Speaker 1: Previously on Hello John Doe.
Speaker 2: So we had the missing person case and name of
Speaker 2: says phill at Brandenburg.
Speaker 3: Nobody knew if this missing infant was a live or dead.
Speaker 3: The FBI had no paperwork on him, but I didn't
Speaker 3: want to give up on looking for him. For fifteen years,
Speaker 3: I continue my work investigating missing and unidentified people with
Speaker 3: the Department of Justice, but I always wondered about the
Speaker 3: fate of those missing voice until one day in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 3: a man called me claiming that he was actually one
Speaker 3: of them.
Speaker 4: And I told him I slept in our conversation. I said,
Speaker 4: you don't have to believe this. I said, I don't
Speaker 4: blame you if you don't believe it, because this sounds crazy.
Speaker 4: And I started explaining. He took the time to listen.
Speaker 1: He said he was a missing infant.
Speaker 3: But now had to figure out if this was actually true,
Speaker 3: and if so, how on earth had he gotten away
Speaker 3: from a serial killer. After that phone call in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 3: I had to prove that this man was actually who
Speaker 3: he said he was. I have my work cut out
Speaker 3: for me. The man who'd called went by the name
Speaker 3: Steve Patterson, and it grown up in Charyble, North Carolina,
Speaker 3: not so far away from me. But the person he
Speaker 3: thought he was, the guy with the profile on the
Speaker 3: DOE network, that was Philip Stephen Brandenburgh. He had last
Speaker 3: been seen in Texas, not North Carolina. Could these two
Speaker 3: be one and the same. I hoped in my heart
Speaker 3: he was, but there's good reason to be skeptical. I
Speaker 3: called up my friend Mike Nance, my coworker from NAMOS,
Speaker 3: that's the national database run by the federal government. I
Speaker 3: asked Mike to put step into NAMOS because it might
Speaker 3: help match him with the person that he thought he was.
Speaker 2: Throughout my tenure with NAMOS that we've had similar situations where,
Speaker 2: for whatever reason, someone has contacted NamUs as an adult,
Speaker 2: believing that they are a missing child from some agency,
Speaker 2: some jurisdiction. So I don't know why if they believe that.
Speaker 3: I totally get that those of us in this business
Speaker 3: have all hit dead ends, or rather we've hit the
Speaker 3: wrong ends. We're all chasing hope that sometimes gets us nowhere.
Speaker 3: You exam a body that ends up being the wrong person.
Speaker 3: Someone vanishes and has never found Disk on the phone
Speaker 3: who said he was a Brandenburg could have been the
Speaker 3: same type of situation. He might be a liar who knows,
Speaker 3: or maybe he had it all wrong and he was
Speaker 3: another missing person, not the Brandenburg infant that I thought.
Speaker 3: I've been exposed to my fair share of heartbreaking this
Speaker 3: line of work, but you know what, I've also been
Speaker 3: in situations where hope one out where the impossible happened,
Speaker 3: even though it had no business going that way. So
Speaker 3: I chose to focus on what seems unbelievable but possible.
Speaker 3: For twenty years, I've been wondering if the Brandenburg infant
Speaker 3: was alive or dead. Mike and I could wonder all
Speaker 3: we wanted, but nothing would be more final than a
Speaker 3: DNA test, and Steve was down to take it. Steve,
Speaker 3: the guy who claimed you was still at Brandenburg, was
Speaker 3: a little surprised at where he had to go for
Speaker 3: the DNA.
Speaker 4: Swap, the Cherito Police Department, of all places.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's not every day goes to hang out
Speaker 3: at the local police department.
Speaker 4: It was kind of funny because the guy that gave
Speaker 4: it to me is like, this is the first time
Speaker 4: I've ever done this. I'm like same here, I said,
Speaker 4: I guess we're both gon be the first time and
Speaker 4: gave a DNA test and the first time I've ever
Speaker 4: taken one. We laughed about it. He just swapped it
Speaker 4: around in my mouth and put it in this little pack.
Speaker 4: I think he said it was going to send it
Speaker 4: to Texas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the University of North Texas processed it. That's where
Speaker 3: NAMES was located at the time. It's where all the
Speaker 3: DNA went. We all waited several months, seemed like years.
Speaker 3: Steve and I had all these phone conversations around that time.
Speaker 3: They were used the kind of short Steve wasn't a
Speaker 3: big talker like me. I was introducing him to tools
Speaker 3: like ancestor dot Com, showing him what all was possible.
Speaker 3: I didn't really know it then, but Steve had taking
Speaker 3: a liking to me. I think it had something to
Speaker 3: do with the fact that I'd taken the time to
Speaker 3: search for the missing Brandenburg infant for years. If you
Speaker 3: ask me, I think Steve has always had a feeling
Speaker 3: of not being wanting. He felt like he'd been thrown away. Well,
Speaker 3: we waited for the DNA tests come back. It dawned
Speaker 3: on me that if this guy wasn't Philip Brandenburg, I'd
Speaker 3: be devastating. But I already made up my mind that
Speaker 3: even if he wasn't, I still wanted to help this guy,
Speaker 3: whoever the hell he was always taking any astray anyway.
Speaker 3: Then one day my nance gave me the definitive phone call.
Speaker 2: We were able to make the familial identification and determined
Speaker 2: that yes, this is Philip Brandenburgh.
Speaker 3: Steve Patterson was Philip Stephen Brandenburg, this once non existent
Speaker 3: person somehow alive.
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 2: He's really a real person and he was really born.
Speaker 2: And it was just such an amazing feeling. Just so
Speaker 2: many different dynamics that go into these cases, and you
Speaker 2: just wonder what's going to be the next chapter and
Speaker 2: this incredible story of this family.
Speaker 3: I'd waited almost twenty years for him to find my
Speaker 3: message in a bottle. Even Mike, the season detective that
Speaker 3: he is, was shocked.
Speaker 2: I guess you just have to understand maybe the mindset
Speaker 2: of the homeleside detective, because you see stuff every day
Speaker 2: that you think, you know, this is the craziest thing
Speaker 2: I've ever seen, and this possibly can't can't be true,
Speaker 2: But then you do your investigation, and sure enough it's true.
Speaker 1: That for the man in the center of it, It
Speaker 1: wasn't a surprise at all.
Speaker 4: I knew the whole time, just in my mind, in
Speaker 4: my heart, I knew that the Tesla will come back positive.
Speaker 4: Was no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: You blew their minds, Yeah did You wasn't supposed to
Speaker 1: be here, but you were.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: This baby somehow escaped the grasp of Franklin Floyd, the
Speaker 3: serial killer. So how did he do it? How did
Speaker 3: he get away? I knew the answer had to be
Speaker 3: in his name. Stephen was born a brandy Bird but
Speaker 3: ended up as a Patterson. That's because he was adopted
Speaker 3: before he could even crawl or speak. It was an
Speaker 3: informal adoption that seems to have taken place in a
Speaker 3: trailer part without the usual paperwork, so formally connecting him
Speaker 3: to his birth mother would take some serious detective work.
Speaker 3: My name is Todd Matthews and this is Hello John Doe,
Speaker 3: A sleuth, a family, and a serial killer.
Speaker 1: The story of a.
Speaker 3: Family torn apart by a tragedy and my quest to
Speaker 3: bring them back together. Chapter two, An unusual Adoption. Once
Speaker 3: I figured out Steve Patterson was Philip Stephen Brandenburg, I
Speaker 3: had a ton of questions, like how did he get adopted.
Speaker 3: Why I had no one ever found him? And why
Speaker 3: did his biological parents give him up in the first place?
Speaker 3: Safe to say, he had a big question too.
Speaker 4: I want to let him my real mama dad word.
Speaker 3: It's not like there's a box of bones to hand
Speaker 3: to someone the way there is when you idde a
Speaker 3: dead body and find the family. A DNA test isn't
Speaker 3: a bar code. You can't just scan it and name
Speaker 3: pops out. It's a lot more complicated. The DNA test
Speaker 3: would tell us who he might match to genetically, but
Speaker 3: we had to go looking for Steve's biological family too.
Speaker 3: Here's some old fashioned reporting. We had to do it together.
Speaker 3: Part of the reason he trusted me is because I've
Speaker 3: been searching for him all along.
Speaker 4: I think it's neat. I think it's cool somebody was.
Speaker 1: Looking his girlfriend Janet O'Connor. What should I all go down.
Speaker 5: He feels that you've been a blessing in his life.
Speaker 3: But we couldn't go out into the world and get
Speaker 3: answers immediately. There was a lot that had to line
Speaker 3: up for us to meet each other first. The pandemic
Speaker 3: lockdowns kept us apart for a really long time. On
Speaker 3: the phone I tried to help him find some initial
Speaker 3: answers about who he was, but there was a lot
Speaker 3: I wanted to wait on until we could meet in person,
Speaker 3: talk man to man. So the week of Memorial Day weekend,
Speaker 3: almost four years after he first called, I finally made
Speaker 3: the trip. I flew from Knoxville to Charlotte and met
Speaker 3: my producer, Kate Michigan. We rented a car to meet
Speaker 3: Steph near his hometown, about an hour west of Charlotte's.
Speaker 3: So to complicate things even more, our hotel in Charlotte
Speaker 3: had a water main late and kicked us out at
Speaker 3: four am.
Speaker 1: What a nightmare.
Speaker 3: We spent the next few hours at a waffle house,
Speaker 3: watching the small North Carolina town wake up, eating waffles
Speaker 3: and eggs, and obsessing over the day ahead, the questions
Speaker 3: we'd ask, What would he be like in person? Would
Speaker 3: we be able to answer the questions that he had
Speaker 3: for us? It was an unexpected start to a unique day,
Speaker 3: A rainy spring day, not human enough to be summer,
Speaker 3: but it was clear it was going to downpour a minute.
Speaker 3: I was nervous. I chewed up al my fingernails on
Speaker 3: the way over. In the car.
Speaker 1: Todd, how you doing and how are you feeling about Stephen.
Speaker 1: That's my producer, Kate.
Speaker 3: I think it's gonna have to be a man to man.
Speaker 1: You look in my eyes. You know it's gonna be
Speaker 1: kind of emotional. I know it.
Speaker 3: The things that I do, the things that I have
Speaker 3: urged to do, is sometimes it just seems supernatural in
Speaker 3: a way. It's just like I don't know really exactly
Speaker 3: what drives it, but it sounds like you.
Speaker 6: Do a lot of like you kind of have that
Speaker 6: presence for like living people too.
Speaker 1: I won't lie.
Speaker 3: My job is taking me through so many different cases
Speaker 3: over the years, but this time the stakes were higher
Speaker 3: than a Georgia mine. There's a weight on you when
Speaker 3: you're trying to get someone answers. This was different than
Speaker 3: finding someone's name. I was trying to figure out why
Speaker 3: Steve's parents gave him up for adoption. It's traumatic. By then,
Speaker 3: I'd work for name Us, but I'd come from the
Speaker 3: Dough network, where investigating what was done in groups and
Speaker 3: family members helped solve and brainstorm new ways to help
Speaker 3: find the missing. It was a community effort. I look
Speaker 3: for Steve, I could prove it to him. I did
Speaker 3: care for you. You didn't know you were lost, but
Speaker 3: I did, and now we would finally meet.
Speaker 1: Today's kind of starts a journey for you.
Speaker 3: I've got butterflies now because I feel like I'm going
Speaker 3: to meet somebody that has been a part.
Speaker 1: Of my life for a long period of time.
Speaker 3: Do you think he feels the same way I do?
Speaker 3: And I feel like in some ways I take the
Speaker 3: place of somebody's missing out of his life, and I
Speaker 3: think in some ways he's taken the place of somebody's missing.
Speaker 1: Out of my life.
Speaker 3: He would have been close to the age of my
Speaker 3: brother that has passed away, So it's and I'm not
Speaker 3: replacing somebody with another person, but it's kind of nice
Speaker 3: to have somebody in that spot.
Speaker 1: You merge on to my south toward Gastonia.
Speaker 3: I knew ahead of time this might be a hard
Speaker 3: conversation that Steve had some complicated feelings about his past,
Speaker 3: about his biological mom in particular. He told me before
Speaker 3: that she threw him away like a piece of garbage.
Speaker 3: And I said, maybe she put Moses in a basket.
Speaker 1: You never know.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's I think she might have been trying
Speaker 3: to save him and not just get rid of him.
Speaker 1: No, I have butterflos. We're getting there, ain't we. So
Speaker 1: we got to our meeting place.
Speaker 3: We couldn't meet it Steve in his girlfriend's house because
Speaker 3: they got these little dogs barking NonStop.
Speaker 1: Kate went outside to get him. How long was I
Speaker 1: driving here?
Speaker 4: Oh? Tenes?
Speaker 3: Okay, Oh yeah, we just got I stood in our
Speaker 3: meeting room waiting for him to come in, my heart
Speaker 3: jumping out of my chest. And when we finally met
Speaker 3: face to face, it felt like a reunion. He was
Speaker 3: exactly what I expected. He was about my height five seven,
Speaker 3: wore a ball cap and a gray Vess glasses, salt
Speaker 3: and pepper beer go tea kind of reminded me of
Speaker 3: Kevin Bacon. We stood there face to face.
Speaker 1: For a beat.
Speaker 4: Where have you been all my life? Man?
Speaker 3: We hugged and I could feel he was trembling. I
Speaker 3: guess I kind of was too.
Speaker 1: You must be you're nervous.
Speaker 4: Yeah, don't be nervous.
Speaker 1: I can see your chin quivering. You're fine.
Speaker 4: We're good.
Speaker 1: I'm your big brother now, so you can do this.
Speaker 4: It's not gonna be easy.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be some tough moments in it.
Speaker 4: Steve, You're all right, Okay.
Speaker 1: He came with this girlfriend, Jeanette the meeting.
Speaker 5: Just I've been excited all week because he has just
Speaker 5: been a savior for us. Had it not been for
Speaker 5: you when you were going through what we were at
Speaker 5: the time and not being able to find any help
Speaker 5: or anyone that wants to And then Todd just like
Speaker 5: came in and just like swooped us up, and you
Speaker 5: have been our saviors. So I appreciate it. But I mean,
Speaker 5: I know how much he does too. He's just not
Speaker 5: a big talker.
Speaker 3: They met in high school, just like me and my wife.
Speaker 3: They reconnected later in life. Steve became a stepfather to
Speaker 3: Jeanette's kids.
Speaker 5: There's not very many men that would do that, and
Speaker 5: he's really good to my kids.
Speaker 6: I'm thankful for that too. Sounds like you guys have
Speaker 6: a really strong foundation.
Speaker 5: Sometimes I'm just kinda definitely not perfect, but it's perfect
Speaker 5: for us.
Speaker 3: Here he was Steve with the girlfriend and kids of
Speaker 3: his own. I wondered why he waited decades to call me.
Speaker 3: Why hadn't you wanted answers before? What was standing in
Speaker 3: his way? According to his own DNA, Steve was a
Speaker 3: Brandyburg part of an other whole tribe of people. He
Speaker 3: knew nothing about a group that had a serial killer
Speaker 3: circle him like a buzzard. But before we get to
Speaker 3: all that, I wanted to know what it was like
Speaker 3: to grow up as a Patterson.
Speaker 4: It wasn't anything different thanybody else. Just rode bikes and
Speaker 4: played baseball and just grew up on.
Speaker 1: Them short stopping outfield.
Speaker 3: Steve was raised in North Carolina by his mom, Mary
Speaker 3: stab Bob, and he has a sister named Tammy.
Speaker 1: Steve came in with some baby photos.
Speaker 3: He's got this big head of blonde hair, and some
Speaker 3: pictures even looks up my grandson. There's one where he's
Speaker 3: laying on this fluffy carpet smiling right into the camera.
Speaker 6: Do you remember when this photo was taken?
Speaker 4: It was probably at Sears.
Speaker 1: We did the Seers.
Speaker 4: I think that's a It wasn't old as me.
Speaker 1: All town's southern thing. It's going to Seers to get
Speaker 1: your pictures made.
Speaker 5: It's like all the machiness right here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this crunch, this little crunchy scrunched up smile. In
Speaker 3: high school, he's a pretty good student, straight a's for
Speaker 3: the most part. His parents raised him good.
Speaker 4: Don't lie don't steal. Definitely, don't steal. Definitely, don't steal.
Speaker 4: There were a big time into that.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 4: I didn't steal anything, but I guess because I listened
Speaker 4: to him. Be on time, be early.
Speaker 3: He took eight Stephen Jeanett were about thirty minutes early
Speaker 3: to our meeting. Growing up, Steve really looked up to
Speaker 3: his dad, Bob, my dad.
Speaker 4: He worked a lot. He worked out of town. He'd
Speaker 4: be gone, you know, weeks at a time. And sometimes
Speaker 4: when he worked in Raleigh, we'd go up there and
Speaker 4: he ran a house and we'd all stay there for
Speaker 4: weeks of time. He was a construction worker, a meal wright.
Speaker 1: Growing up, no one ever talked about Steve's adoption.
Speaker 4: I didn't know for sure, but I knew in the
Speaker 4: back of my mind. I mean, it was never brought up. Never.
Speaker 3: Then there was this one important day. He was a
Speaker 3: teenager by then, and he was prowling around in his parents' bedroom.
Speaker 4: I was running through the closet one day, just just
Speaker 4: sleeping around, looking for guns, probably to go out shoot.
Speaker 4: Was nobody there, and I found this packet, this manilla envelope,
Speaker 4: and it had it had that I was adopted.
Speaker 1: He had to open the envelope to see.
Speaker 4: No, it was writing inside that said that. It said
Speaker 4: that was adopted and I had my real name. My
Speaker 4: name was Philip Stephen Brandenburg. And I read it that
Speaker 4: day and didn't think about it until all this came out.
Speaker 4: I mean, it never dawned on Melbourne. I wasn't interested
Speaker 4: in finding then you know, here's Kate again.
Speaker 5: And did you feel if you're holding a secret in
Speaker 5: after you found out?
Speaker 4: Just one? In my life?
Speaker 3: Steve didn't confront Mary and Bob. He just tucked away
Speaker 3: the m blow.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: I didn't want to upset my mom and dad asking
Speaker 4: him who my real mom and dad is, because I
Speaker 4: thought maybe that would upset them, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: I didn't want to undermine them.
Speaker 1: He was worried that had been salted.
Speaker 4: I didn't want to roughly feathered hurt any feelings, if
Speaker 4: that makes sense.
Speaker 3: But as he settled in the middle age, it was
Speaker 3: harder and harder to keep the Manila and bloke tucked away.
Speaker 3: Life started to creep up on him. I know that feeling.
Speaker 3: You start to enter your forties and fifties and there
Speaker 3: are these questions you start to have about your own life.
Speaker 3: Who you are where you came from.
Speaker 4: Maybe it was now that I'm older, I'd like to
Speaker 4: find out who I am. I kind of want to
Speaker 4: know who my mom and dad were to see, you know,
Speaker 4: for health reasons, for personality reasons, just to find out
Speaker 4: where I came from.
Speaker 3: And then he came face to face with it when
Speaker 3: the only father he had ever known died. Now, I'm
Speaker 3: not entirely sure why things were this way, but my
Speaker 3: guess is it's equal parts Bob and Steve. Steve's not
Speaker 3: the kind of guy to push for answers. Maybe Bob
Speaker 3: didn't want him to ask. It's not like Steve's a stranger.
Speaker 3: When the family raised him, he sees it's mom Mary
Speaker 3: a Ton. Jeanette considers her as her own mama. They're
Speaker 3: that close.
Speaker 5: Mary is just as much my mom as you know,
Speaker 5: I lost my mom about seven years ago, and so
Speaker 5: having Mary in my life, I definitely think that you
Speaker 5: choose your family. I don't think you're born into it.
Speaker 3: She and Steve had been learning about Steve's past. Jeanette's
Speaker 3: been like a little family carrier pigeon.
Speaker 5: I feel like I'm kind of the go between between
Speaker 5: him and his mom. So he asked me the question,
Speaker 5: and she answers, and then I just kind of relay
Speaker 5: back and forth on everything, not just the story.
Speaker 3: When I sit down with Steve and his family to
Speaker 3: ask questions about his past, they were so open to me,
Speaker 3: so matter of fact. Maybe because I'm a stranger. This
Speaker 3: wouldn't be the first time or last time I'd encountered
Speaker 3: this a family that was so open to tell me
Speaker 3: secrets that they couldn't tell each other. So around here
Speaker 3: in the South, there are some things you just don't
Speaker 3: talk about, some things you don't question, not out loud anyway.
Speaker 1: I think Steve's origin story is one of them. Or
Speaker 1: was things changed when Steve's dad died.
Speaker 5: I think if his died hide and passed away, then
Speaker 5: he wouldn't it wouldn't have even come up.
Speaker 3: I could see how Steve and Jeanette get along. They're
Speaker 3: both as sweet as can be, but they're also kind
Speaker 3: of opposites. Steve's more reserved on Jeanette pushes for answers.
Speaker 3: She's a little more assertive. Put it this way, Steve
Speaker 3: didn't have the gumption to ask his mom about his adoption.
Speaker 3: He sure didn't mind of Jeanette. Then the way Stephen
Speaker 3: Jeanette remembering they were all hanging out of his family
Speaker 3: after the funeral. They were at a church. Here in
Speaker 3: the South, you either do the funeral at the church
Speaker 3: or go to the church afterwards for a meal. It's
Speaker 3: never super fancy, but you go to spend the time
Speaker 3: with the loved ones and begin a new life with
Speaker 3: someone missing from it. They're all hanging out eating chicken,
Speaker 3: pop pie, green beans, veggies. When Jeanette brought it up, and.
Speaker 5: We were just talking in general, and I just said,
Speaker 5: you know, Steve is a little curious about who his
Speaker 5: birth parents are.
Speaker 3: And his mother Mary took a moment, collected herself and
Speaker 3: said something she had known for half a century but
Speaker 3: never said out loud.
Speaker 6: My husband said he's ours to leave it alone. That's
Speaker 6: the way he felt about it. And after he died,
Speaker 6: did not watch Steve. Do you want to know the truth?
Speaker 6: Jeanette said, yeah, he's been waiting to hear the truth.
Speaker 4: What did she tell you?
Speaker 5: My name, which was the Phillip Stephen Brandenburg, And at
Speaker 5: that time she didn't give me anything else. Really, it
Speaker 5: was just a name, and that's what we started with.
Speaker 3: She didn't have a ton of emotion when she said it,
Speaker 3: She just said it. It came out so easy, as
Speaker 3: if Mary had been waiting all alone to tell Steve
Speaker 3: his real name was Philip Stephen Brandenburgh. I think it
Speaker 3: was a combination of three things that day. One Mary
Speaker 3: was realizing she had a new normal now, one without
Speaker 3: her husband Bob. Two steve simmering curiosity, and three Jeanette's bravery.
Speaker 3: Three people all had to be at this particular place
Speaker 3: in their lives to finally have this conversation almost half
Speaker 3: a century later. Nobody at the funeral knew what was
Speaker 3: coming next, certainly not Mary.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure that she knew that all of this
Speaker 5: big story, you know, was going to come out of this.
Speaker 4: I don't think so.
Speaker 3: But later that night, Steve finally did the thing he
Speaker 3: could have done years ago. He got on his phone
Speaker 3: and googled his original name, and.
Speaker 4: That's when the bomb exploded.
Speaker 3: And just like that, he found his own page on
Speaker 3: the Dough Network, posted online by a group of citizens
Speaker 3: sleuth volunteers. That page lifts him a baby as missing,
Speaker 3: it endangered, maybe dead. It had become clear at one
Speaker 3: point in his life, very early on, Steve was at
Speaker 3: a fork in the road. Of course, he didn't know
Speaker 3: it was a fork. He was only a baby. Mary
Speaker 3: had been through a lot by the time she met Steve.
Speaker 3: As it turns out, so it a the first time
Speaker 3: she saw and Mary decided to take Steve home right
Speaker 3: then and there. That's next the story of Steve's unusual adoption.
Speaker 3: Mary Patterson is tougher than woodpick her lips. She's super gruff.
Speaker 3: Sometimes i'd ask her a question, she'd just look at me, like,
Speaker 3: are you sure you want to ask me that. Nowadays
Speaker 3: she drives a school bus in North Carolina, and I
Speaker 3: gotta say, I'd hate to be the kid that pissed
Speaker 3: her off. You kind of have to work for Mary's love.
Speaker 3: But once you got it, you got it. The first
Speaker 3: thing she told us that she was married almost fifty
Speaker 3: years to Bob Patterson. They met on a blind date.
Speaker 6: Double date. No, that's been too long ago, as almost
Speaker 6: fifty years ago.
Speaker 3: Like I said, she'll tell you when she thinks it's
Speaker 3: a silly question. In nineteen seventy four, she was pregnant
Speaker 3: with a girl, Mary Michelle, but she lost the baby.
Speaker 3: It was the second time a baby of hers had died.
Speaker 3: Right after they were born.
Speaker 6: Five and a half months. As far as I could
Speaker 6: go with these, one of they were born alive, one
Speaker 6: lived three hours, one lived to hoower. That must have
Speaker 6: been really hard for you, it was, And I've got
Speaker 6: to see the want of the doctress. Wouldn't let me see.
Speaker 3: Her health and well being, particularly or somebody just lost
Speaker 3: a baby, was dismissed outright. No one ever asked her
Speaker 3: what she needed in that moment. As you can imagine,
Speaker 3: it was an emotionally painful experience. It reminds me a
Speaker 3: lot of my mom and her experience with my siblings
Speaker 3: who died much too soon. It's the kind of thing
Speaker 3: that just doesn't leave you.
Speaker 1: You live with it.
Speaker 6: My daughter said he'd be best fight in Sel, and
Speaker 6: I think that's wrong. That is wrong.
Speaker 3: When she was at the hospital, she recognized somebody she knew,
Speaker 3: Sandy Brandenburgh, who said a few missions away from her
Speaker 3: at the garment factory, Mary was a seamstress third in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy four. Both women were pregnant at the same time.
Speaker 6: She was a beautiful woman when she was young, beautiful,
Speaker 6: little short, peteep little lady. Oh, she was beautiful.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't say they were friends, but they chatted like coworkers.
Speaker 6: I wasn't wild, but she was. She liked mem and
Speaker 6: drugs and now call. She wasn't in that scene. I
Speaker 6: ain't never smoke that, I don't drink. I try not
Speaker 6: to cuss, but sometimes it comes out.
Speaker 3: This wasn't really a coincidence. Running into someone you knew
Speaker 3: in a small North Carolina town in the seventies. Mary
Speaker 3: recognized her, but wasn't really in a state to engage.
Speaker 3: She'd just lost her baby, plus, she says, she'd been
Speaker 3: heavily medicated. As far as she remembers, she didn't even
Speaker 3: talk to Sandy in the hospital. After that, Mary says
Speaker 3: she went on with her life, went on to her
Speaker 3: husband and a two bedroom, single wide trailer where they lived.
Speaker 3: She tried to recover. Then about six weeks later, one
Speaker 3: of her friends read a LORI call. She also knew Sandy,
Speaker 3: and said Sandy needed help. She needed someone to come
Speaker 3: and adopt her children. She couldn't take care of them.
Speaker 3: Rita since passed away, so I couldn't confirm it with her.
Speaker 3: This is how Mary remembers it. It's been fifty years,
Speaker 3: so you might want to take it with a grain
Speaker 3: of salt or a spoonful of sugar. What Mary remembers
Speaker 3: is that she showed up to a trailer park with
Speaker 3: her husband Bob, and saw these four little kids. The
Speaker 3: youngest was six weeks old, The oldest might have been
Speaker 3: in kindergarten.
Speaker 1: Mary wasn't really prepared for what she saw next.
Speaker 6: That had never been potty trained, None of them had.
Speaker 6: When I went in that trailer, there was feces all
Speaker 6: over the place. They just peed wherever they wanted to
Speaker 6: pee because she hadn't trained them. They were kind did
Speaker 6: go from trailer trailer baging for food every day, and
Speaker 6: that's said. She wanted me to take all four of them,
Speaker 6: and I wouldn't tell them. I couldn't because I didn't
Speaker 6: have a two bedroom trail.
Speaker 3: But her eyes were fixed on the infant Philip Stephen Brandenburgen.
Speaker 6: If you'd have seen him, you'd morna know, you'd know one.
Speaker 6: He was pitiful, maggot's in his pants and his diaper
Speaker 6: was stuck slammed to him. Bob's grandma, maul Mary Quinn
Speaker 6: stood over him and washed him, and tears running all
Speaker 6: down her on him. She said, this bitch ought to
Speaker 6: be killed.
Speaker 3: It was a horrifying situation. She walked out of the
Speaker 3: trailer with Steve and tried to nurse him back to Hell.
Speaker 3: Months later, Mary said that Sandy needed to sign paperwork
Speaker 3: saying she was given Steve away. Mary and Bob broke
Speaker 3: the law by taking him back. Then in North Carolina,
Speaker 3: there was a rule that babies had to be adopted
Speaker 3: into a different county than they were born. He created
Speaker 3: a separation between birth families and the folks who adopted
Speaker 3: a child. Mary kept him a secret for two years
Speaker 3: and then went before the court.
Speaker 6: We went through Gaston County and they came in, checked
Speaker 6: house out and qualified us, and we adopted him.
Speaker 3: And after that life went on. She raised Steve and
Speaker 3: finally had the child she had been longing for. You
Speaker 3: can tell by the way she talks about Steve. She's
Speaker 3: just crazy about him.
Speaker 6: Chose him. If he hadn't been born, I wouldn't have
Speaker 6: got him. I couldn't love him anymore if he is
Speaker 6: mine or not. Just love him is all you can do.
Speaker 3: They live real close to each other, talk on the
Speaker 3: phone and text all the time. As Steve grow older,
Speaker 3: she never brought up the adoption, not because of the
Speaker 3: rough condition of the trailer park, or even her own pregnancies,
Speaker 3: but because he just never asked. Instead, she focused on
Speaker 3: giving Steve the best life he could possibly have.
Speaker 6: He had them hard metal, tonk of toys and all
Speaker 6: them good ones, roach scrapers and all kind of toys.
Speaker 6: We took him to all kinds of museums while he's
Speaker 6: growing up. If my husband was working in Raleigh, we
Speaker 6: went to every museum down there.
Speaker 1: After she picked up Steve, Mary never saw Sandy again.
Speaker 6: I don't think she even you realized she had given
Speaker 6: them to me. I really don't, because she was out
Speaker 6: there and law Alan.
Speaker 3: She suspects Sandy was drinking and on drugs. But Mary
Speaker 3: I also knew something Steve didn't. She knew Sandy, and
Speaker 3: based on her experience, Mary wasn't sure if Sandy would
Speaker 3: even be a comfort to Steve.
Speaker 1: He wanted answers and she might not have him.
Speaker 6: I don't think she really remembers, be honest with you,
Speaker 6: I don't think she remembers what went on.
Speaker 3: In her own way, Mary might have wanted to protect
Speaker 3: Steve from the heartbreak that might come from knowing.
Speaker 1: His own mother.
Speaker 3: There was a million ways that Sandy might break his heart.
Speaker 3: So while Mary knew all along about Sandy, she said nothing.
Speaker 5: So all these years later, like, how do you feel
Speaker 5: about this woman?
Speaker 6: I don't hate her. God says forgive and forget, you know,
Speaker 6: and she brought him into my love.
Speaker 4: So be it.
Speaker 2: What.
Speaker 3: Steve didn't know his biological mom and sisters were all living.
Speaker 3: Just one stayed over about six hours by car a
Speaker 3: day trip. I had to understand her side of the story,
Speaker 3: how she'd come into this weird adopt and if she
Speaker 3: ever looked for her son again. Once Stephen Janette started
Speaker 3: learning about Steve's past, it was hard to stop. That's
Speaker 3: the nature of Internet rabbit holes. There's always one more
Speaker 3: thing to read. In their searches, Stephen Janette realized Steve
Speaker 3: had siblings, siblings whose fate were much worse than Steve's.
Speaker 3: Some of them are forced to go on the run,
Speaker 3: changed their names. Some of the end up being raised
Speaker 3: by their mother, and others would never see her again.
Speaker 3: And there was one name that kept showing up in
Speaker 3: their search. Franklin Floyd, the man sitting on death row
Speaker 3: into Florida prison. He was the serial killer. Floyd was
Speaker 3: a man I contact you back in two thousand and
Speaker 3: four when I was looking for Steve Stephen Jeanette didn't
Speaker 3: understand how, but Floyd was linked to the family in
Speaker 3: some way. Google just kept suggesting his name.
Speaker 5: It was just kind of unbelievable, like like we didn't
Speaker 5: even know. I don't there were really not even words.
Speaker 5: It was just like shock and confusion. I guess a
Speaker 5: little confused worried, you know, because I didn't know what
Speaker 5: all he was about to start going through.
Speaker 6: But it worried me.
Speaker 4: A little bit.
Speaker 3: It was enough that Steve found out he was adopted
Speaker 3: in his original family for strangers doing it was another
Speaker 3: thing that he found his own missing person's page, but
Speaker 3: to be linked to a serial killer, it was.
Speaker 6: A very big deal.
Speaker 5: You know, you're adopted and you think you're going to
Speaker 5: find your parents. You don't think you're going to have
Speaker 5: all this that comes along with it. It was emotional.
Speaker 5: I'm emotional anyway, so.
Speaker 6: Yes, I can't help it.
Speaker 5: But I was very worried, because you know, it changes
Speaker 5: a person when you find out so many crazy things.
Speaker 3: This killer, Franklin Floyd didn't just cross past with the
Speaker 3: family for the blink of an eye. It was longer
Speaker 3: than that. He was married to Sandy Brandenburg, Steve's original mother.
Speaker 3: Next time on Hello John Doe.
Speaker 7: So, I was in Charlotte and that's where I met
Speaker 7: Franklin Floyd, but I knew him as Brandon Williams. And
Speaker 7: he said that he would help me get the kids.
Speaker 7: He would go with me to get the kids, and
Speaker 7: everything would be all right. Now that I look back,
Speaker 7: I was so stupid and so naive.
Speaker 4: He's creepy.
Speaker 7: He was always creepy.
Speaker 3: Hello John Doe is an original productions by Revelations Entertainment
Speaker 3: in association with First and Last Productions from Revelations. Our
Speaker 3: executive producers are Morgan Freeman and James Younger. From First
Speaker 3: to Last. Lindsay Moreno is the executive producer. Our producing
Speaker 3: partner is Neo on Hume Media. It was written and
Speaker 3: produced by Kate Michigan. Our editor is Katherine Saint Louis.
Speaker 3: She is also nil on Home Media's executive editor. Our
Speaker 3: executive producer is Sharah Morris. Our development producer is Ian Lindsay.
Speaker 3: Our associate producer is Rufaro Faith Maserua. Sound design and
Speaker 3: mixing by Scott Summerville. Theme and original music composed by
Speaker 3: Jesse Pearlstein. Additional music came from Epidemic Sound and Blue
Speaker 3: Dot Sessions. Frendall Faulton is our fact checker. Our production
Speaker 3: manager is Samantha Allison from my Heart Media. Dylan Fagan
Speaker 3: is our executive producer.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to.
Speaker 3: Adelia Ruben at NEI on Hum and Carrie Lieberman and
Speaker 3: Will Pearson at iHeartMedia. I'm Todd Matthews. You can learn
Speaker 3: more about name us at NamUs dot com. The number
Speaker 3: for the National Center for Missing Exploited Children's Call Center
Speaker 3: is one eight hundredth the loss that's one eight hundred
Speaker 3: eight four three five six seven eight. The National Section
Speaker 3: Soil Potline from the Rate of Use and Incest National
Speaker 3: Network is one eight hundred sixty five six four six
Speaker 3: seventy three. Okay, guys, this is the end of the show.
Speaker 3: If you didn't like it, don't do anything. But if
Speaker 3: you did like it, you make sure that you rate
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Speaker 3: it and hear this wonderful story. Thanks again for listening.