Mystery of Infant abandonded in phone booth solved after 64 years.
12 replies, posted
https://www.lancastereaglegazette.com/story/news/local/2018/08/17/lancaster-mystery-baby-abandoned-phone-booth-1950-s-solved/977491002/
At first police weren't sure if he was a kidnapping victim or if a was passing motorist had left him there. Police settled on the latter when there were no subsequent reports of any child abductions. Still, they never found the baby’s parents. The Eagle-Gazette published several articles describing the event, the first one stating "... the baby was lively, but very cold, and a full milk bottle was found beside the infant. The bottle was also cold. The baby's physical condition appeared to be good."
After the first story published, dozens of people had expressed interest in either fostering or adopting the baby. Dennis was placed in a foster home and later adopted by the Dennis family in February 1955. They moved to Arizona where Dennis has resided ever since.
“When I was 18 or 19 I went to Lancaster to kind of get a look at it," Dennis said, adding that at the time, there wasn't much to find.
He had let it go for years until his two daughters, ages 18 and 14 got him a Ancestry.com DNA test that determines ethnicity and can find genetic relatives. The results returned in January, followed by a message from a man also using Ancestry.com, who was a genetic match to Dennis. This man, he learned, was his first cousin.
“He said 'I think I know who your mother is. We’ve heard throughout our lives that there’s a baby that we’re related to that was left in a telephone booth,'" Dennis recalled. "It was this like this hidden secret."
Dennis’ cousin connected him to Dennis' half-sister, who lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Growing up, his sister said had also heard the story.
“This deep dark secret of my biological mother, the kids had heard about this, but they weren’t sure if it’s true or not," he said. To check the story his sister got her own DNA test, confirming the match.
From there, Dennis' sister contacted their mother, who also lives in Baltimore.
“The mother has finally said she wants to meet with me," Dennis said. "Slowly week by week, she said 'I kind of remember.'”
He was told his mother was 18 and coerced to give him up by his father, saying he’d marry her if they left the baby. The couple was traveling through Ohio from Kentucky, where he was born in a hospital. They were on their way back to Maryland when the father took the baby and left him in a phone booth. After that, the father disappeared.
He has no further history of his father. His mother, now in her 80s, married someone else and has two daughters.
Their information was later sold for marketing purposes by ancestry.com, and they lived happily ever.
He was told his mother was 18 and coerced to give him up by his father, saying he’d marry her if they left the baby.
What the fuck?
What do they use the information to market? Like oh we see you have French and Irish ancestry try our new whiskey-soaked baguette?
"hey were on their way back to Maryland when the father took the baby and
left him in a phone booth. After that, the father disappeared."
Seems the father was a piece of shit and probably manipulated the mom.
Lets not magically release the mother from blame. She had a lifetime to come clean. She is also a piece of shit.
I dunno if i'd go as far as calling her a piece of shit. from the story it sounds like her boyfriend at the time was most of the driving force behind getting rid of the baby, and you can't necessarily fault an 18 year old girl 60 years ago for not fighting back against that. It could have been an abusive relationship, abortion access was more limited back then.
People hate the idea of the government having your DNA or fingerprint yet happily pay a company to take it and share publicly, and it obviously is public or else they would keep getting these crazy matched DNA stories.
I mean you're consenting to it if you use their services. It's the whole point of the program
What are they going to do with my DNA? Create another shut-in loser?
Why wait for customers when you can proactively make them.
No idea, but they do sell it to someone who thinks they can make money on it.
