MFM Minisode 503

**Karen Kilgariff** (0:06)
My Favorite Murder Hello and welcome to My Favorite Murder, the mini-series. We read you your stories.

**Georgia Hardstark** (0:22)
And emails.

**Karen Kilgariff** (0:23)
And emails. Stories of emails.

**Georgia Hardstark** (0:26)
Stories where you're writing emails to us.

**Karen Kilgariff** (0:28)
Lots of feelings about email. You're first? I'm first.

**Georgia Hardstark** (0:32)
Whatever you want.

**Karen Kilgariff** (0:33)
I'll go first.

**Georgia Hardstark** (0:34)
Okay.

**Karen Kilgariff** (0:35)
So this was an email that I found when I was researching back for episode 544, where I covered the Paul Franzak disappearance, the baby who was kidnapped as an literal, like two-day-old from the hospital. Yeah. So it's called, Is My Dad Adopted or Stolen at Birth?

**Georgia Hardstark** (0:52)
Wow.

**Karen Kilgariff** (0:53)
Hey, best pals, I've been putting this email together in my head for months now, so here we go.
My dad, Jeff, was a wild dude and lived life fast and extreme. When I was young, I would ask him to tell me his craziest stories. He'd paint beautiful pictures of his younger self, convincing the cops to buy him and his friends beers, and smoking doobies on their way to their fifth Rolling Stones concert. Just regular bedtime stories every father tells his daughter, right? As I got older and because I've always been a murderino at heart, these stories slowly became more murdery, like how his friend Ray was acquitted for the murder of his wife in 1996, but everyone in town knows that he probably did it. But that's not the story I'm here to tell you today.
Sadly, my larger than life dad died of colon cancer complications this past February. At his celebration of life, we were all telling stories with tears in our eyes. Then out of nowhere, my dad's cousin Donna says, I always remember us making fun of Jeff for being that stolen baby from Chicago. Man, he hated that.
Come again, first cousin once removed Donna.
What came next was the unfolding of my dad's final wild story, the one that was so good he didn't want to tell me in person. He wanted me to do the digging myself. So everyone knew my dad was adopted. This is something that he never really cared about. He would always say in a very south side Chicago accent, My ma's my ma and dad's my dad. That's all that should matter to you guys. My dad was born and adopted on April 24th, 1964 by my grandparents. On that same day, Paul Joseph Franzak was stolen from a Chicago hospital by a woman dressed as a nurse.

**Georgia Hardstark** (2:32)
Same day.

**Karen Kilgariff** (2:33)
Same day.
Then he was adopted. So it's so suspicious. Look at all the people who adopted babies on that exact day, who were born there, and you'll find who took it.

**Georgia Hardstark** (2:43)
The turnaround, though. Yeah, that's very true. But that turnaround is like, wouldn't you think that the person...

**Karen Kilgariff** (2:49)
Well, yeah, exactly. It's not. This launched a huge manhunt and baby search. The FBI tested and examined over 10,000 babies, one of which was my dad. They came back multiple times to examine my dad and took multiple hair and blood samples. The authorities were highly suspicious of my grandparents as they weren't my dad's biological parents, and their lawyer was under suspicion of black market adoptions. And he says, OK.
And then it goes on to say, it's clearly not him, it's right up. Another baby was found to be him, but it wasn't.

**Georgia Hardstark** (3:19)
Obviously, it wouldn't be him, because you would have told that during your actual story. I don't know what the hell I was thinking, I'm just like, wait, so it isn't him? It's suspicious.

**Karen Kilgariff** (3:28)
So episode 544 is where you can read, you can hear about that story. And then this email goes on to say that she's been reading Paul Frantzak's book called The Foundling, which she wrote. And then she says, this has been such a comforting way for me to cope with the loss of my dad. Only murderinos get it.
Thank you for giving my dad's story a voice. It means more to me than you will ever know. I've been on the hunt for my dad's bio family, because in my grief, that's just what feels right. So murderino fam, if you know anyone born in that timeframe with a last name, Schwerer, S-C-H-W-E-R-E-R, hit me up.

**Georgia Hardstark** (4:04)
Wow.

**Karen Kilgariff** (4:04)
And of course, a huge U-Rule for normalizing mental health issues and everything that comes with it. If Prozac is your bestie, say, hey! Hey!
Stay sexy and hug your dad for me, Allie. So it's Allie Schwerer. Check it. I mean, if you know something, look her up.