50 Years After Being Kidnapped As A Baby, A Man Realized He’d Been Returned To The Wrong Parents
In 2012 Paul Joseph Fronczak got the call that turned his life upside down. The person on the other end of the phone told him that there was not the slightest possibility that he actually was Paul Fronczak. That meant that his parents were not his parents — and his life was not his life. "I just felt like my life as I knew it was ended," Paul said. "I felt the color drain from my face. I couldn't think. I got all sweaty." It made him question all the assumptions he had held concerning his own identity for 50 years — and everything he thought he knew about a famous kidnapping from 1964.
Baby Paul kidnapped at birth
Dora Fronczak gave birth to her son Paul in Chicago's Michael Reese Hospital on April 26, 1964. Paul spent his first day napping in the nursery and being nursed by his mother. The next morning, however, a nurse entered Dora’s cubicle and said baby Paul needed to be seen by a medic. The nurse left with the two-day-old infant... and never returned. It transpired that this woman wasn’t a nurse at all — and didn’t even work for the hospital.
A frantic search ensued
Hospital staff desperately tried to find the baby and any clue as to the kidnapper’s identity. Seemingly wanting to keep things in-house for as long as possible, the hospital didn’t contact the police or Dora’s husband, Chester, until mid-afternoon. Chester Fronczak was in the middle of a factory shift when he received a phone call telling him his baby son had been kidnapped.
The family life changed forever
Incredibly, the hospital informed Chester of the situation before they told Dora, who was seemingly unaware that anything was wrong. The adult Paul detailed the awful position Chester found himself in during a 2018 interview with the BBC. “My dad had to leave work, go to the hospital and tell his wife that the baby was missing,” he said. “You think you’re safe – you’re in a hospital – and that’s where your baby is kidnapped.”
The largest search operation in Chicago history
The largest search operation Chicago had ever seen ensued. Hundreds of police officers, 175,000 mail employees, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation all pooled their resources. Come midnight that same day, 600 local residences had been searched. However, baby Paul was nowhere to be found. The search operation made headline news at the time: "Baby stolen at home" read the Chicago Tribune. But soon investigators called off the operation as they failed to find a culprit. Paul had vanished.
