Baby Kidnapping

It’s a freezing winter’s night in 1954. A baby boy, a few hours old, is left by his mother, wrapped in nothing but two sheets of newspaper and hidden amongst the undergrowth by a canal bank. An hour later, a late-shift postman is walking wearily home when he hears a faint cry. He finds the newspaper parcel and discovers the newborn, white-cold and whimpering, inside. After being rushed to hospital and against all odds, the baby survives. He’s baptised by the hospital chaplain as Richard.

Blaze is the story of Clayton Blaisdell, Jr., of the crimes committed against him and the crimes he commits, including his last, the kidnapping of a baby heir worth millions. Blaze has been a slow thinker since childhood, when his father threw him down the stairs and then threw him down again. After escaping an abusive institution for boys when he was a teenager, Blaze hooks up with George, a seasoned criminal who thinks he has all the answers.

Amelia Earhart once noted, "In my life I had come to realize that when things were going very well indeed it was just the time to anticipate trouble." And so it would be with America's other famous aviator. Charles Lindbergh had spent the first 30 years of his life escaping multiple plane crashes, becoming a hero across the world, and starting a family, but his luck ran out in an awful way in March of 1932.

At ten months old, Holly Marie was brought to the door of a church by three barefoot women in white robes and head coverings. Adopted by the pastor and raised in a loving Christian home, Holly nevertheless struggled with the ache of not knowing what had happened to her biological parents. She still felt their absence even as she married and started a family of her own. When two detectives showed up at the restaurant where she worked and informed her that she had a large family in Florida who had been searching for her for over 40 years, Holly’s past became the reality of her present.

From the 1940s through the 1960s, young pregnant women entered the front door of a clinic in a small North Georgia town. Sometimes their babies exited out the back, sold to Northern couples who were desperate to hold a newborn in their arms. But these weren't adoptions - they were transactions. And one unethical doctor was exploiting other people's tragedies. Jane Blasio was one of those babies.

New York Governor Phillip Grand’s infant daughter disappears without a trace from her crib. Hours later, newly divorced and out-of-work writer Jamie Carter is abducted by a dark, handsome stranger in a crowded New York City park. Jamie is whisked upstate, where she is forced to care for the kidnapped Baby Grand in a plot to delay the execution of mobster Gino Cataldi.

Gwendolyn Black is one of New York’s most renowned attorneys. But after her baby is kidnapped during her morning jog, the detectives working the case suspect she is hiding something. Further uptown, a retired criminal gives the ultimate gift to his girlfriend, who has just lost a full-term pregnancy: a perfect baby girl. With the media transfixed, the detectives tighten their noose, hoping Gwen will lead them to the kidnappers. But she has everything to lose and cannot trust the cops. Instead, she decides to face the kidnappers alone.

Soon, Rebecca Gray won't be able to see. Diagnosed in her 20s with a degenerative eye disease, each day her world grows a little darker. She's moved to the suburbs to raise her son, Jackson. In the wake of her husband's death, it should be a quieter, easier way of life.

Stolen Babies of Spain chronicles how and why baby-stealing began in Spain just after the civil war of 1936 - 1939. This heartbreaking and tragic history of the worst, modern-day network of stolen babies pulls back a web of deceit and terror, uncovering pain, suffering, and, worse, organization and profit. Using more than 300 interviews conducted by the authors, many of them exclusive, Greg Rabidoux and Mara Lencina reveal the personal stories of the adults who were stolen babies as they search for their biological parents and their true origins.

In this meticulous and authoritative account of the trial and the times of the Lindbergh kidnapping, Robert Zorn clears away decades of ungrounded speculation surrounding the case. Inspired by his father's relationship with the actual accomplices—including the mastermind—he presents the clearest ever picture of a criminal partnership that would shake every class and culture of American society.