Mary Agnes Gross Pt. Two

Welcome back to the Path Went Chilly from part two of our series on the unsolved disappearance of Mary Agnes Gross. Robin, do you want to catch everyone up on what we talked about in our previous episode. Well, this is definitely one of the weirdest disappearances we've ever covered, because Mary Agnes Gross supposedly went missing almost immediately after she was born. Her mother, Marlus, was

a single mother. She decided to separate from her husband seven months into her pregnancy, but still decide she was going to give birth to her daughter, Mary Agnes and raise her anyway. She went under anesthesia, gave birth, but then was told a few hours later that Mary Agnes had died a short time later, but the hospital acted very suspiciously like they only let her see

her daughter's body for about ten to fifteen seconds. She was not allowed to see any photographs, and they held the funeral for while Marlus was still in

the hospital. Marlus a couple months later after she was released, she received a photograph of a family holding a baby, which she thought might have had a resemblance to Mary Agnes, because it seemed to resemble her ex husband and there was no logical reason why someone would send her this photograph without any context, but regardless, she had Marla's buried at a cemetery and would constantly visit

her burial plot over the next three years. But then in nineteen ninety three, Marla's got very suspicious when she saw the headstone for another deceased infront named Pamela Ray Dickey over Mary Agnes's plot and found out that the cemetery had no records for a Mary Agnes Gross, so she started doing her own investigating finally got a court order to exhume her daughter's grave, and they did find some skeletal remains in there, but DNA testing proved that they did not belong to

Mary Agnes. And it also turned out that to the child, Pamela Ray Dickie, who was in the next burial plot, her mother had given birth to her in the exact same hospital and as the exact same day that Mary Agnes was born. But Pamela Ray also died and as far as her family knew, they were having a funeral, they buried her body right next to

Mary Agnes's grave. But it appears that something went horribly wrong either. There was a major clerical air or as Marlos believes, they decided to take Mary Agnes from her faker death and decide to illegally adopt her out to another family who may have been the family that she saw in the photographs she received. But unfortunately Marlos passed away without receiving any answers about what happened to Mary Agnes, and it's unclear if she might still be alive somewhere under a new identity.

So when we left So when we left off on our last episode, we were discussing the possibility that Mary Agnes was taken from her mother and adopted out as part of some black market baby selling operation. Sadly, these type of operations were not on common during the first half of the twentieth century. But I have to concede that no one has ever uncovered any evidence to suggest that they existed in the Worthington, Minnesota and the Worthington and the Worthington,

Minnesota era. In the Worthington, Minnesota area in nineteen sixty two, Worthington had a population of just over nine thousand people at that time, and when Mary Agnes's story started receiving coverage in the local newspapers during the mid nineteen nineties.

A number of the area's residents offered their comments. They described Worthington as one of those small towns where everybody knew everyone, and they had a hard time believing that multiple people would have been willing to orchestrate a conspiracy to steal to steal a newborn baby away from her mother. In our last episode, we made reference to a woman named Georgia Tan who ran an illegal operation which involves stealing and adopting out children at a profit for over twenty five years.

The main reason Tan was able to keep this going for so long was because she stole children away from poor families who could not afford to defend themselves in court. And she also allegedly had a prominent local judge in her back pocket

who would always rule in her favor. But if you believe Mary Agnes Gross was stolen and sold on the black market, the responsible parties actually had to go to the trouble of faking her death in order to prevent her birth mother from searching for and this would have required the cooperation of multiple individuals from not

just the local hospital, but the local funeral home as well. Now I don't know what kind of money they would have made from an illegal adoption that after splitting the cut of the profits, But after splitting the cut of the profits among that many people, would it really have been worth a while? Well, I'm wondering if it wasn't more for moral interest over financial gains.

So we kind of talked about this on the first episode. But when you look at the nineteen fifties and sixties, when we know a lot of these kind of scams were going on, I wonder if a lot of it was more geared towards religious beliefs and moral beliefs at the time, that a single mom like Marlis in this case, wasn't quote capable of raising the child and or would not create the perfect home for that child, that a mother and father were needed to raise the baby, and therefore to either take the child

and just out of compassion give it to another family because they would raise that baby better, or manipulate and have a more sinister version for money as possible as well. But I wouldn't put it past people to just say the best home for that baby would be somewhere else. That's what I think too. I think the conspiracy of many makes a lot more sense when it's not just like a little bit of money in everybody's pocket, but it's literally their moral

compass that's saying this is the right thing to do. This is an unwedded mother, she's not going to be the right person to raise this baby. We need to give this baby to a two person household. Because if it's in alignment with your religious beliefs and not just greed, I think people are more likely to keep your mouth shut, like we did the right thing. I think you can sleep easier at night when you say we did the right

thing. Oh yeah, totally. All that being said, there's also the possibility that the motive for taking Mary Agnes away from Marla's was not a financial decision, like we just said, but a moral one. So quite simply, since this was nineteen sixty two, they may have felt this child did

not deserve to be raised by a single mother. There isn't any information out there about Marlas's ex husband, Late and Gross and why their marriage came to an end, but you'd have to think that something went seriously wrong if Marla's decided to separate from him when she was seven months pregnant. By the time this story started generating headlines during the nineteen nineties, Layton was already deceased,

so we never got to hear his side of the story. But it doesn't sound like Layton was present when Mary Agnes was born, so I'm not sure how much interest he had in his daughter. Whatever the case, it's no big secret that the world did not have The world did not have the most

progressive attitude towards single mothers back in nineteen sixty two. Back in nineteen sixty two, so if words spread around Worthington that Marlis was planning to raise a child on her own, there might have been some people who believed it was their moral obligation to take Mary Agnes away from her and placed a child with a family. So any financial incentive to do this with secondary I am convinced

that has to be kind of what drives this. And like we talked about on the last episode, is that this wasn't crazy late uncommon, Like there's a lot of cities where we can look and we can see different motivations like it maybe the race of the mother, the family dynamics, the single motherhood, the income of the family being low income, all of those things a Jewish family and people believing that the child should be raised in a Christian family,

and those kinds of complications they were happening across the country. Yeah, like you said, it would be very difficult for that many people to keep a secret if it was just financially motivated. But if it was a moral thing where they all believed they were legitimately doing the right thing, then I

can understand why they would be willing to remain silent about it. And they probably never dreamed that anyone would even hear about this story, that it would be featured on Saw Mystery three decades later, and that we'd still be talking about it on a podcast sixty years later. So if any of them are

listening, shame on you. And I don't think that anybody thought that Marlis would fight for the truth, and they doggedly go after any kind of information she could to confirm what happened to Mary Agnes from petitioning the court to try to have Pamela ray Dicky's body exhumed, to like just I'm sure beating down doors in general and asking a lot of questions. I bet they figured that she would just kind of fade into the periphery and they would never hear from

her again. But boy were they wrong. One thing about this story which strikes me is particularly strange is that Worthington Regional Hospital had a total of three newborn babies die under their watch in a span of just over twenty four hours. Mary Agnes, Pamelay, Dickie, and Julie Harride. I mean, if this happened in a big city, that would be one thing, but that seems like a pretty high infant mortality rate for a hospital in a town

of around nine thousand people. There isn't much information out there about Julie Horide, but what's notable is the contrast between how her parents were treated following her

death and how things were handled with Marlus. The Horides claimed they were allowed to spend some time with their deceased daughter's body and take photographs of her inside her casket, whereas Marlus and her mother were forbidden to take photos of both the hospital and the funeral home, and Marlos pretty much had to fight just to see Mary Agnes's body for ten to fifteen seconds, and while Margaret Dickey never got to see Pamela Ray's body following her death, she claimed that her

husband did. The way the Rides and the Dickeys were treated following the loss of their child is exactly how you'd expect someone in their position to be traded. But it sounds like quite a different story with Marlos, for sure.

I'm trying to look up right now the mortality rates in the sixties, and from what I can see, infant mortality rates, so not just newborns, but it says that there were about twenty six deaths per one thousand live births, and that declined down to like ten infant deaths for every thousand births in nineteen ninety, but twenty six per thousand babies born. It is wild that there were three babies that night at the same hospital that passed away. I

mean, two is really, really, really high. And like you guys said, there's not really a whole lot of ormation about Julie, but we do know a lot about Pamela Ray Dickey. That her family followed that baby

from her birth, they were able to hold and grieve her. She looked like the baby that they saw at the funeral home, and that they thought they were preparing for their own burial of Mary Agnes, and then Pamela Dicky has our headstone there, so we're I'm very convinced that Pamela Dicky passed away, that Julie passed away. But Mary Agnes, those bones that were found in her makeshift grave, they weren't Mary Agnes's. Where did she go?

Okay, Robin, I have a question for you. So this is a small place, right, We're not having like a hundred berths a night. I would think that maybe you're gonna have six a night. And if that is the case, you're looking at a fifty percent infant mortality rate. Do we know if doctor Shade or doctor Stam were involved with all of these infant deaths that night. That's a good question. I don't have that information.

It didn't really say that at any sources I found. I mean, I'm assuming that could be the case because I'm guessing that a lot of these hospitals in small towns are not going to have a great deal of doctors. Different doctors we could give birth. But if they were responsible, like for all of these and they knew that, hey, there are two other infandess here and we could use them to kind of cover up Mary Agnes's situation, then

maybe they felt this was a good time to fake her death. During the brief time she saw Mary Agnes, Marlas said it only looked like the child was sleeping, So the implication seems to be that Mary Agnes was still alive at that point and they were going to go to great lengths to keep her away from her mother. The fact that Marlas believed Mary Agnes was sleeping and

not deceased definitely gives off the impression that something shady was happening. But the alternate explanation is that, sadly, perhaps Marla's was simply treated worse because she was a single mother. The Horrides and the Dicky may have been given all the time that they needed to gree for their child because they were married couples, but since Marla's was not, the staff may believe that she was not worthy of that same sensitivity. That's an awful mentality, but I could definitely

see people feeling that way back then. Julia Ride is listed on the find a Grave website and it appears that she's buried at the same cemetery as Mary Agnes and Pamela Ray. But if her parents were allowed to photograph the child inside her casket and were present at her burial. Then I hope that eliminates the possibility that some sort of catastrophic mix up took place and there's no chance

the remains found at Mary Agnes's grave site belonged to Julie. Well, remember that when Marla's goes by and she sees that bassinette and she says, like, please let me see my baby just for a second, and they let her peer in. She said that baby looked healthy, it looked like it was sleeping, and it also had that dark hair, whereas the baby that her mother was shown and her friend was shown at the funeral home had that

really light hair just like baby Pamela did. And Pamela's parents were even able to say, yes, the coffin that we buried our baby, and that's the one that you saw as well, and come to find out they're at the same funeral grieving one child. So I think it's pretty clear that Pamela is a baby that they were shown, and Pamela is the one that was buried that day, And it's just so much like Mary Agnes's family was told like this is yours too, and everyone, like you said, thought that

this family would just move on and go away. And I know it doesn't make a lot of sense to show Mary Agnes to Marlus if she was still alive, because as possible, she might notice her breathing or something. But I think it was just a situation where they just happened to be passing each other on the hallway, and Marlus was asking so much just at least let me see my baby for a moment. So they figured, well, if we don't at least give her like a little taste or something, she's going

to get awfully suspicious. So we'll hold her up for like ten seconds and let you see her and then move her away. But I do think there's a good chance that Mary Agnes really was sleeping at that time and was not dead, which it's true. It is sad because that's literally the only time she ever got to see her baby in her entire life, and she's out there not knowing that she has another mother who missed her so dearly like badgets

breaks my heart. Even if you overlook the hospital staffs rather cold behavior towards Marlus, there are some weird discrepancies in the records about Mary Agnes's birth. A lot has been made about the fact that the doctor who delivered Mary Agnes gave her ratings of two on her app Gar scores for her skin color and heart rate, even though some other paperwork states that the child was not breathing

at the time she was born. While those results might seem unlikely if a newborn is unable to breathe, the alternate explanation which has been provided is that Marlus was heavily sedated during the birth, and a baby which is delivered under the effects of anaesthesia can initially give off the false impression that their heart rate and skin color are normal, so this could explain the adding consistency in Mary

Agnes's app Our score. But the more troubling discrepancy are the times listed on her birth and death certificates, which are six twenty three and six thirty pm, respectively. If Mary Agnes was unable to breathe when she was born, then as plausible as she could have died seven minutes later. Yet Marlaus's pediatrician, doctor John Stamm, told her that Mary Agnes lived for one hour after she was born, and he hand wrote six twenty pm as the time of

death on the exact same death certificate. Now, if you're looking for an innocent explanation, perhaps doctor Stam was telling the truth when he said that Mary Agnes was alive for an hour and he meant to write seven twenty PM on the death certificate instead of six twenty. I mean Stam did not actually signed the certificate until June the fourteenth, two days after Mary Agnes was born,

so enough time had passed for him to misremember things. It is possible that these discrepancies were the result of sloppy clerical errors rather than an intentional cover up, but the circumstances of mary Agnes's funeral and burial are make this story very confusing, well exactly. I mean. The thing is that they showed up and the moment that Pamela's family is there, and you know, Clara is there with the friend saying, hey, can we see our baby now?

Can we take a picture? Can we pick out the casket? Like all of these things that had to happen, and there's only one human baby present there, do you know what I mean? Clearly someone had to go like, wait a minute, someone already picked a casket for this baby. Wait a minute, somebody already came in and viewed the body. Wait a minute, why are there two mothers or two families coming here to see this child

when there's only one child here like that? It blows my mind that someone didn't say this baby is Pamela, and yes, gross is written on the top, but we're not sure what that's about because Pama's family's right there. So as you'll recall, Mary Agnes's funeral took place the day after she was

born and was not well enough to leave the hospital by this point. So I think one of the potential sources of confusion is the fact that her mother, Clara, attended the funeral and Marlas is only sharing her account second hand. By the time the story came to light during the nineteen nineties, I believe Clara was already deceased, but if she had been able to provide her

own first hand account to these events, it might answer some questions. Marlus's friend, Judy Voges, was present alongside Clara when she saw Mary Agnes inside her casket at the funeral home, but the description she provided of the child

was much different than how Marlus remembered seeing her daughter at the hospital. Particularly when it came to the description of her hair, the implication seems to be that a completely different child besides Mary Agnes was inside that casket, and perhaps this is who the remains which were unearthed three decades later, actually belonged to. However, since the description Judy provided happened to match Pamela Ray Dickey,

the alternate theory is that the child in the casket was her. Yeah, I definitely think there could be a mix up based on communication error, but it was something this specific, I really do. I'm leaning more towards the Pamela Ray Dickey being the real identity of the baby that Clara was shown.

So, as you recall, when Clara took photos of this casket at the cemetery, Pamela Ray's mother, Margaret later recognized it as the same casket her husband had purchased for her daughter's burial, and when this casket was laid to rest, Clara remembered another emotional family being at the grave site, and Margaret would confirm that her own family was there that day. Therefore, Clara may have actually attended Pamela Ray Dickey's funeral and burial without even realizing it. According

to Margaret. Her family did not recall seeing Clara at Pamela Ray's grave site that day, Like given that they were not asked about this until over thirty years later, they could have easily forgotten. And since Clara had photos of the casket next to the burial plot that does confirm she was there. But how in the world but these events are played out, did no one mention

either child's name during the entire funeral service. If this wasn't such a horribly tragic situation, you'd almost think this was some sort of wacky misunderstanding from a sitcom. Was someone completely oblivious to the fact that they're attending the wrong funeral? I just cannot comprehend this whole situation. If this wasn't a deliberate cover up to fake Mary Agnes's debt, then somebody must have screwed something up big

time. Yeah, it almost seems like there's too many moving parts for it not to be a cover up. But then it's literally to this point of like you had people all the way to the funeral home, and the people burying this baby, the people performing the funeral, that no one mess this up for you, like that this was a seamless plot. It seems very

complex, but I don't know. I do wonder how Clara could have gotten images of the casket and things like that and seeing this baby is so perfectly mirrored Pamela and then be wrong like that seems less likely than them saying, hey, we're willing to kind of take the money from two families. We know that that Mary Amis is in a better place and we're going to close our mouth. But then that means what ten people were involved in that O. This part is so confusing to me, and I don't know if it

is to you both as well. But what about the fact that Marla's is unable to attend this funeral? Why is this funeral scheduled for one day after Mary Egnus is born? Don't the parents typically dictate when a funeral service will take place so that they can attend. Yeah, that's all so weird to me? Is that that just seems like awfully premature to like have to do it so quickly. I mean, even if it's not a baby, you're unlikely to have a funeral for someone who died the day afterwards, Like,

why can't they just show more patients? Why not just say, give Marlas some time to recover. But I'm guessing they must have pressured her or something like that because her mother obviously agreed to go with it. So maybe it was a case where we'll pay for the funeral if you can have it tomorrow, but if you want to hold it off, then you're responsible for all the expenses. So maybe that's why they decided to go along with this.

Yeah, that makes sense because it doesn't sound like Marlos would have had any great type of resources. She just experienced a divorce and now she's going through all this. So I think a lot of people when given the opportunity of

knowing what caskets cost, they're so expensive. So if somebody's saying we'll do this for free for you, I can definitely see why you know, she might, I'm sure, kind of begrudgingly, because of course she would want to be there for her daughter's funeral, would just take them up on their

offer. Well, you also have to remember this is the nineteen sixties, so I feel like the doctors were already pressuring her and pushing her around at the hospital, like listen, the baby's already been embalmed, Like nope, you don't get to see her, and there was already kind of this like just being defeated and you're already experiencing trauma, but having no one really show you empathy, your compassion, that if the body had really been taken an

hour later and embalmed like they're speeding this along. It's almost like I could see these women in the case the friend Mom Marliss just being told there will be a burial tomorrow if you want someone to show up, show up, and them kind of being like okay, You're like, there's it seems like they were steamrolled from the beginning. But don't you guys think in today's time, you'd be hard pressed to be able to make arrangements for a funeral in

one day. There's just so many different details that need to be considered and lots of forget that the same thing happened to Margaret Dicky, like she was still in the hospital when Pamela Ray was buried, even though her husband and

her other children were able to attend. And this also would have been one day after Pamela Ray died, So I think they probably faced the same thing where they figured well in order to make this scheme work, we have to have another child's funeral take place on the exact same day, so they probably, even though the Dickies didn't think anything suspicious was going on, this was probably intentional just so that they could pass give off the impression that Mary Agnes

was being buried even though the funeral was actually being held for Pamela Ray. And the quicker they get that casket in the ground, the harder will be to answer any questions. Yes, exactly, exactly, So let's try to make some sense of this whole situation. When Marla's did her own investigation three decades later, she found no records to indicate that Mary Agnes was buried at Saint Mary's Cemetery, but she did find a record at Benson Funeral Home that

Mary Agnes was scheduled to be buried on that particular day. There's no indication where this burial was supposed to take place, but you have to wonder if Mary Agnes may have been buried at another location and Clara mistakenly went to the wrong gravesite where Pamela Ray was being buried. Marla's also found it suspicious that the name Gross just happened to be written on a card in Pamela Ray's funeral records, but this card was apparently filled out after a nurse from the hospital

called them with information. If two separate deceased infants from the same hospital were scheduled to be handled by the same funeral home on the same day, then I could see someone haphazardly writing Mary Agnes's last name there for future reference without

any malicious intent. So Jules, you're saying that what they did is they had this piece of paper and they basically were on the phone, They're filling out Pamla's information, and they don't have any other paper around, so they just write Gross in the corner, like a little note to themselves, and then now it's forever a linked as like the same child. It's possible. I mean, it seems unlikely, but it is possible. Since Marlos was

still recovering in the hospital at that time. She seems to have no idea who organized this funeral and paid for it, and there's no record of who did so either. But I think there's a good chance that Worthington Regional Hospital took care of everything. Since losing a newborn baby is one of the saddest, most traumatic events a parent can go through, they are often not in

the right state of mind to be doing things arranging a funeral. So therefore, it's not uncommon for hospitals to arrange the funeral and burial of a stillborn child on the parents' behalf, sometimes completely free of charge, and they will often be responsible for the decision making and the paperwork. Therefore, it would not surprise me at all at the hospital made all the arrangements for mary Agnes's

funeral. And if you believe they were complicit in mary Agnes's disappearance and orchestrated a cover up, perhaps they intentionally sent Clara to Pamela Ray Dickey's funeral in order to give her the false impression that Mary Agnes was dead and have been laid to rest. But that seems like an awfully convoluted plan that could have easily fallen apart if Clara had bothered to ask the Dickey family why they were

attending her granddaughter's burial. And think about this too, y'all mentioned that like a no point did they mentioned, And here we lay our Pamela Ray Dicky to to rest, and then all of a sudden, Claire's gone like, wait, who, Like they didn't say the baby's name the whole time. That is a massive risk. I do find it very very interesting though, that, oh, the baby that they saw doesn't even look like the baby that she saw in the bassinete right, It had dark hair. She's all

the time, So we messed up on the birth certificate. I just can't believe that Mary Agnes died and that when you go to her grave site there is not a body there. There are little bones and a makeshift casket that was not the one that they picked out for her to be buried in,

and those do not genetically link back to Marylis. So when Marlas went to Saint Mary's Cemetery after her release from the hospital and visited Mary Agnes's grave site, she claimed there was a fresh mount of dirt there for a burial plot, so of course she had no reason to believe Mary Agnes was not there. As far as Marlis remembers, she never saw a second burial plot or a mount of dirt a few feet away at the spot where the child's remains

were were eventually exhumed. All those years later. Now, when Marlos purchased a headstone for Mary Agnes One year later, it was subsequently moved a few feet away from the burial plot, but no one knows who actually did that, since the cemetery record showed the Pamela Ray Dicky was supposed to be buried in that plot. Then I can understand why an employee would move a headstone containing somebody else's name away. But did they place it at that particular spot

because they believe Mary Agnes was buried there? Or was it just moved there at random? And it's a complete coincidence that the remains of an entirely different child or beneath it. To me, when you look at this, what's crazy is it eventually Pamela gets a headstone there right after Mary Agnes has been

moved? Oh yeah, yeah, Like did it get the headstone until like a couple of years afterwards, Like where Marlos just suddenly showed up there many years after the fact and say, hey, there's a headstone there for a completely different person. But what's wild? Did Pamela's family not come when Mary agnes Is headstone was sitting there? Were they the ones who maybe said, like, wait a minute, our babies here, or yeah, I'm guessing because it had been moved a couple of feet to the left. They didn't

figure that it was over our plot. They just probably just figured that it's right next to ours. So that's maybe why they didn't get suspicious. But I'm sure they still found it weird because Mary Agnes's headstone wouldn't have been there when they had Pamela's funeral. Does anyone know how much gravestones cost? They're pretty expensive, right, I hear they are, Yeah, very expensive. I guess that makes sense while there was no gravestone put up initially by either

family. Yeah, it took like a year for Marlos to raise enough money, and I think the Dickies didn't do it for a couple of years if you think about it too. I mean, she was a single mom, she'd just gone through divorce. Things like that. I would be really difficult to put the money together to have that. Nowadays, it says that the average headstone costs between one and three thousand dollars. One thousand and three thousand dollars. I thought it was more than that. I would think it was

more than that obviously, ten grand or something. I don't know why. I think it depends on how complex that might just be a straight simple headstone, but like once you start putting pictures and shapes and symbols, Yeah, because you've got to get like a stonemason to do it or something right. I mean, I guess you can get a very basic one done with lettering, but I mean, I don't know what you can. I mean,

I have no idea what technologies used for headstones. I don't know what I'm talking about here, but it says it says some headstones can cost around twenty five thousand dollars, so I guess it really can be. It's as elaborate as you want to make it. I suppose, so a thousand to twenty five thousand, yea all on the average. Wow, that's a huge range.

Unfortunately, by the time Marlis started asking questions, I believe the cemetery had a completely different caretaker than whoever was working there during the nineteen sixties, and this guy had no answers. He even said that he had no idea why the headstone for Mary Agness Gross was there, since her name was not in the cemetery record. Since DNA testing proved that the remains which were on

earth did not belong to Mary, Agnes or Pamela Ray Dickey. It seems like this caretaker personally believed that they might have belonged to a deceased child who was buried at that spot long before in nineteen sixty two, as records for that particular section of the cemetery were incomplete, and it is easier to believe than the idea of someone bearing a completely different infant at Mary Agnes's grave site

in order to fake her debt. It would also mean that Pamela Ray was buried in her correct grave at the correct time, and the ADM five remains which were found a few feet away have no connection to this story. But if that's the case, then what actually happened to Mary Agnes? If she really did die following her birth, where did her remains wind up? I don't think she did die. I think that she was given to another family. For me, it's driven by probably moral purposes and not financial gain.

But I do think that this other child who's in the spot where her headstone was moved to would have been from that what do they call it baby Land or the baby Yeah burial site, and that there were just these unnamed babies who were buried in these little makeshift, small cheap caskets, and that's just happens to be a coincidence that when you look where her headstone was, this

unremoved remains were there from that baby land. It's apparently not uncommon when you're trying to exhume bodies to sometimes be horrified to discover that their additional bodies inside the grave or the remains or not where they're supposed to I recently did an episode on the Saint Louis Jane Doe, who was a child who was murdered back in nineteen eighty three, and when she was buried at the cemetery, the record keeping was just such a mess that when they tried to exhume her,

like three decades later, they found three separate bodies where her grave was supposed to be, and none of them actually belonged to her, and they had to do a lot of legwork to find out that she was actually buried in a completely different section of the cemetery. So it's pretty horrifying to think

that your loved ones could be buried in the wrong place. But apparently that wasn't uncommon for some of these older cemeteries, and it would not surprise me at all if these remains belonged to a child that have been buried there like a long time before Mary Agnes even died. I guess in the alternate explanation is that Mary Agnes is actually buried in Pamela Ray's grave, But unless the

Dickey family consents to exhuming her remains, will probably never know. And I can totally understand Margaret Dickey's decision not to disturb her daughter's grave, and she has every right to say no. If they found out Pamela Ray was not buried there, as we spoke about earlier, then I cannot imagine the pain and devastation this would cause when you look at the big picture, I think you could probably write off most of these oddities as mistakes and clerical errors and

assume that Mary Agnes's remains were lost somewhere. But the one thing which gives me pause is the photograph of the family with the baby, which was an anonymously mailed to Marlus three months after Mary Agnes's supposed death. Given that she only saw her daughter for a couple of seconds, I'm not sure Marlos could be a one hundred percent certain that the child and the photo was Mary Agnes. But if she wasn't, why would someone just mail her a random family

photo with no note attached. I don't think there's a big risk that the baby that was buried was not Pamela Ray Dicky. I mean, remember, Marlos was mistreated in the hospital. She wasn't allowed to see her baby. She wasn't allowed to grieve or spend time with the body of her a little one. But the other families were, so they would have been able to

see their child. They would have noted that tuft of blonde hair and the really light skin, and these kinds of things that Clara was able to document with the friend at the funeral home, and so I believe they would have likely seen her at the funeral home as well. Right, they would have been able to go pick the casket out, see the little body go to the funeral, so they followed the child's body the entire way. I don't

see there being a high risk of that actually being Mary Agnes. So Marlous pushed forward the theory that perhaps it was the family themselves who sent the photo in order to provide assurance that Mary Agnes was alive and in a loving home, but that seems like a pretty risky thing to do since there was a possibility of them being recognized. Unless this was just sent by someone who felt like playing a very mean spirited prank, then the center could have been someone

who was involved in illegally adopting out Mary Agnes to this family. They may have developed a guilty conscience and wanted Marlus to know that her child was not dead. I guess the big issue is that since she lost this photo,

we really only have Marlus's word that it existed in the first place. Though I certainly don't want to accuse her or making the whole story up, but if the photo was real, it must be noted that Marlus was willing to move on with her life for the next thirty years, and it was only after finding someone else's headstone at what she believed was her daughter's grave site that

she decided to start digging deeper. Even if you believe the official story is true and Mary Agnes really did die following her birth, that doesn't change the fact that this child no longer seems to have a vinal resting place exactly. I mean, the reality is that Marlis knew the likelihood of finding her baby was rare. There wasn't enough information for her at the time to be able to say, hey, this is a picture of my baby, right, this is me and my child, Like look at her father's face and my

face and her as a baby, and here's the age progression. We didn't have any of that for Mary Agnes. All we have is Marlus's DNA and the hope that you know, genetic genealogy or something like that could help today, But that Marlos passed away, so there's really going to be no justice or any kind of idea of her saying I found and reunited with my child.

That alone can be a very painful and upsetting process. But even in a rare event, I think that Mary Agnes did die at birth or shortly after her birth, Marlos deserved the right to be able to bury her baby, to know that she was safe, just like Pamela's parents said, our baby is safe. We have given her this place of rest. We're not going to disturb that. Marlos and Mary Agnes deserve the exact same kind of

adimacy. That she's safe now and I'm not going to ever have her hurt again, exactly because she spent the better part of thirty years visiting that grave site, completely believing that her daughter's remains were there, and I cannot imagine what it's like to suddenly find out that, oh, there's another child in

there, and we have no idea where your baby is. But I can see why Marlos would have felt that it cover up and an illegal adoption was the best case scenario, since that would have meant Mary Agnes was still alive and had been raised by another family. That's still a pretty tragic and heartbreaking scenario, but it's better than the alternative, which is that Mary Agnes died in childbirth and her remains are buried somewhere and no one has any clue how

to find them. We kind of go back and forth on both scenarios, as there were enough black market adoption rings during this time period to believe that something like that could have happened here. But on the other hand, this illegal adoption would have required the collusion of one or more doctors, other hospital staff, and the funeral director, and would that many people have been willing

to go along with all this. One of the biggest issues with this cover up theory is that it seemed to hinge on the coincidental timing of another newborn baby girl dying around the exact same time, which is something that probably could not have been anticipated. And even though Pamela ray Dickey was born a few hours before Mary Agnes, she did not actually pass away until the following morning, and that does not seem like a lot of time to concoct a plan

to fake Mary Agnes's death. Now, could there have been a plan to take the baby away from the single mother when she arrived at the hospital and the idea was that, Okay, we know she's coming in. She doesn't have a partner. This baby deserve street raised by a mother enough, because that was critical back then. And so the plan's already in place, just the way the doctor said, like, you can't see her, you can't hold her, you can't take pictures of her. Oh, the baby's already

been embalmed. Her body's already gone. What if the plan had just been Look she got there and we cremated her, or she's you know, like we already buried her. Like could they have been that evil? Had there not have been another baby that died? Did that just create an easier out for them when they already had the motion in place. Yeah, you're probably right. It seems like that would just make it pretty easy for them. I mean, it does seem really convoluted and a little bit strange, and

so many people had to be involved. But I keep coming back to what we've all spoken about earlier, as I agree with you Ash, I think this was some kind of illegal adoption, but I do think that it was

driven more by morality than it was by financial gain. Because if these people had these very strong religious beliefs or moral beliefs that a baby should be raised by two parents, then I think that this situation with Pamela ray Dickey dying, it just kind of provided an out and this very strange funeral situation where you've got two families attending, And it's just really too bad that Marlos couldn't have been there and we would have been able to have a first hand account

because it sounds just so bizarre, and like you both have said, nobody said, you know, we're laying to rest Mary Agnes Gross or Pamela ray Dickey. It's just we're laying the baby to rest. It's so confusing. I'd love to see how this would have played out if Pamela Ray had not

died. Would they have just held a funeral and told, like Clara and Judy that we're gonna have a close cass at funeral and we can't open the casket under any circumstances to let her see her, because like, the theory seems to be that they used Pamela's body in the casket and that they showed that to Clara. But I wonder how it would have played out if they

wouldn't have had a baby's body in order to work with. Oh, maybe they would have just said it had to be a close casket because she was incredibly purple and it's too disturbing you can't see because they seemed to be, like Ashley said earlier, steamrolling her like right for a minute one it was

like, you can't see your baby, you can't take any pictures. It seemed like everybody was leading her around and telling her exactly what she needed to be doing, and that what she wanted to do wasn't was in alignment with their plans, so she better get on board. Yeah, I'm sure they would have come up with any sort of excuse to prevent her from seeing her

daughter, even if they hadn't had Pamela Ray. However, if Mary Agnes really was secretly adopted out to another family, then it's a major tragedy that Marla's passed away without finding out the truth or getting the opportunity to reunite with her daughter. If Mary Agnes is still alive today, then there's a good

chance she has no inkling that she was raised under a false identity. Now I know of a number of cases in which babies have been abducted shortly after their birth by a kidnapper who raised them as a own child to fairly recent examples of this were the abductions of Carlina White and Kamaia Mobli, who were both stolen from the hospital shortly after they were born, but as they got older, they became suspicious over the fact that the person who raised them did

not have a birth certificate or any legal documentation to prove they were their child. But the key difference is that those children were kidnapped by people who were working entirely on their own, whereas if Mary Agnes was stolen, it would have been done by people connected to the hospital who likely would have been able to provide her new family with the necessary documentation. If Mary Agnes is still alive, she may be well aware that she was adopted by her parents,

but is under the mistaken impression that the adoption was legal. And what's so sad is that when you think about this, her parents likely wouldn't have known either, right, Like I mean, in these cases where they took these children and they gave them to these other families, I think oftentimes the other parents thought, like, what a blessing, we have this beautiful baby,

and this amazing organization helped us, with this amazing doctor helped us. I don't think many of them knew what actually had happened behind the scenes to get them their dream. Maybe. What's also interesting is that in the photograph Marlos received, the family had two older children in addition to a newborn baby.

Maybe this couple reached the point where they wanted another child who were unable to have anymore, which is why they arranged for a black market adoption, and since Marlos was a single mother, the people responsible thought she would be an ideal target. Anyway, all these theories of what a black market adoption ring our pure speculation, as no one ever found any evidence that this type of

thing was taking place in Worthington during this time period. This whole story may very well just be a case of a terrible tragedy evolving into an unsolved mystery because of bureaucratic incompetence. If there is a resolution to this case, someday, it might occur through pure chance. You will know, anyone can upload their DNA to genealogy websites these days, and this is the reason the Mary

Agnes Maroney case wound up being solved after nearly one hundred years. When Mary Agnes went on to have children under her new identity, one of her daughters decided to upload her DNA like this, and it wound up having an unexpected genetic match to a member of the Maroni family. So the same situation you could very well repeat itself and Mary Agnes Gross's case. Otherwise it may be

difficult to conclusively solve this mystery. All that being said, if you happen to have any information about what happened to Mary Agnes Gross, or perhaps you feel you might be Mary Agnes yourself, please contact the appropriate authorities. Jules actually any final thoughts in this case. This case, it's fascinating to me.

Like I said in episode one, I've always been really interested in these cases that involve babies being taken from hospitals, these questions of nurses helping to support religiously driven are morally driven companies that want to take babies from single parents and give them away or make sure that children aren't exposed to low income families. It's wild to me. One of the things in this case specifically,

though, is that Mary Agnes would be sixty one today. And as much as it's kind of this interesting thing, like Robin you just covered the other Mary Agnes who found out her real identity, or like we found out that she was still alive and had grown up and then passed away right with this very successful life, I wonder is it equally as exciting as it is horrifying to be the individual who finds out this information, Because, like you said before, even if I know I'm adopted, if I don't know that my

mom was desperately looking for me, that my mom had been so mistreated, that maybe my parents hadn't been fully transparent with me, like I think that oftentimes would create more trauma than it would cause any kind of joy, because she can't talk to Maryliss anymore. Right, marylist is deceased, she may not have her own parents alive to ask questions too, So I don't know.

In certain ways, I think it would be pretty tragic for Mary Agnes to find out that her poor mom went through all of this and fought her whole life and there's kind of no justice or ability to find out more about that relationship. It's so heartbreaking to think that this woman could find out, you know, while she's in her older years, and discovered that there was this whole other family that she never got to experience, and now it's too

late. So I mean, everybody deserves to have the truth of where they came from, but sometimes that truth comes with incredibly traumatic implications. And I personally think that, you know, as we've spoken about throughout, I don't think it was a bureaucratic error. I think that it was intentional on the part of multiple people at this hospital, and I think that their driving force was morality and that was what kept them to keep this kind of like conspiracy

of silence. And as far as we know, there could be more people out there who gave birth at this hospital who you know, maybe suffered the same type of faith that Marlo's did where their child was taken away, but maybe they just didn't ask questions, and maybe there wasn't the evidence to support that that baby could potentially still be alive. Like I think the photograph is that one thing that Marlo's probably clung onto and was like, why would somebody

just send this to me? This isn't the age of the internet. This isn't the time where people had access to that type of information in order to prank other people in the way that they do today. So I can see why she clung on to hope that maybe her daughter was alive, And it just breaks my heart that she never got to see a resolution or find out

what happened to her daughter. There is like a bright spot in the story that she was able to have three boys, but I'm sure that she went to her grave always wondering what happened to her baby daughter, and if she's alive out there being loved by some other family, and what did her life turn out like, did she have children of her own, did she get married, did she go to college? All these questions that a mother would just love to know. The answers too, and would like to have experienced

those things with her daughter. So my heart really goes out to Marli's for what she had to experience and never getting those answers. And I think, like Robin had said earlier, if there is ever a resolution here, it

will be completely by chance. Yeah. When I saw the resolution in the Mary Agnes Maroney case, it was like bitter sweet to hear that she did live a good life, that even though she was stolen from her family, she seemed to be raised by loving parents and went on to have a successful career as a nurse, and she had children of her own, and everyone

described her as a very nice person and a very loving mother. And even though she died before anyone find out the truth, in a way, that might have been good for because the trauma of finding out that she wasn't who she thought she was and had been stolen from her birth family would have been

too much. And the same thing could very well happen to Mary Agnes Gross, who would be in her sixties if she's still alive today, and it would probably come as a major shock if she found out who she really was.

But of course, even though we have a resolution in the Mary Agnes Maroney case is still a major tragedy that her parents suffered this terrible trauma and died without finding out the truth about what happened to their missing daughter, and the same thing happened to Marlous Gross, but at the same type of the

events play out the same way. There could be a possibility that perhaps some of Marlus's other sons have uploaded their DNA into a genetic genealogy database, and maybe if Mary Agnes is with another family, someone from there has uploaded their DNA, maybe Mary Agnes herself has, and one of these days they'll just suddenly have a genetic match and they'll be able to find out the truth.

I mean, for all we know, maybe Mary Gross has already passed away, but it would still be nice if they found out what actually happened to her. But yeah, this is just such a weird story. And I have heard a lot of child abduction cases, but this is one of the only ones that I know of where they've someone has gone to the trouble of faking a newborn baby's death in order to steal her from her mother. And if that's actually what happened and that's a major travesty, and it put this

poor woman through a bunch of unnecessary trauma. And while it's good that she got to live a good life in the long run with the other children of her own, it's just so sad that she never got to find out the truth about what happened. And if you do find out that Mary Agnes Gross is still alive somewhere and we can finally conclusively solve this mystery, then that

will definitely be a good thing. Maybe lightning will strike twice for the second Mary Agnes Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon? Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now, and we offer the standard bonus is like early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers and sign thank you cards to anyone

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factoids about the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very first episode that I did a commentary track over was the episode featuring this case. So if you want to download a commentary track in which I make more smartass remarks about Juwel kaylor than be sure to join Tier three. So I want to let you you know a little bit about the Jewels and Ashley Patreon,

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