But if they say it in the Detroit Free Press, it must be so!
Already have that linked, thanks anyway. 
Sure they are. This one determined the fact that people are gullible and optimistic quite admirably. 
:smack::smack::smack:
Why don’t we have a blind man smiley?
Maybe this will do. 
I am so glad that the Mother wa snot informed. It could have caused a new upwelling of grief.
Somebody needs to give the media a serious smackdown. Is it really so difficult these days for an editor to set somehting on the edge of his desk, and wait to see if it turns out to be newsworthy?!?
btw, the story in the OP does not seem to match the Stephen Damman story. Are we sure it is the same incident?
That is what I meant. The original article was light on info.
Of course now that there’s a birth certificate, the question turns to whether Barnes invented the story of his mom telling him on her deathbed that he wasn’t her natural child (and specifically, at least according to the letter he allegedly sent Steven’s sister, that he had been kidnapped). Because if he made this up and wrote to the Dammans, fostering their hopes about their lost relative all this time (not to mention wasting the FBI’s time), that is some seriously screwed up shit.
If he didn’t fabricate the tale, I feel sorry for him for not having an answer to whatever questions/demons are roaming around his head.
An odd and heartbreaking tale all around. And yes, it is very fortunate they didn’t disturb Steven’s mom.
No, he bloody wasn’t. Loach was asking, repeatedly, about he the child’s [ikidnapper* treated him.
He can not know how his kidnapper treated him because he does not remember his kidnapper. He has no idea how hi kidnapper treated him and he can not know how his kidnapper treated him because he does not know who his kidnapper was.
Is this really such a difficult concept?
He knows how he was raised. He does not know how the kidnapper raised him because he doesn’t even remember if the kidnapper raised him.
You have to remember before the mid 70s, there wasn’t much control over records. You could just walk into a social security office and get a number. You get 10 numbers, it didn’t mean much. Even during the early 80s when I was in school they didn’t use the SS# for an identifier.
So records are reliable, but there not as absolute as they were now and people tend to forget that.
Pseudocyesis or false pregancy in women can lead them to kidnap babies and raise them as their own. This mental condition doesn’t automatically conclude they aren’t capable of raising kids, but they may be.
Also don’t forget until the 70s it was not unheard of for women, especially young ones to be sent away to have kids, Booth Memorial Hospitals were esentially homes for unwed mothers, run by the Salvation Army.
So if a woman who was fat suddenly went away and came back thin, you figured, “well you know,” so it was easiers for babies to appear and disappear, 'cause people expected it.
Unless the kidnapper was the father or mother who raised him and he just doesn’t remember being kidnapped. Then he would know how the kidnapper raised him.
Am I reading that right? The FBI said that the man and the presumed sister did “not have the same mother.” And yet the prior article said that a preliminary DNA test said they could be related. Was the FBI being not-so-discreet in mentioning they may share the same father?
I would bet “no.” The “private DNA test” was conducted by/for them, and not (AFAIK) released to the public/media for scrutiny. If they are not making it up entirely (and I can’t rule that out), who knows if it just said they were both Caucasian or both had genes commonly found in Scandinavia, which means they “could be related” in a way they couldn’t if one had only Asian markers and one only African.
I smelled BS on this from the word go. It was all always on his own say-so. Positive IDs are not made by “I thought a picture from 50 years ago looked like me.” This guy (who obviously flogged the story to the media, or how would they know?) had attention whore written all over him. Even if true, why would you publicize this, especially before having definitive proof of what would have been a serious crime, among other things?
Few major crimes are solved by amateur kibitzing, with no access to clinical or forensic evidence, after decades have passed. That’s why Patricia Cornwall’s stupid Jack the Ripper thing was, well, stupid. These attempts or reveleations generally stem from people who are obsessive and/or deeply troubled (cf. the guy/woman who made a big splash announcing that they had “discovered” or “remembered” that their dad was the Zodiac Killer, or the clown who “confessed” that he killed JonBenet). No, a responsible media should not run such stories uncorroborated. Yes, we don’t have a responsible media, but instead one that very much wants to encourage attention whoring if it will lead to a good story. Nothing to see here, move along.
Pure guesswork here, but I’d assume the FBI did a mitochondrial DNA test, rather than the standard DNA test we automatically think of. Mitochondrial DNA is passed down directly from mother to child, so it’s useful for determining familial relationships (two people have matching mDNA = they’re somehow related on the mother’s side), less useful for identifying criminals (suspect’s mDNA matches the perpetrator’s = suspect is somehow related to the perpetrator, which is nowhere near as useful as a specific match). If this guy’s mDNA didn’t match the mDNA from the sister of the kidnapped child, then there wouldn’t be any point in doing more detailed tests: he’s not the missing kid.
P.S. Plus the first thing I thought when I saw the photos are that his eyebrows are a different shape. I thought eyebrows could change thickness etc between childhood and adulthood, but not basic shape. Maybe I’m wrong?
Family gatherings are going to be really awkward after this.
Reading between the lines in the article in this morning’s Free Press, it seems fairly clear that family gatherings were already pretty awkward. This guy has never felt like he fit in with his family (one reason he always believed he wasn’t really related? His siblings had dark hair and he didn’t. :rolleyes: ) and latched on to his mother’s deathbed mutterings and this elaborate scenario as a possible concrete explanation why not. A telling bit: it seems like the first step in figuring out who he belongs to would be to compare DNA with the people he was raised by instead of random people he vaguely resembles, but he hasn’t done that. And now that this far-fetched kidnapping idea didn’t pan out, he can still search for some other story to justify his alienation, because if he KNEW for sure he was related to the family that raised him, he’d have to give up his fantasies and face that reality.
The relatives the press has talked to seemed pretty sick of him and his desires to prove he’s not related to them. I don’t much blame them; according to the article he’s been hunting through old kidnapping cases for almost 20 years. How little he must think of his own parents, to assume they’d be capable of kidnapping a child and raising it as their own!
I feel bad for the family of the kidnapped boy, having this guy drag all this up because of his own personal vendetta against his own family. I don’t have sympathy for him at all.
I don’t think anything was done in bad faith, it just the story got carried away with. People don’t like a good mystery, they like a good mystery with an ENDING 
I like to read True-Crime and when you look back you make holes in most cases that make one wonder what was going on?