Finding Steven Damman? Family Waiting for DNA Confirmation
John Barnes believes he may have been stolen from Damman family 50 years ago.
June 17, 2009— -- The Michigan man who believes he was the toddler kidnapped on Long Island, N.Y., more than 50 years ago said today that it was pictures of the missing boy's mother that led him to contact the boy's family with his startling theory.
John Robert Barnes told The Associated Press today that the woman in pictures he found online looked familiar. Now he's "waiting for the FBI to tell me who I'm related to."
Steven Craig Damman disappeared from a Long Island sidewalk in 1955. DNA tests to confirm Barnes' claims are still pending, but the family of missing Steven Craig Damman said it has already begun referring to Barnes as "Steven."
"I think I'm more hopeful than really convinced," said William "Matt" Greer, the son of Steven Damman's adult sister, Pamela Horne.
Barnes' search for the people who could be his biological family began last fall when he was apparently told something by the woman who'd raised him, Greer told ABCNews.com.
Greer said that in a phone call to Pamela Horne, Barnes said his mother was in the hospital and on medication when she blurted out the information that started his search. Barnes looked intomissing children that matched his description. That's when he found the Damman family.
On Oct. 31, 1955, Steven Damman was nearly 3 years old when he and his baby sister, Pamela, disappeared from a sidewalk outside a Long Island store while their mother was inside.
Pamela, then about 7 months old, was found by a family friend in her carriage around the corner from the store. Steven was never seen again. The family eventually moved from Long Island to the Midwest. Their parents divorced and their father, Jerry Damman, remarried.
In October, Greer said, a letter addressed to Pamela, whose last name is now Horne, was delivered to her ex-husband's house in Liberty, Mo. The ex-husband called Matt Greer, who lived down the street from his mother.
"I kind of threw it on the table," Greer said and left it unopened.
Later that night, he called his mother and told her about the letter and she asked him to open it and read it to her. Greer said he didn't realize what the sender was actually saying until about halfway through.
"I got this really eerie feeling," he said. "It gave me chills basically."
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