Additional tests on unearthed skeletal remains of baby fail to reveal identity
Alan Smithee
(Minneapolis Star Tribune)
Marlys Thomas knew all along that bone fragments unearthed from
a small grave in Worthington, Minn., last November were not her
baby's.
Blood tests taken last winter proved she was right.
So whose baby was it?
Some have wondered in the months since whether the fragments
were those of a baby girl who died at the same hospital within hours
of Thomas' daughter and was buried in an adjacent cemetery plot.
But results of tests released Monday proved that isn't the
case, either.
So whose baby is it?
Nobody knows for sure. Monday's development further clouds an
already complicated mystery of what happened to Thomas' daughter,
Mary Agnes Gross, who supposedly died shortly after her birth in
June 1962.
Thomas, who at the time was separated from her husband and
living with her mother in a rural community south of Worthington,
said she thinks her daughter may have been taken from her at birth
-
and may still be alive.
She had her daughter's grave unearthed in November, hoping to
find some answers.
Instead, the skeletal remains found have prompted more
questions.
"I feel in my heart she was taken from me," Thomas said Monday
from her home in Sioux Falls, S.D. "Everybody thought I'm mistaken,
that maybe after all those years I don't remember. But I have a very
good memory. You don't forget something like that."
Thomas, 55, always wondered about her daughter's death, but
never thought to investigate it until she went to her daughter's
grave at St. Mary's Cemetery in 1993 and found a marker with the
name Pamela Rae Dickey on the spot where she thought her daughter
had been buried.
Headstone clues
Mary's headstone, several feet from Pamela's, was
misplaced when it was first put in, Thomas said. She knew that
because when she visited the cemetery after her baby's funeral, the
only fresh grave was at the site where the Dickey headstone later
would appear. Once the Dickey headstone went up, she said, she was
convinced that her daughter had never been buried there.
Dickey, the daughter of Margaret Dickey, was born six weeks
prematurely and died shortly after Mary was said to have died.
Thomas immediately reviewed birth and death records, hoping to
learn more. Instead, she found only inconsistencies about the time
and cause of death, which fueled her belief that her daughter may
not have died. No cemetery records of the girl's burial were
found.
She was haunted, too, by what she had seen and what she was
told in the hours, days and weeks after her daughter was born on
June 12, 1962.
Thomas said she was told by her doctor after the delivery that
her daughter died an hour after birth. But her doctor never said how
the baby died and wouldn't allow an autopsy, she said. And her
mother told her she had been unable to take pictures of the infant
before the funeral, leading to doubts about the identity of the baby
who was buried. Thomas was still hospitalized at the time of the
funeral.
Mystery envelope
Three months later, someone mailed Thomas an envelope with a
family portrait inside. No note was attached, and Thomas didn't
recognize the family. She said the baby in the photo resembled her
husband.
Despite skepticism, she said, she visited her daughter's grave
regularly until that day in 1993, when she saw the Dickey marker.
Thomas eventually contacted Worthington police, but after a
brief investigation, she said, they told her that there was little
they could do.
She then contacted Scott Heidepriem, an attorney in Sioux
Falls.
Heidepriem said Monday that he's not sure what more can be done
to help Thomas find out what happened to her daughter.
"I really don't know what to do," he said.
Thomas said she isn't sure where to go next, either. The
experience has been so stressful, she said, that it put her in the
hospital in March with pneumonia.
"This is very, very hard on me," she said. "I'm still not
well."
Nevertheless, she said, she'll continue to search for an
answer.
"This ain't over until I know where my daughter is," she
said.
John Stam, a pediatrician who was on duty that day in June
1962, could not be reached for comment Monday.
Thomas, meanwhile, said she was not surprised to learn that the
remains - of a full-term baby girl - were not those of Pamela Rae
Dickey. Neither was Margaret Dickey. Although Dickey has
consistently questioned Thomas' story and her recollection of what
transpired in 1962, she ultimately agreed to have her blood tested
on the chance that the infants' bodies had been switched at
burial.
Dickey also had been hospitalized at the time of her daughter's
funeral. "I knew where my baby was because my husband told me," she
said Monday from her home in Worthington. The test results mean
"that my baby was laying right where she was supposed to be."
Thomas said she believes the bone fragments are those of
another infant buried long before June 1962, and said she remembers
that part of the cemetery once was filled with old headstones of
children who had died. Most of those stones no longer exist, she
said.
Dickey, meanwhile, said Monday that she will not dig up
Pamela's grave to prove that her daughter is buried there.
"She's laid there 34 years without being disturbed, and she's
not going to be now," she said.
Copyright 1997 Star Tribune. Republished under license to Infonautics
Corp. All other rights reserved.Richard Meryhew; Staff WriterMinneapolis
Star Tribune, 07-22-1997, pp 01A.