Stolen At Birth

Transcript

A Myth That Explains The Unthinkable

Carole Townsend 0:07

Greek mythology tells us of a supernatural entity named Gelo, a malevolent creature known to target women and young children. Babies. According to ancient myth, Gelo was a young woman who died a virgin and returned as a ghost to do harm to the children of others. Ancient accounts claim that this creature hunted unmarried or pregnant women, interrupting their reproductive cycles or even stealing their newborn babies. Gello was feared far and wide, for no one knew when she would strike, secretly snatching a newborn from its mother and spiriting the child away. When a child fell ill or went missing, it was Gello, her jealousy and her vengeance, who was blamed for the dreadful tragedy. In the 1950s and 60s, in the tiny town of McCain'sville in North Georgia, babies were disappearing, some were dying. And while mothers were left confused and grieving, there was no mythical creature to blame for these unexplained misfortunes. Was there? Like a newsreel running behind the story being told, we're reminded that this all really happened. That the characters aren't born of fiction, but of fact. Somehow, that makes a story like the one I'm going to tell you tonight even more frightening. The idea that there are those who are capable of the unthinkable. That thought gives us pause. And as always, they're true. So let's draw close again tonight here on my front porch. There's comfort and company, isn't there? And there's safety. Never mind the dark and the mist rolling in off the river. We're here together. And I'll turn on the light because we tell ourselves that light pushes back the darkness and that monsters look like the ones we imagined as children. We tell ourselves that they don't walk among us.

Warning And A Front Porch Light

Carole Townsend 3:49

The following podcast contains material that may be disturbing. Listener discretion is advised.

The Mother Who Heard Her Baby

Carole Townsend 4:06

The baby's cries penetrated her sleep. As usually happens when a mother first hears her child's cries, her entire body responded to that new but age-old sound. If she could describe it, she would say that she felt the baby's cries instead of merely hearing them. And those feelings were screaming her awake. My baby, she whispered, her voice sounding like a creaky hinge instead of her own. Where's my baby? I want to hold her. But the kind, caring face of her doctor had changed somehow. His words sounded kind, but his face was cold and hard. Baby? he questioned, his expression changing to one of confusion and concern. He leaned down and whispered to the young woman, My dear, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but your baby died at birth. You're right, though. She was a girl. Now it was the mother's turn to look, to be confused. No, please, I want to hold my child. The fog that had rolled in when the doctor sedated her was beginning to lift now, and all of her senses were becoming sharper because of the words the doctor had just spoken. She had heard a baby cry, the cries of life. She was sure of it, because she'd heard it before. This little girl would be her fourth child, and while she was devastated early on to learn that she was pregnant, she now knew that she wanted this child too. And she was certainly the only one in the room who had been pregnant when she arrived this morning. So whose baby's cries had she heard? The baby was alive and she was hers. She tried to get up off the bed, but the fog hadn't completely cleared. She was clumsy and dizzy, and her limbs felt incredibly heavy. The doctor put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back down onto the table, his face more stern now. The nurse had her back to the woman, and she seemed unconcerned about what was happening here. She turned and walked toward the doctor, not making eye contact with the woman on the table. Holding the syringe up and pushing it until a drop of liquid squirted skyward, she handed the medication to the doctor and backed away, busying herself with collecting some metal tools from a metal tray. Now, now, my dear, Dr. Hicks said to the woman, relax. And with that last, he injected more medication into the woman's arm. She began to fade. Where is my baby? she asked again in a weak, trembling whimper. The doctor, attempting a kind tone in his voice, told her that it was common to hallucinate the sound of a baby's cries right after birth. But he assured her again that her baby had been stillborn. Don't worry, my dear, you can try again someday. For now, try to rest. She lay back, confused, sure she had heard the cries, but doubting her own senses now. Would Dr. Hicks be right? Did she really just dream that she had heard the cries of her newborn daughter? She turned her head toward the wall, wanting to die if what the doctor had said was true. She closed her eyes and allowed the dark fog of the heavy sedation to roll over her. A cold blanket of heavy sorrow.

A Couple Buys A Newborn

Carole Townsend 8:10

In the lobby of the nondescript medical clinic, a couple waited, their eyes expectant and hopeful. After about an hour of waiting like this, a nurse pushed through the doors that led to the waiting room. She held a baby in her arms, a girl, and she said, She's a bit small, just a little over five pounds, but she seems like a healthy one. The baby's color looked a little off, with a bluish-purple tint to her skin. There was dried blood on her tiny body in places, and the cord on her belly looked freshly cut and still full of life. The baby's cries were thin and weak. She cried, as babies have done since the beginning of time, for her mother. The waiting woman took the baby from the nurse and cradled her gently in her arms. Tears filled her eyes. To the kind doctor, she said, We brought a pillow to put her on for the drive back, just like you said. She's so tiny. She cooed and shushed the baby, turning away and offering her the bottle of formula that the nurse had handed her. The woman's husband pulled a roll of hundred dollar bills from his coat pocket. He peeled off ten of them, folded them in half, and handed the money to the doctor. Without exchanging another word, the nurse turned and walked back through the door, motioning for the couple to follow her. She guided them to the back door of the clinic and opened it. Are you sure she's okay? The woman asked the nurse. She should be fine, the nurse answered. Dr. Hicks, the man who ran the clinic, looked on from another room. We can't thank you enough, Doctor, the woman said, clutching the tiny baby to her chest. She's beautiful. We're naming her Nora Louise. She should be fine if you do everything I told you to, he called from inside the room. But if she isn't, you can have the next one. And with that, the nurse handed the couple a birth certificate for the girl. Blank, except for the doctor's signature and the date. They could fill in the rest later. The night was muggy and warm, typical for Georgia in July, and the cicadas were singing their high-pitched nighttime tunes to no one in particular. The narrow alley was dark and deserted. The man opened the rear door of the car and the woman slid in, placing the baby on the pillow beside her. Closing that door, the man opened the driver's door, slid in, and adjusted the seat and the mirrors. He popped the headlights on and drove into the night. The couple from Akron, Ohio left the state of Georgia with a tiny newborn baby girl. Back at the clinic, a young woman cried softly even in her drugged sleep. Her body ached to hold the child she had just delivered. The child whose cries she was sure she heard. Two days later, she left that clinic, clutching her stillborn daughter's death certificate.

Pre-Roe America And A Perfect Cover

Carole Townsend 11:46

As is usually true when you and I share such stories, it's important to understand the time and the place of the events. In the 1950s and 1960s, laws were very different than they are today. For example, abortion was illegal. It wasn't until the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court case, Roe v. Wade, that medical abortions were deemed to be legal. Still, in the 50s and 60s, an estimated 1 million illegal abortions were performed each year in the United States. These brutal procedures were often done under horrible circumstances, with filthy makeshift instruments such as coat hangers, knitting needles, and dangerous chemicals. Women were even known to throw themselves down flights of stairs to end pregnancies. Now, imagine the small southern town of McKay'sville, Georgia, with a population of about 2,000 people back then. The town had one physician, Dr. Thomas Hicks, who attended to the town's medical needs. From broken bones to obstetrics, Dr. Hicks took care of the health of the townspeople. We must also remember about this time in our history that small towns were fortunate to have a doctor set up shop. For this reason and many others, physicians were held in especially high regard, and their opinion on health, birth, death, or just about anything simply wasn't questioned. Now, while Dr. Hicks took care of the medical needs of the people of McKay'sville, he also offered a specialized service, one that could not be openly offered or even discussed. Law or no law, Dr. Hicks advertised his abortion services on phone booths, bus stations, and bridges. Women came by bus, by car, and by train to pay $100 to fix their problem. A small airstrip was even built in nearby Ducktown so that prominent families could fly their daughters in from Atlanta and Chattanooga for an abortion. In a town the size of McKay'sville, everyone knew everyone. Everyone knew the goings-on, the town business. Everyone knew that Dr. Hicks performed abortions for a fee. And even though most townspeople wouldn't ever dare to openly support the act of terminating the life of a baby, everyone protected the good doctor. And they protected another secret as well.

Who Dr. Thomas Hicks Was

Carole Townsend 14:47

Thomas Jagarthy Hicks was born in 1888 in Pickett County, Tennessee. He was educated at Tusculum University and later at Emory University Medical School in Atlanta. After getting his medical degree from Emory in 1917, he moved to Copper Hill, Tennessee, but there he lost his medical license, serving time in federal prison for selling narcotic painkillers to an undercover FBI agent. While incarcerated, Hicks studied silicosis, an irreversible progressive lung disease that prevented copper miners from living past the age of 40. Once out of prison, he was hired by the Tennessee Copper Company to treat minors for this disease. There was just one problem. He filed more claims for payment than there were miners with the disease, and as a result, the Tennessee Copper Company invited him to leave their employee. Dr. Hicks and his wife Chass then moved to nearby McKay'sville, Georgia, where he opened Hicks Community Clinic, a general medicine practice. McKay'sville's backdrop is the Blue Ridge Mountains and it borders Tennessee. In fact, a blue line drawn through the town separates the two states, and yes, one can stand with one foot in Georgia and one in Tennessee while in this little town. McKay'sville is situated along the fringe of Appalachia. In his clinic, Dr. Hicks treated the everyday run-of-the-mill health issues of the folks in town. It was well known that in some of the back rooms of his clinic, Dr. Hicks would not just perform abortions on women. The good doctor was also kind enough to house pregnant girls and women until their little problem could be fixed, or until they gave birth and put the baby up for adoption. In fact, many of the women who sought abortion with Dr. Hicks came to him from the poor and rural Appalachian countryside. Still others, of course, were flown in to receive the doctor's services from moneyed families in nearby cities. Some of the women Dr. Hicks treated simply didn't want the babies growing inside them. Some couldn't afford to have them, much less raise them. Some were sent to Dr. Hicks so that their condition wouldn't embarrass their families. And still other pregnant women did want their babies and sought Dr. Hicks for normal prenatal treatment and delivery. Now, about that other service the doctor offered also on the sly.

How The Baby-Selling Pipeline Worked

Carole Townsend 17:43

From about 1950 to 1965, 15 years and possibly longer, Dr. Hicks offered babies for adoption from his community clinic. He did so secretly because the clinic he'd been running since the mid-40s was not a licensed adoption agency. It was not an advertised adoption agency. Nevertheless, there was a waiting list of families desperate to get one of the Hicks babies as these children came to be known. Here's how it worked. Parents on the waiting list would get a phone call, telling them that they had 12 hours to get to the clinic in McKay'sville to pick up their baby. If they couldn't be there in 12 hours, the next family would receive the call, and so on, if necessary. So, where did he get the more than 200 babies he adopted out, or not to put too fine a point on things, where did he get the more than 200 babies he sold on the black market? Well, he had the perfect setup right there in his clinic. You see, very often, when a young mother would go to Dr. Hicks for an abortion, he would convince her to carry the baby to term or at least wait until the baby could survive outside the mother's body. He would tell these young women that their baby would be well cared for. If she'd just give birth to the child, he would take care of the rest. He would let these women live in one of the rooms in his clinic, or in a nearby hotel, or in one of the many buildings he owned in town. He paid all their expenses while their pregnancy progressed. Sometimes the women carried their babies to term, and in other cases, the doctor would induce labor as early as 30 weeks into the pregnancy. Now, at 30 weeks, a baby weighs about three pounds and is approximately the size of a cabbage. Unlike today, in the 1950s and 60s, the survival rate for babies born that early was extremely low and survival was risky. Still, these tiny babies were sold to parents without any follow-up medical care available to them, other than the doctor's advice to not hold the baby too much, and to bring a pillow on which to lay the child for the long drive home. And perhaps even more sinister, Dr. Hicks would provide prenatal care for an unsuspecting mother who wanted her child. When labor commenced, he would administer morphine and scopolamine, sometimes called a twilight sleep, to produce a state of deep sedation, partial pain relief, and complete amnesia. Arbitruates, analgesics, and other sedatives might also be administered, and this was not uncommon medical practice for labor and delivery at that time. But when Hicks needed a baby to sell and he didn't have a preemie he had delivered, he would deliver a baby using a mother who was in his care and who desperately wanted her child. Once the baby was born, he would then convince her that her child had been stillborn, and he would assure her that the cries she had heard were simply hallucinations. Common after delivering a baby, he would say. And sometimes, he would then sell that baby to a waiting couple while the birth mother was still trying to understand what the doctor had just told her, while she was still crying and grieving in another room in his clinic, and while the expectant father was still trying to process what he'd just been told, even as he tried to comfort his wife. As you might imagine, the demand for babies grew quickly, and Hicks clandestinely. And operation began to run like a well-oiled machine. At the other end of the transaction, instead of walking in the front door and out the back with a baby, adoptive parents now drove to a window in the alley behind the clinic, handed over $1,000 or more, which was a lot of money at that time, and they were handed a newborn. These babies were often frightfully small and sometimes still covered in blood from the birth. The so-called Hicks babies had falsified birth certificates, and no one has ever found whether Dr. Hicks kept records tying them to their biological families. In truth, it's doubtful. Many of these children, now grown, had no idea they were adopted until well into adulthood. Some of the Hicks babies were sold to good and loving families, but not always. None of Dr. Hicks's customers had been vetted, and once a baby was handed over, he had no idea what became of them. This black market baby selling ring, which moved more than 200 babies with no questions asked, relied on young poor women from North Georgia and East Tennessee and on wealthy families who didn't want to be shamed by their daughter's condition. And it relied on families desperate to have children of their own. Now, were these legal adoptions since the records are in the county courthouse? Opinions differ on that today, but even if they were legally recorded, the parents still purchased the babies from Dr. Hicks. All the parents who bought them work in the Akron Tire Companies, except for a Cuyahoga Falls doctor who bought two babies from Hicks. All of these sales were arranged by a West Akron Goodrich employee who bought four babies for herself. Seems that this woman had moved to Ohio from Georgia when she married her sixth husband. She knew about Dr. Hicks's dealings and she told the Goodrich employees all about them. These families happily paid $1,000 for a baby that no one could trace back to its birth mother. How on earth did such an operation even get its start in a small, nondescript town such as McKay'sville? How would a well-educated physician who knew the perils of operating outside the law allow himself to go down such a dark road? Well, we can't be completely sure, because the doctor and his wife are both deceased, and because most people in town still won't openly talk about the matter, but this much is true. Dr. Hicks had an extramarital affair with his housekeeper, and that affair produced a child. He wanted to give this child, a girl, to his own son, which would mean that his daughter would be raised by his son and would be known as the doctor's granddaughter. Well, the son and his wife rejected the idea out of hand for obvious reasons. In fact, Dr. Hicks had many affairs, so there may be others out there like this female child. But some mothers went to him to give birth to a child they wanted. Some birth mothers knew they were placing a baby for adoption, some thought they actually had an abortion, and some were told that their infants had died. Records, when he kept them at all, were falsified. It was a tip-off, though, a common thread that would ultimately be pulled to unravel the entire tangled mess, or at least most of it. No matter where these children grew up, most often in the industrial cities of Ohio, their birth certificates said they were born in the Hicks Clinic in McCaysville, Georgia.

DNA Tests And The Search Begins

Carole Townsend 26:45

In 2014, Ancestry.com and ABC News helped these people conduct DNA tests on themselves and members of the McKay'sville community. And once the story did break, ITV America for TLC produced the documentary Taken at Birth, which follows the efforts of Jane Blasio, a Hicks baby herself, and author of a book by the same title. Through these efforts, several people were able to identify their birth parents, most of whom are now deceased. The doctor is dead. The nurses who worked in his clinic are dead. Most of the parents who bought their babies are dead. Siblings who might hold the key are aging. And decades later, many of the Hicks babies are still looking for their birth parents. Using DNA, door-to-door interrogations, and even a search of the Hicks mausoleum in the hopes of finding a document trail, taken at birth continues the quest to reunite the Hicks babies with their biological families. Dr. Hicks was forced to surrender his medical license in 1964 after being charged with performing illegal abortions, but he was never criminally charged for the illegal adoptions. He died of leukemia in 1972 at the age of 83. Today, the building that housed Hicks Clinic is home to a barbecue joint on one end and a pizza place on the other. The rest of the building sits empty, with cracked walls, stray vines, and a forlorn forent sign in the window.

Small-Town Silence And Moral Fallout

Carole Townsend 28:40

Old timers in McKay'sville, at least the ones who will talk about Dr. Hicks, do so in a manner that skirts the absolute horror of the deeds he committed. Everyone knew about it, they say. We just didn't talk about it. Because small towns protect. They protect their people, they protect their secrets. A premise that begs the question: when does morality become the business of an entire town and not just that of those involved in wrongdoing? I don't ask that question to spark yet another debate about the morality of abortion. I ask it because in researching this story, I've been given two perspectives. On the one hand, people in McKay'sville believed then and now that a person's business is their own. Live and let live. Fences make good neighbors and all that. Others in the town thought the whole business was an abomination, and that Dr. Hicks had no right to do the things that he did. But he got away with it for a very long time. Just for a minute, let's forget about the doctor and the young women who sought his help when they found themselves in a family way. Forget about them, and now think of the hundreds of children who were taken from their mothers, many far too early, handed out a window, and then taken away to live with parents and families who weren't theirs. Some of them, no doubt, died with no one knowing who they really were. These children have never known where they came from. And these adoptive parents, those who bought drive-thru babies under clandestine circumstances, were they wrong to do what they did? And imagine the mother whose babies were stolen from them right there in the delivery room. The mothers who were told that their child had died at birth. What about them? Oh my. Small towns.

Host Outro And How To Listen

Carole Townsend 31:04

I'm Carole Townsend, veteran newspaper journalist and six-time award-winning author. You can find me on social media and check out my website at Carol Townsend.com. As always, thanks for listening. And if you're enjoying these tales of Southern history and lore, I hope you'll tell your friends. Subscribe to this podcast on Spotify, Apple Play, iHeart, and anywhere you listen. My team and I researched this shocking story using the following resources. The documentary Taken at Birth, the article The Bad Old Days, Abortion in America before Roe v. Wade by David Grimes, and an interview titled Sold at Birth Hicks Baby's Search for Birth Parents, a Georgia public broadcasting interview.