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The Trail Went Cold

The Trail Went Cold - Episode 41 - Mary Agnes Moroney

The Trail Went Cold

Robin Warder

True Crime, Tv & Film

4.53.2K Ratings

🗓️ 30 August 2017

⏱️ 38 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

May 15, 1930. Chicago, Illinois. After a newspaper ad seeks assistance for the poverty-stricken family of two-year old Mary Agnes Moroney, a woman calling herself Julia Otis shows up at their home to help. She offers to take Mary Agnes shopping to buy her new clothes, but they never return. 22 years later, a woman named Mary McClelland comes forward after suspecting she might be Mary Agnes and experts conclude that she is probably the missing child. However, after Mary McClelland passes away in 2005, DNA testing shows no genetic connection between her and the Moroney family. So what happened to the real Mary Agnes Moroney? This week’s episode of “The Trail Went Cold” features the oldest cold case we’ve ever covered, which has gone from solved to unsolved again over the course of several decades. Additional Reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Agnes_Moroney http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/m/moroney_mary.html LIFE Magazine (Sep. 22, 1952) The Trail Went Cold is produced and edited by Magill Foote. All music is composed by Vince Nitro.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

May 15th, 1930 Chicago, Illinois

0:08.0

After a newspaper ad is placed asking for assistance for the poverty-stricken family of two-year-old Mary Agnes Moroni, a woman

0:15.7

named Julia Otis shows up at their home to help.

0:19.0

She offers to take Mary Agnes shopping to buy her some new clothes, but they never return.

0:24.0

22 years later, a woman named Mary McClelland comes forward

0:28.5

after suspecting that she might be Mary Agnes,

0:31.3

and experts conclude that she is probably the missing child.

0:35.0

However, after Mary McLellan passes away in 2005, DNA testing shows no genetic connection between her and the Moroni family.

0:45.0

After that, the trail went cold. Oh, uh, yeah. Oh, uh, uh, uh, uh, and uh, and uh, uh, uh, uh,

1:04.0

uh, uh, and uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, okay.

1:15.0

Oh, uh, okay. Hello everyone and welcome to the latest episode of the Trail went cold.

1:30.0

I'm your host Robin Warder and today we will be jumping back 87 years to profile the oldest

1:36.3

cold case we've ever featured on this podcast, the 1930 disappearance of two-year-old Mary Agnes Moroni.

1:44.0

This is actually the first mystery we've covered involving a missing infant

1:48.0

since those cases are incredibly heartbreaking.

1:51.0

However, this story is pretty unique because it was seemingly solved two decades later, but a stunning

1:57.3

revelation in recent years has turned it into an unsolved cold case again. You might be familiar with the story of Bobby Dunbar, a four-year-old boy who disappeared

2:06.8

in 1912 and was the subject of a very famous episode of the podcast, This American Life. A boy resembling Bobby was found in

2:15.4

another state eight months later and even though another woman insisted that he

2:19.7

was her child, the boy was returned to the Dunbar family. He lived the rest of his life as Bobby Dunbar, but several

2:27.0

decades after his death, DNA testing proved that he had no genetic connection to the Dunbar family and that a horrible mistake had been made.

2:36.0

Today's story about Mary Agnes Moroni is fairly similar and while it's less well known than the Bobby Dunbar case,

...

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