http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/d/damman_steven.html
Steven Craig Damman


Above: Damman, circa 1955


Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance

Missing Since: October 31, 1955 from East Meadow, New York
Classification: Non-Family Abduction
Date of Birth: December 1952
Age: 2 years old
Height and Weight: 3'2, 32 pounds
Distinguishing Characteristics: Blond hair, blue eyes. Damman has a small scar under his chin and a birthmark resembling a mole on back of his left calf. He has previously fractured his left arm; the injury had healed by the time of his 1955 disappearance.
Medical Conditions: Damman was undergoing treatment for a growth on his kidney at the time that he vanished.


Details of Disappearance

Damman was last seen at a supermarket in East Meadow, Long Island, New York on October 31, 1955. The establishment was a block and a half from his home; he had gone there with his mother and baby sister. Damman's mother left him and his sister, who was in a carriage, outside the supermarket for a few minutes while she shopped. When she came out, both children were gone. Damman's sister was recovered still inside her carriage a few blocks away but Damman has never been heard from again.
In late November 1955, a student at Queens College in New York City wrote three letters demanding money from Damman's parents in exchange for the toddler's safe return. Each letter asked for a larger amount: first $3,000, then $10,000, then $14,000. Damman's parents attempted to comply, but the student turned out to be an opportunist who had nothing to do with Damman's presumed abduction.

It was suggested that Damman might be the "Boy in the Box" or "America's Unknown Child," a small boy who was found dead inside a cardboard box in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1957. They both were blond and blue-eyed and both had the same scars, but the unidentified boy did not have a healed arm fracture as Damman had and Damman's footprints, taken when he was a baby, did not match the Philadelphia child. In 2003, the police compared the unidentified boy's DNA with DNA from Damman's sister to make sure, and conclusively proved that Damman was not the Boy in the Box. The child remains unidentified in spite of a major investigative effort that continues today.

Damman is originally from Iowa; his father was in the Air Force in 1955 and the family was stationed on Long Island. His father left the Air Force a few months after Damman's abduction and the family returned to Iowa. There is very little evidence available to indicate his fate and his cace remains unsolved.



Investigating Agency
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:
Nassau County Police Department
516-573-5370



Source Information
NewspaperArchive
America's Unknown Child (the Boy in the Box mystery)
The Doe Network



Updated 2 times since October 12, 2004.

Last updated December 7, 2005; date of birth added, distinguishing characteristics updated.

Charley Project Home

Murdered Boy May Be 1955 Kidnap Victim
02/27/57- Philadelphia Bulletin
Link Is Hunted to Airman's Son Taken At Long Island Store

Detectives here today were checking whether the young boy found murdered in Fox Chase yesterday was the missing Steven Craig Damman.
The Damman boy, son of an airman stationed at Mitchel Air Force Base, N.Y., was kidnapped outside a Long Island supermarket, October 31, 1955, when he was 34 months old.
The boy, whose nude body was found in a cardboard box here on a rubbish strewn lot, appears to have been between four and five years old - which would coincide with Steven's age now.
The murdered boy had blue eyes and a small scar under his chin. So did the missing Damman boy.


Check Footprints
To establish whether or not the murdered boy was Steven Damman, police are sending his footprints to Nassau County, N.Y. detectives for comparison with those of the kidnapped child taken at birth.
Homicide detectives said the legs of the boy found murdered here are too bruised to be able to tell whether the right calf had a birthmark there as Steven had.
At the time of Steven's disappearance he was described as 38 inches tall, weighing 32 pounds and having blond hair.


Violently Murdered
Dr. Joseph Spelman, city medical examiner, who performed a two-hour autopsy on the slain boy, establishing that he had been violently murdered, said he was closer to four than five years old.
The medical examiner said the child was 40 1/2 inches tall and weighed 30 pounds. He had medium brown hair, cropped short, and was rather slender.
Dr. Spelman said that in addition to the scar under the chin, the boy's body also had a slight scar on the front of the chest and another on an ankle. He said these three scars appear to be old ones and normally acquired.


Telephone Conference
Stuyvesant A. Pinnell, chief of Nassau County detectives, who has headed the investigation of the Damman kidnapping, held a telephone conference today with Captain David H. Roberts, head of the Philadelphia homicide squad.
Pinnell said the age and the general description of the murdered boy matched to some degree that of the missing child.
He said that in order to determine whether or not they were the same person, Roberts was making another minute examination of the body, in addition to taking the footprints.
Pinnell said X-rays would be taken to determine whether the murdered boy had suffered a fractured left arm which subsequently healed well. He said the Damman child sustained such an injury in January, 1954.
Pinnell said Steven also had an abnormal condition of the right kidney. He said Steven had also suffered a ruptured right eardrum in September, 1955, and had a birthmark-like mole or freckle on his right calf.
The Nassau County detective chief said that Steven had had three stitches taken in a chin cut on May 18, 1953.
Dr. Spelman said that the boy's body would be moved from the morgue to Philadelphia General Hospital for the X-ray examinations.


Dead 2 Days At Least
Dr. Spelman said the cool weather made it difficult to tell how long the child had been dead. He said it was at least two or three days and that it was possible it was as long as two or three weeks.
But he said he did not believe the body had been very long at the spot where it was found. He said the child had not eaten within the last couple of hours before his death.
Fibers found near the body that might be human hair are being checked out in the laboratory.


Tests For Assault
Dr. Spelman said laboratory tests also would be made to determine whether or not the murdered boy had been sexually assaulted.
In another development, it was reliably reported, despite official denials, that police were questioning a man who told them of a strange incident he witnessed last Sunday near the spot where the boy's body was found.
The witness said that he was driving along the road when he saw a car that was stopped with a woman and a boy about 12 standing by the car trunk.
The witness said he halted his own car, thinking the woman had a flat tire, and asked if he could be of any assistance. He said that both the woman and boy remained absolutely mute.


Thought It Strange
He said he thought this was strange but decided they didn't want him interfering with whatever they were doing so he drove off.
Chief Inspector John J. Kelly and Captain Roberts spent some time this morning examining the torn halves of a cheap and well-worn blanket found in the cardboard carton along with the boy's body.
On one of the halves, Kelly noticed a small black blob. He ordered a chemical analysis made to determine whether the blob was automobile oil or grease. Kelly said that if it was, it might be an indication the body had been in the trunk of an automobile.


Photos of Blanket
Color pictures also were taken of the halves of the blanket. Detectives will take the pictures to institutions here and in the suburbs to see if it can be identified.
The blanket was of a faded gray background and appeared to have Navajo Indian designs on it. A piece about two feet by two and a half feet was missing from one of the torn halves.
At the time Steven Damman was kidnapped, his parents lived in East Meadow, Long Island. His father, Gerald, 26, was an airman first class. He and the child's mother, Marilyn, also had a daughter, Pamela, then seven months old.
The mother went to a supermarket a block and a half away from the family apartment. She left Pamela strapped in her coach and Steven standing beside it in front of the store. When she came out ten minutes later, she found the two children missing. A friend found Pamela unharmed in her carriage a block and a half from the store.


No Trace Ever Found
No trace ever was found of Steven. Police discounted the report of an elderly woman that she had seen two men and four women take Steven by the hand and walk him to a car parked around the corner from the supermarket.
Steven's parents returned last March 16 to Newton, Iowa, where the father works on a livestock farm, having left the Air Force.
At the conclusion of Dr. Spelman's post mortem examination last night, Chief Inspector John J. Kelly and Captain David H. Roberts, head of the homicide squad, announced that the unidentified boy had been killed by "blows on the head."
Kelly made an urgent appeal to the press and the public for any information which might lead to identification. A minute description of the boy was sent to police in every state in the country as well as township police in the Philadelphia area and the chiefs of county detectives in Montgomery, Delaware and Bucks counties.
This morning, the police department assigned an artist to draw a life-like picture of the boy. Kelly said, if necessary, the picture and an accompanying description will also be sent to police throughout the country.
Welfare Commissioner Randolph E. Wise said his department will make a direct check to account for 64 normal children in foster homes here and about 400 mentally retarded children.
He said half of the latter are in about 36 foster homes in Philadelphia, while the other half are in their own homes. All 400, he said, are waiting placement in state institutions.
Wise said a special check was being made on mentally retarded children at the request of the police.
Police found the body about 10:30 A.M. yesterday after a telephone call from Frederick J. Benonis, 26, of 2013 E. Lansing St., a junior at LaSalle College.
Benonis said he was driving along Susquehanna road west of Verree road on Monday when he saw a rabbit jump into underbrush along the highway. He stopped the car and, while chasing the rabbit, found some muskrat traps.


Thought It Was Doll
He was standing by the traps, he said, when he noticed the cardboard box and saw what he thought was a large doll inside. He remembered the incident yesterday morning when he heard about the missing four-year-old girl in Bellmawr, N.J., and telephoned police because he thought there might be some connection.
Captain Roberts said serial numbers on the box showed it came from a department store in the 69th street section. However, he said, it is a standard size and was not designed for any specific kind of merchandise. There was no address on the box.


'Institution' Haircut
The boy had a recent crew-cut, trimmed high around the sides, which police described as a "homemade or institution type" haircut.
Because of this, police districts were ordered to check every institution in the city to find out if any boys were missing. Orphanages and children's homes were covered yesterday and last night but Kelly said none reported any missing children.
Police also began a check of all foster homes caring for children in this area.
State police started the tedious counting of heads in surrounding counties. Local police undertook it here with the assistance of the Welfare Department.

http://z13.invisionfree.com/PorchlightUSA/...opic=4874&st=0&

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2...ap_mystery.html

Lead in sensational 1955 Long Island kidnap mystery: Michigan man claims he was abducted child
BY John Marzulli
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, June 16th 2009, 4:00 AM

A Michigan man claims to be Steven Damman - who disappeared in 1955.

Platnick/News

Marilyn and Jerry Damman, with daughter Pamela, after the disappearance of Steven.
The mom left her toddler son and his baby sister outside a Long Island supermarket, told her boy to be good and ducked inside to buy a loaf of bread.

Minutes later, when his mom returned, Steven Damman had vanished into thin air.

Cops found a stroller nearby with his baby sister inside. But the nearly 3-year-old boy was gone, along with the bag of jellybeans he was munching on.

It was Halloween Day 1955.

More than 50 years later, there may be a major breakthrough in one of New York's most baffling disappearances. A middle-aged Michigan man recently came forward to claim he is Steven Damman, sources told the Daily News.

"The development is being treated seriously," said a source familiar with the investigation.

DNA tests from the FBI lab in Quantico, Va., due back in about a month, could confirm the man's claim.

Jerry Damman, the missing boy's father, who was an airman attached to the base at Long Island's Mitchel Field at the time, was reluctant yesterday to discuss the case.

"Naturally, you kind of give up after that long, but anything's possible," Jerry Damman, 78, told The News in a phone interview from his 300-acre Iowa farm, where he grows corn and beans.

Steven's mother, Marilyn Damman, who is long divorced from Jerry, couldn't be reached for comment.

"I don't know to this day what truly happened, and I don't know enough about what is going on now to comment," the father said. "It's 50-something years ago, and it was awful. I really don't care for any publicity."

Sources would not disclose why the Michigan man believes he is the long-missing boy. He approached Nassau County cops in March with his story, and they contacted the FBI in Detroit.

The parents who raised him claimed to be his biological parents, the sources said.

Steven Craig Damman was two months short of his third birthday on the day he seemingly vanished off the face of the Earth.

Marilyn Damman had parked the baby carriage with Steven's sister Pamela tucked inside and little Steven standing next to it outside the Food Fair on Front St. in East Meadow at 2:45 p.m.

"There were three or four other carriages, with babies in them, outside the store," she told The Saturday Evening Post one year after the abduction. "I told Steven to be good, that Mama would be right back, and went in.

"It was something which I had done a thousand times, and other women still do. It is as common to a housewife as cooking eggs for breakfast."

When she came outside 10 minutes later, the carriage was missing.

A neighbor later found the carriage around the corner with Pamela inside. But Steven Damman and the bag of jellybeans were gone.

As Marilyn was taken to a hospital to be treated for shock, some 2,000 searchers - personnel from Mitchel Field, cops, firefighters, Boy Scouts and other volunteers - fanned out searching parks, golf courses and waterways.

'Stevie, where are you?'

A poster described Steven as 38 inches, 32 pounds, blond hair, blue eyes, fair complexion, small scar under his chin, walks with his toes turned out.

He was last seen wearing blue overalls, a blue polo shirt, a red sweater with white and blue ships on the front and brown shoes.

Cops drove Marilyn throughout the area in a sound truck, with the grief-stricken woman crying "Stevie, where are you?" over the loudspeaker.

Over the years, the FBI and Nassau County cops followed leads as far away as Hawaii.

In 2003, Pamela Damman provided a DNA sample that ruled out the possibility that the body of a young boy found in a box in Philadelphia in 1957 was her brother.

There were reports of a female hitchhiker with a small boy resembling Steven in Minneapolis.

There was another claim of a woman and a boy who looked like Steven in a tavern in Topeka, Kan.

None of the leads panned out.

After the disappearance, Steven's devastated parents returned to their hometown in Iowa with his then-infant sister, Pamela.

The couple later separated. According to an account in The News in 1958, Jerry Damman always blamed Marilyn for what happened to their son.

But the dad told The News at the time that the divorce was unrelated to the disappearance.

"Jerry denies that Stevie's disappearance had anything to do with the divorce," The News reported. "He says they had trouble long before Stevie vanished. He blames Marilyn's temperament."

Marilyn Damman was granted a divorce in 1958 on the ground of cruelty, and she was awarded custody of Pamela.

Jerry Damman remarried and raised a new family on his father's farm.




Marilyn, Jerry and Pamela Damman

Mich. man claims to be NY boy who vanished in '50s
3 hours ago

EAST MEADOW, N.Y. (AP) — New York authorities have a lead in the mysterious disappearance of a 2-year-old boy outside a Long Island bakery 50 years ago.

A Michigan man now claims he was the boy.

Nassau County Police Lt. Kevin Smith said Tuesday the man contacted his office in the past few months. The man told police he believes he is Steven Damman.

The case was referred to the FBI in Michigan and Smith says authorities are awaiting the results of DNA testing. An FBI spokeswoman in Detroit declined to comment.

Damman disappeared in 1955. His mother left Damman and his younger sister in a stroller just outside the bakery in East Meadow. He was never found.

Damman's father, Jerry, now lives near Newton, Iowa. He says "it's very possible" that the man could be his son.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/articl...luZydQD98RRP4G2

newsday.com/news/local/ny-liboy1712884274jun16,0,790894.story

Newsday.com
Dad of boy missing since '55: 'This might be him'
BY JOHN VALENTI AND MATTHEW CHAYES

john.valenti@newsday.com. matthew.chayes@newsday.com

5:57 PM EDT, June 16, 2009

The father of a Long Island toddler who went missing more than five decades ago says he has reason to believe the man now claiming to be his long-lost son actually is Steven Craig Damman.

"It probably is him," Jerry Damman told Newsday when reached at his farm in Newton, Iowa, on Tuesday.

"(I'm) not a hundred percent sure," he said. "But there's good reason to believe it might be."

PHOTOS: Man missing for more than 50 years may be found

Nassau County Police Department spokesman Det. Lt. Kevin Smith told Newsday that in March, a Michigan man contacted Nassau detectives claiming to be Steven Damman, whose unsolved missing persons case may be the oldest in Long Island history.

Steven was a toddler when he disappeared on Halloween 1955 after his mother left him and his infant sister outside an East Meadow supermarket. The girl was found unharmed in a stroller not far from the scene and the boy was presumed kidnapped.

After the man claiming to be Damman came forward, Smith said, Nassau police referred the case to the Federal Bureau of Investigation field office in Detroit.

A law enforcement source told Newsday the man, whose name has not been released, had previously contacted a woman he believed to be his biological sister, Pamela.

On Tuesday, Jerry Damman confirmed that the man had contacted his daughter, though it remained unclear how the man was able to find the woman - or why he elected to track down her instead of another family member.

"This guy never felt he was part of the family he was with," the source said. "[He] started looking into adoption or missing persons cases - and narrowed in on this one."

The source said the FBI is awaiting results of its own DNA test, being conducted at the FBI lab in Quantico, Va.

The story, citing an unnamed source, was first reported in the Daily News Tuesday.

A spokeswoman for the FBI office in Detroit said the bureau would not confirm or deny specifics - including if there is an ongoing investigation in the Damman case.

"The FBI follows up on all leads," Special Agent Sandra Berchtold said Tuesday.

Steven Craig Damman was just a toddler - 2 years, 10 months old - when his mother told Nassau County Police he was taken from in front of a Food Fair supermarket on Front Street in East Meadow between 2 and 3 p.m. on Halloween day, 1955.

A story about the alleged abduction in the Nov. 1, 1955, edition of Newsday reported that the mother, Marilyn Damman, told police she had left her son outside the market standing alongside a stroller holding her daughter, Pamela, then 7 months old.

The then 22-year-old mother said she was inside the store for "about 10 minutes." When she exited, Damman told police, her son, her daughter and the stroller were gone.

"I don't think he knows where the brake is," Marilyn told Newsday not long after the alleged kidnapping, explaining that she did not think her toddler son could have moved the carriage.

"He never wanders," she said. "He's kind of a momma's boy."

A neighbor found the stroller - and baby Pamela - a few blocks from the scene and not far from the Damman home on Mitchel Avenue. Steven was never found and officials could never determine why Pamela was left behind, unharmed.

A follow-up story in Newsday that came with a blaring front-page headline reading "Fear Missing Boy Kidnapped" reported that more than 5,000 volunteers had searched for Steven in what police called "the most-intensive street-by-street search in the history of Nassau County." Other stories reported officials had launched "a nationwide hunt" for "six persons" whom a witness had seen "pick up the boy" in front of the supermarket.

The details of the story never panned out.

The search involved many U.S. airmen, as well.

Jerry Damman, now 78, was then a 25-year-old airman stationed at Mitchel Field.

Months after the disappearance both Jerry and Marilyn Damman returned to Iowa, which the couple called home.

They were later divorced. That was in 1957, about the same time police in Philadelphia found the body of a young boy buried in a cardboard box along Susquehanna Road in the Fox Chase section of suburban northeast Philadelphia.

For a time it appeared the boy in the infamous "Boy in the Box" case would be identified as Steven Craig Damman.

But Nassau Police Insp. James Farrell went to Philadelphia to see the body in 1957 - and said then it was not Damman. Jerry Damman confirmed Tuesday that his daughter, Pamela, supplied DNA to Philadelphia police in 2003 - and those tests confirmed again that the "Boy in the Box" was not Steven.

The case has been the subject of a wide-range of Internet sites highlighting the cases of missing and kidnapped children, among them: The Doe Network, For the Lost, The Charley Project, Remember the Innocents, Websleuths and America's Unknown Child.

"I've been somewhat aware (of the developments) for some time," Damman told Newsday. "After that many years, you don't know what to think. It's very difficult . . . It's just something that stays with you."

In his interview, Damman repeatedly apologized for not being able to elaborate about what he might know about the pending identification of the man who could be the son he hasn't seen since that day back in 1955.

Damman said he has tried to contact the man who would be his son but has so far been unsuccessful. He said he is anxiously awaiting confirmation of the man's true identity.

"The one thing I would really like to find out," Damman said, "is what actually happened . . . I still don't know the answer to that question. I know nothing, really - other than this might be him."

PHOTOS: Man missing for more than 50 years may be found



http://www.newsday.com/news/local/ny-liboy...956,print.story

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/16/ny.mis...rss_mostpopular
Michigan man claims he was N.Y. boy who vanished in 1955Story Highlights
Unnamed Michigan man says he was toddler who went missing in 1955

2-year-old Steven Dammer vanished from in front of a Long Island, New York, bakery

Toddler's father: "You never give up hope, [but] things dim after all those years"

The FBI is conducting DNA testing, says Nassau County police detective
updated 3 hours, 27 minutes agoNext Article in Crime »


From Stacey Newman
CNN

NEW YORK (CNN) -- For more than a half-century Jerry and Marilyn Damman wondered what happened to their 2-year-old boy, who mysteriously vanished into thin air outside a Long Island bakery.


Steven Damman and his sister disappeared from outside a bakery in 1955. His sister was found safe.

1 of 2 Now, 54 years later, a Michigan man claims he is the missing child whose name was Steven Damman.

Within the last six months, the unidentified man contacted Nassau County, New York, police and said he had credible evidence that would link him to the case of the missing toddler, according to police Detective Lt. Kevin Smith. Nassau County police turned the case over to the FBI in Detroit.

So far, authorities will not release the Michigan man's identity and won't say why he believes he is Steven Damman. The FBI is conducting DNA testing, Smith said.

Sandra Berchtold, spokeswoman for the FBI Detroit bureau, said only, "The FBI investigates all leads in kidnapping cases, but cannot confirm or deny the existence of an investigation in this matter."

In 1955, Marilyn Damman took her toddler, Steven, and his baby sister, Pamela, to a bakery in East Meadow. The mother went inside to do some quick shopping, leaving her 2-year-old and baby girl in the stroller outside. But when Damman returned, her children were gone. A short time later, blocks away, the baby girl was found unharmed and the stroller was intact, but Steven was missing, Smith said.

Thousands of searchers looked for the toddler, but the boy was nowhere to be found. Hitting one dead end after the next, the Dammans packed up and moved from New York back to Iowa, Jerry Damman said.


Cold Cases: Boy on milk carton still missing after 30 years
And until now, they thought there was little chance of ever seeing their son again.

Jerry Damman, who lives on a farm in Iowa, told CNN, "You never give up hope, [but] things dim after all those years."

He said he isn't ready to comment on the latest developments for various reasons. Damman says authorities have contacted him, but he has not yet given DNA samples.

A few years back, Steven Damman's sister gave a DNA sample in connection with the 1957 Philadelphia case of a young boy's body found in a box. In that case, all indications were it was not Steven Damman.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/nassau/n...0,1479790.story

From newsrooms to living rooms, kidnapping stunned Island
11:13 PM EDT, June 16, 2009

The day Steven Damman vanished from an East Meadow market in 1955, Joan Bookbinder remembered the terror that invaded her life and that of countless young mothers.

A Newsday staff writer that day, Harvey Aronson, recalled that many believed the little boy was killed, probably by someone close to him.

And the lead reporter on the sensational suburban kidnapping story, Richard Estrin, said he sat somewhat speechless in Jerry and Marilyn Damman's home as the couple waited for word, any word, about their son's whereabouts.

In newsrooms and living rooms, the story of little Steven's disappearance stun-ned and frightened Long Islanders unaccustomed to such a brazen crime as they raised families and told the stories of Long Island life in the 1950s.

Inside Newsday's Garden City offices, editors and reporters were stunned by the kidnapping and remained suspicious.

"Everybody was sure he was dead, was sure he was murdered," Aronson said.

For journalists, the case of the missing boy had all the ingredients of a good story: emotion, suspense, danger and loads of human interest.

For young mothers, accustomed to feeling safe and secure in the growing mid-'50s suburbs of Long Island, the kidnapping was a chilling wake-up call.

"We all left babies in carriages," Bookbinder, 81, of East Meadow, said Tuesday. "The carriages would be lined up outside the supermarket. At the time we never thought about it. We never worried about it."

That changed after Steven disappeared.

Steven's mother, Marilyn Damman, left the toddler and his infant sister outside the Food Fair market at Front Street and Merrick Avenue while she went inside to shop. When Marilyn Damman came out, about 10 minutes later, her children were gone. Steven was presumed kidnapped but his little sister, Pamela, was found unharmed in her stroller nearby.

Until Steven's disappearance, child kidnapping was unheard of, Bookbinder said Tuesday at the site, now a Waldbaum's, where Steven, nearly 3 years old, was last seen Oct. 31, 1955.

"All I remember were the fears amongst the mothers," Bookbinder recalled. "We changed our ways of shopping."

From that day on, Bookbinder said she and other young mothers pushed their baby strollers inside the markets or shopped only when someone was looking after their children at home.

More than five decades later, there may finally be a break in the case. A Michigan man has contacted Nassau police to tell them he may be the little boy who disappeared in front of the East Meadow market.

"I always thought about it and wondered what happened to that boy," Bookbinder said. "I hope it is that boy."


Newsday's front cover wrote about missing boy Steven Damman, and of the thousands of people who searched for him. (Multi Credit Photo / November 2, 1955)

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/articl...luZydQD98SAJVO1

Iowa man wonders if mystery visitor is missing son
By MELANIE S. WELTE – 5 hours ago

NEWTON, Iowa (AP) — When a mysterious visitor showed up last fall at Jerry Damman's Iowa farm, there wasn't any reason for him to suspect it was the toddler son who long ago vanished from a stroller in front of a New York bakery.

After all, five decades of silence have passed, each of them bringing no new leads about the fate of his blond 2-year-old boy, Stephen.

Damman's wife directed the man to a neighboring farm where her husband was working, but the man never showed up to speak with him. The couple dismissed the visit at the time. Damman now wonders if that visitor could have been his son, a grown man from Michigan who recently told the FBI that he was the missing child taken so many years ago.

"It's just one of those things, you know. Nothing's happened all those years," the 78-year-old Damman said Tuesday. "You don't figure it's going to now, but maybe it did."

The man's identity hasn't been released, but an official familiar with the investigation said he believes he never fit in with the family in which he grew up and began researching missing persons cases around the nation. That's how the man learned of the Damman case, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the claim was still under investigation.

Nassau County Police Lt. Kevin Smith said the case was referred to the FBI in Detroit and authorities are awaiting DNA results to determine if the man's claim is true.

"To a certain extent, this would probably close it," said Damman. "Just like a death gives you closure, you know sometimes, it will give you closure to know what happened."

Jerry Damman and his wife, Charlotte — who is not Stephen Damman's mother — said they've often thought back to the stranger's visit to their farm and his decision not to identify himself. The missing child's sister also got a visit from the same man, they said. "She looked at this guy, and he looked like Jerry," Charlotte Damman said.

Investigators learned that the Michigan man reached out to the woman he believed to be his sister, Smith said, and that the two conducted a private DNA test that found they could be related. The FBI is conducting its own tests, Smith said.

"He came all the way down from Michigan," Jerry Damman said. "I don't know if he was kind of timid about it. He probably was."

Damman said he has tried to call the man twice since a report of his claim was published Tuesday in the New York Daily News. Jerry and the missing child's mother divorced a few years after their son's kidnapping. His ex-wife could not be located to talk about the case.

Jerry Damman was working at Mitchell Air Force Base on Long Island when his son disappeared. His wife, Marilyn, left Stephen and 7-month-old daughter, Pamela, waiting outside a bakery while she went inside to shop on Oct. 31, 1955, according to Smith and news accounts from 1955.

"Back in that time, it was probably not that uncommon to do something like that," Smith said.

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

More than 2,000 people searched for 28 hours without finding Stephen. The county's assistant chief inspector, Leslie W. Pearsall, called off the search, saying that the boy's disappearance had become "a case for detectives only," according to 1955 story in The New York Times.

The family received a ransom note in mid-November, according to an Associated Press account. Stephen's parents also made a public plea to the kidnappers at the time, saying Stephen suffered from anemia and asking that he receive medicine that included vitamins, aspirin and a tonic, the Times reported.

Today, the spot where Stephen was taken is a Waldbaum's supermarket at a busy strip-mall intersection. The report has stunned residents old enough to remember the futile search for the toddler.

Joan Bookbinder, 81, was a few years older than Damman's mother in 1955. She said it was common at that time to leave babies outside in their carriages while shopping.

"They would all be lined up outside the supermarket," Bookbinder said while standing outside the market. "We never worried. We never thought about it."

Everything changed after the toddler was kidnapped.

"We never left the carriages outside again," she said. "All I remember is the fear amongst the mothers."

Photos tipped man he could be kid snatched in '55

John Barnes, 54, talks about his year-long search for his past, Wednesday, June 17, 2009, in Kalkaska, Mich. Barnes said said Wednesday that pictures he found online led him to believe he could be the 2-year-old boy who vanished more than a half-century ago from a bakery on New York's Long Island. John L. Russell

By JOHN FLESHER (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
June 17, 2009 5:43 PM EDT

KALKASKA, Mich. - A Michigan man said Wednesday that pictures he found online led him to believe he could be the 2-year-old boy who vanished more than a half-century ago from a stroller outside a bakery on New York's Long Island.

John Robert Barnes told The Associated Press that he was doing online research within the past year to try to figure out who he really was, saying that from childhood he never felt as though he fit in with the family that raised him.

Barnes, who is in his 50s, saw pictures of the missing boy's mother when she was a young adult, thought the woman resembled himself at the same age and started to believe he might be Stephen Damman, who disappeared in 1955.

"I don't know if I'm related to the Dammans or the Barneses. I'm just waiting for the DNA results," Barnes said during an interview at his trailer home, located on a dirt road in Kalkaska, about 195 miles northwest of Detroit.

Police in New York's Nassau County have said a Michigan resident contacted their office in the past few months, saying he believes he is the missing toddler. The case was referred to the FBI. Barnes said the FBI took a sample of his DNA via a cheek swab and he's now "waiting for the FBI to tell me who I'm related to."

Stephen Damman's mother, Marilyn, left the boy and 7-month-old daughter, Pamela, waiting outside a bakery while she went inside to shop on Oct. 31, 1955, according to police and news accounts at the time. After 10 minutes, Marilyn came out of the bakery but could not find the stroller or her children, authorities said. The stroller, with only her daughter inside, was found around the corner from the market a short time later, authorities said.

The description of the child that vanished said the boy had blond hair, blue eyes and a fair complexion. It also said the boy walked with his toes turned out, and that he had a small scar underneath his chin. Barnes has a faint line, less than an inch, that runs below his chin and slightly up the right side of his face.

Investigators learned that the Michigan man who approached New York authorities also reached out to the woman he believes may be his sister, said Nassau County Police Lt. Kevin Smith, and the two conducted a private DNA test in March that found they could be related. Barnes said he did reach out to a sister in Kansas City, Mo., and that the two have become close.

Sandra Berchtold, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Detroit, declined to comment the case Wednesday.

The father of the woman and the missing boy, Jerry Damman of Newton, Iowa, has said he's hopeful the man is his son. Damann divorced the boy's mother a few years after the kidnapping and now lives on a farm with his wife, Charlotte.

"After all those years, you kind of lost all hope," Damann said Tuesday.

Barnes said he traveled to Iowa last year to see the man he believed was his biological father, but they never spoke. Damman's wife said that a man came to her door last fall and asked for Damann, and she gave him directions to another farm where he was working, but the two didn't connect.

"I didn't want to, you know, say, 'Well, I'm your long lost son,'" Barnes said. "I just wanted to get a look at the guy."

Barnes said he doubts he will establish ties with the family if the DNA test indicates he is the missing child, although he'd like to meet Jerry Damman.

"I'm really glad that I'm finally finding all of this out, finding out who I'm related to. Because I didn't want to get old and die and not know. I was convinced that I was not one of the Barnes.

"You just know things like that."

---

Associated Press writers Frank Eltman and Amy Westfeldt in New York, Nigel Duara and Melanie S. Welte in Iowa and The AP News Research Center in New York contributed to this report.



http://enews.earthlink.net/article/us?guid...0617-1338612141

Kalkaska man claims to be boy who went missing more than 50 years ago
Francis X. Donnelly / The Detroit News
A Kalkaska man was identified today as the person who believes he is the 2-year-old boy who disappeared from outside a Long Island supermarket a half century ago.

John Robert Barnes told the Associated Press that a photo of the boy's mom he found online led him to believe that he was Steven Damman.

After becoming suspicious about his heritage, Barnes began doing research on the Internet about adoption and missing person cases.

Advertisement

Nassau County police said they were contacted by a Michigan man believing to be Damman. They referred the case to the FBI, which is awaiting the results of DNA tests to determine whether the claim is true.

"(I'm) waiting for the FBI to tell me who I'm related to," Barnes said.

Barnes had contacted members of the Damman family since the fall, and family members are taking the claim seriously.

Steven Damman's father, Jerry, said he believes that the Michigan man may be his son but declined to give his reasons for thinking so.

Jerry Damman said he had given up hope long ago of ever seeing his son again.

"After all those years, you partially give up," he said. "You kind of figure that it won't be solved after all is said and done."

In the incident, Steven Damman was standing next to a stroller holding his baby sister when their mother went inside a supermarket in East Meadow, N.Y.

When the mother returned, the carriage had been moved several blocks away with the daughter inside. There was no sign of the boy, and a search by thousands of volunteers found nothing.
http://www.detnews.com/article/20090617/ME...an-50-years-ago

http://www.kcci.com/news/19781376/detail.html

DNA Tests Key To Iowan's Long Lost Son
Jerry Damman Waits For Test Results
POSTED: 4:10 pm CDT June 17, 2009
UPDATED: 9:36 pm CDT June 17, 2009

NEWTON, Iowa -- A Newton man and people all across America are waiting to hear results of DNA tests in a case of a missing toddler from 1955.

Jerry Damman, 78, is still waiting for DNA test to determine whether a Michigan man, John Robert Barnes, is his son. For now, he's trying not to get his hopes up until has the answer.

Tucked inside a worn manila envelope are old pictures and newspaper clippings that Damman has kept for nearly 55 years since his son disappeared on Oct. 31, 1955.

Stephen Damman was just two months shy of his third birthday when he was kidnapped outside a Long Island, N.Y., bakery.

His father said he has never stopped wondering what happened to Stephen.

"It's always there in the back of your mind somewhere, even though it has been a long time," said Damman.

Damman said his son's disappearance got a lot of media attention at the time, but despite all the efforts police never solved the case.

"There were leads but of course none of them were the right one. We just didn't come up with an answer," said Damman.

There is now new hope that Damman may get some of those answers.

The sudden media attention surrounding the story of a Michigan man who believes he may be the missing son is overwhelming and Damman is careful not to let himself get caught up in that possibility.

"You kind of want to be cautious and in the past we've learned not to get our hopes too high," said Damman. "It would be nice to have some closure on it and find out what happened maybe, really."

"Like other things in life, you have to accept some of those things even though it is very hard, time heals a lot of things," said Damman.

Barnes Also Awaiting Word

Barnes was doing some online research to find out about his childhood and came across some photos that led him to believe he might be Stephen Damman.

"(I'm) waiting for the FBI to tell me who I'm related to," Barnes told the DetroitNews.com.

The case was referred to the FBI in Michigan and Smith said authorities are awaiting the results of DNA testing.

According to other media reports, Barnes has a scar and a mole that match characteristics of Stephen Damman identified in the original police report from 1955.

Encouraging Sign For Families

If the DNA tests match, it is the kind of break 382 Iowa families would love to get.

Iowa's official clearinghouse for missing persons said that's how many are missing right now. Manager Linda Mason said she has had a hand in some happy reunions.

"Usually they're very happy to have them back, kind of like the prodigal son, welcoming their child home," she said.

Mason said that of the 382 missing, 88 percent are children. She said that 86 percent of them are home within a month.

She said that the people who have been missing for years that always make her think about the families left behind.

"They're concerned, very concerned," she said. "(They) don't know what to do."

Happen on this story, Drop in real quick to drop you a line

I didn't see it no where I hope I am not double posting it.

Man believes he’s tot taken from family in 1955
John Barnes ‘confident’ DNA test will prove he has solved his own abduction

Mike Celizic
TODAYShow.com contributor
updated 2 hours, 30 minutes ago
It had been a big story, a tragic story, and it dominated local newspapers. A little boy, just shy of 3 years old, had disappeared from a Long Island sidewalk — and despite the efforts of law enforcement agencies and hundreds of volunteer searchers, he was never found.

It happened on Halloween 1955, and after more than 50 years, the case was colder than the Antarctic, the paperwork filed away and forgotten.

But now a 58-year-old man has come forward, saying that he is that little boy who disappeared so long ago. Today he awaits the results of DNA tests taken by the FBI to confirm whether he has solved his own 54-year-old kidnapping mystery

Right now I’m pretty confident those tests will come back positive,” John Barnes told TODAY’s Meredith Vieira from Michigan Thursday morning.

Decade-long search
After 10 years of detective work, Barnes decided last year that he was indeed Steven Damman, the boy who had been abducted so many years ago. He tracked down Pamela Horne, the woman he thought was his younger sister — she had been 7 months old when he disappeared. After he sent her a letter, they talked and agreed to meet.

Growing up, Pam’s parents, Jerry and Marilyn Damman, hadn’t talked about her older brother; it was too painful a subject. But when John contacted her, she felt a connection. “When we first talked, it was just immediate friendship, like we had known each other for years,” Pamela Horne told Vieira in the TODAY studio in New York.

Both Barnes and Horne agreed to send DNA samples to a private lab. The preliminary test wasn’t 100 percent conclusive, but the lab reported that there was a very good chance they were siblings.

Armed with that information, Barnes contacted police in Suffolk County, N.Y., where the disappearance occurred back in 1955. They contacted the FBI, which is conducting its own tests and expects soon to be able to tell Barnes conclusively who he is.

‘Didn’t fit in’
The man who raised Barnes as a son, Richard Barnes, did not do a live interview, but he told NBC News’ Jeff Rossen that John Barnes is mistaken.

“He always felt he didn’t belong to us, but that’s false,” Richard Barnes said.

“There’s an investigation going on right now, and when that’s over with, I’ll know who I am and he won’t be able to dispute anything,” John Barnes said. “[The FBI is] going to tell us if we’re related or not.”

Barnes told Vieira that even when he was growing up, he didn’t feel as if he was the biological son of the family that raised him. He had a brother and a sister, but he never felt related to them.

“I didn’t fit in with my family, I didn’t look like them. They were all dark-complected, brown eyes, dark hair, shorter than I was. They had different personalities. I’ve always known that, and that’s what got me started a long time ago,” he said, speaking very deliberately.

Deathbed drama
He said he began to feel certain that he wasn’t a Barnes 10 years ago, when his mother was on her deathbed. He believes she tried to tell him that he was not her biological son.

“She was trying to tell me that, but she was dying of lung cancer and she was on a bunch of different drugs — morphine. That’s what she was trying to do, I believe,” Barnes said.

So he began his search in earnest, going through newspaper archives day after day, searching for stories about abducted children. The Steven Damman disappearance caught his eye. One of the stories had a picture of Marilyn Damman, and he was struck by the resemblance.

“I think she was about 21 or 22 at the time. I knew what I looked like when I was 21 or 22, and I looked just like her, and that’s what got me started on this case,” Barnes explained.

He has told newspapers that he has no interest in filing any charges against the Barnes family and that he isn’t bitter. Any criminal charges would come from the FBI, not him. Barnes just wants to know who he is.

“It’s important to me because I’ve always wanted to know who my real relatives were and where I came from and things like that,” Barnes told Vieira. “It’s real important.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31423132/ns/today_people

By Mike Celizic
TODAYShow.com contributor

It had been a big story, a tragic story, and it dominated local newspapers. A little boy, just shy of 3 years old, had disappeared from a Long Island sidewalk — and despite the efforts of law enforcement agencies and hundreds of volunteer searchers, he was never found.

It happened on Halloween 1955, and after more than 50 years, the case was colder than the Antarctic, the paperwork filed away and forgotten.

But now a 58-year-old man has come forward, saying that he is that little boy who disappeared so long ago. Today he awaits the results of DNA tests taken by the FBI to confirm whether he has solved his own 54-year-old kidnapping mystery.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Right now I’m pretty confident those tests will come back positive,” John Barnes told TODAY’s Meredith Vieira from Michigan Thursday morning.

Decade-long search
After 10 years of detective work, Barnes decided last year that he was indeed Steven Damman, the boy who had been abducted so many years ago. He tracked down Pamela Horne, the woman he thought was his younger sister — she had been 7 months old when he disappeared. After he sent her a letter, they talked and agreed to meet.

Growing up, Pam’s parents, Jerry and Marilyn Damman, hadn’t talked about her older brother; it was too painful a subject. But when John contacted her, she felt a connection. “When we first talked, it was just immediate friendship, like we had known each other for years,” Pamela Horne told Vieira in the TODAY studio in New York.

Both Barnes and Horne agreed to send DNA samples to a private lab. The preliminary test wasn’t 100 percent conclusive, but the lab reported that there was a very good chance they were siblings.

Armed with that information, Barnes contacted police in Suffolk County, N.Y., where the disappearance occurred back in 1955. They contacted the FBI, which is conducting its own tests and expects soon to be able to tell Barnes conclusively who he is.

‘Didn’t fit in’
The man who raised Barnes as a son, Richard Barnes, did not do a live interview, but he told NBC News’ Jeff Rossen that John Barnes is mistaken.

“He always felt he didn’t belong to us, but that’s false,” Richard Barnes said.

“There’s an investigation going on right now, and when that’s over with, I’ll know who I am and he won’t be able to dispute anything,” John Barnes said. “[The FBI is] going to tell us if we’re related or not.”

Barnes told Vieira that even when he was growing up, he didn’t feel as if he was the biological son of the family that raised him. He had a brother and a sister, but he never felt related to them.

“I didn’t fit in with my family, I didn’t look like them. They were all dark-complected, brown eyes, dark hair, shorter than I was. They had different personalities. I’ve always known that, and that’s what got me started a long time ago,” he said, speaking very deliberately.

Deathbed drama
He said he began to feel certain that he wasn’t a Barnes 10 years ago, when his mother was on her deathbed. He believes she tried to tell him that he was not her biological son.

“She was trying to tell me that, but she was dying of lung cancer and she was on a bunch of different drugs — morphine. That’s what she was trying to do, I believe,” Barnes said.


54-year-old mystery solved?
John Barnes believes he may actually be Steven Damman, a toddler who disappeared from outside a Long Island bakery in a kidnapping mystery that made headlines in 1955.
more photos


So he began his search in earnest, going through newspaper archives day after day, searching for stories about abducted children. The Steven Damman disappearance caught his eye. One of the stories had a picture of Marilyn Damman, and he was struck by the resemblance.

“I think she was about 21 or 22 at the time. I knew what I looked like when I was 21 or 22, and I looked just like her, and that’s what got me started on this case,” Barnes explained.

He has told newspapers that he has no interest in filing any charges against the Barnes family and that he isn’t bitter. Any criminal charges would come from the FBI, not him. Barnes just wants to know who he is.

“It’s important to me because I’ve always wanted to know who my real relatives were and where I came from and things like that,” Barnes told Vieira. “It’s real important.”

http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/apAr...e/id/D98SNBTG3/
Published Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Michigan man bears striking resemblance to New York boy who vanished in 1955
By JOHN FLESHER Associated Press Writer , The Associated Press - KALKASKA, Mich.


FILE -In this file photo combination Jerry Damman and John Barnes are shown. John Robert Barnes, 54, said Wednesday, June 17, 2009, that pictures he found online led him to believe he could be the 2-year-old boy who vanished more than a half-century ago from a bakery on New York's Long Island. Barnes saw pictures of the missing boy's mother when she was a young adult, thought the woman resembled himself at the same age and started to believe he might be Stephen Damman, who disappeared in 1955. (AP Photo, File)The same chubby cheeks. The same round face and bright, blue eyes. And, most important, the faint scar on his chin.

John Barnes does indeed bear a striking resemblance to photos of a 2-year-old boy who was snatched from outside a bakery on New York's Long Island in 1955. And he hopes DNA tests will confirm the suspicions he's harbored virtually his entire life _ that the couple who raised him were not his biological parents.

"I'm really glad that I'm finally finding all of this out, finding out who I'm related to. Because I didn't want to get old and die and not know," Barnes, a laborer who is now in his 50s, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Barnes said he never really bonded with the mother and father who raised him. They didn't look like him, and they just didn't seem like family.

"They would say, 'Oh, you look like your grandpa so-and-so or your uncle so-and-so.' But they never had any pictures to show me to compare it with. ... I just had a hunch that something was fishy," Barnes said.

"I never asked them if they kidnapped me. I asked them why I was so different from them," Barnes said of his parents.

Asked about a possible abduction, the man who raised Barnes called the idea "a bunch of foolishness."

"I'm his dad," Richard Barnes said. He shook his head and replied, "no, no," when asked by a reporter if he had kidnapped John Barnes.

John Barnes said the woman who raised him hinted before her death about a decade ago that she was not his biological mother.

"She requested that I come over there by myself, and she wanted to talk to me. I think that's what she was trying to tell me," he said.

Years earlier, Barnes had 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," said Barnes, who has done farm and factory work but is currently unemployed.

The mother, Marilyn Damman, left the boy and his 7-month-old sister waiting outside a bakery while she went inside to shop on Oct. 31, 1955, according to police and news accounts at the time.

Police in New York's Nassau County have said a Michigan man contacted their office in the past few months, saying he believes he is the missing toddler. Barnes said the FBI took a sample of his DNA via a cheek swab in March, and he's now "waiting for the FBI to tell me who I'm related to."

"I don't know if I'm related to the Dammans or the Barneses. I'm just waiting for the DNA results," Barnes said during an interview at his trailer home, located on a dirt road in Kalkaska, almost 200 miles northwest of Detroit, where he lives with his wife and a 12-year-old Labrador.

Back in 1955, Marilyn Damman 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 told the AP 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. "This story's really strange. I can't believe it myself sometimes."

Barnes said he was born in 1955 _ the same year a 2-year-old Stephen Damman disappeared _ but only saw his birth certificate once and no longer has a copy. He said the FBI is looking into the discrepancy as part of its investigation.

Barnes said he began his research around 1992, doing it the "old-fashioned way" and not "getting anywhere." Barnes said he went to Florida, his supposed birthplace, but did not make much progress until he was doing online research within the past year.

Richard Barnes is retired and lives in a rural subdivision just eight miles from his son, although the two have not talked in about a year. Richard Barnes said his son was born in a Navy hospital in Pensacola, Fla., on Aug. 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.

During his research on the kidnapping, the younger Barnes said he drove to Newton, Iowa, where Jerry Damman, the father of the missing boy, lives. But they did not meet.

"I didn't want to, you know, say, 'Well, I'm your long-lost son,'" Barnes said. "I just wanted to get a look at the guy."

Physically, Barnes resembles somewhat the Iowa farmer he believes could be his biological father, though they are far from identical. Both men have fair skin with a ruddy complexion. Both have blue eyes and wide, round faces.

Reached Wednesday in Iowa, Damman told the AP "it's almost too good to believe" that Barnes could be his son.

Barnes said he has become close with the woman who could be his sister, Pamela Horne of Kansas City, and talks with her on the phone each day. They did a home DNA test in March.

"We got a really high score on it," indicating that they two could be related. "That's how the FBI got involved," he said.

___

Associated Press writers Frank Eltman and Amy Westfeldt in New York, Nigel Duara and Melanie S. Welte in Iowa, and AP researcher Susan James contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

Police: 'Probability' exists man is N.Y. boy who vanished in 1955Story Highlights
John Robert Barnes claims he's Steven Damman, who went missing 54 years ago

Private DNA tests show "probability" that he and Steven's sister, Pamela, are siblings

The boy's father, Jerry Damman, said authorities haven't contacted him
June 17, 2009 -- Updated 0115 GMT (0915 HKT)Next Article in Crime »


From Stacey Newman
CNN

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Police said Wednesday that a private DNA test indicates a "probability" that a Michigan man was a 2-year-old Long Island child who disappeared in 1955.


Steven Damman and his sister disappeared from outside a bakery in 1955. His sister was found safe.

1 of 3 The Michigan man, John Robert Barnes, approached Nassau County police twice in March claiming he is Steven Damman, the toddler who disappeared 54 years ago, Detective Lt. Kevin Smith said.

According to Smith, Barnes tracked down the woman who could be his sister, Pamela Damman, and the two conducted their own private DNA tests, which showed a "probability" that the two are siblings.

The FBI is currently awaiting its own test results in the case. But Sandra Berchtold, spokeswoman for the FBI Detroit bureau, said as people come forward talking to the media about the case, the FBI "isn't confirming or denying any statements made by these individuals."

In 1955, Marilyn Damman took her toddler, Steven, and his baby sister, Pamela, to a bakery in East Meadow. The mother went inside to do some quick shopping, leaving her 2-year-old and baby girl in the stroller outside. But Damman told authorities that when she returned, her children were gone. A short time later, blocks away, the baby girl was found unharmed and the stroller was intact, but Steven was missing, Smith said.

A flier circulated by police at the time of Steven's disappearance, described him as having blond hair, blue eyes and a small scar under his chin. The toddler was last seen wearing blue overalls, a blue shirt, a red sweater and brown shoes.

Don't Miss
Michigan man claims he was N.Y. boy who vanished in 1955
Sheriff: Body is probably missing 5-year-old's
The disappearance attracted widespread attention, including an interview with the boy's mother in the Saturday Evening Post magazine a year after the disappearance.

Thousands of searchers looked for the toddler, but the boy was nowhere to be found. Hitting one dead end after the next, the Dammans packed up and moved from New York back to Iowa, said Jerry Damman, the boy's father.

And until now, they thought there was little chance of ever seeing their son again, he said.

Jerry Damman, who lives on a farm in Iowa, said authorities have contacted him, but he has not given DNA samples at this point.

A few years back, Steven Damman's sister, Pamela, gave a DNA sample in connection with the 1957 Philadelphia case of a young boy's body found in a box. In that decades-old case, all indications were it was not Steven Damman.
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/17/ny...ref=mpstoryview

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/nassau/n...0,2258153.story
Man whose son vanished in 1955 recalls dark dayBY SUMATHI REDDY | sumathi.reddy@newsday.com
11:23 PM EDT, June 17, 2009

Jerry Damman talks about his son, Steven Damman, who disappeared from outside a Long Island supermarket more than 50 years ago (Photo by Sumathi Reddy / June 17, 2009)



NEWTON, Iowa - The man on the television screen bore a resemblance to him, Jerry Damman admitted Wednesday as he watched the 6 p.m. local news in his farmhouse filled with pictures of his two sons and six grandchildren.

There were no signs of his firstborn here, 2-year-old Steven, who was whisked away from an East Meadow market on Halloween in 1955.

-Click here to see the latest photos, and exclusive photos from our archives, in the controversy over a Long Island toddler missing since 1955

But on the television screen was John Robert Barnes, the man who has a suspicion he may be Steven Damman.



Things to do this weekend "He did kind of look like me but he looks older and I think bigger," Damman said with mild excitement on the phone with a friend. When the news segment aired, Damman's wife, Charlotte, turned up the volume.

"He's bald like me," said Damman, who had Steven Damman with his former wife, Marilyn, now of Kansas City, Mo. "He looks like he's a pretty big fella."

Until now, Damman's only memories of that dark time are the yellowing newspaper clippings and aging photos he has tucked into a large envelope labeled simply, "Steven."

Inside it are pictures of a young family in Long Island: Marilyn and Jerry Damman and their firstborn son.

There's Steven crawling on the floor in a diaper, Steven clutching a stuffed animal next to his crib, Steven playing in a wheelbarrow.

"I remember that wheelbarrow," Damman, 78, says sitting on the porch of his 440-acre farm here. "It was so long ago."

The unassuming Iowan native rewound some 50 years ago to his first marriage and life in Long Island, to Oct. 31, 1955, when his first son disappeared from the front of the East Meadow Food Fair.

FBI officials are analyzing DNA data, sources say, to see if John Robert Barnes is Damman's long-lost son. Damman and other relatives of the boy who vanished hope a DNA match can solve the mystery.

"I went through all this when I was 25 and just a farm boy and it wasn't easy then," Damman said. "And it's not really now, but at least you don't have a loss like you did then. You try to keep up hope. But then after all these years, I just can't say."

Damman said his son Dwight spoke on the phone with Barnes Tuesday but Damman doesn't plan on meeting him or getting his hopes up until officials confirm that it's really him.

Damman said he believes a man who came to his house in the fall looking for him may have been Barnes. His wife, Charlotte, who figured the man was a salesman, told him her husband was working down the street.

"He didn't pursue finding me," says Jerry Damman. "I wish he would have."

Memories fade with age, but for Damman, the night that his son disappeared when his first wife left him and his 7-month-old sister, Pamela Sue, outside in a stroller is crystal clear.

"It never leaves you," Damman said.

Damman was serving in the Air Force, working as an office manager when he got a call from his wife saying she had left the children outside of a store and that Steven was gone.

He stayed awake for more than two days, hoping his son would be found, alive. "After this all happened I was just worn out," Damman said. "I went the longest I ever went without sleep."

-Click here to see the latest photos, and exclusive photos from our archives, in the controversy over a Long Island toddler missing since 1955

FBI: Test shows Mich. man not missing NY boy
DNA test proves 54-year-old man is not toddler who was kidnapped in 1955

TODAY staff and wire
updated 21 minutes ago
DETROIT - DNA testing confirmed that a 54-year-old Michigan man is not a toddler kidnapped in Long Island, N.Y., in 1955, the FBI said Thursday.

The FBI said testing showed John Barnes of Kalkaska, Mich., is not Stephen Damman, who disappeared at age 2 from outside an East Meadow bakery while his mother shopped.

"DNA samples analyzed by the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, show John Barnes and Pamela Damman Horne do not share the same mother," the FBI said in a statement, referring to the sister of Stephen Damman.

Barnes has said he has long suspected the couple who raised him are not his biological parents, and the FBI took his DNA sample. He said he began investigating his origins years ago and found photos on the Internet that led him to believe he could be Stephen.

On Thursday, Barnes told TODAY’s Meredith Vieira how confident he was that the DNA tests would prove he was indeed Stephen Damman. He also told Vieira that even when he was growing up, he didn’t feel as if he was the biological son of the family that raised him. He had a brother and a sister, but he never felt related to them.

“I didn’t fit in with my family, I didn’t look like them. They were all dark-complected, brown eyes, dark hair, shorter than I was. They had different personalities. I’ve always known that, and that’s what got me started a long time ago,” he said, speaking very deliberately.

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

In Iowa, Stephen's father, Jerry Damman, called the news about the DNA test results disappointing.

"It's too bad we had to go through all of this for actually nothing in the end," he told The Associated Press.

Barnes said he was born the same year the boy disappeared, but that he only saw his birth certificate once.

Barnes' father, Richard Barnes, has called the speculation "a bunch of foolishness." He said John Barnes was born in a Navy hospital in Pensacola, Fla., on Aug. 18, 1955.

Police in Nassau County, N.Y., said a Michigan man contacted their office in the past few months saying he believed he was the missing toddler. Barnes said the FBI took the DNA swab in March.

Damman said it's frustrating not knowing what happened to his son, even after all these years.

"I guess we don't know any more than we did," he said. "It's been very hard to bring this all up after all those years. It's been hard."


http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/31433077/?GT1=43001

I am so sorry for them all.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2..._bklyn_tip.html

From the News archives on Steven Damman: Airman's son kidnapped, cops say; Sift B'klyn tip
By James Davis

Friday, June 19th 2009, 3:19 AM


Platnick/News

Gerry Damman and his wife, Marilyn Damman, with daughter Pamela, wait for news of their missing son at their home.

Originally ran in New York Daily News on November 2, 1955

After 28 hours of fruitless search, Nassau County police at 6:30 last night pronounced the disappearance of little Stephen Damman a kidnapping - and called off the 5,000 cops and volunteers who had been combing East Meadow and adjoining Long Island communities.

Authorities immediately began checking on all known sex deviates in the area and a list of mothers who have recently lost newborn children.

"I think we have covered this area as well as it can be covered," declared Inspector Lester Fearsall, in charge of operations at the scene, as FBI agents entered the case. A hurry call was put in for Nassau Detective Chief Stuyvesant Pinnell, who turned the Woodward shooting investigation over to a subordinate and sped to the scene.

Makes Television Appeal

The police announcement came as the missing boy's father, Air Force Sgt. Jerry Damman, 26, was appearing on a news broadcast on The News television station, WPIX, with an appeal for word of his missing son.

A photo of little Stevie, who disappeared at 2:30 Monday afternoon from a supermarket in East Meadow was shown on the air. No sooner had newscaster John Tillman signed off then a Brooklyn real estate phone to report he had seen a woman with a little boy who resembled the photo outside his office about 2:30 yesterday afternoon.

The caller was George J. Mutari, 66, who lives at 1641 72nd St. and has his office at 7010 Fort Hamilton Parkway. Sgt. Damman, Tillman and a News reporter immediately hurried to Brooklyn with the photo. After examining it carefully, Mutari declared it looked "very much" like the boy he saw except the boy he saw seemed older.

Taken 16 Months Ago

This added up, because the picture was taken 16 months ago and Steve is now 2 and 10 months old. Nassau police were promptly notified and Mutari agreed to canvass the area in hope of seeing the youngster or the woman again.

The anguished Sgt. Damman, who is in the Continental Air Command stationed at Mitchel Field, L.I., begged the kidnaper to take special care of the child who had recently been ill.

From Nathan L.H. Bennett, Hempstead town clerk, police meanwhile obtained a list of children who had died recently. This was being checked against Welfare Dept. records on the chance that the abductor may have been a bereaved mother who stole another child to take the place of her own.

Stevie's mother, Mrs. Marilyn Damman had taken him and his 7-month-old sister Pamela shopping with her Monday afternoon. As she had done many times in the past, she explained tearfully yesterday, she left them outside the supermarket at Front St. and Merrick Ave., East Meadow. Pamela was secured in her carriage by a harness and Stevie was posted to keep an eye on her.

Mrs. Damman was in the store only 10 minutes, she said, but when she came out, both children were gone. She ran to her home in the desperate hope that Stevie had wheeled his sister home.

The carriage with Pamela safely inside - although her harness appeared to have been tampered with - was found soon afterward at the rear of a store a block from the supermarket.

Police declared it would have been physically impossible for Stevie to release the brake on the carriage and push it that far - a distance of more than 300 feet.




Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2...ixzz0JAcRxVL6&C

http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/ser...earchLang=en_US

Endangered Missing

STEVEN DAMMAN

DOB: Dec 15, 1952
Missing: Oct 31, 1955
Height: 3'2" (97 cm)
Eyes: Blue
Race: White
Age Now: 58
Sex: Male
Weight: 32 lbs (15 kg)
Hair: Blonde
Missing From:
EAST MEADOW
NY
United States

Steven was last seen on October 31, 1955, outside a grocery store. He was wearing dungarees, a blue shirt, red sweater, and brown shoes. Steven has a small scar on his chin and a mole on the back of his right calf.

ANYONE HAVING INFORMATION SHOULD CONTACT

National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
1-800-843-5678 (1-800-THE-LOST)
Nassau County Police Department (New York) 1-516-573-7000

Long-Lost Children Rarely Turn Up
Published June 21, 2009
Associated Press

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When Jerry Damman first got news his son may have been found after vanishing from Long Island more than 50 years ago, he said it "was almost too good to believe."


It turned out he was right.


His new hope was dashed when DNA tests last week revealed that John Barnes, the man who claimed he was the missing boy, actually wasn't — an outcome that didn't surprise law enforcement officials and experts.


They say a storybook ending was a long shot from the start. Past cases show that it's rare for someone purporting to be a long-lost child to suddenly come forward, and rarer still that he or she ultimately proves to be the person who vanished.


"That would be extraordinary," said Joseph A. Pollini, a former New York Police Department cold-case investigator now teaching at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.


At least 15 people have approached the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in the last decade with beliefs like Barnes', but none turned out to be the missing children they sincerely thought they were, said Jerry Nance, who oversees long-term missing child investigations for the organization.


Like Barnes, most started with a feeling that they simply didn't belong in their families, then researched old missing-child cases and found one that seemed to fit, Nance said.


More than 778,000 people nationwide were reported missing last year. Nearly 80 percent of them were under 18, FBI statistics show.


Most missing children are found fairly quickly, according to a 2002 study done for the federal Department of Justice. The study found fewer than 10 percent of missing children were kidnapped, usually by relatives.


Police in New York — where 8,202 missing persons cases were opened last year — also say that nearly all children reported missing soon turn up.


One exception was the headline-grabbing case of 6-year-old Etan Patz, who vanished 30 years ago after leaving his apartment to catch a bus to school. The disappearance remains unsolved, though the family members have said they believe a baby sitters' boyfriend, a convicted child molester, killed the boy.


The boyfriend, who remains in prison, has not been charged in the case. But he was ruled responsible for the boy's disappearance in a civil case. A judge ordered him in 2005 to pay Etan's family $2 million.


New York City police procedures require an immediate and aggressive search for missing children under 16. Detectives can call in police helicopters or boats, and they often contact social workers because many disappearances involve child custody disputes.


In the Long Island case, Stephen Damman was 2 when he disappeared while his mother shopped on Oct. 31, 1955.


Investigators chased down leads around the country, to no avail. A hope for a major break came and went in 1957, when a boy's body was found buried in a cardboard box in Philadelphia. But it was determined not to be Stephen's.


Other police departments have contacted Nassau County investigators about four times in the last six years about cases that might match Stephen's disappearance, but none of the inquiries led anywhere, Nassau police Lt. Kevin Smith said.


Detectives were initially leery when Barnes, an unemployed Michigan laborer in his 50s, contacted them earlier this year, Smith said. But when Barnes called back some weeks later to say a private DNA test had shown he and Stephen's sister might be related, Nassau police turned the case over to the FBI.


The FBI said Thursday that more extensive DNA tests found Barnes and the woman could not be siblings.


While the finding may send the Damman case back into limbo, it isn't the only 1950s missing-child mystery getting renewed attention.


As Barnes' claims made headlines this week, FBI agents and local authorities explored possible leads in the disappearance of Daniel Barter, who vanished on a family camping trip along Perdido Bay in southern Alabama on June 18, 1959, when he was 4 1/2 years old.


Hundreds of volunteers conducted a manhunt and even gutted alligators to see if they had eaten the boy. Then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent the family a telegram pledging the agency's aid.


But the investigation stalled before new details emerged in recent years. A conversation about the case was overheard in a doctor's office, and investigators got a tip that someone elsewhere was familiar with an abduction in the area in the 1950s, FBI Special Agent Angela Tobon said.


After five decades, Mike Barter isn't sure what he thinks happened to his older brother. But he, his siblings and supporters held a candlelight vigil Saturday at the campsite in Lillian, Ala., to draw attention to the case's 50th anniversary.


"The more you bring any missing person up," he said, the more chance "some little something — some wording, something to flash back in someone's memory — brings back something that they can work with."



Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,528038...l#ixzz255YUjweZ