Newborn baby abducted from Chicago hospital 55 years ago found living in Michigan

CHICAGO — Fifty-five years after a newborn baby was kidnapped from Chicago's Michael Reese Hospital, WGN Investigates has learned investigators have found him living in rural Michigan.

The April 26, 1964 abduction captivated the nation. One day after Chester and Dora Fronczak became the proud parents of the baby boy, a woman wearing white and appearing to be a nurse entered Dora Fronczak's hospital room and said she would take the baby to see the doctor. She never returned.

The FBI enlisted the help of local police — even mail carriers — in a desperate search for the child. Days turned to weeks. Weeks into months. More than two years later, the FBI was contacted about an abandoned boy found in New Jersey.

It was decades before DNA testing, and law enforcement thought the boy they found had ears similar in shape to the Fronczak baby. Newspaper accounts at the time quote Dora Fronczak as saying “that's my baby, it's Paul!” The Fronczaks raised the baby as their own.

Then, in 2014, our sister station KLAS-TV reported the person who thought he was Paul Fronczak had taken a DNA test that proved he wasn't.