MFM Minisode 503
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
This episode of My Favorite Murder features two compelling hometown stories: one about a man whose adoptive identity may be linked to the in
Key takeaways
- A man's adoption story may be connected to a high-profile baby abduction case from the same day he was born.
Main topics
- Family secrets and adoption
- Historical child abduction case (Paul Fronczak)
Notable quotes
"My ma's my ma and dad's my dad. That's all that should matter to you guys."
Conclusion
The episode underscores how personal stories—whether rooted in mystery or mundane labor—can
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:01) This is exactly right. Speaker 1 (0:06) Welcome aboard season six of The Girlfriends, Flight or Fight, which takes place 30,000 feet in the sky. A beautiful woman smiles and hands you a scotch, but you have no idea just how messed up her job actually is. It was the most sexist job I think you could have. Until one day, a group of stewardesses spark a revolution that reshapes America. Listen to The Girlfriends, Flight or Fight, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 2 (1:03) And welcome. To my favorite murder. Speaker 3 (1:05) The Speaker 2 (1:05) Minnesota. We read you, Speaker 3 (1:06) your stories. And emails. And emails. And stories of emails. Stories where you're writing emails to us. Thoughts Speaker 2 (1:15) and Speaker 3 (1:15) feelings about email. You're first, I'm first. Whatever you want. I'll go first. Okay. So this was an email that I found when I was researching back for... Episode 544, where I covered the Paul Fronczak disappearance, the baby who was kidnapped as a literal two-day-old from the hospital. Yeah. So it's called, Was My Dad Adopted or Stolen at Birth? Wow. Hey, best pals. I've been putting this email together in my head for months now. So here we go. My dad, Jeff, was a wild dude and lived life fast and extreme. When I was young, I would ask him to tell me his craziest stories. He'd paint beautiful pictures of his younger self, convincing the cops to buy him and his friends beers and smoking doobies on their way to their fifth Rolling Stones concert. Just regular bedtime stories every father tells his daughter, right? As I got older and because I've always been a murderino at heart, these stories slowly became more... Like how his friend Ray was acquitted for the murder of his wife in 1996, but everyone in town knows that he probably did it. But that's not the story I'm here to tell you today. Sadly, my larger-than-life dad died of colon cancer complications this past February. At his celebration of life, we were all telling stories with tears in our eyes. Then out of nowhere, my dad's cousin Donna says, I always remember us making fun of Jeff for being that stolen baby from Chicago. Man, he hated that. Come again, first cousin once removed, Donna? What came next was the unfolding of my dad's final wild story, the one that was so good he didn't want to tell me in person. He wanted me to do the digging myself. So it says, everyone knew my dad was adopted. This is something that he never really cared about. He would always say in a very South Side Chicago accent, my ma's my ma and dad's my dad. That's all that should matter to you guys. My dad was born and adopted on April 24th, 1964 by my grandparents. On that same day, Paul Joseph Franzak was stolen from a Chicago hospital by a woman dressed as a nurse. Same day. Same day. And then he was adopted. So it's so suspish. Like, look at all the people who adopted babies on that exact day who were born there. Speaker 2 (3:27) And you'll find who took Speaker 3 (3:29) it. Speaker 2 (3:29) The turnaround, though. Yeah. Yeah. Turnaround. That's very true. But that turnaround is like, wouldn't you think that the person... Speaker 3 (3:34) Well, yeah, exactly. It's not. This launched a huge manhunt and baby search. The FBI tested and examined over 10,000 babies, one of which was my dad. They came back multiple times to examine my dad and took multiple hair and blood samples. The authorities were highly suspicious of my grandparents as they weren't my dad's biological parents. And their lawyer was under suspicion of black market adoptions. It says, OK. And then it goes on to say it's clearly not him. It dried up. Another baby was found to be him, but it wasn't. This is a story I told. Obviously, Speaker 2 (4:05) it wouldn't be him because you would have told that during your actual story. Right. I don't know what the hell I was thinking. I don't know. I'm just Speaker 3 (4:11) like, wait, so it is him? It's suspicious. So episode 544 is where you can read, you can hear about that story. And then this email goes on to say that she's been reading. Paul Fronczak's book called The Foundling, which he wrote. And then she says, this has been such a comforting way for me to cope with the loss of my dad. Only murderinos get it. Speaker 2 (4:30) Thank Speaker 3 (4:31) you for giving my dad's story a voice. It means more to me than you will ever know. I've been on the hunt for my dad's bio family because in my grief, that's just what feels right. So murderino fam, if you know anyone born in that time frame with a last name Schwerer, S-C-H-W-E-R-E-R, hit me up. Wow. And of course, a huge you rule for normalizing mental health issues and everything that comes with it. If Prozac is your bestie, say hey. Hey. Stay sexy and hug your dad for me, Allie. So it's Allie Schwerer. Check it. I mean, if you know something, look her up. Get onto our Discord. Or Speaker 2 (5:10) message Speaker 3 (5:10) me, yeah. Solve this. Message us. Speaker 2 (5:14) 559. Call the hotline. We've just had it installed. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, that's wild. So thank you, Speaker 3 (5:21) Allie, for your info. And then obviously I had to read that as well. Yeah, that's great. Speaker 2 (5:28) Okay, well, we'll just do a quick pivot over to this subject line, which is children of the corn, a Nebraskan child labor story. Okay. Right? Okay, L-A-H. Oh, no. You said Nebraska. Oh, it could have been so perfect. Could have been so perfect. Hi, Karen and Georgia. While most seventh graders were gearing up for summer pool days, my friends and I were applying for summer jobs as detasslers. For people outside of Nebraska and Iowa, detasseling is the process of pulling the pollen-producing top off of a corn plant to prevent self-pollination. Whoa. Giant machines do the first pass, and then crews of teenagers walk the rows of seed corn to pull whatever was missed. Those tiny little young hands. Wow. In the Midwest, this is basically a rite of passage. Wow. Every July, thousands of teenagers spend about three weeks working in the cornfields. I love this information. A typical day looks like this. I woke up at 4.30 a.m. and put on my uniform, hat, mosquito net, safety goggles, long sleeves, long pants, tall socks, galoshes, and gardening gloves. You do not want exposed skin unless you wanted corn rash. Speaker 3 (6:45) Corn rash is a thing that I've never heard of. Wow. Speaker 2 (6:51) At 5 a.m., I boarded a yellow school bus with a bunch of other kids my age to head to whichever cornfield we'd been assigned to that day. This is just like child labor in a very real way. Once we got to the field around 6 a.m., we spent the next 10 to 12 hours walking row by row pulling tassels. It took a trained eye to recognize the tassels, so we lived by the cardinal rule. When in doubt, pull it out. Speaker 3 (7:15) Rain or shine, Speaker 2 (7:16) we were out there. The fields were often wet and muddy, which added to an extra challenge. Sometimes the cornfields were so tall that at 5'2", I had to jump for each and every tassel I pulled. That's a good workout. For 10 to 12 hours. No, Speaker 3 (7:30) fuck Speaker 2 (7:30) you. Speaker 3 (7:32) Suburbia is not Speaker 2 (7:33) that bad now that I think about it. But we got paid by the acre. Speaker 3 (7:37) By the acre. It's so big. Speaker 2 (7:40) So the goal was to be as efficient as possible. No excuses, eyes on the prize. Yep. This is farm life for sure. Of course, since we were teenagers with minimal supervision, there was also plenty of tomfoolery. The most memorable was corn bowling, where someone would sneak into your row and shove you over just to see how many corn stalks your body could take out on the way down. I fucking love corn bowling so much. Corn bowling, oh. It's the best. Despite the bugs, mud, and intense heat, I actually loved it. All my friends were there. And since we didn't have smartphones yet, we were forced to interact and invent ways to entertain ourselves. That's right. The amount of teens that fell in love in the corn stalks pulling out Speaker 3 (8:22) tassels. Speaker 2 (8:24) Detasseling. Speaker 3 (8:26) Fell in love or did it? Don't fall in love. You're too young. Speaker 2 (8:31) Sorry, let's keep it on the crush level. You don't want to be like weirdly staying back in your hometown Speaker