A man’s quest to find his biological parents unearthed disturbing secrets about the family he says left him abandoned in a shopping center before he was given to another couple.
Paul Fronczak grew up in Chicago with his parents, Dora and Chester Fronczak, and his brother, Dave Fronczak. When Paul was 10 he stumbled upon old newspaper clippings and learned a disturbing secret: he had been kidnapped as a baby.
Dora and Chester told Paul that in 1964 when he was one-day-old he was snatched from a Chicago hospital. The couple said they were reunited with him two years later when police in New Jersey found a two-year-old boy who resembled their son abandoned in a shopping center.
Because of the lack of DNA and there only being one picture of Paul from when he was born, there was no way for Dora and Chester to know for sure if the toddler found alone in a shopping center was actually their son.
Paul Fronczak, who was actually born Jack Rosenthal, said he grew up thinking that he had been kidnapped at birth and returned to his parents two years later after police found him abandoned in a shopping center
The real Paul Fronczak (pictured in this 1964 photo when he was one-day-old) was snatched from a hospital in Chicago. He has never been found
The kidnapping, which happened 54 years ago, was a big story at the time
Paul, now a 54-year-old father-of-one, told The Sun that because he resembled the missing baby his parents took him in and tried to move on from the abduction.
‘There were no accurate DNA tests back then, so there’s nothing the Fronczaks could have done to be 100 per cent certain that the boy they were given was their actual son Paul,’ he said.
Paul, however, said he always had doubts Dora and Chester were his biological parents and in 2012 he approached them about his suspicions.
Paul said he grabbed an over-the-counter DNA testing kit and asked his parents if they wanted to know the truth about his identity. He told the outlet that at first Dora and Chester were on board and swapped their cheeks for the kit.
His parents later changed their mind and asked Paul not to send the kit off. Paul said he sent it anyway and found that there was no way Dora and Chester were his parents.
Paul said his parents stopped talking to him for a year because he ignored their wishes, but he now wanted to know who his real family was so he hired a genetic genealogist to track down his biological mom and dad.
CeCe Moore, the genealogist Paul hired, told The Sun that she matched Paul’s DNA to an enormous database comprised of users of popular testing kits like AncestryDNA and 23andMe.
‘From there, we worked with the family trees of those who share DNA with Paul,’ she said. ‘By studying their trees, we were able to start to reverse engineer his family tree. It was a huge relief when we were finally able to give him an answer.’
Because of the lack of DNA, Dora and Chester Fronczak (pictured during a 1964 pres conference about their missing son) believed they had found their biological child
Paul Fronczak (pictured as a child in this photo) said he always thought Dora and Chester were not his real parents
In 2015, Moore was able to track down Paul’s real identity to Jack Rosenthal. Paul said he reached out to the Rosenthal family and learned some dark secrets about his biological parents.
According to Paul, his biological mother was an alcohol and his biological father was ‘a disturbed veteran’. Both are now dead.
Paul said family members told him that he had a twin sister, named Jill, who went missing after allegedly being neglected by his biological parents. The Rosenthal family never learned what happened to Jill, and she remains missing.
Paul said one cousin told him that his biological parents would keep him and Jill ‘in a cage’ when they were babies. Other family members told Paul that he and his sister were constantly crying.
Paul still doesn’t know how he ended up alone at a shopping center, but believes something ‘tragic’ happened to Jill and his biological parents abandoned him to try and cover it up.
‘I had expected to feel absolute elation when I finally learned my true identity,’ he said. ‘But that’s not what happened, because in the very next breath I learned that I also had a twin sister who was missing.’
Paul Fronczak said he learned in 2015 that his real name was Jack Rosenthal and his biological parents abandoned him as a toddler after his twin sister vanished
He added: ‘The only reason I started this journey was to find my parents’ kidnapped son, Paul. If I found out who I was in the process, that was a bonus. I never imagined that this mystery would only get bigger as we found more answers.’
Paul said Jill’s whereabouts remain a mystery. The real Paul Fronczak has also never been found. He said private investigators believe they have tracked down bodies that could possibly belong to Jill and Dora and Chester’s biological son.
Paul said he is planning on exhuming the bodies to find out the truth.
‘Our best lead regarding the real Paul Fronczak involves someone who unfortunately passed away many years ago in Texas,’ Paul told the outlet.
‘We also have new leads that come in every week, and we’re just going to keep tracking them down until we find the real Paul. We are also running down some serious tips on Jill.’
Paul said for now, he’s going to keep the name he grew up with but hopes one day he can change it to Jack Rosenthal.