Man claims he is 1955 kidnap victim

THE father of a Michigan man who believes he was snatched from his real parents in New York half a century ago called the speculation “a bunch of foolishness”.

John Barnes has long suspected the couple who raised him were not his biological parents, and now he’s awaiting DNA tests to find out if he was the two-year-old boy who disappeared outside a bakery on New York’s Long Island while his mother shopped inside. The 1955 kidnapping captured national attention.

“I’m his dad,” John’s father, Richard Barnes, said.

He replied, “no, no,” when asked by a reporter whether he had kidnapped John Barnes.

He called the claim “a bunch of foolishness”.

Cheryl Barnes, 50, Richard’s daughter, said she was “flabbergasted” by John’s claims and was willing to undergo DNA testing to prove they are biological siblings.

“I can’t begin to know why he would think this,” she said. “Everybody in my family thinks John looks just like my dad.”

For his part, John Barnes said he never really bonded with the mother and father who raised him.

He said they didn’t look like him and just didn’t seem like family.

“I just had a hunch that something was fishy,” said the labourer, who is now in his 50s.

“I never asked them if they kidnapped me. I asked them why I was so different from them.”

Police in New York’s Nassau County have said a Michigan man contacted their office in the past few months, saying he believes he was the missing toddler.

Barnes said the FBI took a sample of his DNA via a cheek swab in March.

“I don’t know if I’m related to the Dammans or the Barneses. I’m just waiting for the DNA results,” he said during an interview from his home.

Years earlier, he started his own investigation and found some potential answers on the internet – a few pictures that led him to conclude he could be the missing toddler, Stephen Damman.

Barnes said pictures of the missing boy’s mother when she was a young adult resembled what he looked like at the same age.

“I thought I looked like her, so I had something to sink my teeth into,” he said.

The mother, Marilyn Damman, left the boy and his seven-month-old sister waiting outside a bakery while she went inside to shop on October 31, 1955, according to police and news accounts at the time.

She came out of the bakery after 10 minutes but could not find her children. The stroller, with only her daughter inside, was found around the corner from the market a short time later.

A flier at the time said the boy walked with his toes turned out and had a small scar under his chin.

“Yeah, I do have a scar,” Barnes said as he pointed to a faint line, less than an inch, that runs below his chin and slightly up the right side of his face.

Barnes said he was born in 1955 – the same year two-year-old Stephen Damman disappeared – but only saw his birth certificate once and doesn’t have a copy.

Richard Barnes is retired and lives in a rural subdivision just 13km from his son, although the two have not talked in about a year.

He said his son was born in a Navy hospital in Pensacola, Florida, on August 18, 1955.

“We brought him home two days later, and he’s never been out of our sight,” the elder Barnes said, referring to John’s childhood.