Chapter 23 - The Second Nursery
The second nursery belonged to a house on the outskirts of Milwaukee.
Property records showed it had once been owned by Claudia Voss.
Detective Bennett contacted Wisconsin investigators. The house had been sold years earlier, but the current owners allowed a search after learning its history.
The nursery no longer existed.
However, beneath several layers of paint, investigators found small pencil marks measuring a child’s height.
The earliest mark was labeled L.
The dates began four years before Jake and Leah were born.
Leah stared at the photographs.
“That can’t be me.”
In the basement, police discovered a sealed metal container hidden behind an old heating panel.
Inside were copies of maternity records from several hospitals, temporary guardianship forms, and letters written by desperate parents searching for children they had been told were dead.
Claudia Voss had not altered one adoption.
She had been involved in a network that exploited vulnerable families.
The letters spanned almost twenty years.
One file contained Lorraine’s signature.
Another contained Andrew’s.
But the documents told different stories.
Lorraine’s form appeared to surrender Baby Sullivan B voluntarily.
Andrew’s later statement accused Claudia of replacing the page after Lorraine signed a temporary medical authorization.
A handwriting expert confirmed that most of the surrender form had been typed after Lorraine signed the bottom.
Lorraine had been deceived.
Yet another document complicated everything.
Four months before Jake’s birth, Lorraine had paid Claudia Voss $12,000.
The payment note read:
PRIVATE PLACEMENT - L.S.
“Lorraine paid them before we were born,” Leah said.
Jake remembered the height marks labeled L.
Perhaps the letter did not stand for Leah.
Detective Bennett opened the oldest maternity file in the container.
The mother’s name had been removed.
The child’s original name remained.
Lillian Sullivan.
Megan looked at Jake.
“Who is Lillian?”
Jake had never heard the name.
May you like
But Leah had.
“Martin said it once when he came to my apartment,” she whispered. “He thought I was someone named Lillian.”
