On the 27th of April 1964, a nurse came into the room of Dora and Chester Fronczak at Chicago’s Michael Reese Hospital. Their 1-day-old son, Paul, lay beside them. The nurse told the new parents that she needed to bring Paul for a checkup with the doctor. Unbeknownst to the couple, this woman was not a nurse. Baby Paul Fronczak had been kidnapped from his hospital cot. His disappearance sparked one of the largest missing person searches in Chicago’s history. Paul Fronczak came on Today with Sean O’Rourke this morning.
Paul took Sean back to that day in 1964, when news broke that a baby was missing in Chicago.
“That baby and that nurse vanished and were never seen again…That day, 200 police officers and FBI agents descended on the South side of Chicago. They searched 600 homes, interviewed 1000 people by midnight and even the postal service kicked in and they had 175,000 letter carriers going door-to-door, looking for the baby.”
The search proved fruitless. Paul Fronczak would remain missing for 2 years, when a toddler was found abandoned in New Jersey. Identified by the FBI as Paul Fronczak by the shape of his ears, the toddler was reunited with the Fronczaks. Paul had no idea about the early years of his life. Until, aged 10, he was searching in the attic for Christmas presents, where he found a box of newspaper clippings and sympathy cards regarding his own kidnapping instead. He asked his mother about what he had found. She didn’t want to engage in a conversation about it.
“She said, ‘You were kidnapped. We found you. We love you. That’s all you need to know. And we will never talk about this again‘. And we didn’t.”
But things never felt quite right. Paul “looked different” to his brother, Dave. He didn’t share the mannerisms and characteristics the Fronczaks did. Paul told Sean that as he faced impending fatherhood himself, he decided he wanted to take a DNA test to see if he really was baby Paul Fronczak.
It wasn’t a straightforward decision. His parents, while initially supportive, changed their mind about wanting to know the results. They asked him not to do the test.
“They called me and said, ‘We’ve thought about this. We don’t want to know. Don’t do this‘.“
His love for his parents and his need to find out the truth split Paul’s loyalties, he told Sean.
“I wrestled with this for a couple of weeks. I had the sealed package in my desk, ready to go. Every morning I passed it and said, ‘You know what? I love my parents, I’m going to honour their wishes‘. But eventually, the truth won out.“
Paul sent the test away to be analysed. The results would change his life forever.
“The truth was, I wasn’t their son at all…It just knocked the wind out of me. The colour drained from my face. Everything I believed and thought was a lie. I didn’t know who I was.”
Paul may not have known who he was but he now knew one thing for sure. He was not the real Paul Fronczak. He didn’t tell Dora and Chester Fronczak for a while, thinking he could soften the blow.
“I thought, in own my naivety, that I could just solve this on my own, find their real kidnapped child and present Paul to them. I thought it’d be the greatest gift I could give them because they gave me the greatest life.”
Though he is not the real Paul Fronczak, Paul has decided to keep his name until he has solved this mystery.
“I’m going to stay Paul until I find the real Paul. I want to hand him his birth certificate and then I want to claim mine…I’m an optimist. I really believe that Paul is alive and we’re going to find him. And maybe he just doesn’t know who he is.”
To find out more about where he might have come from and why he was abandoned, Paul started working with a local journalist. He knew he had to tell the Fronczaks the results of the DNA test before the story broke. Unfortunately, their reaction was negative.
“They said that they were really, really mad at me and that they wished I didn’t do this. We didn’t talk for over a year.”
The story made national headlines and the revelation that Paul had been misidentified caused the FBI to re-open their investigation into the kidnapping. Paul told Sean that this actually made his own investigation more difficult, as the Freedom of Information Act no longer applies to a case that is now active.
Leading DNA testing websites offered Paul free tests and pro bono research in a bid to help him find his biological family. On June 3rd, 2015, a woman named CeCe Moore, who had been helping Paul, phoned him to ask him a question.
“What do you think of the name Jack?”
It transpired that Paul’s real name was Jack Rosenthal. And he had a twin sister, Jill. Jill had also disappeared as a baby and remains missing to this day. From talking to living biological family members, Paul believes that Jill’s troubling fate may have been the impetus for what happened to him.
“They [the Rosenthals] weren’t the ideal family. There was a lot of secrets and a lot of abuse. But I can say that I think the greatest thing that ever happened to me was them abandoning me...I came to the conclusion that something bad had happened to my twin sister and I was abandoned because my parents couldn’t explain one twin in the house...My biological family did everything they could to make the twins vanish.”
The mystery of what exactly happened to the real Paul Fronczak and Jill Rosenthal remains just that. But if Paul has his way, one day he will find out the truth.
“I firmly believe that we’re going to find an answer to this. I’ve got some really good tips right now. We’ve got a couple of bodies to exhume for DNA testing. There’s so much going on right now. This story is nowhere – by any means – close to being over.“
Listen back to the full interview on Today with Sean O’Rourke here.