Ep. - 1465 - THE 1964 CHICAGO HOSPITAL KIDNAPPING: TWO BABIES, ONE MYSTERY
Reality Life with Kate Casey
Kate Casey
4.4 • 7K Ratings
🗓️ 25 November 2025
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Paul “Jack” Fronczak and Tracey Hastings, co-hosts of the investigative podcast The Fronczak Files, about the extraordinary and still-unfolding mystery of Jack’s true identity. Many listeners will remember Jack’s story from Kate’s 2021 interview at the time of the CNN documentary The Lost Sons, which chronicled his decades-long search to uncover who he really was—and what happened to the baby stolen from a Chicago hospital in 1964. That episode remains one of Kate’s most asked-about interviews.
In this follow-up conversation, Jack shares what has happened since 2021, including new investigative leads into the disappearance of his twin sister Jill, insights into the original kidnapping, and the emotional journey of reconstructing a life built on mysteries and missing pieces.
Reality Life with Kate Casey
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The amazing Kate Casey. Welcome back for another episode of Reality Life with KKC. In October |
| 0:08.4 | 2013, I watched a 2020 story that completely captivated me about a kidnapped baby named Paul Franzak. |
| 0:15.7 | Every few years, I would look up updates, hoping there had been a breakthrough, a clue, anything. Then in |
| 0:22.2 | 2021, I interviewed Paul, whose story by then had become the subject of the CNN documentary, |
| 0:28.1 | The Lost Sons, which you can still watch on Prime Video and Hulu. And that interview remains |
| 0:34.5 | one of my most asked about episodes ever. And now Paul goes by the name Jack, his birth name. And I reached out to him once again to discuss the latest developments in this extraordinary case. But before we get into those updates, I want to take you back to the beginning, because if you're new to the story, you need the full picture. On the morning of April 27, 1964, Dora and Chester Franzak's newborn son, Paul Joseph, |
| 1:00.8 | was just over a day old at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago. |
| 1:05.1 | A woman dressed as a nurse entered the room and told Dora the baby needed to be returned |
| 1:09.3 | to the nursery for testing. |
| 1:11.7 | Dora handed over the baby. The woman walked out of the room and told Dora the baby needed to be returned to the nursery for testing. Dora handed over the baby. The woman walked out of the room and out of the hospital. |
| 1:17.6 | Hours passed before the hospital notified Dora and Chester, or authorities, that their baby was |
| 1:22.9 | missing. By 3 p.m. Chester received a call at the factory where he worked as a machinist. |
| 1:28.7 | Your baby is missing. |
| 1:31.1 | What followed was the largest manhunt in the United States at that time. |
| 1:35.0 | 200 police officers went door to door around Chicago with a sketch of this mysterious woman. |
| 1:41.8 | 10,000 babies were examined over two years. With no fingerprints, no birth |
| 1:46.8 | marks, and no blood type records, there were almost no leads. When Dora and Chester finally left |
| 1:53.5 | the hospital a week later, the case had gone cold. Nearly two years later, in March of 1966, |
| 2:00.6 | Dora and Chester received a letter from the FBI. |
| 2:03.7 | A toddler found abandoned in a stroller in Newark, New Jersey, months earlier, seemed to match their missing son. |
| 2:10.8 | His foster family, the Eckers, had named him Scott McKinley and were planning to adopt him. |
| 2:16.6 | A New Jersey detective had a hunch. What if this was |
... |
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