Paul Joseph Fronczak - True Identity: Cracking the Oldest Kidnapping Cold Case and Finding My Missing Twin

A POST HILL PRESS BOOK

True Identity:

Cracking the Oldest Kidnapping Cold Case and Finding My Missing Twin

2021 by Paul Joseph Fronczak and Alex Tresniowski

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-1-64293-667-4

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-64293-668-1

Cover photo by Greg Preston and Sharon Sampsel, Sampsel Preston Photography

Cover design by Paul Fronczak and Alex Tresniowski

Interior design and composition by Greg Johnson, Textbook Perfect

This book is a work of nonfiction. All people, locations, events, and situations are portrayed to the best of the authors memory. While all of the events described are true, some names and identifying details have been changed and one event slightly fictionalized to protect the privacy of the people involved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Post Hill Press

New York Nashville

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Published in the United States of America

There was a secret pact.

It involved the two most important law enforcement officials working the caseMarlin Johnson, the Special Agent in Charge of the FBIs Chicago Bureau, and the highly esteemed Lt. John T. Cartan of the Chicago Police Department, who was heading the Baby Fronczak investigation.

Johnson, an Iowa native, was only twenty when he joined the FBI as a fingerprint clerk. He stepped away from the job to serve in the Navy, but returned and rose through the ranks until he was given what was then the FBIs most high-profile assignmentheading up the Chicago force. He had a solid, stalwart appearance, topped off with thick, black-rimmed glasses.

Lt. Cartan had a reputation as a great policeman with a squeaky-clean nose. He worked long hours, brought his work home with him, seized on certain cases, and never let up. Johnson and Cartan recognized something pure and noble in each other and became quick friends during the Baby Fronczak investigation. That friendship would last both their lifetimes.

After I was abandoned in New Jersey, and drew attention as a possible Baby Paul, the decision of what to do with me fell to both Johnson and Cartan. Their job would have been easy if the blood analysis had shown some link between the Fronczaks and I, but when it didnt, they found themselves in a tricky spot. They could either pass the decision off to the Fronczaks and hope the couple accepted me as their son, or they could funnel me back into the child services system.

Only one of those options allowed the FBI and the Chicago PD to claim they had righted a terrible wrong.

The truth was that both Marlin Johnson and John Cartan had a strong suspicion, if not a near certainty, that I was not Paul Fronczak.

My father would come home and say to my mother and me, The Fronczaks are such fine, good people, and my heart is heavy for them, but that is not their baby, John Cartans daughter Mary Hendry told me many years later when we spoke about the case. He believed they would make great parents, and he would never discourage them from taking you, but he was certain that you were not theirs. I can still see him standing in the kitchen shaking his head and saying, They are good people, they will do a really good job of raising him.

Lt. Cartan wasnt the only one convinced I wasnt Paul. Marlin Johnson felt the same way. They agreed that neither one of them believed you were the kidnapped baby, but they also agreed to go along with it, says Mary Hendry. They were sure the Fronczaks would be good parents, so they let it all unfold.

So it was that Dora and Chester Fronczak were forced into making an unimaginably pressurized decisiona decision I would later learn gave them no real choice at all.

For decades, Dora Fronczak refused to discuss the day she claimed me as her own, or allow that she had any doubts that I was her son. Eventually, though, I got the chance to ask her about the fateful moment when she called me her baby in that office in Somerville. Did she truly believe that I was Paul? Was she nearly convinced but not sure? Did she know I wasnt him?

When I asked about that moment nearly five decades later, Dora wiped away tears and let out a big sigh.

I had to ask myself, Is this really him? she finally admitted. I had to worry if you were really him. Could we have just said, Thats not him, and then be judged for not taking you? Or could we just take you and save a child?

That sounded to me like she felt she couldnt say no. Which meant that when she claimed me as hers, she was voluntarily accepting a lifetime of questioning herself.

In my heart, she told me, I was hoping you were him.

Back in Somerville, Johnson and Cartan gave the Fronczaks two days to think about it before officially agreeing to take me. I dont know if they wavered in that time, but on the third day, they said they wanted to bring me home. A few days later, when the paperwork was finished, the Fronczaks took me to Chicago. Reporters clustered outside the Fronczaks home, hoping for a glimpse of me, or a quote from one of the happy parents. A local paper reported a family friend saying, Dora is really happy.

Not much later, the Fronczaks put me in a little white suit and brought me to Saint Joseph and Anne Catholic Church, where the Rev. James V. Shannon baptized me in the Catholic faith. In short order, the Fronczaks were awarded official legal custody of me before, in December 1966, the adoption process was finalized. Chester and Dora Fronczak are husband and wife, of lawful age and under no legal disability, the adoption decree read. They are reputable persons of good moral character with sufficient ability and financial means to rear, nurture and educate the said child in a suitable and proper manner. Thus, the decree went on, Scott McKinley, a minor, shall be to all legal intents and purposes, the child of the petitioners. The name of said child shall be changed to Paul Joseph Fronczak.

Ironically, and for claritys sake, the decree concluded that, The petitioners are not related to said child. After all, how can you legally adopt a child who is your biological son?

Everyone involved in the decision regarding my placement with the Fronczaks faced the same, stark realitythere was simply no way to be certain of my identity. There is presently no known method of positively establishing the descendancy of a two-year-old child, Edward Weaver, regional director of the Chicago Department of Children and Family Services, unambiguously declared in a newspaper interview. In other words, the best anyone could do was guess.

But if that was the simple truth that everyone understood, why was the situation not handled that way?

Why wasnt it honestly portrayed as a family that lost a son taking in a son who lost his family? Why did Dora have to definitively claim that I was her kidnapped boy?

Is the missing baby your son? one reporter demanded when he cornered her outside her home.

Yes, it is, Dora said without hesitation.

Her insistence that I was the kidnapped childwhether she believed it or notcreated an enormous disconnect between my new parents and I, as, over the years, I failed constantly to live up to the imposed truth that I was Paul. The handoff in Somerville created a situation that invited resentmentresentment of me because I was not Dora and Chesters true son, resentment of the Fronczaks for not being my real parents. What began as Det. Joseph Farrells well-meaning hunch, and ended with Johnson and Cartans secret pact, wound up trapping us all in a situation that was far more emotionally and psychologically complex than anyone could have dreamed.