectually disabled, which was not true.
01:00:08
Paul thought it was interesting that Jack
had a black eye when Susan babysat him.
01:00:13
Remnants of a bruised eye were visible on his face
when he was found outside McCrory’s department
01:00:19
store in July 1965. Perhaps this meant he’d been
abandoned just a few days after Susan had found
01:00:27
the twins in an appalling state. However, the
fact that Susan hadn’t mentioned the Rosenthals’
01:00:35
youngest child, Fred, meant that perhaps there
were gaps or errors in her recollection of events.
01:00:42
Fred had been around six months old when
the twins disappeared and yet Susan didn’t
01:00:47
remember him being present when she
babysat. However, it’s possible that the infant may have been staying with
extended family on that night instead.
01:00:59
Paul believed that a particularly horrible event
must have preceded his parents abandoning him.
01:01:06
Perhaps they had either deliberately or
accidentally killed Jill and felt they had to
01:01:11
get rid of her twin as well. Multiple relatives
reported hearing that Jill had been “dropped”.
01:01:19
One recalled that she had supposedly
been sent to an institution. Most of them agreed that the subject of
the twins was forbidden within the family.
01:01:32
Paul wondered if Jill had been buried
somewhere. In the first part of 1965, his family had lived with his paternal
grandmother, before moving into public housing.
01:01:44
His grandmother’s property was now an empty lot. A
radar sweep of the lot indicated a disturbance in
01:01:52
the soil, right at the point where the backyard
began. Paul obtained permission from the lot’s
01:01:58
owner to dig it up and got some help from a
construction crew. They cleared a hole that
01:02:05
was six feet wide and deep. Eventually they found
something: a bone. Ten more fragments followed.
01:02:16
Paul found an expert to examine the bones. It
turned out that all were animal bones and had most
01:02:23
likely been used in making soup. He was told that
he had little hope of ever finding Jill’s remains.
01:02:32
The bones of a child around two-years-old
aren’t yet fully formed and would have
01:02:37
most likely disintegrated after such a long time. Another aspect of the 50-year-old
mystery remained unsolved.
01:02:50
Paul had learnt his own identity and origins, but
the truth of what had happened to the real Paul
01:02:56
Fronczak after being kidnapped from Michael Reese
Hospital was still unknown. The FBI had reopened
01:03:04
the case after Paul went public with his story,
but no news or developments had come from that.
01:03:12
Several more years passed.
Then one day in January 2019, Paul received an email with the subject
line: This is the baby you’re looking for.
01:03:25
It was from an anonymous tipster. They informed
Paul that a 36-year-old woman from Michigan
01:03:32
named Julie had uploaded her DNA to a genealogy
database. The database had matched Julie with a
01:03:40
genetic relative who was also on the website:
Paul’s brother, Dave Fronczak. It turned out
01:03:48
that Dave was Julie’s uncle on her father’s
side. Her father was the real Paul Fronczak.
01:04:00
This revelation was shocking to Julie, and
she hadn’t told her father about it yet.
01:04:06
As far as he knew, he was Kevin Baty and his
mother was a woman named Lorraine Fountain.
01:04:14
Lorraine’s parents had immigrated to the
United States from Russia and Lithuania.
01:04:19
They decided to make Chicago their
home, and raised their family there. Lorraine was born in 1921 and spent much of her
life in Chicago and the nearby state of Michigan.
01:04:33
Lorraine married at the age of 19 in 1940, and
soon had two children: Norma Ray and Joe Bowers.
01:04:43
She divorced and remarried in 1951,
but that relationship also failed. In 1964, the year that Paul Fronczak was
born and kidnapped, Lorraine was back in
01:04:57
her hometown of Chicago. She was now in
her early 40s and was dating a doctor. All of a sudden, she abruptly left to live
in Arkansas. The south-central state was in a
01:05:12
completely different part of the country to the
mid-western regions Lorraine had always resided
01:05:17
previously. Lorraine wasn’t alone. She had a
baby boy with her who was named Kevin Baty.
01:05:26
His surname wasn’t explained but Lorraine
told everyone that Kevin was her son.
01:05:33
When he was about five years old, Lorraine took
him back to Michigan where her other, adult
01:05:39
children lived. Lorraine’s daughter was surprised
to see her mother with a small child and asked:
01:05:46
“Who’s that kid?” Lorraine
replied: “That’s your brother.” Lorraine married a man named Robert
Fountain and he became Kevin’s stepfather.
01:06:00
Lorraine and Robert were both heavy drinkers
and this seeped into Kevin’s upbringing.
01:06:06
In high school, Kevin was shy but liked
sports. He played football and basketball,
01:06:12
but for some reason Lorraine never attended
his games. According to those who knew them,
01:06:20
Lorraine was an angry person and Kevin was
afraid of her. After graduating school,
01:06:26
Kevin began working as a machinist. He
also married and had three daughters. Kevin struggled with alcoholism over the
years. His mother often purchased alcohol
01:06:39
for him when he was in junior high and as he
grew older, his substance abuse increased.
01:06:46
Friends described Kevin as “a really sweet
man” when he was sober. But when he drank,
01:06:53
he was, quote: “A nightmare”. Kevin’s drinking
ultimately led to him and his wife divorcing.
01:07:02
Kevin’s mother Lorraine died in 2004 at
the age of 82. There’s no indication she
01:07:10
ever gave Kevin any reason to believe
that he wasn’t biologically hers. After Kevin’s daughters found out the truth of
his paternity, they were afraid to tell him.
01:07:26
They had not only discovered that
his mother wasn’t related to him, but that he was a famous kidnapping victim.
Several weeks after Paul had first heard
01:07:37
from the tipster, Kevin’s daughters told
him the truth and also informed the FBI.
01:07:44
Photos of Kevin as a teenager revealed a striking
resemblance to his biological brother Dave.
01:07:51
They had the same smile,
eyes and roundish face shape. Even their hair was styled identically,
parted so it swept over their foreheads.
01:08:02
There were other family similarities too.
Without realising it, Kevin had inadvertently
01:08:09
followed in the footsteps of his biological
father by becoming a machinist like him.
01:08:16
Kevin’s father Chester Fronczak died in 2017,
two years before Kevin’s identity was discovered.
01:08:24
But his mother Dora Fronczak was still alive. She was excited to learn her kidnapped baby had
finally been found, and couldn’t wait to meet him.
01:08:36
Then, three months later in April, Kevin
was diagnosed with four brain tumours,
01:08:42
as well as lung and kidney cancer. He began
chemotherapy treatment and was unable to travel.
01:08:51
In early 2020, Kevin was able to call Dora and
have their first ever conversation. They had
01:08:58
another call shortly after that, and Dora held
out hope that she might still be able to meet her
01:09:03
kidnapped son. But on Saturday April 25 2020, one
day before his 56th birthday, Kevin passed away.
01:09:17
Dora told Paul that she felt a new kind of
grief upon finally learning what had happened
01:09:23
to her kidnapped baby. Quote: “I’m glad that he
was found. I’m glad we finally got an answer.
01:09:32
But the thing that always used to make me feel
better was the hope that whoever had him would be
01:09:37
able to give him more than he would have gotten
from us… I prayed he’d been that fortunate.
01:09:44
But from what I’ve learned, I don’t feel like
he’s had many opportunities in his life… I
01:09:51
remember thinking, ‘Why would somebody kidnap him
if they couldn’t give him a really good life?’”
01:10:01
Although Paul had been found, questions
about his kidnapping remained. It still wasn’t clear who was behind the
kidnapping. Was Lorraine Fountain solely
01:10:12
responsible? Or had she purchased, taken
or been given Kevin by whoever stole him?
01:10:20
Lorraine’s mother had been a nurse’s aide, leading
to speculation that she could have obtained a
01:10:25
nurse uniform that way. However, her physical
appearance didn’t really match the kidnapper’s.
01:10:33
Witnesses at the time described the kidnapper as
between 35 and 45 years old, about five foot five
01:10:40
inches tall, and approximately 145 pounds. She
had greying brown hair and a ruddy complexion.
01:10:50
Lorraine had been 42 at the time,
putting her in the right age range. But she had been much shorter at just
under five feet tall, and one acquaintance
01:11:01
who’d known her as a young woman said she’d
looked like country music star Dolly Parton.
01:11:09
A source close to Kevin said he had been
certain his mother wasn’t his kidnapper.
01:11:15
This same source told Paul that the Mafia had
been behind baby Paul Fronczak’s abduction,
01:11:21
as part of a child kidnapping ring. According
to this source, Lorraine was acquainted with
01:11:29
some mob bosses and had a role caring for these
children until they were placed with new families.
01:11:35
All of the publicity around Paul’s kidnapping
led to the Mafia struggling to sell him.
01:11:41
Lorraine eventually agreed to take him and
raise him when he was three months old.
01:11:48
There is no evidence to support this claim. After Kevin Baty was identified as
Paul Fronczak, special agents from
01:11:58
the FBI started making calls and conducting
interviews with witnesses. The case remains
01:12:05
open. But as of mid-2023, the identity of
Paul Fronczak’s kidnapper remains unknown.
01:12:18
The man who was raised as Paul Fronczak has
kept his name, despite learning that he was
01:12:24
originally Jack Rosenthal. Paul’s biggest question
today is what happened to his twin sister Jill.
01:12:32
He believes it’s possible that Jill was killed
back in 1965, but also holds out hope that she
01:12:39
is still alive. Perhaps Jack and Jill were
both abandoned separately at the same time,
01:12:46
and Jill wound up with a new identity like he
did. Paul was unable to question his biological
01:12:54
parents Gilbert and Marie about the mystery,
as they had died in 1995 and 1997 respectively.
01:13:03
Both were killed by cancer and
were 61-years-old when they passed. Paul has received messages from a number of
women who believe they may be Jill Rosenthal,
01:13:16
but so far DNA testing has failed to find her. In March 2020, Paul filed a missing persons report
for Jill with the Atlantic City Police Department.
01:13:28
He also commissioned an age-progressed composite
sketch of what Jill might look like today.
01:13:35
No photographs of Jill as a baby existed,
so the artist drew upon other photographs
01:13:41
of the Rosenthal family, as
well as Paul’s own appearance. Although he and Jill hadn’t been identical twins,
his former babysitter Susan Wohlert had said they
01:13:53
looked remarkably similar. In September 2022,
the National Centre for Missing and Exploited
01:14:00
Children published and circulated the
image of Jill that Paul commissioned. As of the release of this Casefile episode, the
whereabouts of Jill Rosenthal remain unknown.
01:14:14
Paul's journey to discover the truth
of his identity and what happened to the real Paul Fronczak became something
of an obsession for him over the years.
01:14:24
He says that his preoccupation with the case
ultimately led to the breakdown of his marriage,
01:14:29
but he felt obligated to resolve the
mystery. He has written two books about the case and his own investigations,
titled The Foundling and True Identity.
01:14:42
For as long as he can remember, Paul
felt out of step with those around him. As an adult, he found it hard to put down roots
and would drift between jobs and relationships.
01:14:55
He partially credits this tendency to a genetic
predisposition, as other members of the Rosenthal
01:15:01
family have led similar lives. But Paul mostly
believes that his restlessness was due to
01:15:08
lacking a sense of belonging. In getting
to know some of his biological relatives,
01:15:13
Paul finally met family members who
looked like him and shared his interests. One of his cousins was a talented musician
and shared Paul’s passion for music.
01:15:26
But Paul’s real sense of belonging came when his
daughter was born. Paul’s commitment to solving
01:15:33
his families’ mysteries was also done for her, to
give her more information about her own heritage
01:15:39
and story. And it was also done for the family who
raised him. Paul’s investigation initially drove
01:15:47
a wedge between him and his adoptive parents, who
didn’t want to dredge up the past. But eventually
01:15:54
it allowed Paul to grow closer to them and discuss
things that had been left unsaid for decades.
01:16:02
Paul interviewed his mother Dora for his
second book. During their conversation,
01:16:08
she told him about the first moment
she met him as a toddler in New Jersey. Quote: “The truth is, from that very first moment,
I never really doubted that you were my son.
01:16:23
Over the years I noticed the differences…
but even then, I never questioned it…
01:16:29
I loved you and I was always proud
of you, so why would I question it? You were the son that we
raised, and that was that.”
01:16:40
[Music]