A woman discovers that her best friend from childhood is actually her sister.

CASE DETAILS

In 1962, 16 year-old Irene Love of Los Angeles, California, was home alone one Saturday afternoon exploring a box she found in her mother’s bedroom:

“I opened it up and there were some papers. They were dated 1942. And I thought, God, Mom keeps this? Then there was another piece of paper folded up and it was a birth certificate. And it had Irene Wynn on it. And I go, hmm, same first name as mine. I said, well the date, that was what caught my eye, the date was the same date as my birth. And by that time, a little bit later on, my mother came home. And I showed her the paper. And it came to light that I was adopted and my mom and my dad had adopted me three days after I was born. And she was fearful that I was going to leave and go and search for my real parents. And I told her no, I wasn’t, I just wanted to know what the story was.”

Minnie and Forrest Love had no children of their own, so they were thrilled with their newly adopted daughter. Irene’s parents gave her everything, even a best friend. Dolores Ford was one year older than Irene, and the only child of her parents’ best friends. Irene said they became inseparable:

“We went on camping trips. We went to the park. We went everywhere, to the lakes. We never really argued. It was like we knew each other, we connected. If one wanted something, the other one knew about it and it was always there. We were just connected so close that, there was like a great friendship there. Every holiday they would come over and bring the gifts and we exchanged gifts there in the living room. We basically got the same toys. They made sure that we were happy kids.”

Irene’s mother asked her to think back to her childhood. She asked her to recall Clifton’s, the restaurant they had gone to every Sunday. Now Irene’s mother explained why they had always gone to the same place. Irene’s birth mother, Ramona, worked at the cafeteria. This was her only opportunity to watch Irene grow up.

At some point, Irene’s birth father, Glenn, began to work at Clifton’s too. The Loves would sit at different tables in the restaurant each week so both Glenn and Ramona could see the daughter that they had been too poverty-stricken to raise themselves. Irene says she understood their predicament:

“I never faulted them for what they did. They had to do what they had to do. And I’m thankful that they gave me a family, to the family that they did give me to. So I was lucky in that way.”

When Irene was 10 years old, her friend’s mother died. Suddenly, Dolores seemed to vanish into thin air. Irene never saw her again. Years later, Irene’s mother finally explained what had happened to her friend. Dolores’ father took her to live with Glenn and Ramona, the couple who worked at Clifton’s cafeteria. But why? Finally, the shocking news came out: Dolores was also Glenn and Ramona’s child. Delores and Irene were sisters. Irene was stunned and felt an even stronger urge to reunite with Dolores.

After both of her adoptive parents died, Irene found herself drawn back to the old neighborhood, reliving her happy childhood with Dolores:

“In my mind, I can see us playing together. We were like twins, you know, but didn’t know we were sisters. And so that’s what I want real bad, to meet with her. She’s a part of my early life. She’s a part of me. I feel things that I don’t think anybody else could feel right now because it’s like an emptiness that’s going on inside of me, due to the fact I don’t know where she is. And I hope one day soon that we can come together and be the silly little girls that we were when we were growing up, ‘cause I’m still a silly little girl at heart and I want to be with her as soon as possible.”

When she was 10, Dolores Ford moved to Second Street in downtown Los Angeles to live with Glenn and Ramona Wynn. Dolores’ last known address was also in the Los Angeles area.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season five with Robert Stack and in season five with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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A woman searches for the brother her father put up for adoption.

CASE DETAILS

Twenty-eight year-old Lee “Curly” Lloyd served his country as a member of the Army during World War II. He managed to survive, but his marriage did not. While Curly was away on duty, his wife filed for divorce and placed their son and two daughters in a boarding home for children in Oroville, California.

One day in 1944, Curly’s wife arrived at the boarding house with the man she would marry when her divorce was final. She said she had returned to take the girls. Peggie Lloyd and her sister went to live with their mother and the man who was to become their stepfather. Peggie’s brother, Arthur, was left behind.

Peggie grew up being told that her father had deserted the family. When she asked about her brother, she was ignored. Peggie began to wonder if Arthur had ever even existed. Peggie says she learned otherwise one summer day in 1948:

“I climbed up into the attic and crawled along kind of looking at things, and in the back was a bunch of boxes. So I was playing in this particular group of boxes and I found this picture. When I looked at the picture, I knew that it was Arthur. I couldn’t say that it was a memory. It was a feeling, it was like, he looked like me, he was the right age. I knew that it was Arthur.”

Peggie showed the photo of Arthur to her mother, but wasn’t surprised by her reaction:

“She took the picture from me and I never saw the picture again and I still never got an answer. But of course, in mind I just knew. And so I guess that I just grew up believing that wherever my father was, Arthur was.”

It wasn’t until Peggie Reyna was an adult herself that she raised the subject again with her mother. Peggie says that in 1983, she gave her mother a genealogical chart as way to start a conversation about Arthur and Curly:

“I was an adult now and she didn’t have to be so afraid of what I did and, perhaps she would give me the information and she might feel like enough time had passed that she could do that.”

In the end, Peggie’s mother told her that Curly’s birthplace was Lindsey, Oklahoma.

“The next day I called there on the phone, and I put an ad in their local weekly newspaper asking if anybody knew his whereabouts, or Arthur’s. It was from there that things began to happen.”

Just nine days after placing the ad, Peggie was bringing in a stack of mail when a letter caught her eye:

“And there I saw this one that said ‘Curly ‘n Cue. Clown Alley, Spokane.’ When I saw that the letter was from my dad, I felt like my heart stopped. And I opened the letter, and the letter said ‘My beloved daughter! How thrilled I am to hear from you!’ It was like, it’s indescribable.”

Peggie was surprised to learn that her father, Curly, had been a professional clown with Ringling Brothers and other circuses. In 1955, he had even performed within five miles of Peggie’s home in Southern California. On Peggie’s 43rd birthday, she was able to celebrate with her father for the first time since she was three years old:

“Suddenly, I had a grandfather, and aunts, and uncles, and cousins, and just this whole world of family, and they just all acted like I’d been there my whole life, like they’d always been my family. And it’s just a wonderful thing.”

The only sad note to the reunion was that Peggie’s brother, Arthur, was not with the family. Curly told her that for four years, Arthur had traveled with the circus watching him perform in towns and cities across America. Curly had no idea where his ex-wife and his two daughters were living. Curly had joined the circus when he was just nine and believed the traveling life would be good for his young son. According to Peggie, not everyone agreed:

“The circus people told him that Arthur needed to be in school. Arthur needed a home, stability, and that the circus life wasn’t a good home for him.”

In the fall of 1948, when Arthur was just six years-old, Curley left him in the care of a Catholic organization in Logan, Utah. Fifteen years later, Curly received two letters from his son, but Arthur didn’t include his adopted last name or his return address. The letters were mailed from Colorado Springs, Colorado. Peggie now had a new place to look:

“I tried Colorado Springs, but I didn’t find anything there. I seemed to be at a loss. I have to find Arthur. I have to find him to say, ‘You have a family, not just myself, but all of Curly’s family, who love you and want you and want to know you.’”

Photographs of Arthur Franklin Lloyd show that he has blonde hair and blue eyes. His birth date is April 21, 1943.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season five with Robert Stack and in season six with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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A woman who believes she was kidnapped as an infant wants to find her real family.

CASE DETAILS

In May of 1970, somewhere in Texas, a little girl named Monica Libao clutched her only friend and waited patiently. Her family was on the move again. Monica would move a total of 28 times in 15 years, nearly one move every six months:

“I would come home from school, you know, and there would be boxes everywhere, and I knew it was time to go again.”

Monica’s parents, Pablo and Burma Libao, were relatively old to have children her age. Monica’s two half-sisters were already grown and had moved away. Monica had learned not to question her family’s nomadic lifestyle or why she was always kept home from school on class picture days. Then, at age 16, Monica came across a long buried family secret:

“My mother got ill and I had to transfer her medical papers to where she was in the hospital. I began reading through my mom’s folder. That’s when I found out that my mother had a total hysterectomy in 1945. There’s no way I could have belonged to her.”

If Burma Libao wasn’t Monica’s mother, then who was? Monica confronted her alleged mother Burma, and asked her for the truth:

“She got mad. But she told me that my mother was a family member, my sister. I was shocked. That was probably the worst shock of my life.”

It was true that Monica’s half-sister was much older –19 years, in fact– but was she truly Monica’s mother? Monica had to find out and confronted her sister:

“I asked her straight out if she was my mother and she said, ‘No, I’m not your mother.’ She said ‘Mom just doesn’t want to face the truth.’ And my sister told me that my real mother sold me for a bus ticket to New York and that she was trash and no good, and that I didn’t need to know her anyway.”

Now faced with two conflicting and bizarre stories, Monica didn’t know who to trust or what to believe. After searching her home, Monica finally found her birth certificate, which indicated she was born in Chicago during the early 1960s. But strangely, it listed no hospital, no address, and no doctor. Also, the document had been filed when Monica was seven years-old, not at her birth.

Years later, in 1990, at the age of 26, Monica contacted an Illinois judge, hoping to locate her adoption records. But the judge’s response only deepened the mystery:

“The judge told me that she could not find anything from the years 1962, ’63, ’64, and that she had searched all the records that they have there.”

For the next decade, Monica was haunted by the strange and conflicting stories about her past. Still, she managed to get on with her life, marry, and have a daughter of her own.
One day, during a rare family get-together, Monica decided to try one last time to find out the truth and confronted Burma once again:

“My mom, at that point, was just angry, very angry. She started getting mad. And my sister, she just kind of looked at her.”

According to Monica, her half-sister suddenly became irate. She began ranting about how, nearly four decades earlier, her mother had hidden a tiny baby from the police. Monica was stunned. In an instant, her past came flooding back. She remembered as a teenager overhearing her father talk about stashing a cardboard box in a bar, something about roadblocks, and the need to tell the truth. To Monica, a disturbing scenario had begun to emerge:

“The indication that I got from the whole thing is that my mother had probably kidnapped me. I really started thinking, ‘My God, how could they just up and take me from somebody?’”

Whichever way she turned, Monica was faced with a troubling past. Had she been abducted as an infant, a horrible crime that forced Pablo and Burma Libao to constantly run from the law? Perhaps a desperate young woman had sold Monica for the price of a bus ticket? Or, maybe the woman Monica knew as her half-sister was actually her own birth mother. Whatever the answer may be, Monica is desperate to find out the truth:

“I would be willing to go through anything, a DNA test, anything at all to be able to find out the truth behind all this. I am without an identity. I am searching and I’m probably going keep searching. I’m not going to give up.”

Monica was born with a uniquely shaped ear lobe on her left ear, a clue that may help confirm her true identity. If she was in fact kidnapped, she believes it happened in the Miami, Florida area in 1963 or 1964.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season twelve with Robert Stack and in season six with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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Scott Merz was illegally sold into adoption and now is searching for his birth mother.

CASE DETAILS

In November of 1959, 18-year-old Dylene Zolikoff was alone, scared, and seven months pregnant. She was taken in by a nurse in San Antonio named Ethel Nation. On January 6, 1960, Dylene gave birth to a healthy baby girl. But while Dylene was still in the hospital, Ethel took the infant away:

“Ethel stole my baby. And I searched, I searched, I tried everything in San Antonio. I talked to a lawyer. Ethel wouldn’t help me. I just couldn’t find my baby.”

Ethel Nation always denied that she had anything to do with the abduction of Dylene’s baby. But in 1968, Dylene found a photograph of her daughter in Ethel’s house. It took another 15 years of searching before Dylene and her daughter were reunited on national television:

“When I first saw my daughter, she smiled. And I was just overjoyed… after all these years… I finally found her.”

While the story of Dylene and her daughter had a happy ending, the stories of two other young people who were sold by Ethel Nation are far from over. Scott Merz was born in San Antonio in 1965. His adoptive parents were unable to have children and paid Ethel twelve hundred dollars for Scott. Scott grew up knowing he had been adopted. But when he was 10, Scott began having a strange, recurring dream. Scott’s dream seemed to be about the mother he never knew, and perhaps, the place where he was born:

“I remember walking through the main doorway. Feeling very cold. I felt like very, very horrible things went on there. Beside this table, there was a man in a green robe and a lady dressed in white. I don’t know what they were doing there. When I woke up, I woke up almost screaming, I mean I was really, really scared.”

When Scott was 18, he and his adoptive mother, Mary, began an intensive search for his birth mother. Scott started his search with a visit to Ethel Nation:

“She seemed really nice… like she wanted to help.

Scott and Mary visited Ethel on six occasions. With each new visit, Ethel changed her story. At various times, she told Scott he had been born in three different hospitals. However, none of the hospitals had his birth records. On the final visit, Ethel lost her temper and revealed what, she said, was the bitter truth about Scott’s mother:

“She told me that I was a bastard child, that all my mother was, was a slut, a whore and that I should have no right to even look for her, so for me to go home and for me to stop looking for her.”

Scott and Mary refused to give up. They decided to visit yet another place where Ehtel said Scott had been born. According to Scott, the place was a community health center known as the Woodlawn Clinic:

“The very minute that we walked in, I was completely stunned. I couldn’t even talk. The feelings that I got from this were just incredible. I mean it was… a morbid type feeling but yet I felt like I had been there before. And everything in this dream that I had back when I was ten was coming true before my eyes. I was so happy that it made sense of the dream I had from many years ago.”

But that was the only satisfaction Scott would receive. Sadly, Scott never found his birth mother. He did, however, meet a young woman who had a remarkably similar experience with Ethel Nation. Dawnette Barker was adopted in July of 1966 by a childless couple from San Antonio. As a last resort, Dawnette’s parents approached Ethel Nation after years of trying to adopt through state agencies. Dawnette learned that on the night she was adopted, her parents had to choose between her and two other infants:

“Because my parents didn’t expect that things would happen so quickly they just thought they were going to go to see the baby. But at that point Mrs. Nation told my parents that they could go ahead and take me home that night.”

When she turned 18, Dawnette found that her mother’s name was listed as Gloria Cantu. The adoption papers had been notarized by Ethel Nation. There is no way of knowing how many babies were sold by Ethel Nation, who died in 1991. Scott Merz and Dawnette Barker now suspect that there may be dozens of young people who, like them, will not be able to rest until they are re-united with their natural mothers. Dawnette Barker’s birthday is listed as July 21, 1966, but she may have been born weeks earlier. Her mother, Gloria Cantu, may have been 23-years-old when Dawnette was born.

Update:

On the night this story aired, several viewers called on behalf of Dawnette’s birth mother Gloria Cantu Martinez. A short time later, Dawnette spoke to her mother for the very first time and learned that Gloria had never wanted to give her daughter up for adoption. Ethel Nation had tricked her into signing the papers. Dawnette made plans for a long overdue reunion with her birth mother. Within a few days, Gloria flew to see Dawnette in Washington, D.C.:

“I just couldn’t believe it. I’ve always wanted to find her and wondered what she was like, if she was married, if she had any children.”

The reunion was made even more special when Gloria met her four grandchildren for the first time. Dawnette’s dream of having her entire family together had finally come true.

Scott Merz is still looking for his birth mother.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season five with Robert Stack and in season eight with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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A sheriff’s deputy searches for two men who saved her life after she lost control of a prisoner.

CASE DETAILS

On September 16th, 1995, Thomas Wright of Eldon, Missouri, awoke from a disturbing dream so troubling, that he sat in bed and prayed. That night, Thomas had a nightmare about his mother Doris, a deputy sheriff for the Miller County Sheriff’s Department. It’s a dream Thomas will never forget:

“I could see my mother’s squad car. There was a struggle. I saw the person take my mother’s gun. It was a woman. I remember the gun moving back and forth and it looked like my mother really wasn’t winning the struggle. She needed help. A gunshot went off. And that was the most disturbing thing about the whole dream, the fact that I didn’t know who was shot and why. The only thing I could think at that point was that there was a possibility that my mother might have been taken away from me.”

The bond Thomas shared with his mother had always been especially strong:

“A lot of different things have really brought us close to where we’re best friends, really. And we can feel each other’s hurt. I didn’t know until later why I had the dream.”

The day after Thomas’ nightmare, his mother was transferring a prisoner to a facility four hours away. The inmate was serving a one-year sentence for writing bad checks. As they traveled toward Laddonia, Missouri, a series of events took place just as they had in the nightmare. At 6 P.M., the squad car stopped. The convict used her small hands to slip out of her handcuffs and begun to attack. Chaos broke out. In the ensuing struggle, Doris had to fight for her gun, as well as her life, exactly as it played out in Thomas’s dream:

“I could see my mother’s expression and it was almost as if the life had just gone from her face. She needed help.”

Constrained by her seatbelt, Doris was losing the fight. But that’s when the events in reality began to differ from the events in Thomas’ dream. Out of nowhere, two men suddenly appeared. They managed to distract Doris’ attacker and got her to release her hold on the gun, likely saving Doris’ life. Was it just coincidence that the good Samaritans came by? Or was some mysterious force at work? Either way, Thomas Wright is grateful:

“If I wouldn’t have prayed, what would have been the outcome of the events? Would those two men have been there to help her? I really think they’re responsible for saving my mother’s life.”

By the time Doris regained her composure, the two men had driven off. She never had a chance to thank them for their help, but Doris Smith is eternally grateful:

“I was absolutely convinced that I would die that day. I looked for the men that were there. I wanted to talk to them, wanted to get their names, wanted to thank them for what they had done for me. I want them to know, because of their courage and their willingness to help another person, I am still here today.”

Thomas and his mother would like to thank the people who came to Doris’ rescue, but there are very few clues. A person who stopped at the scene took a photo of the men’s vehicle, a pre-1995 dark blue Chevy CK pickup truck with tinted windows and an extended cab. It was towing a blue-and-white boat. The two men were driving near Laddonia in northeast Missouri, when they jumped out of their truck to help. The event took place was on Highway 19, about 50 miles from Mark Twain Lake.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season ten with Robert Stack and in season seven with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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A man comes face to face with his exact double and believes they may be related.

CASE DETAILS

In December of 1943, Ken Palmer was a newly commissioned second lieutenant in the Army Air Corp, on his way to Wisconsin. During a momentary stop to change trains in Cincinnati, Ohio, Ken had the most remarkable encounter of his life. He sensed that someone was staring at him. A quick glance told him why. Incredibly, Ken was being watched by his exact double:

“I was amazed. And both of us saw it and both of us reacted so much to it. Both of us set down our bags and stared. And until I got a hold of myself and extended my hand, he didn’t move. He was just frozen looking at himself, in a different uniform. My first thought, of course was that he’s closely related. We began to exchange our father’s names, our grandfather’s names where we lived, things of this nature. And that didn’t get it.”

Surprisingly, the two men could not find a single relative in common. But when Ken mentioned an old family legend, he was stunned by the stranger’s response:

“He added details that I checked out with Dad later and they were accurate, things that I didn’t know. So it was perfectly obvious that we were related and yet we couldn’t understand how we could be. I took his name and address, stuffed it in my pocket. I picked up my luggage and scooted off for my train. If I’d had the sense… I would’ve stopped right then and we would’ve spent some time together. When I got on the train and settled, I reached in my pocket to get that slip of paper, it wasn’t there. It all fell apart at that moment. I was devastated.”

Ken never saw his double again, and all attempts to find him have been unsuccessful:

“I would like very much to find him, and/or, part of his family. How many times are you going to walk across the station and see that double. Out of all of the people in the United States we walk into one another and we set down our bags and stare at one another.”

Like Ken, the man’s last name was Palmer. His first name may have been Robert or James. Ken believes his double lived in the eastern United States, possibly New Jersey. At the time, the man was either a technical or staff sergeant in the Army Air Corp.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season seven with Robert Stack and in season seven with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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A German man searches for the soldier who took care of him during WWII.

CASE DETAILS

For decades, Siegfried Laier of Moerlenbach, Germany, has been searching for an American soldier. More than half a century ago—when Siegfried was just a boy—he formed a friendship with the young GI.

It was March of 1945 … The final days of World War II. For Germany’s civilians, it was a time of uncertainty and despair. One of the innocent victims was young Siegfried Laier, whose neighborhood was destroyed by allied bombers. Siegfried’s mother fled with her three youngest children. The Laiers walked 125 miles to be with relatives in the village of Moerlenbach. It was a tough time for Siegfried and his family:

“It was very bad. I was four when the war ended. There was very little food to be had. We had to go with meal vouchers and buy food, but there wasn’t much around.”

When American troops rolled into Moerlenbach, the German citizens were afraid that the conquering army was out for revenge. But instead, they found friendly soldiers who provided them with food and medical supplies. According to Siegfried, one of the GIs was a young man named Alexander:

“He was sympathetic to me and friendly. If it hadn’t been for him, perhaps I would not be alive today. He was a guardian angel for me.”

The “guardian angel” took it upon himself to track Siegfried down. Alexander took a genuine interest in the Laier family, and before long, the food shortages were a dim memory. Alexander made daily visits and over the next three months, virtually became a member of the Laier family. According to Siegfried, their friendship transcended race, nationality, and even language:

“What he would say to me, I don’t know. I don’t believe that he knew German and I certainly didn’t know any English. It was just hands and feet and somehow it just felt alright. Somehow we did communicate, because you don’t necessarily need words for communication. You can do things with signs and it went alright.”

Often times, Alexander would invite Siegfried to tag along on routine patrols around town:

“When I was sitting in the car and the other children saw me, they were perhaps a bit jealous because I was allowed to drive and they couldn’t. I was very proud.”

Inevitably, the time came to say goodbye and Siegfried was left heartbroken:

“I was sad. Perhaps I would never see him again. As I think about it today, I was really sad. I have always thought about how he helped us and that I should’ve helped other people. He was not obliged to us in any way. But he did it as a human being, out of human love.”

Today, Siegfried has only one memento of Alexander—a photograph taken in the spring of 1945. At the time, Alexander was about 20 years old. Siegfried does not know Alexander’s last name, but does recall that his unit marched into Moerlenbach, Germany, on March 27, 1945. Siegfried is hopeful that he and his guardian angel will one day be reunited.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season seven with Robert Stack and in season six with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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