INSIDE EDITION has the story of Paul Fronczak who is searching for his true identity after learning the only identity he has ever known is not real.
Paul Fronczak is on a quest to find out who he really is, combing through old newspaper clippings, scanning the internet and searching family photos.
“I don't know my real name. I don't know how old I am, I don't even know when my birthday is,” he said.
Fronczak is a college administrator from Henderson, Nevada. He grew up believing his parents were Dora and Chester Fronczak.
But when he was ten, he found a pile of newspaper clippings stored in a scrapbook in his house. They were about him, and it revealed that when he was a newborn, he had been kidnapped.
He said, “It didn't make any sense that I was actually the baby that was taken from Chicago.”
According to the articles, in 1964 his parents suffered the worst nightmare imaginable.
Just hours after his mother gave birth at this Chicago hospital, a woman posing as a nurse stole the baby.
“It was very traumatic for them. I can't even imagine what they went through.”
Two years later, the FBI announced they had found the boy.
The FBI determined that a little boy found abandoned in a stroller in front of a department store on a Newark, New Jersey street was the same boy who had been stolen from his parents at the hospital in Chicago. The way the FBI figured it out may be surprising.
The FBI concluded that the little boy in Newark had the same ear structure as the kidnapped baby from Chicago. Dora and Chester Fronczak were told the remarkable news that their missing son had been found.
Home video shows the joyous celebration after little Paul was reunited with his parents.
He says his childhood was filled with love, but something about the story didn't make much sense. For one thing, he looked nothing like his parents.
“My brother looks exactly like my dad. Exactly. I don't,” he said.
Paul is now married and has a child of his own, but he became obsessed with learning the truth about his personal history.
Finally, he took a home DNA test. When he got the phone call with the lab results, he was stunned even though he'd always suspected the truth.
Fronczak said, “In my heart I really knew that I probably wasn't their real child. I felt it, but once the guy told me those words, it took my breath away.”
The truth had finally come out, but an even bigger mystery remains. If Paul Fronczak isn't really Paul Fronczak who was kidnapped when he was a newborn, then who is he?
His wife Michelle is hopeful that one day he'll finally uncover his real history.
She said, “I support him 100 percent. Whatever he wants. It's about him finding answers.”
“Two tragic things happened to two different people, and I would love to be part of solving those crimes.”
