they're a team of artistic acrobats who give new meaning to the word, fear of flying. that's next week on "nightline prime." but first, "20/20" saturday "stolen at birth" with barbara walters starts right now. i don't know anything about myself, my heritage, my birthday. everything i thought was my life, wasn't. tonight on "20/20," a huge break through of a shocking story of a baby stolen at birth by a woman dressed up by a nurse. >> the baby was kidnapped? >> baby was gone. >> suddenly 14 months later he's found, or is he? >> this is my life and this is my only shot at solving these mysteries. >> tonight, barbara walters with the 50-year-old cold case that "20/20" has suddenly turned red hot. >> this couldn't be an easy case. >> a young man's obsession with finding out if he's the real

baby paul. hundreds of all new leads pouring into our "20/20" tipline. cousins, caregivers, stunning age progression images. is he not the real paul? is this man? >> it's ghostly to see it in person. >> and finally the shocker that will change everything. >> do you know who stole this baby? >> yes, my mother. she had a room with nothing but wigs and nurse dresses. >> tonight is there finally an answer of who was really stolen at birth? here's barbara walters. good evening, tonight, a program literally 50 years in the making. as a man living a mystery comes the closest yet, to finding out who he really is for the last year, "20/20" has been along for the ride with him, bringing in hundreds of leads ourselves, as

we asked for your help, but nothing could have prepared us, and the fbi, for the most shocking call of all, the one that might finally shovel the mystery of who was stolen at birt birth. >> i want to show you some photographs. >> reporter: looking at old family photos with paul fronczak is a strange experience. because the baby in his baby pictures is not him. >> how do you feel when you see this picture? >> i feel like i want to find him, and hug him, and make sure he's ok. >> reporter: paul has a wife, michelle, a daughter, emma, and a fish named blue. a perfectly ordinary life. the problem, as he recently discovered, it is not his life. this mystery, born of a terrible crime, was supposedly solved nearly 50 years ago. but today it is paradox so strange, even his name is not his own.

>> who is paul fronczak? >> that's what i hope we can find. >> reporter: the crazy amazing story begins with a villain, an evil woman dressed in white, and a baby stolen at birth, half a lifetime ago in 1964. lyndon johnson was in the white house, leading a nation still reeling from the assassination of president kennedy. a young journalist named barbara something-or-other was breaking into television, appearing on "the today show." and the original boy band was shaking up america. ♪ shake it up baby >> reporter: in chicago, chester and dora fronczak, married two years, living in an apartment in his parents' home, were starting a family. a first pregnancy ended in

stillbirth, but on sunday, april 26th, dora gave birth to a healthy nine pound boy. they named him paul joseph. >> he was a very cute, alive, sparkly baby, and she was thrilled. mary trenchard petrie was a 19 year-old student nurse at michael reese hospital in chicago. she was in the maternity ward with dora fronczak the day after her delivery. >> that whole thing is like a movie in my brain. i see myself in my uniform as a student nurse, i see the joy that was when they brought the baby to her the first time, how thrilled she was. >> reporter: but soon the thrill and the baby would be gone. it was the last time dora fronczak would hold her son. earlier that day, a woman dressed like a nurse, all in white, had come into her room. she looked at baby paul and left without a word. the woman had been seen elsewhere in the maternity ward several times that day and the day before. no one questioned her or raised any alarm. former fbi agent and abc

consultant, brad garrett has looked into this case for us. >> my sense is she was looking for what child she wanted to take. >> reporter: that afternoon, the woman in white returned to dora fronzcak's room. >> and as i was leaving the room, a woman came into the room. >> reporter: this time, she did more than just look. >> and did mrs. fronczak give her her baby? >> the woman said to her, "um, the doctor wants to see your baby." and she said, "oh, ok." and handed the baby to her. >> reporter: the fake nurse was able to whisk paul fronczak out of the maternity ward, down several flights of stairs and out of the hospital. >> apparently she got in a cab and took off. >> easy? >> easy, very easy. >> reporter: just like that, paul fronczak, less than two days old, was stolen from his mother's arms and vanished. >> the baby was kidnapped? >> the baby was gone. >> reporter: mary trenchard says 45 minutes passed before the

baby was missed. >> and they said, "do you have the fronczak baby?" and i said no. and she said, "well then the baby's gone." i was like, "gone where?" you know and, and she said, "you go back to mrs. fronczak's room and stay with her. the baby's been taken." >> reporter: there was a frantic search. nurses turned the hospital upside down. but, astonishingly, for several hours no one told dora fronczak, the one person best able to describe the kidnapper, that her baby had been taken. >> your heart must have been in your mouth. >> it was awful. >> reporter: finally, authorities came empty handed to the maternity ward to deliver their stunning news. >> and they told her, "mrs. fronczak, your baby's been taken." >> is there anything you would like to add, mr. fronczak? what would you like to tell the

person that took your baby? >> reporter: we uncovered rare archival news photos and film footage of the case. here is chester fronczak, the day after learning that while he was at work as an aircraft machinist handing out celebratory cigars, his boy had been stolen. >> do you have an appeal to the kidnapper? >> i pray that she'll take care of the baby. return him. >> reporter: a distraught dora fronczak, with chester kneeling by her side made a public appeal for the kidnapper to return their son. >> would you have any reason to think why she might have taken the baby? >> the only thing i can think of she must have been desperate for a baby that she would come and take someone else's baby away from them. or she couldn't have her own. or she lost hers or something. but even losing a child, i don't think you're that desperate to go and take another woman's baby. >> reporter: if the kidnapper seen in police sketches heard the fronczak's plea, she was not

moved by it. but others were. fbi agents and police, many working on their day off, searched the city for the phony nurse and the kidnapped baby. they threw out a dragnet, pursuing hundreds of leads and tips from the public. >> so where do you go from here lieutenant? >> we're still checking out all the leads we have, that we're receiving by telephone and other checks that we are making. >> reporter: authorities had another problem. if and when they found the baby, how would they positively identify him? there was no dna testing and blood testing was inexact. >> particularly if you go back to 1964-65, extremely challenging trying to match up. is this the child, the biological child of the fronczaks? >> reporter: there was another identification method then in vogue. the shape of an ear. >> basically, it's the dimension size and the folds of the ear. >> reporter: authorities were about to get a chance to put the ear theory to the test.

14 months after the kidnapping a child was found. a boy, apparently the right age, halfway across the country. was it possible? might this be the face of paul fronczak? >> and i heard the lady say, oh my god, this is my child. this is my baby." >> stay with us. we perform solos, improvs, even miracles. with over 50% more awarded and highly rated appliances than anyone else, sears helps you perform your best by giving you the best. like kenmore, the most awarded brand in the industry. sears. performance starts here. with olive garden's new cucina mia for just $9.99. italian dinner first, choose unlimited soup or salad. then create your own pasta with one of five homemade sauces.

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"20/20" "stolen at birth" continues. once again, barbara walters. it was the biggest kidnapping since the lynn beind baby. paul fronczak, stolen at birth by a fake nurse. his angelic face peering from the front page was the last anyone had seen of him. left behind were an empty crib and two broken hearts. a year passed. and then, one day, their phone rang. eight hundred miles away in newark, new jersey, a boy had been found.

>> the fbi contacted my parents and said, "we think we found your -- your son." >> reporter: whoever abandoned the baby, had dressed him up, wheeled him to a department store, in a new stroller, and walked away. 48 years later, we returned to the very place, with paul fronczak. >> somebody wheels a stroller, puts you here, and walks away. >> and never looks back. >> and never looks back. >> it's crazy. >> reporter: new jersey authorities temporarily placed the abandoned boy with an unidentified family. that period was a mystery, until after we first aired this story. then, janet ingrassia came forward. she contacted the "20/20" tip line with incredible new details. she says it was her family who had cared for the boy, as they had for nearly one hundred other foundlings over the years. >> he was an adorable little boy, he really was. >> the fbi is now investigating the little abandoned boy.

>> they came several times, and took different, like, a mold of his ear, and that was sent up to chicago. >> reporter: authorities compared the shape of the left ear of the boy in new jersey with the baby photos of paul fronczak. one day, janet's family was summoned to a meeting. they were told to bring the boy. he was led to a room where dora and chester fronczak were waiting. >> and i heard the lady say, "oh my god, this is my child. this is my baby." everybody is such an, oh my god, the woman found her baby, and this baby found his mother. >> reporter: the fronczaks took the little boy home with them to chicago. and that was the last time janet saw him. >> you have not seen paul fronczak in something like 50 years. >> that's right. >> would you like to meet him now? >> oh, i certainly would. oh my god! hello! >> hi, how are you doing?

how are you? >> i'm doing good, how are you? this is surreal, right? >> it is after so many years. it completes my heart. this brings back such good memories. >> reporter: on a winter morning, paul and janet returned to the house in watchung, new jersey where he spent almost a year as a child. paul remembers nothing of that time. janet doesn't forget a thing. >> your crib was -- your crib was over by the window, okay. you loved my father dearly. you really did, you know. you were the one that, uh, used to sit on his lap, you know. and, uh, you used to fall asleep on his lap and then he'd take you and put you inside. you were very happy here, paul, you really were. >> reporter: there was great happiness in the fronczak home too. the family so often filmed in heartbreak, now recorded home movies of their own.

the star of every celebration of course, was paul. they had missed his first step, first word, first birthday. but paul was now back where he belonged. blissfully unaware of his past until years later. >> when you were ten years old, you had a shocking discovery, tell me about it. >> i was looking for christmas presents and snooping around the house, and i found all these boxes, and it turned out it was a box of clippings and a bunch of cards and letters all about a kidnapping. >> did you ask your parents about it? >> i did. i asked them, you know, what is this? and they said, well, you were kidnapped, we found you. >> just like that, you were kidnapped, we found you? >> and that's all that matters, you're our son, we love you. >> how did your parents explain what happened to you? >> they really didn't talk about it, it was something that we really didn't bring up in the house. it was a very touchy subject. >> did you ever feel that there was anything out of the ordinary when you were growing up? >> well i, i did notice that i didn't resemble anybody in my family. >> you had a brother? >> correct.

>> and he looked like your parents? >> exactly like my dad. hundred percent. >> and you didn't at all? >> not at all. >> reporter: when he grew up, paul pursued a career as an actor. his resemblance to george clooney got him work as a stand-in in ocean's eleven movies. ready, go. today, paul works for a college in nevada where he lives with his wife michelle and their daughter, emma. >> good job. >> again, daddy. >> do you remember how you felt when paul said i'm not really sure who i am? >> the first time he told me i thought he was joking. i thought he was just kidding around. but then, once i realized it was true and i saw the newspaper clippings i felt very sad for his parents and sad for him. >> how do you think it has shaped him? >> i think as a 10-year-old boy, when he first saw those newspaper clippings, not realizing who he was, i'm sure that that has somehow shaped him

and that's done something to him over the years. it's just sad. >> was it sort of there in the back of your mind, this peculiar thing? >> it was really a big part of me through my whole life, and it's just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. >> who am i? who am i? >> yeah. >> reporter: then, last year paul happened to see a dna test kit for sale at a local drug store. at last, an easy answer to the question that had followed him all his life. the hard part, asking his parents for a dna sample, forcing them to travel back in time, to the most painful part of their lives. >> it's something i wanted to do for a long time, but i never really had the nerve to -- to ask my parents. >> reporter: still ahead, will the fronczak family agree to end decades of doubt? paul is determined to find the truth, but his parents seem just as determined to keep it hidden. >> and they said, "paul, please don't -- please don't send it in. we don't wanna know." i'm beth...

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from his home in las vegas, a city defined by luck and lust, paul fronczak took the biggest gamble of his life. after decades of wondering, of suspecting that he might not be the baby stolen from his mother's arms, he asked his parents for samples of their dna. >> i think i got them off guard a little bit, because i, i had just, i mentioned my, to my mom, did you ever really wonder if i was really your child? she said, yeah, we, we thought about it. i said, well, what if we can find out? a way? and they said, well, yeah, we'd like to know. and then i went and got a dna kit, and it was all done in five minutes. >> reporter: but later, second thoughts. >> were you ready to handle whatever secrets might come out?

>> yes. >> were your parents ready to handle the secrets? >> no. they called me and they said, "we don't want you to have that test done, and if you do it, we don't want to know." >> i had the packet ready to go on my desk in my house for about three weeks, and i would pass it every day, fighting with whether to do it or not. and finally one day i told my wife, i said, you know what, i have to do this. i really need to know. >> reporter: it was the answer he had anticipated and feared. the results were in. the test that would tell him if he'd been living a lie. >> describe the moment when you got the results of the dna test. >> i got the phone call, i found out there is no remote possibility that i was a fronczak child. all the sudden i felt the color drain from my face. >> and i said, "are you okay?" and he said, "i don't know." he said, "i feel a little dizzy. i need to stay in my chair right now." >> all the sudden i started thinking, i don't know anything about myself.

i don't know how old i am, my heritage, my birthday, every, all these things that people take for granted, i, everything i thought was my life wasn't. >> he said, "i don't know anything about myself." and i said, "well, you do. you're -- you're my husband, you're emma's dad. you know who you are. >> reporter: but who he is is not this baby boy. for chester and dora fronczak the fairy tale ending to their family tragedy was revealed to be just that, a fiction. >> how does a loving son say to his parents, you are not my biological parents? >> that was another hurdle i had to go through. my dad is 82. he has a hard time hearing on the phone, and my mom, i knew she would be very upset. so, i really through the best way would be to send them a letter. >> would you read it? >> sure. so it's dear, mom and dad. first, i am your son and always will be. i love you both, and that will

be forever. i am not the kidnapped baby that you had stolen from your arms on april 27th, 1964. this means that the real paul joseph fronczak may still be out there, alive, not knowing who he is. i know this is hard for you, but this is also about me at this point. >> what was the reaction of your parents? >> my dad called me, and he called me a name that he never has called me before in my life. >> how did you feel? >> i was speechless. and then my dad hung up. in their heart, i was their son, and -- and that's all that mattered. >> did you think maybe you shouldn't have taken the dna test? >> i struggle with that quite a bit. it's, i mean, i love my parents, and i always do what they ask. but this is something that i really felt i had to do. but the truth hurts. the fronczaks' prayers to find their stolen baby had actually never been answered. paul's fond memories have become bittersweet, tainted by the knowledge that he was not

kidnapped and found. he had been abandoned, most likely by a parent. the toughest moment for me, and i watch the home movies and i see a young boy running around that someone had just left. it kills me every time i see that. i look at my daughter. she's 4 years old. the thought of leaving her behind, that's what really hurts me the most. paul is now determined to solve the two mysteries in his life. who is he, and what happened to his parents' stolen baby. >> my main goal is to find the real paul. my parents raised me and they did a great job. i feel if i can't do anything i can to help them find their real child. i'm not doing my job as a son. >> reporter: don't you want to

find out who you are? >> it would be a bonus. >> reporter: to help paul solve these miseries we introduced to to to our nba profiler. >> i'm in this for the long hall. i'm in chicago -- >> asking callers to send in tips. >> if you know anything about the case. let us hear from you. >> coming up. shocking tips. >> the resemblance is uncanny if i'm not this guy. >> this is what the baby would look like today. is he the real paul? next at "stolen at birth." fresh pristine scent anywhere.

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since "20/20" appealed directly to you to help solve the mystery of paul fronczak, we have been inundated with tips from you. but the two you're about to see which came after this investigation first aired, have astonished even the fbi. here's abc's brian ross back at the scene of the crime. >> reporter: until our 20/20 investigation, the case had been as cold as a chicago winter. but now, in the wake of our first report, the "20/20" tipline has been alive with all kinds of new, and admittedly sometimes whacky leads about the stolen baby or about paul fronczak's birth family. some viewers suggested he might be related to football quarterback bret farve. he's not. others wrote saying he bears a resemblance to the anchorman at our abc tv station in indianapolis. another dead end.

and there were at least three 50-year old men who thought they were the stolen baby, based on drawings of what he might look like today. >> i could be paul. >> i might be paul fronczak. >> i do believe that there is a chance of me being paul fronczak. >> reporter: but while none of those three were a match, we continued to get more tips, including two that got the full attention of the fbi. that hairline is so -- first, a man who grew up in chicago, with a strong resemblance to the stolen baby. >> the resemblance is uncanny, if i'm not this guy. >> reporter: and then, a surprising admission from a man who believes the stolen baby had been in his home. >> so you're saying you saw this baby? >> that baby. >> reporter: in your house? >> and it looks like him, yes. >> reporter: the new attention and the new leads grow out of the one, and the only, solid piece of evidence from 50 years ago. the hospital on the south side of chicago where paul fronczak was stolen long since shuttered, its records nowhere to be found.

and the key detectives from back then all dead. >> do you have any further clues? >> no sir. not at this time. >> reporter: all that remains is the hospital photograph taken the morning the baby was stolen, at a day and a half old. and that's what was used by the artists at the national center for missing and exploited children to create the age progression images we used in our investigation. >> i feel good about it. >> i think it is the ballpark. yes sir. >> reporter: the last known sighting of the baby and the kidnapper was at this intersection in the chicago neighborhood of bridgeport where a cab driver told police he had dropped them off after picking them up at the hospital. 35th and halstead is where the cab came from the hospital. the police went door to door looking for possible suspects. the search went on for days in 1964, hundreds of officers

and fbi agents were involved, and our consultant, former fbi agent brad garrett, says it is likely the kidnapper had some ties here, given past infant abduction cases. >> they tend to be from the community where they take the child. >> reporter: so we did our own door to door canvas, with the image from the center for exploited children, and another one produced by artists commissioned by abc news from the michigan firm phojoe.com. some of the old-timers in bridgeport remembered the case. >> i do remember that baby being stolen. >> they had handbills with pictures of a woman from the newspaper. >> reporter: but no one recognized any likeness to the people living around here now. then last month, paul fronczak visited barbara walters on "the view." >> so tell us what your quest is. >> the main quest is to find what happened to paul because a tragic thing happened to my mom. >> the real paul fronczak, the real baby who was -- >> kidnapped. >> kidnapped. >> reporter: and a viewer thought she knew the solution to

this five decades long mystery, a friend of hers in dallas by the name of sam miller. >> there she sees this picture up on tv, and she called me. she goes, "you're gonna think i'm out of my mind, but you've gotta go to this website and look at this." and so i did, and we all just stood there in shock. >> reporter: this is the picture? >> yes, it's ghostly to see it in person that large. >> reporter: not only does miller look a lot like one of the age progression images we had produced. but look at the baby pictures. this is the photo taken of the baby just before he was stolen. >> my -- yeah. >> reporter: and your own baby photo from whenever that was taken. >> it looks like me. and it looks like my son. >> reporter: miller, a 49-year-old microsoft executive, is the right age to be the stolen baby, grew up in a suburb outside of chicago, and did not learn he was adopted until earlier this year after doctors told him his kidney disease had

taken a serious turn for the worse. he called a cousin for information about the family's medical history. >> i'm end-stage renal disease, and i need a kidney. she started the sentence with "what kidney disease? you mean you don't know you're adopted?" >> reporter: so for miller and his wife and two children, the prospect of finding his real family could be a matter of life and death. >> so here i am. and hope that i'm able to find a kidney find my family and go on with my life because i'm kind of near the end. >> reporter: miller was eager to provide swabs with his dna sample to be tested, and made contact with the fbi. this must be quite an emotional moment for you? >> i look like that guy, and i have no idea where i came from. >> reporter: and then as miller was showing me pictures from the family album, the phone rang in the kitchen. it was the call from chicago he had been waiting for. >> this is sam. i would like to know who i am.

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stolen at birth continues. once again, brian ross. >> reporter: it was in this quiet, upscale neighborhood of dallas, in this house on colgate avenue, that a life changing drama was about to play out. what seemed like the strongest lead yet in finding the stolen baby. 49-year-old sam miller, adopted under what he called unusual circumstances, a mirror image of one of the age progression drawings of what the baby would look like today.

and the baby photos of the two, hard to tell them apart. we were there when he got the phone call that would resolve it all. from the government office in chicago that had his original adoption papers, which 20/20 helped to get unsealed. >> i appreciate it. i would like to know who i am. >> reporter: it was a 90 second phone call. full of nervous anticipation. as miller learned what was found in the adoption files that that had been kept secret until this moment. >> my birth mother was -- shiela -- >> reporter: if true, that meant he had not been stolen, but give up for adoption legitimately. >> so you're not the stolen baby? >> no. they found my original birth certificate. >> reporter: for sam and his family, hugs and tears and disappointment. >> you okay? >> yeah, i'll be fine. >> reporter: and a new search for a family he needs to find as he faces a kidney transplant to keep him alive. >> i have a brand-new search.

thank you so much for flying down. >> reporter: of course. >> i appreciate it. >> reporter: for us, it was back to chicago and the discovery on the "20/20" tipline of what, amazingly, would turn out to be an even more intriguing lead about who the kidnapper might be. you know who stole this baby? >> yes. >> reporter: who stole the baby? >> my mother. >> reporter: your mother stole the baby? >> yes. >> reporter: his name in johnnie harbaugh and what he told us about his mother may seem far-fetched, but it most definitely is not. it's a pretty serious charge that your mother kidnapped a baby. >> right. but she was arrested a few times for suspicious of kidnapping babies. >> reporter: his mother's name was linda taylor, a notorious figure in chicago in the 1970s and '80s, dubbed america's welfare queen and vilified by president ronald reagan. >> her name is linda taylor, the alleged illinois legislative

advisory committee on public assistance investigated, came up with 82 charges of welfare fraud, perjury and bigamy. among other things they discovered 100 aliases and 50 false addresses. we began to look for her after our "20/20" tipline provided this clue. the baby was stolen by a lady known as the welfare queen. she had many, many schemes to get money and would have most likely sold the baby. linda taylor died 12 years ago but we found her son living in a chicago suburb, prepared he said, to finally tell what he knows about his mother and the stolen baby. did he have a name? he had a name, but we called him tiger. >> reporter: harbaugh said he was a teenager living in this house in chicago, when he came home to discover a new baby. was your mother capable of stealing a baby? >> my mother was capable of anything. not only stealing a baby, but she could steal you. she was just that kind of woman, you know. she done whatever it took for her to survive. >> reporter: harbaugh said his

mother was a master of disguise, could pass as white or black, puerto rican or hawaiian, in her schemes to collect fraudulent welfare payments, sometimes posing as a doctor or a nurse. >> she had a room with nothing but wigs and nurse dresses and shoes. >> reporter: at the time that paul fronczak was stolen from the michael reese hospital the police put out a sketch. >> yes. >> reporter: do you -- do you think that's your mother? >> except for the nose. but she could do anything with her face or her hair. >> reporter: in the 1970s, when linda taylor was put on trial for welfare fraud, she actually came under investigation for stealing the fronczak baby. from one newspaper account, quote, "one of her ex-husbands told agents that miss taylor appeared on day in the mid-1960s with a newborn baby although she had not been pregnant." >> that would not surprise me. >> reporter: isaiah gant was linda taylor's lawyer at the time and told "20/20" she never

admitted anything but he wouldn't put it past her to snatch a baby. >> the woman was just a c chameleon. she could be anything. so i couldn't rule out the possibility that she could be involved in something like that. >> reporter: her son johnnie says he was already in trouble with the law then, and never volunteered what he says he knew about the fronczak baby, until he talked with us and a reporter for the online news site slate. i wasn't gonna go tell somebody, hey i know where this baby is, you know. you didn't do stuff like that back then. >> reporter: harbaugh says he came home from school one day, and the baby was gone, taken, he believes, by one of his mother's boyfriends to tennessee. but you're sure about this. >> i'm positive. >> reporter: harbaugh said the man who took the baby worked at what was then the american rivet company. a former employee there confirmed to 20/20 the name harbaugh gave us, and said the man, indeed, had moved to a small town in tennessee.

♪ our "20/20" investigative team went to tennessee, to the town of sevierville. but we could find no current record of the man who supposedly took the stolen baby here so many years ago. what would you say to the fronczak parents, mr. and mrs. fronczak that had their baby taken away, day and a half old? >> back then i was young. you know, a baby, you know, and i seen so many of them. but i would -- i'm -- i mean, there's nothing i could say to 'em. i mean, i couldn't apologize enough for not turning her in. >> reporter: cold comfort for the fronczak parents so many years later. until tonight, chester and dora fronczak declined to comment on the new investigation, but this week they sent their first public statement to "20/20" staying we wish paul well in his search and we continue to cooperate in the fbi in our hope for answers.

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"20/20," "stolen at birth" continues. once again, barbara walters. >> reporter: for paul fronczak, a mission has become an obsession. between breakfast and ballet lessons he's on the hunt. >> i work a full-time job, i have a family, but this, this is my life. and this is my only shot at solving these mysteries.

so i put as much time as i -- as i can. everyone goes to bed at night, i'm, i'm on line researching. >> this is my first actual baby picture right here. >> reporter: his focus is finding his parents' stolen baby. but he is still searching for clues to his own identity. >> i feel kind of like an imposter because i am still using his birth certificate. paul is out there, and i have his birth certificate and i want to give it to him and i want to find mine. >> reporter: desperate to find any connection to his biological family, paul sent dna samples to three genealogy sites: 23 and me, family tree dna and ancestry.com. >> we took the sample that you gave us and we put it on a chip, and what that does is it gives us a unique dna signature that only you have. so we compare your dna to dna from populations all over the world. >> so, you're kind of like csi but you work with dna? >> it's family history. >> reporter: the results were paul's first indication of who he is and where he's from.

there were surprises about his ethnic roots. >> you are, uh, 37% according to our analyses, of european-jewish descent. >> wow. >> is that new? >> well, i was raised a roman catholic. >> well, uh -- >> so this is interesting. i've been twice baptized and i'm actually jewish. so, it's kind of cool. i have to learn a whole new religion now. i'm excited about that. >> reporter: even more exciting, a major development in ancestry.com's search. all of a sudden this name pops up and it says possible third cousin. finally a clue. and for paul a chance to meet his first blood relative. her name, fran kirby. it's a moment 50 years in the making. >> i'm very excited. >> you get excited, you get nervous, how is this person going to react to me reaching out to them, what's the response going to be? >> well let's find out the response. we have brought here to meet you, your cousin fran. >> reporter: the first branch in paul's family tree blossoming

into the ordinary miracle of a family reunion. >> hi. >> hi, paul. nice to meet you. >> cousin fran. >> a blood relative. how's that feel? >> it feels pretty good. >> did you know that paul existed? >> no, i didn't. i googled after i found out, i found out the whole story, and saw your "20/20" >> paul, just to find out that there might be a relative is a very big deal for you, isn't it? >> it's a very big deal. so this is really huge, this is one step closer. >> reporter: but then another step --make that a leap, closer. paul got another match on ancestry.com, this time a possible second cousin. >> reporter: finding a second cousin match is substantially better than finding a third cousin match. for cece moore, a genetic genealogist helping paul with his case, it was a eureka moment. >> i was extremely excited. i thought we might be able to have a very quick resolution to this case. >> reporter: that cousin's name,

alan fisch, a 57 year-old father from new york. a second cousin could unlock the mystery. alan and paul's parents could be first cousins, their grandparents siblings. but there is one ironic obstacle. turns out, alan was himself adopted. so just like paul, he was searching for his biological parents. to find that his closest match turns out to be adopted was just unbelievable. incredibly disappointing. >> it just couldn't be an easy case, could it, barbara? >> no, exactly. >> reporter: a setback, and then a tragedy. days before alan would see court records revealing details about his birth mother, he died of a sudden blood clot. alan's children and widow randi are determined to carry on alan's search and help paul with his. >> it's nice to meet you. hi. >> we know this must be very difficult. in this very sensitive time, you still came in to meet paul and help him on his journey.

>> yes. >> why did you want to do this? >> all four kids at the same time said they wanted to honor alan's memory and finish this. he was so excited to meet you. >> to have this happen, my father passing away just days before he meets him is just, it's surreal. i can't, can't believe it. >> was your husband very curious about paul? >> yes. >> what did he want to know? >> he wanted to know everything about him. >> this is amazing. and thank you for continuing this. because it's going to be an interesting journey. >> reporter: the next step in that journey, tracking down alan's birth mother. this week, with "20/20's" help, the family got her name. >> age 15. born november 15th, 1940. >> if found she would be paul's closest relative so far.

paul's hope is that every clue brings a tragic mystery closer to being solved. >> look at all these people. this is all of your family. >> are you getting to be more hopeful that you'll find out who you are, who paul fronczak is, the whole story? >> if it's possible to me more hopeful, because i'm really, really a hopeful guy. >> you know? i still think we're going to solve both these mysteries. >> wouldn't that be great? >> yes. it's going to happen.

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