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Photo of 79-year-old Jerry Damman and potential long-lost son John Barnes/AP
Update: The AP is reporting that DNA test results have shown that John Barnes is not the same man as the toddler kidnapped on Long Island 54 years ago. Jerry Damman, the father of the missing Stephen Damman, said to reporters, "It's too bad we had to go through all of this for actually nothing in the end." The story from earlier continues below.
The story of the Michigan man who believes himself to be the same person as the two-year-old toddler kidnapped outside an East Meadow grocery story in 1955 continues to unfold. This morning John Barnes was on The Today Show along with Pamela Horne, the sister of the kidnapped boy, Steven Damman. Horne said that when the two met, there was "an immediate friendship, like we had known each other for years."
While John Barnes is "99-percent sure" that he is Steven Damman, he is currently waiting for DNA test results to confirm it. Naturally all of this leads to serious questions about the parents who raised him. Barnes says that his mother was "trying to tell him" that she wasn't his biological mother while she was on her deathbed (and on morphine) ten years ago.
But Richard Barnes, the father who raised him in rural Michigan, called the allegations "a bunch of foolishness" and told reporters, "I guarantee you we had him from the day he was born. I guarantee you he's mine." The elder Barnes says that his son has had a bone to pick with the family ever since his parents divorced in 1972. John Barnes's sister added, "At one point, he thought he was adopted. And then, he thought he was switched at birth. Now this. Everybody in my family thinks John looks just like my dad."
Richard Barnes says that his son was born in a a Navy hospital in Pensacola, FL, on August 18, 1955, but that he doesn't have a birth certificate. None of the reports nor The Today Show story this morning address whether the Barnes family has any pictures of their son as an infant, something that would be seemingly impossible if they began raising him at almost three years of age.
Here is Barnes and Pamela Horne on Today, where the soft-spoken Barnes simply states, "I didn't want to get old and die and not know." (The interview segment following the back story begins around the 3:30 mark.)
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This is sad for both families.
So heartbreaking for so very many reasons, but has there been a reason given for why there is no birth certificate (sorry if it's in the video, can't watch it at work)?
This is such a weird story. How the hell does he not have a birth certificate if he was born in a navy hospital? I guess the DNA test will solve the mystery, but damn. My first thought was that he was just an attention whore, but if he really doesn't have a birth certificate - that's very fishy.
If he doesn't have a birth certificate, how did he get a social security number?
Also, why doesn't Barnes Sr. just take a DNA test to prove his claims that he's the biological father?
I imagine he hasn't taken one on principal, especially assuming that he is the father since the DNA test says the guy isn't Damman, because he's hurt by the idea that his son could possibly think this way.
How long does a DNA test take? I've been hearing about this story for over a week.
"How the hell does he not have a birth certificate if he was born in a navy hospital?"
Plenty of people don't have a birth certificate. What I haven't seen reported is whether one was issued.
Lack of a birth certificate is evidence of nothing. A birth certificate is just a piece of paper. However, the RECORD itself, of the birth, must be catalogued somewhere. That record is held or kept by the "custodian of records" of the jurisdiction in which he was born. In NYC, it would be the Vital Records Section of the Dept of Health and Mental Hygiene. This info is easily retrievable by making a request to the proper authority. Records for the decade of his birth may be in archives. To find it may take some time, but should not be impossible.
But what about the possibility that this is all a hoax and/or he's a loonie? That might explain why his dad wouldn't bother humoring him or anyone else with a DNA test to prove father-son relationship. Wouldn't the cops and the FBI have vetted this before investing time and effort?
a record of a birth is not proof that the person with that name is the same person, so even if they went to Florida and examined an original birth record, that wouldn't prove anything in regard to this individual all these years later
Right - it's not airtight, by far. But a record of the birth of a son at such a Navy hospital as claimed by Barnes' current father would bolster's the father's claim. The ball then goes back into Barnes' court to explain away that fact.
Seems like the thing to do if he had that suspicion would be to wait for the results before going to the press.
I think that the original story the News published Tuesday came from sources who leaked that the FBI investigation was going on. From there, I think that the press showed up at Barnes's door and he didn't refrain from sharing what was going on.
So either he really, really wanted this to be true or feels like he has a serious axe to grind with his family.
Does this guy feel like a big ol' asshole now or what?
He did get his 15 minutes of fame.
"...uh, hi dad. What's new?"
All white ppl look same.