Local
Search resumes for Paul Fronczak, baby stolen from Chicago hospital in 1964
September 18, 2013 (CHICAGO) (WLS) -- There's a new, high-tech effort to solve a Chicago mystery dating back to 1964. The mission: to track down a man who was kidnapped as a baby.
Brian Ross of ABC News was at the ABC7 studios in Chicago on Wednesday night on the hunt for a baby stolen almost five decades ago here in Chicago.
He'd be a middle aged man now, likely living somewhere in Chicagoland, and as part of an upcoming special with Barbara Walters, we have an idea of what he might look like that we are revealing for the first time here.
This 49-year old man may not know it, but he could help bring an end to a decades-long mystery, if he is alive that is.
It was 1964, at the now closed Michael Reese hospital in Chicago, that a one-day old baby by the name of Paul Fronczak was stolen out of his mother's arms by a woman posing as a nurse.
Dora and Chester Fronczak thought their prayers had been answered a year and a half later.
An abandoned toddler in Newark, New Jersey seemed to match their missing Paul. They took him home, adopted him and raised him as their own.
But as Paul Fronczak grew up, he says he always thought he was different.
And this year DNA tests proved him right. He was not the stolen baby, and now he is working with ABC News 20/20 and our consultant former FBI agent Brad Garrett, trying to find out who he really is, and what happened to the Paul Fronczak stolen at birth from his mother.
"Maybe, maybe he's going through the same thing I am. Maybe he feels like something's wrong here," said Paul Fronczak.
So with his help, ABC News commissioned artists who work with police and families on missing persons cases, to produce a likeness of what the stolen baby might look like today.
"Let's hope he's sitting on the couch and recognizes himself," said the artist who created the image.
Paul Fronczak's hope now is that the real, or the other Paul Fronczak can help solve the mystery and be reunited with the elderly parents who had their son stolen from them so long ago.
"And I would want nothing more than to have them be able to meet or at least know what happened to their real child before they're gone. That's my main goal," said Fronczak.
The FBI has reopened its investigation into this case, which has brought much heartache to the Fronczak family, and now, perhaps some hope.
The Paul Fronczak tip line is at abcnews.com/2020.
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