50 Years Later, Mystery Still Surrounds Baby Found in Newark

For most of his life, a Nevada man had believed he had been kidnapped as a baby, then reunited with his parents after being found abandoned in Newark the following year.

But Paul Fronczak has since learned an even more incredible truth: he was not the infant snatched from his parents in the mid-1960s, and the people he had always believed to be his biological parents actually aren’t. 

The strange tale began in 1964, when Dora Fronczak gave birth to a son at a Chicago hospital, the CBS TV affiliates in New York  and Las Vegas reported.

The following day, Dora and Chester Fronczak’s newborn was abducted by a woman in a nurse’s uniform, touching off a nationwide search. For more than a year, everyone from postal carriers to local police pitched in to look for the boy, without success.

But then, according to a timeline of events prepared by KLAS TV, a baby was found abandoned outside a Newark variety store on July 2, 1965. The child was taken to a New Jersey orphanage and given the name Scott McKinley.

A short time later, the FBI -- which had looked at 10,000 other babies in its search for Paul -- concluded that “Scott McKinley” was the child who had been abducted in Chicago. The Fronczaks, convinced he was their son, adopted him the following year.

But as Fronczak grew older, and after noticing he didn't much resemble the older Fronczaks, he began to have doubts, until he recently decided to have his DNA tested. The results revealed he actually was not the couple’s biological son.

Fronczak, who has a Facebook page dedicated to his story, is now on a quest both to find his blood relatives and to help solve the mystery of what became of the baby taken from a Chicago maternity ward nearly 50 years ago.

"My bag is packed," Fronczak told KLAS-TV. "I'm ready to go to New Jersey. Whatever it takes."