Hi everyone, this is Deb from Dying to be Found.
Before we get started, I just wanted to say that episodes contain disturbing discussions on harmful acts and crimes against animals and or humankind.
Recordings are not intended for young or sensitive audiences due to the content nature of this podcast.
Listener discretion is strongly advised.
Hi everyone, this is Deb, your host from the True Crime Podcast, Dying to be Found.
Welcome to The Dash, a special collection of true crime stories that I hope will help you get through at least one way of your commute today.
When I first put this series together, I wanted to break out of our regular routine by adding short little snippets of solved true crime cases,
plus hopefully a little bit more uplifting because, you know, sometimes they're just not.
If you've been listening to The Dash this far in, you know that I definitely have a diverse group of podcasters.
And today I have Ashley and Alicia here from the Murd Nerds.
Hi guys.
Hello.
How are you?
I'm a little chilly.
You guys are sounding a little shy.
I know you're not shy because we just had this really great conversation.
We got to warm up a little bit.
This is our first episode of the night.
So once you hit record, it still always sets in a little bit.
It does.
The way you.
Yeah, oh, yeah, sure.
Does. Yeah.
Well, I'm so glad to see you again.
A couple of months ago, I know that we talked.
I actually interviewed on your show, which was really cool.
And believe it or not, that inspired me to do what we're doing today.
Get podcasters on here, see what your podcast is all about and, you know, just kind of get a little jumpstart here.
So thank you for being here today.
I am really excited.
Thanks for having us.
All right. This is how it works today.
What I do is I have a little mini interview to ask you guys about Murd Nerds.
Sounds easy, right?
We like talking about ourselves.
Yeah.
All right. Well, then when we're done, I'll dash into my storyline.
D, B, two, F style.
And just like you here with me and my family members, I get to tell you a story.
And hopefully, you guys, you don't know this.
I'm going to try to make you cry.
Oh, no. Oh, gosh.
I'm so easy.
Same. I'm a big baby.
Commercials, man.
Oh, right. I had a commercial.
Yeah. And sad music and puppy dogs behind bars.
No, I'm just kidding. I'm not going to try to make you cry.
I just happen to do that with my daughter, Shelby.
I don't know why it is, but I can get her to cry easy.
I think it's just the way that I tell stories sometimes.
But I'll do my best not to make you cry. I was just messing with you.
OK, good. No deals.
All right. So I just wanted to start off and ask you guys, how do you know each other?
And what made you decide to start a podcast together?
So I will let Alicia take the meat of this one.
Oh, my gosh. She should have known.
I moved to a new school in my seventh grade year in the middle of seventh grade.
Right at Thanksgiving.
And my parents were friends with people that lived in the town we were moving to.
So they would take me to visit and make friends, essentially.
And I met Ashley at a football game.
I literally wrote that. Did you really?
I wrote I remember the first time we met and hung out.
And it was at an away football game in your Avril days.
Yeah. In seventh grade.
And I was like basic to the max until I met her.
And then we kind of mixed each other up a little bit and became who we are now.
Yeah, we're inseparable.
That is a great story. I love that.
If you've heard me enough, you know, I'm real sentimental and I love my family.
And I don't have those roots like you guys do.
But friendships, once you get that connection.
Yeah, there's loyalty there. I get that.
Right. And it grounds you.
Mm hmm. Absolutely. Yeah.
What made you guys decide to start a podcast together?
So the funny thing about that is I've been like secretly a big true crime
for a really long time and always thought it was kind of weird
because I think it's kind of something that people hear.
And they're like, you like learning about people's murders and.
Right. Like it's OK now.
Yeah. Back then, it was like taboo to be a true crime.
I don't want to say fan because you don't write it.
But being interested in something like that.
And I had told Ashley, which for years we have always said
we need our own TV show and we tried to do YouTube at one point.
And it didn't.
Ashley Shalitman productions.
Yeah, it didn't go well.
But I was like, we should start a podcast.
And she's like, yeah, what should we start it about?
And I'm like, well, I listen to a lot of true crime podcasts.
And she's like, I like true crime.
And I'm like, is this happening right now?
Good for you.
Well, how do you guys decide on your storylines?
How do you start on your stories?
Well, it's definitely evolved over the past year and a half.
We get a lot of listener suggestions and I like to sift through those
every time I'm picking just to see if there's any that I want to look into.
But other than that, if I hear a story, I throw the name on my list.
I've got like four or five pages in my Google Docs just full of names
and I just sift through and kind of pick one at random, honestly,
and really and look into it and like, OK, I want to tackle this story this week.
Or I want to save that for another time.
I'm going to look into a different name type of thing.
Why do you save it, though?
What makes you put that aside?
I've done that, too.
And I've had suggestions.
As a matter of fact, with my season one finale, I had that suggested
to me months ago, I just simply was not ready to.
I had to put that aside and I knew I was going to at some point make that my finale.
Is it the vibe of the story?
Yeah, I don't know.
It just depends on how much meat is there, how close it hits to home for you.
I think.
And actually, nowadays I have a younger girl.
She's like 20.
She helps me.
She researches and she writes.
And then I just kind of go through and I rewrite a lot sometimes.
Sometimes I just read it out exactly how she writes it.
It just depends on how much time I have and how much I relate to the way she writes it.
And so that helps a lot.
Oh, absolutely.
Especially if you have that help and you're doing other things.
And we all work full time jobs.
Yeah.
Now, Alicia, how about you?
So I have a list as well that I've compiled over the what?
We've been doing this for a year, a little over a year.
Yeah.
We started in September.
I think a year and a half as far as starting to plan it out in reality.
You know how it is.
It takes so long to plan it out.
It does.
But I follow a lot of Reddit forums and different Facebook groups.
And sometimes there's just a case that stands out.
And I'm a sucker for anything with a twist or that doesn't make sense that I need to dissect.
Yeah, she does that a lot.
Yeah.
I like to write cases and write episodes that are, you think you know where it's headed
or you're not expecting something to turn out the way it does.
But like you said, I just had a case the other day that I was writing and I had it on the
back burner for a while and I didn't want to deal with it.
Like as awful as that sounds, I couldn't handle it or it wasn't speaking to me.
So I put it down and then I started another one that was like, I don't know, just call
him a name.
Yeah.
It's weird how cases just jump out to you sometimes.
We both do that a lot where we'll have everything almost ready and then two days before we're
supposed to record, we completely flip the script and write a whole new episode.
I don't know why.
It just happens.
Like something just syncs to you and you're just like, I have to do this one.
This is the one I have to do.
Yeah.
Do you guys ever find when you're doing your research, you actually find another case within
that case and then you go and look up that case?
There's a couple that I found.
I have never actually gone to investigate the cases that I've come across that way,
but I wondered if other people did as well.
Yeah.
It's usually unsolved because when they're unsolved, people tend to speculate.
Yes.
A lot of time the speculation will involve a serial killer and then you learn about all
these other people that felt a tragedy to this serial killer, but it could have also
been this person because they did this to this person.
It's like, oh my gosh.
Yeah.
I did that with the Brandy case.
That's how I found out about Darlene Hulse.
Right.
And you linked all those together.
Yeah.
Crazy.
It's crazy.
Or even we've done episodes where there are shorter stories.
Like I did animals that kill.
Stop laughing.
Well, because then I did animals that save lives.
Yeah.
Because we do no Murder November where we don't tell any stories.
I remember those.
When I was researching about all these animal attacks, I found one that was just a very
large story that was super interesting.
And I'm like, I'm going to save this one and not include it in the animal attack, which
maybe at one point.
I was going to say she hasn't done that one yet.
It's about a chimpanzee and I have an irrational fear of chimpanzees.
Really?
Oh wow.
Yeah.
She always has.
I remember.
Yeah.
You always have monkeys, anything like that.
They freak me out.
They look too human, right?
They take one or two chromosomes away from us.
Yeah.
Science.
They're hands, man.
If you knew then what you know now, what advice would you give someone who's just starting
out on a podcast?
And it doesn't have to be true crime.
It could be any type of podcast.
What kind of advice could you give?
Go ahead.
Okay.
I would say have your first 10 to 20 episodes written and ready to record or recorded before
you start promoting because that was actually our goal at the beginning.
We wanted to have, I think we set a goal of six or something.
It was pretty small to have recorded before we started actually posting.
Well, we got our first one recorded and we posted it that night.
We were so high on that.
We were like, oh my gosh, let's just do it.
And then we were screwed.
We were like, oh my gosh, we don't have anything for next week.
What are we supposed to do?
We would record on Fridays, edit on Fridays and release on Fridays for six weeks straight.
We did that and it was really hard.
How in the world?
Yeah.
It was like, I mean- It was poorly done.
I don't know about you guys, maybe because I'm an over thinker, it takes me a good six
hours to edit.
Yeah.
She would sit on my couch and I would just sit there and edit and it was a lot.
We would take turns.
I have a video of you getting frustrated.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
She used to go, uh, where was I?
I would go, um, so I would suck my teeth and say, um, and so.
I said it so much.
I still do it a lot.
You can ask Jeremy.
You say the word so?
Oh, all the time.
I write it in my script all the time too.
It's just, it's the way my brain works.
I think we all have a phrase or something, those filler words.
We all have them and so is one of my words, but I do always edit it out because I find
myself saying it too much.
Yeah, but you know what I noticed?
Cause it was something I was really self-conscious about and I did edit out a lot when I was
doing the editing.
Jeremy, when we first started recording with him was editing a lot of them out and eventually
at some point he was like, all right, I can't keep doing this.
And nobody really noticed.
Yeah.
That's what I found.
I would try and get ahead of it and say, I say, um, so much.
And then people who listen will be like, I never even noticed.
I think we become immune to it when we're listening to it.
We don't notice it.
So yeah.
Yeah.
I'm all about the storytelling.
I don't notice all that other stuff.
I mean, right, right.
And I think that's most people that listen, especially to true crime.
It's about the content and I think a lot with all podcasts is about the chemistry with the
hosts and it's just not, you know, that's one of my other filler words.
I say, you know, all the time, but it's like trying to relate to people.
You know?
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, we're having a conversation.
Absolutely.
Right.
Yeah.
How do you guys balance work, life and podcasting?
It's easy for me.
I don't have any kids, ergo, I don't have a life.
I'm the same way.
It's easy when you don't have those distractions.
Yeah.
It's not too bad for me.
I mean, I've got stuff going on.
I'm always busy, but I can always make time for it because it's priority.
So yeah.
Distractions, you say.
I got four kids.
Yes.
I call those drop and roll days because you got to get everybody to the ballpark and they're
all at different ballparks.
You just have so much going on when you got kids in the house.
I get that.
And we've got a 13 year old, a 10 year old, a four year old and a two year old.
So and I work nights and my husband works days.
So yeah, it's nuts.
So there's been times where I've worked because I work five days a week, but I work on Saturdays.
It's my longest shift.
I work from open to close and there's been times which I hope my boss isn't listening,
but I've wrote a paper at work because I have no time and I don't sleep.
Like I don't sleep a lot.
I was.
Yeah.
I was getting at one point three to four hours of sleep a night.
So these watches really tell you a lot.
I average, I average 4.4 hours a night.
I didn't even know that.
I've been wearing it for two weeks.
Wow.
I'm like, that's not good.
No, that's not good.
You know what?
I have that analog old fashioned watch that I don't keep up with that stuff.
I know my patterns and I've had enough of those smartwatches to tell me what I should
or should not be doing.
You're like, I don't want to know that I only got four hours of sleep because that makes
it more stressful.
It messes with your head.
It does.
Yeah, for sure.
Who would you guys absolutely love to have on Merd Nerds as a guest cohost?
Besides me, of course, but no, really.
Who would you like to have?
Tell me.
I need to know.
Me?
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, we like talking with you, obviously, but we already had you guys on.
I think it'd be really cool to have the morbid girls on.
I love morbid.
That's Ashley's favorite.
Well, it's tied with my favorite murder.
I like them both and true crime obsessed.
I love them too.
Patrick Hines is hysterical.
He screams and yells.
It's so funny.
But yeah, that's as far as podcast goes.
As far as having just a guest, I would really like to sit down with the West Memphis, the
three guys.
Oh yeah.
I would really like to sit down with them.
I think it would be really cool to kind of hear about, you know, you think about it,
you can't wrap your head around an innocent person serving like 20 years in prison.
You can't fathom that like to the fullest.
So it'd be really cool to sit with them and kind of just actually absorb that as a reality
because that's kind of hard to intake.
I think that would help us even with how we report our podcasts.
I think if we were to do that a little more often and get into the heads of people involved
in cases like that, I think it would really change how we report.
Yeah.
We were lucky enough to interview Audrey VanSock, which was Amanda VanSock's sister.
And that was really insightful to get her side of the story and you know, her thoughts
on everything because she knows everybody involved personally.
She grew up with them.
So that was really cool to hear that side of that story.
Alicia, what about you?
I got into True Crime Podcasts by listening to My Favorite Murder and I love Karen Kilgarafe.
Like I truly think she's just a special individual.
Seriously, she is.
She's one of a kind.
I would love to have her on and just pick her brain.
Yeah, her view, the way she sees and describes the world and just situations, you're just
like, that's the way it is.
That works.
Whatever she says, I'm like, okay, that's fact.
I'm following that.
Yeah, I listened to their Stay Sexy and Don't Get Murdered book that they wrote and I was
like in tears just listening to Karen talk.
I'm like, she screwed me on and she's not, but she is.
Yeah, she's.
Yeah, I cried a lot in that book too.
If you were to listen to a podcast that's not True Crime, what would it be?
Oh, I have so many.
The Call Guys.
I didn't write any of our podcasts.
Golden Image Podcast, The United States of Paranormal, A Court of Book and Boos, Indian
Energy.
It's all the other podcasts that are in our.
I can't believe I missed that.
I missed that.
That was right over.
That was smooth.
And we listen to a lot of audiobooks too.
I've stopped listening to podcasts for the last couple of months because I've been just
going through.
I've been blowing through an audiobook a day.
I used to.
Now I haven't in a long time since I started listening to podcasts, but yeah, that's actually
probably some good advice to just decompress a little bit and listen to a book on tape.
Like a good Mystery and Murder books if you want something to do.
See, but you got to escape from that as a thing.
I listen to a lot of like sciency and psychology podcasts.
I really like this is actually happening.
It's a wandering podcast.
It's just like so good.
It's all good.
They've always got really good podcasts on there.
And there's one called The Science of Everything, The Gray Area.
That's a really good one too.
Ologies.
I really like Ologies.
Have you ever listened to that one?
They talk about all kinds of different sciences.
All the Ologies.
That's clever.
That's a clever name.
That's a really good one.
I've got New Heights with Jason and Trammus Kelsey.
I have not listened to that.
I haven't listened to that.
I'm sorry.
And for our listeners who don't know who that was, you guys want to tell us who that was?
Oh yeah.
We haven't even, we didn't even introduce you, Jack.
Yeah, just in case he wants to pop in when I start telling my story.
You go do that.
That is Jeremy Golden.
That is our editor, producer, and unpaid babysitter.
Our honorary father.
He's the owner and operator of Golden Mojo Entertainment.
He is the emperor.
You want to say hi?
New Heights with Travis and Jason Kelsey.
That's one that he listens to.
Oh goodness.
All right.
When do your new episodes drop?
Where can we find you?
Oh, did you write it down?
I did.
Way to go.
Go ahead.
We drop on Fridays, so you can tune in on Fridays.
Yep.
New episodes every Friday.
You can email us at murderns.gmail.com or contact us on our social media, Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram.
We have a TikTok, but we don't use it.
I think I like it better than Instagram.
Yeah.
And we talked about it.
Like I promised this week I'm going to make a video for my episode and I never freaking
do it.
It is so easy to do.
When I do all my social media for Instagram, I literally plop it right there on TikTok
at the same time.
So it's really easy to do.
I get little OCD about stuff and I'm like, I have to make this into this intricate video.
Right.
Yeah.
I bite off more than I can chew.
That's like literally describes me in every fast.
I get that because I'm an over thinker and I can think that it's going to take me literally,
I don't know, two to three minutes to put something out there, but no, it turns into
a long ordeal.
I listed a few places we are, but we're a lot of places, so I wasn't sure.
Oh yeah.
We're a distributor like Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Stitcher, FM.
What is it called?
What?
I can't remember what it's called.
I don't know.
Any of them.
We're all of them.
FM Studio, I believe in it.
I don't know.
We're like everywhere.
Everywhere we could be.
Just Google us and we're on page one.
Give us a gook.
I totally ripped that for my favorite murder, but I did not mean to.
Oh, it is from that.
No, it's not my favorite murder, is it?
It's true crime obsessed, I think.
We say it at work all the time too, so it just kind of comes out, but I did not coin
that.
I just want that to be public knowledge.
At some point it became a verb.
Did you Google that?
Right, yeah.
All right.
Well, that is awesome.
I listen to you guys when I'm getting ready for work in the morning, sometimes when I'm
in the car.
It just depends.
What I love about podcasts is that I can listen to half of it when I'm getting ready.
I'll finish it on the drive in.
Be sure to check out Ashley and Alicia on Merg Nerds wherever you get those podcasts
that they listed, plus on their social media sites and apparently not on TikTok just yet.
We're there.
It's just not very active.
I haven't posted anything on there in months.
All right.
Are you ready to dash into my story?
Oh, I'm sorry.
Yes, I am too.
We didn't recognize the name, so we're pretty interested to hear.
What I like to do when I start my storylines, I ask a question, but it's basically getting
us into the thought process of the storyline.
Let me ask you two, have you ever gone snooping for a Christmas present when you guys were
kids before Christmas morning?
Have you?
Oh yeah, I would open mine and we wrapped them.
I was a spoiled brat.
We didn't have rules, so I got to do whatever I wanted.
I wasn't scared of repercussions.
Okay.
I grew up an only child, so I totally did.
All right.
Did you guys wrap it perfectly though that your parents did not know?
I would just take the tape slowly off.
I remember it was the year I got a digital camera and I was so excited because I didn't
think I was going to get one.
I lived with my grandparents, so they just really weren't very observational, so I was
just able to pull it off without a lot of effort.
I don't ever recall ever doing that, but there was one time that my dad or some, there was
a lot of ruckus going on.
I could hear a lot of wrestling, and so I peeked down the stairs and I saw that I was
getting skis that Christmas, which was pretty exciting, but I did have to pretend that I
was surprised that morning.
There's a picture that I have with my sister, Kathy, and I. My sister has her arms up and
she's like, oh wow, how exciting.
I got skis for Christmas.
That was totally fake, and even when I'm looking at it today, I knew what she was doing, but
we had to act surprised.
Yeah.
That's really funny.
That is super funny.
All right, so we're going to come around to that question in just a bit, but for now,
I'm going to tell you the story about Paul Joseph Fronczak.
On April 27th, 1964, Paul Joseph Fronczak was born at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago,
Illinois to Dora and Chester Fronczak.
Obviously, Alicia, you have kids, you know this should be a very, very happy event for
the new parents, but unfortunately, Paul was kidnapped from that hospital when he was just
two days old.
Now I will say this, I'm curious to know why, and I'll tell you this in just a moment, but
they had not taken his footprints yet, and I'm curious to know why, because at two days
old, you would think that they would have already done that.
Yeah.
That's like within the first hour they do that.
It's an inside job.
Yeah.
So at 1.45 PM on April 29th, 1964, a woman posing as a nurse, inside job like you just
said, but a woman posing as a nurse came in, told Dora that she needed to take Paul to
the nursery so that they could take blood work.
Sounds reasonable, right?
That's part of the process, but maybe get those footprints while you're at it.
Who knows?
Naturally, Dora handed her baby over to the nurse who immediately left the hospital, jumped
into a taxi, took off, and was never seen again.
Oh my gosh.
One thing too is back in the 60s, car seats were not required, so it was probably really
easy to get away.
The lady just jumped in the car, had a baby in her hand, and off they went.
So according to the taxi driver, this woman was Caucasian, blonde, approximately 35 to
40 years old, around 5'7".
Is that us?
I mean, right?
5'7", too tall.
And medium build, so he got a pretty good description of her.
Believing the occurrence was connected to a kidnapping though, run by the Chicago area
mob, over 200 police began an immediate investigation and canvassed a 16 block radius of that hospital
where Paul had just been taken.
So they acted pretty quickly here.
They started going door to door.
They went to 600 homes before midnight and couldn't find any leads on the baby that had
been kidnapped, unfortunately.
They also tested 10,000 boys to see if they were baby Paul over the next two years, but
no news came back that any of them were the stolen baby.
So he just disappeared in plain sight, which is really sad.
Yeah, that's tough.
Though the kidnapping case is considered to be one of the biggest manhunts in the history
of Chicago way back in 1964, definitive leads were never established and at some point this
case went cold.
That makes sense.
It'd be hard.
I mean, they didn't exist two days ago.
He didn't exist, you know?
That's crazy.
And it's like all newborns look like potatoes.
Yeah, literally.
So it's like, for this potato with dark hair or this potato with light hair.
A really big scowl on their face because they're not happy coming out from their warm spot.
Exactly.
Meanwhile, in March 1966, a little toddler boy was abandoned in a parking lot by a department
store in New Jersey.
He was simply left alone in a stroller when a passerby came through and figured out that
he was just sitting there by himself.
Now, he was a little too young to even say his name and was placed in foster care with
a family who was going to adopt him until police linked him to baby Paul Fronczak, who
was stolen from that Chicago hospital two years earlier in 1964.
Can you imagine being that person who stopped and just saw a baby by themselves or a toddler
just in their stroller outside of a department store?
I mean, is that normal back then?
Was that normal?
To just leave a baby?
No.
Well, like to go into a store and leave your baby outside, that's not normal.
Like back in the 60s?
I don't know.
But it was a European thing.
She hopped in the car with the baby in her arm, probably a cigarette in her mouth.
I mean, you never know.
It is a European thing though.
They leave the prams outside of the store and then they go into the stores, not in the
United States.
Are you saying they leave their kids outside?
I think like in Norway and stuff they do that.
Yeah, they leave them in the prams outside of the store and it's not uncommon to see.
Well, because they don't have freaking psycho killers like we do here.
So for real.
Yeah, that's true.
People are happy there.
Well, police looked into this abandoned child and they felt that he could have been baby
Paul Franszak, who had been abducted from the hospital.
And the only thing that the investigators had to go on was that newborn picture because
yes, they did have the picture of the baby.
But like I said, they hadn't taken his blood work yet, his fingerprints, footprints, nothing.
So they only had that picture to go by.
They compared photos of newborn Paul Joseph Franszak from the hospital photos and they
looked really closely at his facial features.
Now here's an interesting fact and I don't know if you guys know this, but another approach
to identifying the abandoned toddler was the shape of his ears.
Oh yeah, they're like fingerprints, aren't they?
Kind of.
Yeah, I have read that.
Yeah, they are.
And back in the 1960s, they believed, like you said, that that is pretty significant
like a fingerprint.
And me personally, I can relate to this because when I came from Canada to the United States,
it was back in the 1980s and I was required to tuck my hair behind my ear, have a sideways
photo or at least like a partially sideways photo so that they could specifically see
my ear.
And they took that picture for my green card.
Yeah, I thought that was interesting.
Wow, that's interesting.
How weird.
Isn't it?
I did ask them, I'm like, why are you doing this?
Why are you making me tuck my hair behind my ears?
And that's what they told me.
It was as significant as a fingerprint.
So I thought that was neat.
And once they completed their comparisons and were confident that the toddler was baby
Paul, authorities contacted Dora and Chester Frankzak to give them the good news that their
son had been recovered.
Dora and Chester were obviously elated with this and agreed to psychological testing before
they could be introduced back to the toddler.
And that makes sense.
I understand.
Well, they've been through a lot.
Sure.
Right, right.
Something interesting happened here.
When Dora was introduced to the toddler, she felt at the time that all eyes were on her
due to the media frenzy that obviously erupted in this case.
Baby is found, baby's returned home.
And Dora felt that she could either say yes, no, or I'm not sure that this is truly my
son.
And what do you guys think she did?
I would imagine that she would say, oh gosh, okay, I don't know.
Either she said yes because you want to think that so badly no matter what you actually
know or think in your head.
Or I don't know because she only knew him probably for a few hours out of those two
days.
How are you going to be able to know?
Yeah.
But I don't have that like mother's intuition.
So I don't know that feeling, you know?
What about you?
Yeah, I would feel like she'd be pressured to say, yeah, this is my son.
Okay.
So you're feeling she's pressured?
Yeah.
I mean, I think that's when they were introduced, but according to a statement that she had
made many, many years later, Dora did not say yes so much because out of clear definition,
she absolutely knew that was her son.
She did it because she thought it was the right thing to do because this boy needed
a family.
Right.
But you got to think too though, you got to think if that's the reason, then people are
going to stop looking for your son and he could be out there somewhere.
So that feels like a scary reason to do that because then that cuts off all hope.
Well, you have four years on.
Yeah, within the public.
And then Ashley, you said she may have wanted that baby so bad to be hers that she said
yes.
You just don't know.
I mean, I don't know what I would do in that situation.
Well, Dora and Chester took the toddler in, declared him as Paul Joseph Frunksak and raised
him as their own.
Honestly, that's really sweet.
I would think that's a happy ending.
But Dora eventually went through the court systems and had to adopt Paul because obviously
there was no record of him other than that newborn picture.
In 1960s, she couldn't even prove that he was her biological son.
From a very young age, Paul did not feel like he even fit in with his new family.
And I've heard that before, that adopted kids, even if they don't know they're adopted, they
just don't get that warm and fuzzy feeling like they're part of the family.
They feel different.
Right.
Paul didn't feel that he fit in because he didn't look like anybody.
There was no family resemblance there.
He did go to Catholic school and was raised by a loving yet overprotective mother for
good reason, of course.
Did he know kind of the situation growing up?
Did he know his situation or did he think that he was like a birth child?
I think that he felt like he was a birth child.
It's my understanding his parents never told him he was adopted.
Okay.
So he seems like a pretty smart kid because he's at a young age already saying, you know
what, I don't look like anybody.
Right.
I don't know, but I will tell you this.
So when he was 10 years old, Paul was curious and boys will be boys, right?
He decided he was going to go look for Christmas presents hidden around the house.
And of course, Paul's quest took him to the basement where he pushed a sofa aside and
accessed the crawl space in the family home.
I mean, he was determined.
Who does that?
Right.
All right.
There in the crawl space, he came across several old boxes full of newspaper articles, sympathy
cards and letters addressed to the family of a baby boy who had been kidnapped in 1964
from Michael Reese Hospital.
So he came across these articles as he went reading through them.
The mother of the boy who was stolen pleaded for the kidnapper to bring her baby back home
unharmed.
Paul recognized the woman in this photo to be his mother, Dora.
Gosh, at 10 years old, what a way to shake your foundation.
That's already a weird age anyway.
Yeah.
Well, another article showed the same mother being interviewed saying that she had reunited
with her infant boy who was a toddler by now and had been abandoned in New Jersey.
And because there was not a paper trail on that infant, the mother had adopted the boy
and called him her own.
Paul immediately ran upstairs to ask his mother about what he had just found.
Of course, she would have been a little shocked.
She was angry that he had been snooping for those Christmas presents.
Yeah, for real, that's bold of him to run up there immediately.
I think I would have waited at least a day or two.
It's stewing a little, just a little.
But that is when she told him that yes, he had been kidnapped and that was all he needed
to know.
So basically she's like, drop it.
We're not talking about this.
And life went on.
Wow.
That probably just reassured him as to his feelings of not belonging and feeling like
he was different.
But we don't know these personalities.
So was she an easily approachable woman?
She told him the truth, but did he know his boundaries?
Right.
Paul graduated from high school, played in a band for a few years and even joined the
army.
He held multiple jobs and eventually got married, had a child and moved out to Las Vegas.
In 2012, when Paul was 48 years old, his daughter asked him to take a DNA test.
Paul obliged and asked his adoptive parents to take a DNA test along with him.
They reluctantly agreed.
So they all swabbed.
They prepped the DNA kits for mailing.
However, on their flight home from visiting because they did not live in the same state,
Paul's parents went ahead and flew home, but Dora and Chester had gotten cold feet and
they asked him not to send in those tests because he was their son no matter what.
Oh, that's hard.
I know.
What would you guys do?
Would you send those DNA tests off?
Would you comply and agree to the tests or agree to their wishes?
I would say, okay.
And then I'd still send them because I don't think it would change.
It wouldn't change everything that they had done for him down to taking him in not knowing.
I don't think that would change anything.
You could just not tell them ever if you wanted to.
I probably would.
Well, and it sounds like they already know.
They already know that.
It definitely sounds like they didn't need that.
And if they've already said, look, I don't care.
You're my son.
We love you.
I get it.
I think it's 48 years of being okay or 46 years or whatever, being okay and having him
and moving on to just rip that open again.
That's got to be hard for the parents.
Well, Paul did comply for a couple of weeks, but he simply couldn't take it anymore and
he did mail off those DNA tests.
Jay's nodding his head back there.
He's like, yup, that's what I wanted to happen.
Deb, you got to give me the answer to this.
It's driving me nuts.
You're telling a great story.
I think I have heard this case, but I don't know it well enough to remember how it ends.
So I'm very excited.
Are you calling me a good storyteller?
You are a great storyteller.
Thanks.
I think more podcasters need to come on with me.
What do you think?
I think so.
We'll spread the word.
Weeks went by and DNA tests did come back.
Paul was not the biological son of Dora and Chester from Zach.
He was not the baby who was stolen from the hospital back in 1964.
Imagine if that would happen today where they just find a missing child and they're like,
oh, you're missing a child.
Take this one.
You can have this one.
Yeah.
Exactly.
That's insane.
See, now I'm like, okay, well, were his parents in the database?
Did they find him?
You got it.
Did he find cousins?
Who are their parents?
Who are their siblings?
I'm so glad you're asking me those questions because Paul immediately began searching for
his birth parents, which unfortunately caused discourse with his adoptive parents because
he did send those tests off.
They stopped talking to him for about a year.
That's awful.
What a wonderful journey for him to be able to go on and for them not to support him.
That's upsetting to me.
Well, you know what was upsetting to them?
They were ticked off because he went against their wishes and mailed off those tests.
Again, you don't know what personalities you're dealing with here because the dynamics of
families, I mean, shoo.
Well, and having that big of a secret, I think it starts to snowball.
So I'm sure there was a lot of short, like, no, just because.
So I imagine that had to be part of the dynamic at least.
It took some time, but Paul was able to make Dora and Chester believe that he did not act
out of haste or maliciousness.
When he did decide to send off those tests, he actually told his parents that he had sent
them off because he wanted to help them find their real son.
Right.
He could be in the database too.
Absolutely.
Paul spent the next several years looking for his true identity.
He went public asking news outlets to help him not only find his own real family, but
the real Paul Joseph Frunkzak.
The FBI reopened this case and located at least 10 boxes of evidence from the original
kidnapping case.
However, since DNA proved that Paul was not that stolen baby from the hospital, he could
not have any access to those records.
So he began his own investigation and Paul set up a website which produced some pretty
solid leads here.
He discovered that both his biological parents had passed away.
He also learned that he had plenty of family, including two older siblings who are now living
on the East Coast of the United States.
I am so curious what happened, why he was alone outside of that store.
But I'm going to keep my mouth shut.
I'll let you finish.
Yeah.
I'll tell you in just a minute.
He has family in Tennessee.
One of the leads that Paul was given was to a machinist by trade named Kevin Beatty who
lived in Michigan.
Kevin was confirmed to be the real Paul Joseph Frunkzak.
That's our neck of the woods.
Interesting.
In the sake of differentiating between these two Pauls, I am going to refer to the adopted
Paul as Paul and the real Paul as Kevin because that is what Kevin grew up with.
He grew up with the name Kevin.
Paul wrote to Kevin to tell him what he had discovered, but unfortunately Kevin had been
recently given the diagnosis of terminal cancer and chose not to pursue what he had just found
out.
What a hard decision to make.
I know.
It's like, it doesn't even sound like a real story.
It sounds like a movie or a book.
Wouldn't you want that to close things out?
But unless you're in that position, you can't even begin to try to think about how hard
it is to make that decision.
Yeah, absolutely.
And me personally, I'm so sentimental.
Family is everything.
I probably would.
I mean, that's just me.
I don't know.
That's how I feel too.
Well if you paid attention to the dates that Paul had tracked down, I don't even know if
I gave you the dates.
Back in 2020 is when Paul had started looking into this and made his discoveries.
But if you pay attention to that date, you would understand that Paul tracked Kevin down
in Michigan during the high active season of COVID.
So it really made everything hard for anybody to do anything face to face.
Kevin did, however, hold a conversation with Dora, but they never met face to face before
Kevin eventually passed away.
I hate it.
I thought you weren't going for the crying.
That is awful.
I'm sorry.
Oh my gosh.
I'm glad they at least got to have a conversation though.
That must have been fulfilling for Dora.
I think so.
Ironically, you guys, Kevin passed away on April 27th, which was his original birthday
back in 1964.
Wow.
Things are weird.
Aren't they though?
That's crazy.
That's just the universe, man.
Oh my gosh.
Dora extended her gratitude to Paul for giving her that closure on her missing child, but
in the end told him that Paul, the one that she had adopted was her true son.
I just got the goose bumps.
Oh my gosh.
Okay, here we go.
Kevin's obituary produced additional leads to Paul's new family members.
That's great.
They list all those names.
Right, right.
He reached out, but this is the sad part.
Unfortunately, no one chose to talk to him or acknowledge that he was even related to
them.
Are you kidding?
Right?
Ew.
Who is the adopted Paul Joseph Fronksak, you ask?
The abandoned boy found in New Jersey when he was a toddler?
As it turns out, his real name is Jack Rosenthal.
Jack was actually born six months earlier than the real Paul Fronksak.
And honestly, if it were me, I'd like to know I was a little bit younger, not older, but
you know, that's just how that goes.
He was born in New Jersey on October 27th, 1963.
It's my sister's birthday.
Really?
Just not 1963.
Exactly.
And guess what?
Ironically, it's the same birthday as his mother Dora.
Oh my gosh.
See, they all linked together.
That is insanity.
That is like synchronicity and numbers.
Yeah, that shit's real.
That is wild.
It is.
Well, for the purpose of consistency, I am going to continue calling Jack Paul since
that was the name that he went by all his life.
Paul is one of four siblings who unfortunately grew up in an abusive household with a Korean
war vet and an alcoholic mother.
Oh my gosh.
Through his quest to find answers, Paul also discovered that both of his biological parents
were now deceased.
He's putting so much work into finding his family.
Right, because it started in 2012, you said, right?
I'm going to say yes to that.
I was going to say, I think he said 2012 and I'm like, okay, so man, like that's like eight
years of work from 2012 to 2020.
That's crazy.
And he put a lot of this time in on his own time because he didn't have records to those
FBI files.
He also found that he had a twin sister named Jill.
Oh my gosh.
Oh, Jack and Jill.
Oh my gosh.
I thought that's what you were owing was that for Jill.
Are you making a joke or is that their real names?
No, that was their real names.
What?
Are you calling me a jokester?
I don't do that.
I wasn't sure.
I was like, that would be an odd place to put a joke.
Yeah, their mother was definitely drunk when she named them.
And then it was 1964 when Mother Goose was very popular.
Ah, yes.
Yes.
Through his own research, Paul discovered that he and Jill were abused as children and
foul play is suspected in Jill's disappearance.
Oh my freaking Lord.
I cannot handle this.
Okay, then I'll move on.
No, you're fine.
All right.
It's not certain if Jill disappeared at the same time that Jack had been abandoned at
that department store regardless.
Wait, did I say Jack?
Okay, Paul.
Yeah.
Regardless, Jack or Paul in this case continues to search for his long lost twin.
To this day right now?
To this day.
Oh my gosh.
So there's a chance they were both left out there and someone abducted her and left him.
Oh my gosh.
It's kind of like a little miracle though that he was abandoned and that Kevin went missing
when you think about it because he could have been murdered himself or...
Or in whatever situation she might have been in.
Continuously abused.
Yeah.
Wow.
Kind of how bad things play out.
There are so many elements to that story that were so unexpected.
It's my kind of story though.
That was an Alicia story for sure.
As of today, Jack continues to go by the name Paul Joseph Fronczak.
He successfully had his biological sister's case reopened under the New Jersey State Police
Agency, the one that had gone missing.
Police believe that Jill disappeared in 1965, close to the same time that Paul was abandoned.
And Paul firmly believes that Jill is still alive and continues to look for him.
An age progression photo has been created for Jill, which can be found on the missingkids.org
website.
So if you have any information on the disappearance of Jill Rosenthal, please contact the National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST.
And that's the story of Paul Joseph Fronczak.
Wow.
What a good story.
Well done.
Thank you.
I almost Ashley'd that a hundred times.
I wanted to ask so many questions, but I knew I was like, she's going to cover her bases.
I got to keep my mouth shut.
Did I?
Yeah, that was great.
Believe it or not though, because I listen to you guys a lot.
And Alicia, I think that you and I have a lot of the same style in our storytelling.
Yeah, I agree.
I do have a question.
I've got a question too.
Yeah.
You go first.
Did you ever make contact with his older siblings and have a relationship with them?
That was my question.
No, I think that in his quest, it wasn't really specific, but whoever it was that he contacted
that he found out were his relatives could have been his older siblings.
They did not want to contact him.
That is insane to me.
Why would you not want to explore that at least?
I'm too nosy.
Like, okay, yeah, he might be a shit person, but find out because he might be a great person.
It sounds like he was or is.
Yeah, because I've been in touch with people.
I did that DNA test several years ago and I have found family that I did not know I
had.
Yeah, me too.
Ashley's got a crazy story, actually.
Yeah, we found out, we all did it, and we found out that my grandpa had a child in Seattle
that he didn't know about.
He was donating sperm back in the 70s and my mom had another sister.
It actually looks exactly like my mom too.
Yeah.
Do you guys talk?
We actually all went on vacation together.
She fits right in.
That's wonderful.
That's an amazing story.
Yeah, she's lovely.
She works for Microsoft, I think.
Cool.
Way to go.
Why are you laughing, Sheri?
I'm a name dropper.
Ashley got a rich aunt out of that.
No, my question was the same as hers if he was talking with the other, but I do remember
you saying that they didn't want to reach out, which is just, just, poof, poof to them.
I can't imagine.
I hate that.
And I hate them.
All right.
We would love to hear what our listeners have to say about this story and our Dash interviews.
You all, I can only say that I have had quality guests so far.
Woo-hoo.
All right.
Click on the links in our show notes to find out more about this podcast, your hosts, and
our social media.
Join me, my co-hosts, and my guests back here for the Dash every Thursday with Shelby, Cory,
or Beth.
If you are a True Crime podcaster and want a chance to highlight your own podcast, email
me at dyingtobefound at gmail.com.
Talk to you soon.
Thanks for listening to Dying to Be Found, True Crime podcast, and our Dash mini series.
Every week, we'll bring you a variety of True Crime episodes, a little dash of hope,
plus special bonus episodes with some really cool guests.
Before we go, we'd love for you to share this podcast with your friends and give us a five-star
review.
Follow us on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest at Dying to Be Found, or visit
our website at dyingtobefound.com, spelled just like you see in our logo.
Better yet, click on our Linktree account found in the show notes, where you'll find
all the information in one place.
Be sure to Dash in every Thursday when I get together with some of my family members.
Thanks again, everyone, and we'll talk to you soon.