Mich. man claims to be NY boy Stephen Damman who vanished in 1955(FBI says no)

[MuffyBee]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_50_YEARS_MISSING?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US
Jun 16, 5:48 PM EDT

Mich. man claims to be NY boy who vanished in 1955

By FRANK ELTMAN
Associated Press Writer
 EAST MEADOW, N.Y. (AP) -- More than 50 years ago, a mother left her stroller outside a Long Island bakery and returned minutes later to find her 2-year-son had vanished.

Police and residents searched ditches and homes for the blond toddler. Investigators chased down leads around the country. But the sensational case soon went cold. No one knew what happened to little Stephen Damman.

Now a Michigan man has come forward to say he is the boy, and federal officials are awaiting DNA test results to determine if he's right.

The revelation stunned Long Island residents old enough to remember the futile search, and it renewed hope among Damman's relatives, including Stephen's 78-year-old father.

"Just like a death gives you closure, you know sometimes, it will give you closure to know what happened," Jerry Damman said Tuesday from his corn and soybean farm in Iowa.

It was unclear why the man believes he is the Damman toddler. He approached Nassau County police and federal authorities in the past few months. His current name was not released.

Lt. Kevin Smith said the case was referred to the FBI in Detroit. A spokeswoman there declined to comment An official familiar with the investigation said the Michigan man believes he never fit in with the family in which he grew up and began researching missing persons cases around the nation.

That's how the man learned of the Damman case, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the claim was still under investigation.

Jerry Damman said "it's very possible" that the man could be his son.

"To a certain extent, this would probably close it," said Damman, who lives on a farm near Newton, Iowa, about 30 miles east of Des Moines.

Jerry Damman and his wife, Charlotte - who is not Stephen Damman's mother - said they believe the Michigan man might have stopped by their farm last fall.

The missing child's sister also got a visit from the same man, they said. "She looked at this guy, and he looked like Jerry," Charlotte Damman said.

Smith said investigators learned that the Michigan man reached out to the woman he believed to be his sister, and that the two conducted a private DNA test that found they could be related.

The FBI is conducting its own tests, Smith said.

Damman said he has tried to call the man twice since a report of his claim was published Tuesday in the New York Daily News. Jerry and the missing child's mother divorced a few years after their son's kidnapping. His ex-wife could not located for comment.

Jerry Damman worked at Mitchell Air Force Base on Long Island when his son disappeared. His wife, Marilyn, left her son and 7-month-old daughter, Pamela, waiting outside a bakery while she went inside to shop on Oct. 31, 1955, according to Smith and news accounts from 1955.

"Back in that time, it was probably not that uncommon to do something like that," Smith said.

After 10 minutes, Marilyn came out of the bakery but could not find the stroller or her children, authorities said. The stroller, with only her daughter inside, was found around the corner from the market a short time later, authorities said.

More than 2,000 people searched for 28 hours without finding Stephen. The county's assistant chief inspector, Leslie W. Pearsall, called off the search, saying that the boy's disappearance had become "a case for detectives only," according to 1955 story in The New York Times.

The family received a ransom note in mid-November, according to an Associated Press account. Stephen's parents also made a public plea to the kidnappers at the time, saying Stephen suffered from anemia and asking that he receive medicine that included vitamins, aspirin and a tonic, the Times reported.

Today, the spot where Stephen was taken is a Waldbaum's supermarket at a busy strip-mall intersection.

Joan Bookbinder, 81, was a few years older than Damman's mother in 1955. She said it was common at that time to leave babies outside in their carriages while shopping.

"They would all be lined up outside the supermarket," Bookbinder said while standing outside the market. "We never worried. We never thought about it."

Everything changed after the toddler was kidnapped.

"We never left the carriages outside again," she said. "All I remember is the fear amongst the mothers."

[canadianmonkey]

Man says online photos led him to believe he may be boy kidnapped in 1955
Module body

By The Associated Press

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KALKASKA, Mich. - A Michigan man says pictures he found online led him to believe he could be the two-year-old boy who vanished more than a half-century ago from a bakery on New York's Long Island.


John Barnes of Kalkaska told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he was doing online research when he saw pictures of the first wife of the man he thinks could be his father.


She seemed familiar and that led him to believe he might be Steven Damman, the missing boy.


He says he's now "waiting for the FBI to tell me who I'm related to."


Police in New York's Nassau County have said a Michigan resident contacted their office in the past few months, saying he believes he is the missing toddler.


The case was referred to the FBI. Authorities are awaiting the results of DNA testing.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/090617/world/us50_years_missing

[Toler]

 Man who says he's Steven Damman, kidnapped 54 years ago, speaks
BY Rich Schapiro
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Wednesday, June 17th 2009, 1:22 P
 
John Barnes, who believes himself to be Steven Damman, a boy (below) kidnapped over 54 years ago, speaks at his house.

 
Daily News
 Related News
Articles
Family hopes boy is coming home after 54 years of heartbreak
Lead in sensational 1955 Long Island kidnap mystery
KALKASKA, Mich. - A Michigan man said Wednesday he is "99% convinced" that he's the Long Island toddler kidnapped in a long-unsolved 1955 crime.

"I'm not upset about anything, I'm glad," John Barnes told the Daily News in his home. "Everything's kind of fallen into place."

Barnes told the News that he harbored suspicions about his past for as long as he can remember. His mother, as she was dying 10 years ago, suggested she was not his biological parent, Barnes said.

The clincher came in March, Barnes told the News, when preliminary DNA tests indicated he might be related to Pamela Horne. Her nearly-3-year-old brother was kidnapped on Long Island back in 1955.


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/06/17/2009-06-17_man_who_says_hes_steven_damman_kidnapped_54_years_ago_speaks.html#ixzz0IjMqxqUE&D

[2NJSons_Mom]

AP – FILE -In this file photo combination Jerry Damman and John Barnes are shown. John Robert Barnes, 54, …

Mich. man scoffs at son's suspicion he was takenBy JOHN FLESHER, Associated Press Writer John Flesher, Associated Press Writer 2 hrs 21 mins ago
KALKASKA, Mich. – The father of a Michigan man who believes he was snatched from his real parents in New York half a century ago called the speculation "a bunch of foolishness."

John Barnes has long suspected the couple who raised him were not his biological parents, and now he's awaiting DNA tests to find out if he was the 2-year-old boy who disappeared outside a bakery in Long Island, New York while his mother shopped inside.

"I'm his dad," John's father, Richard Barnes, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. He replied, "No, no," when asked by a reporter whether he had kidnapped John Barnes. He called the notion "a bunch of foolishness."

John Barnes on Thursday brushed off the comments from his father in an interview with NBC's "Today" show. He said he's "pretty confident" that the tests will indicate he was the missing boy.

"I've always wanted to know who my real relatives were and where I came from," he told the interviewer.

Cheryl Barnes, Richard's daughter, said she was "flabbergasted" by John's claims and was willing to undergo DNA testing to prove they are biological siblings.

"I can't begin to know why he would think this," said Cheryl Barnes, 50. "Everybody in my family thinks John looks just like my dad."

For his part, John Barnes said he never really bonded with the mother and father who raised him. He said they didn't look like him and just didn't seem like family.

"I just had a hunch that something was fishy," said Barnes, a laborer who is now in his 50s.

"I never asked them if they kidnapped me. I asked them why I was so different from them," he said of his parents.

Police in Nassau County, N.Y., have said a Michigan man contacted their office in the past few months saying he believed he was the missing toddler. Barnes said the FBI took a sample of his DNA via a cheek swab in March.

"I don't know if I'm related to the Dammans or the Barneses. I'm just waiting for the DNA results," he said during an interview at his mobile home, located on a dirt road in Kalkaska, almost 200 miles northwest of Detroit, where he lives with his wife and dog.

Years earlier, Barnes started his own investigation and found some potential answers on the Internet — a few pictures that led him to conclude he could be the missing toddler, Stephen Damman.

Barnes said pictures of the missing boy's mother when she was a young adult resembled what he looked like at the same age.

"I thought I looked like her, so I had something to sink my teeth into," he said.

The mother, Marilyn Damman, left the boy and his 7-month-old sister waiting outside a bakery while she went inside to shop on Oct. 31, 1955, according to police and news accounts at the time.

Marilyn Damman came out of the bakery after 10 minutes but could not find her children. The stroller, with only her daughter inside, was found around the corner from the market a short time later. A flier at the time said the boy walked with his toes turned out and had a small scar under his chin.

"Yeah, I do have a scar," John Barnes told the AP as he pointed to a faint line, less than an inch, that runs below his chin and slightly up the right side of his face.

Barnes said he was born in 1955 — the same year a 2-year-old Stephen Damman disappeared — but only saw his birth certificate once and doesn't have a copy. He said the FBI is looking into the discrepancy as part of its investigation.

Richard Barnes is retired and lives eight miles from his son, although the two have not talked in about a year. He said his son was born in a Navy hospital in Pensacola, Fla., on Aug. 18, 1955.

"We brought him home two days later, and he's never been out of our sight," the elder Barnes said, referring to John's childhood.

Cheryl Barnes, who lives with her father, said John had never been close to the rest of the family and previously had suggested he'd been switched at birth.

"He wanted to be by himself, do his own thing, be a loner," she said. "I feel bad for him that he feels this way. I feel bad for my dad. This is going to leave a lasting scar on him."

During his research on the kidnapping, the younger Barnes said he drove to Newton, Iowa, where Jerry Damman, the father of the missing boy, lives. But they did not meet.

Physically, Barnes resembles somewhat the Iowa farmer he believes could be his biological father, though they are far from identical. Both men have fair skin with a ruddy complexion, blue eyes and wide, round faces.

Reached Wednesday in Iowa, Damman told the AP "it's almost too good to believe" that Barnes could be his son.

Barnes said he has become close with the woman who could be his sister, Pamela Horne of Kansas City. Horne said on the "Today" show Thursday morning that she felt an instant bond with John Barnes.

"When we first talked, it was just an immediate friendship," Horne said. "Like we had known each other for years."

They did a home DNA test in March and he said it indicated they could be related.

"I'm really glad that I'm finally finding all of this out, finding out who I'm related to," Barnes said. "Because I didn't want to get old and die and not know."

___

Associated Press writers Frank Eltman and Amy Westfeldt in New York, Nigel Duara and Melanie S. Welte in Iowa, and AP researcher Susan James contributed to this report.

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 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090618/ap_on_re_us/us50_years_missing

[MadMom]

First post here (why this topic for my first post???)

Anyway, I was reading this article and I can't figure something out.  How does the family that raised him have pictures of him that are obviously of a child younger than 2, if he was abducted when he was almost 3?

The picture I am referring too looks as if the child is closer to one year.

[MuffyBee]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1193600/DNA-tests-Michigan-man-NOT-toddler-kidnapped-54-years-ago.html
DNA tests reveal Michigan man is NOT the toddler who was kidnapped 54 years ago

By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 1:46 AM on 19th June 2009
DNA testing has confirmed that a 54-year-old Michigan man is NOT a toddler who was kidnapped in Long Island, New York, in 1955, the FBI said yesterday.

The FBI said testing showed John Barnes of Kalkaska, Michigan, is not Stephen Damman, who disappeared at the age of two from outside an East Meadow bakery while his mother shopped.

'DNA samples analysed by the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, show John Barnes and Pamela Damman Horne do not share the same mother,' the FBI said in a statement, referring to the sister of Stephen Damman.
Barnes had said he has long suspected the couple who raised him are not his biological parents.

He said he began investigating his origins years ago and found photos on the internet that led him to believe he could be Stephen.

Barnes said pictures of the missing boy's mother when she was a young adult resembled what he looked like at the same age.

Barnes claimed he had never bonded with the mother and father who raised him. He said they didn't look like him and just didn't seem like family.

'I just had a hunch that something was fishy,' he said.

'I never asked them if they kidnapped me. I asked them why I was so different from them.'

In Iowa, Stephen's father, Jerry Damman, said the news was disappointing.
It's too bad we had to go through all of this for actually nothing in the end,' he said.

Barnes said he was born the same year the boy disappeared, but that he only saw his birth certificate once.

Barnes' father, Richard Barnes, has called the speculation 'a bunch of foolishness.'

He said John Barnes was born in a Navy hospital in Pensacola, Florida, on August 18, 1955.

'We brought him home two days later, and he's never been out of our sight,' he said.

Barnes senior lives eight miles from his son but said they have not talked in a year.

Cheryl Barnes, John's sister, said she was 'flabbergasted' by his claims and that she was willing to undergo DNA testing to prove they are biological siblings.
'I can't begin to know why he would think this,' said Cheryl Barnes, 50.

'Everybody in my family thinks John looks just like my dad.

'He wanted to be by himself, do his own thing, be a loner. I feel bad for him that he feels this way. I feel bad for my dad. This is going to leave a lasting scar on him.'

Police in Nassau County, New York, said a Michigan man had contacted their office in the past few months saying he believed he was the missing toddler.

Barnes said the FBI took the DNA swab in March.

Damman said: 'I guess we don't know any more than we did.

'It's been very hard to bring this all up after all those years. It's been hard.'

[MuffyBee]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_50_YEARS_MISSING?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US
Jun 20, 9:56 AM EDT

DNA debunks Mich. man's hunch he was snatched tot

By MELANIE S. WELTE
Associated Press Writer
 DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- After five decades of silence about what happened to his toddler son, farmer Jerry Damman was hopeful that a Michigan man's incredible claim to be the boy was true.

But DNA results released Thursday disproved the possibility, closing a bizarre chapter in a long-cold case of the New York toddler who disappeared on Halloween in 1955. The tests showed John Barnes did not have the same mother as a sibling who was in a stroller at the time of the kidnapping. That meant there was no way he could possibly be the kidnapped child.

Hundreds of miles north, the family members who raised Barnes in Michigan angrily rejected the suggestion he wasn't theirs. They said they'd even be willing to submit to tests to disprove his hunch that he wasn't their flesh and bone.

"He pretty much lost two families today," said Cheryl Barnes, a sister who grew up with the man in northwest Michigan. "We knew that was going to be the outcome. ... My dad feels the same way. Neither of us had a doubt. My dad knows who his son is. I'm angry at my brother for putting everyone through this, turning everybody's lives upside down."

The case had raised the hopes of Damman - the missing boy's father - and the Long Island community where crews fruitlessly searched after the kidnapping. From his farm in Iowa, the 78-year-old Damman said he was disappointed. He said reliving the experience has been difficult.

"It's disappointing and it's too bad we had to go through all of this for actually nothing in the end," Damman said. "I guess we don't know any more than we did."

Authorities in Long Island had said a man came to them in recent months saying he believed he was Stephen Damman, kidnapped at 2-year-old more than 50 years ago. According to police and news accounts at the time, the boy's mother left him and his 7-month old sister waiting outside a bakery while she went inside to shop. She came out 10 minutes later but could not find her children. The stroller, with only her daughter inside, was found around the corner.

Barnes, a laborer who lives in rural northwest Michigan, developed his suspicion that he could be the child after searching online for his family history. He had always suspected the couple who raised him weren't his biological parents, and said photos he found of the missing toddler's mother as a young adult looked like himself at the same age.

He even went as far to travel to Iowa to try and get a glimpse of the man he thought was his father, and connected with the sister of the missing toddler, Pamela Damman Horne. He said they took an at-home DNA test, and that's when the FBI took a test of their own.

Barnes did bear a striking resemblance to a photo of the missing boy: He had the same chubby cheeks, the same round face and bright, blue eyes. And there was a faint line on his chin, possibly the scar the missing toddler was said to have on a missing persons flier at the time of the disappearance. But there were inconsistencies.

Barnes said he was born in 1955 - the same year a 2-year-old Stephen Damman disappeared - but only saw his birth certificate once and said he doesn't have a copy. He wouldn't explain the age difference and said only that the FBI was looking into it as part of his investigation.

The door to Barnes' trailer home went unanswered Thursday, and he didn't return a call seeking comment. He lives not far from his father, Richard Barnes, although the two had not talked in about a year.

After news reports of Barnes' suspicion that he was the missing boy, his father called the idea "foolishness" and said that his son was born in a Navy hospital in Pensacola, Fla., on Aug. 18, 1955.

"We brought him home two days later, and he's never been out of our sight," he said.

Dwight Damman, a son from Jerry Damman's second marriage who would be the missing toddler's half brother, said he always had been skeptical of Barnes' story.

"We didn't hold out a lot of hope that it was true," Dwight Damman said. "After the pictures came out it kinda made you think, but with DNA you have to wait for the results."

[MuffyBee]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MISSING_CHILDREN_COLD_CASES?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US
Jun 21, 5:27 PM EDT

Lesson from NY: Long-lost children rarely turn up

By JENNIFER PELTZ
Associated Press Writer
 NEW YORK (AP) -- When Jerry Damman first got news his son may have been found after vanishing from Long Island more than 50 years ago, he said it "was almost too good to believe."

It turned out he was right.

His new hope was dashed when DNA tests last week revealed that John Barnes, the man who claimed he was the missing boy, actually wasn't - an outcome that didn't surprise law enforcement officials and experts.

They say a storybook ending was a long shot from the start. Past cases show that it's rare for someone purporting to be a long-lost child to suddenly come forward, and rarer still that he or she ultimately proves to be the person who vanished.

"That would be extraordinary," said Joseph A. Pollini, a former New York Police Department cold-case investigator now teaching at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

At least 15 people have approached the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in the last decade with beliefs like Barnes', but none turned out to be the missing children they sincerely thought they were, said Jerry Nance, who oversees long-term missing child investigations for the organization.

Like Barnes, most started with a feeling that they simply didn't belong in their families, then researched old missing-child cases and found one that seemed to fit, Nance said.

More than 778,000 people nationwide were reported missing last year. Nearly 80 percent of them were under 18, FBI statistics show.

Most missing children are found fairly quickly, according to a 2002 study done for the federal Department of Justice. The study found fewer than 10 percent of missing children were kidnapped, usually by relatives.

Police in New York - where 8,202 missing persons cases were opened last year -also say that nearly all children reported missing soon turn up.

One exception was the headline-grabbing case of 6-year-old Etan Patz, who vanished 30 years ago after leaving his apartment to catch a bus to school. The disappearance remains unsolved, though the family members have said they believe a baby sitters' boyfriend, a convicted child molester, killed the boy.

The boyfriend, who remains in prison, has not been charged in the case. But he was ruled responsible for the boy's disappearance in a civil case. A judge ordered him in 2005 to pay Etan's family $2 million.

New York City police procedures require an immediate and aggressive search for missing children under 16. Detectives can call in police helicopters or boats, and they often contact social workers because many disappearances involve child custody disputes.

In the Long Island case, Stephen Damman was 2 when he disappeared while his mother shopped on Oct. 31, 1955.

Investigators chased down leads around the country, to no avail. A hope for a major break came and went in 1957, when a boy's body was found buried in a cardboard box in Philadelphia. But it was determined not to be Stephen's.

Other police departments have contacted Nassau County investigators about four times in the last six years about cases that might match Stephen's disappearance, but none of the inquiries led anywhere, Nassau police Lt. Kevin Smith said.

Barnes is an unemployed laborer in his 50s who lives in with his wife and a 12-year-old Labrador retriever in a trailer on a dirt road in Kalkaska, Mich., about 195 miles northwest of Detroit.

Detectives were initially leery when Barnes contacted them earlier this year, Smith said. But when Barnes called back some weeks later to say a private DNA test had shown he and Stephen's sister might be related, Nassau police turned the case over to the FBI.

The FBI said Thursday that more extensive DNA tests found Barnes and the woman could not be siblings.

While the finding may send the Damman case back into limbo, it isn't the only 1950s missing-child mystery getting renewed attention.

As Barnes' claims made headlines this week, FBI agents and local authorities explored possible leads in the disappearance of Daniel Barter, who vanished on a family camping trip along Perdido Bay in southern Alabama on June 18, 1959, when he was 4 1/2 years old.

Hundreds of volunteers conducted a manhunt and even gutted alligators to see if they had eaten the boy. Then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent the family a telegram pledging the agency's aid.

But the investigation stalled before new details emerged in recent years. A conversation about the case was overheard in a doctor's office, and investigators got a tip that someone elsewhere was familiar with an abduction in the area in the 1950s, FBI Special Agent Angela Tobon said.

After five decades, Mike Barter isn't sure what he thinks happened to his older brother. But he, his siblings and supporters held a candlelight vigil Saturday at the campsite in Lillian, Ala., to draw attention to the case's 50th anniversary.

"The more you bring any missing person up," he said, the more chance "some little something - some wording, something to flash back in someone's memory - brings back something that they can work with."