Saturday's "This American Life" featured the story of a boy who disappeared in 1912.
The 'end' of the story has bugged me tremendously. I've tried to do some research surfing, but it hasn't helped.
Here are the main points of the story, culled from Wikipedia.
*Bobby Dunbar was a 4 year old child who disappeared in 1912. After 8 months investigators believed that they had found the child. Lessie and Percy Dunbar identified the boy as their son, Bobby Dunbar, though press accounts differed on how sure they really were.
*At the same time, a woman named Julia Anderson was claiming that the boy was not Bobby Dunbar, but was in fact her own son, Charlie Bruce Anderson. A court turned down her claim, awarding custody to the Dunbars.
*The man raised as Bobby Dunbar eventually had children of his own, and died in 1966.
*In 2004 DNA tests on one of his children and a Dunbar 'cousin' proved that they were not related by blood.
So that was that, supposedly. The surviving Anderson family claimed him as kin, said Julia Anderson was vindicated, and embraced Bobby's granddaughter as family.
It seems to me that there are two other possibilities, and what really bothers me is that the people involved apparently didn't bother to check into them
1) They don't seem to feel the need to match the DNA to Anderson's family. If I'd believed for nearly a century that I was a member of one family and then found out I was wrong, I would feel compelled to take that last step.
Apparently, both 'mothers' had some doubt. That blows my mind. Also, even if the moms weren't sure, it seems to me that a 4 or 5 year old boy could have definitively identified his mother even after an 8 month absence. The fact that there was some dispute and lingering doubt would lead me to guess that there's at least a chance that he was not a Dunbar or an Anderson.
2)The DNA test they did conduct was of Bobby Dunbar's son and a grandson of Lessie and Percy Dunbar through their other son (Bobby's supposed brother). I don't think I could just skip over the possibility of spousal infidelity playing a role in the lack of a match.
The loopholes and the lack of curiosity on the part of either family dumbfound me. They are responsible for me wasting 35 minutes looking them up on the net, and also for the approximately 4 instances throughout the last 2 days that I've stopped and pondered their situation and tried to figure out why, after going to the trouble of doing the test once, they would feel no need to dig just a little deeper.
I therefore will be contacting the Dunbar and Anderson families to seek restitution for my mental duress.
1 comment:
I'm sure they'll be as eager to hear what you have to say as was Donna Brazile.
I heard part of the story, and it sounded interesting. I, too, wondered how the parents could be uncertain of his identity? But when you factor in mental duress, societal pressure, and what might have stressful, unsettled ("dysfunctional") home life, you could get all kinds of screwy results.
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