A Charley Project reader sent me this

A fascinating article on the life of Linda Taylor, who epitomized the urban myth of the “welfare queen” who collects public assistance whilst driving a Lincoln and shopping at Barney’s.

What readers of this blog will find most interesting is the section on Paul Fronczak. Taylor, whose many crimes included trafficking in infants, was considered a suspect in the Fronczak baby’s abduction. She was never cleared and no one knows where she is today or even if she’s still alive she’s been dead for a decade now.

Splerd, I totally forgot about Flashback Friday

My apologies. So, Flashback Friday, a day late…

Two people, who didn’t know each other and disappeared years apart, but are in fact connected: Darcy Dawson Brown and Charlotte Elaine Brown. Darcy was 20 years old when she disappeared in 1964; Charlotte disappeared in 1973 at the age of 29. They were both from the Cleveland, Ohio area and both married to the same man.

No prizes for guessing what happened. Darcy’s kids said they actually witnessed her husband murder her, but nobody was ever prosecuted. Of course, murder-without-a-body prosecutions were much less common back then. Probably all the evidence has been lost or destroyed in the nearly fifty years since Darcy’s disappearance. In any case it doesn’t matter much because the prime suspect in her disappearance, the husband, is dead. I don’t even know what his name was.

It’s unlikely that either of these two women will ever be found. If Darcy and Charlotte had disappeared today, I would hope there would have been a lot of press about their disappearances, and who knows, maybe a MWAB case against the husband. But who knows? I can think of plenty of equally deserving cases that haven’t been prosecuted.

Writing up the Paul Fronczak case

I’ve started writing up the story of the disappearance, recovery and un-recovery of baby Paul Fronczak. (Chances are, if you’re reading this blog, you know who he is already.) It’s going to take awhile. The Facebook page about his case has loads of articles from back in the sixties when this happened.

It’s a heck of a story, Bobby Dunbar all over again. With the difference that Bobby Dunbar’s parents died believing they had their son back, and Paul Fronczak’s parents are both still alive. I wonder how they’re taking it. He was their second child; the first had been born dead.

The chances of finding the real Paul Fronczak are remote. Even more remote are the chances of finding his abductor alive. If she was 35 to 40 years old in 1964, she’d be in her eighties now and very possibly beyond the reach of what justice humans can mete out. That woman sounds absolutely chilling. She hung around the hospital for at least four fracking hours, apparently baby-shopping. She had the hospital’s layout and staff routines down. And she stayed calm the whole time and fooled patients and staff alike. I think she must have been plotting for months.

The Fronczak parents are of Polish and Croatian descent; the boy they raised, according to his DNA, has Jewish ancestry. Ancestry.com managed to track down a third cousin in their database, but that’s not much of a lead because people usually have thousands of third cousins they have no idea exist.

In the meantime, for me, writing up this case is troublesome because there are two Paul Fronczaks here: there’s Paul the kidnapped baby and Paul the adult who, it turns out, was not the kidnapped baby, but has no other name. How do I refer to them so there’s no confusion? Maybe call the kidnapped one “baby Paul” and the other just “Paul”?