She Said She Was A Social Worker. Then Children Started Disappearing
For 20 years in Tennessee, a mysterious woman appeared on the doorsteps of single mothers, claiming to be a social worker. She would then disappear with their children.
TW: child death, kidnapping, reference to sexual assault
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SOURCES
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-08-20-vw-882-story.html
https://allthatsinteresting.com/georgia-tann
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-tennessean-series-1-tann/24013539/
https://www.nchgs.org/html/a_story_of_stolen_babies.html
https://www.newspapers.com/image/563194/?match=1&terms=georgia%2520tann
https://www.newspapers.com/image/109883002/?match=1&terms=%22Tann%20Tann%22%20%22Kenyon%22
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNdC5pjFwVc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCg-Tjc25jA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaiRYfhvj0k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDIBtI6ZFkY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh-XEjqj73c
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/daughter-origins-adoption-america/
https://pages.uoregon.edu/adoption/topics/adoptionhistbrief.htm
https://www.britannica.com/topic/adoption-kinship
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/adult-adoptee-birth-cerficiate-legislation/
https://fundyouradoption.org/resources/cost-to-adopt-a-child/
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/adult-adoptee-birth-cerficiate-legislation/
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/secret-adoptions-right-to-know/677677/
https://www.joancrawfordbest.com/articlememphis95.htm
https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/use-morphine-and-scopolamine-induce-twilight-sleep
https://hekint.org/2017/01/27/changes-in-childbirth-in-the-united-states-1750-1950/
The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption by Barbara Bisantz Raymond
Before And After by Lisa Wingate and Judy Christie
TRANSCRIPT
In 1943, an 18 year old girl Mary Reed came to in a Memphis, Tennessee hospital. She had just given birth.
She had been pretty heavily sedated, and she was still pretty groggy as a nurse handed her a small, blue blanket. Inside was her son, Steve.
Mary had done something scandalous, at least by the standards of the 1940’s. She had given birth out of wedlock, to a child whose father would not be present. And she could tell from the judgemental looks of the nurses as they left the room to take her son to the nursery, that her decision to give birth to and keep him was going to make their lives difficult.
Just then, there was a knock
A small, older woman with a sweet smile stood in the doorway and introduced herself as a social worker. Mary was still a little out of it as the woman approached her bed with some papers. She told mary that she just had some routine paperwork for the new mother to sign, but when Mary tried to read them over, they were all fuzzy. The sedation hadn’t quite worn off, and she struggled to even keep her head up long enough to read each page.
She was desperate to be able to put her head back down on the pillow, so she took the social worker's pen, signed her name , and handed the paperwork back to the woman, who gave her a sweet smile and walked out the door. And then, everything went black.
Mary awoke just a little while later with a much clearer mind. She was able to sit up on her own, and speak with the nurse who came in to help her. She was ready to see her son, she told the nurse.
But the nurse gave her a weird look. What do you mean? She asked mary
“My son, Steve", she said. “I’d like to hold him”. The nurse looked at her like she had just told her she was an alien. Confusion and skepticism.
So the young mother bolted up out of the bed and walked down to the nursery. Behind the glass window there were babies in blankets being watched after. But Steve wasn’t there. She turned to a nurse and asked where her was, but she was met with another confused look.
Baby Steve wasn’t in the hospital. It was like he had vanished into thin air.
Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I’m your
host, Kaelyn Moore.
We are about to take a dark journey to Tennessee in the 30’s and 40’s, a seldom talked about time when hundreds of children went missing. A time when a mysterious social worker arrived on the doorsteps of poor mothers and disappeared with their children.
Now, I just want to preface this by saying this episode is dark. It involves missing children. But it is an incredibly important part of American history, one where the fallout is still affecting thousands of people to this day, so I hope you stay with me.
But before we jump in I want to tell you about Clues–the new Pave true crime hosted by Morgan Absher who you may know from Two Hot Takes and me, who you may know from, well, here. I have to say it’s been really fun getting to know Morgan and diving into some of these cases–a little bit of true crime, a little bit of mystery. So make sure you check it out wherever you get your podcasts, starting april 16th and every week] where we talk about a case many of you probably know very well–Scott Peterson. We take a look at some of the clues that led to breaks in the case and talk about our own theories. So please, go drop a hello in the comments on YouTube or Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Would love to hear from you
Alright, let’s go back to it
Mary was confused and devastated after she realized that her son wasn’t in the hospital nursery. But no one there seemed to know – or care – what happened to her baby. The hospital staff felt it wasn’t their problem. As an unmarried mother, they viewed Mary as pathetic at best, and at worst: a contemptible, immoral drag on society. No one wanted to help. Mary was on her own.
But Mary was smart, she knew that her son’s disappearance had to have something to do with that paperwork she signed.
At the time, she wasn’t aware, but while still under the influence of heavy drugs, Mary had actually signed to terminate her parental rights and made her son a ward of the state.
The parental rights termination paperwork came from a place called Tennessee Children’s Home Society, a state agency responsible for child welfare. That’s probably where the social worker worked. Maybe this was a huge misunderstanding, she hoped.
She ended up going to the organization’s headquarters in midtown Memphis. There, she found a massive, three story mansion with pillars framing the large porch, and an intricate terra cotta roof. It was in a residential neighborhood in a really nice part of town. A lot nicer than where Mary lived on her own. That day, she wore her best dress and shoes. She knew if she were going to get anywhere, she needed to make a good impression. Being a poor single mother was not going to help her case.
Inside the building, There were fireplaces at either end, flanked by sofas and chairs where a few other people, mostly well-dressed couples, were waiting. The whole place was styled in pastel blue and pink. A beaded lamp by the window cast a kaleidoscopic array of sparkling light onto the floors and wall. It was all supposed to be so warm and inviting, but this was one of the worst days of Mary’s life. It’s fine, she reassured herself. This was a mistake, they must have thought I was someone else when they had me sign that paperwork, I just need to explain what’s happening.
But as she was sitting there, she made eye contact with another single woman in an outdated dress. She, too, had a panicked look on her face, and the employees ignored her every time she tried to catch their attention. Mary couldn’t help but notice how similar they looked. How out of place they looked inside of this otherwise inviting building.
We don’t know this particular woman’s name but we have a pretty good idea of her story. Let’s call her Theresa. Like Mary, this woman would also have been a new mother. And, like Mary, she would have come to this building today to search for her child.
Theresa had recently brought her new baby home to an empty house. It was just the two of them. The child’s father was an older man, who was married and had other children. He had told Theresa he would leave them for her and the baby, but he never did, and he stopped returning her phone calls once the baby was born.
So, Theresa was learning to be a parent all on her own. She was trying to hold, soothe, feed, burp, change and get to sleep this tiny, demanding infant. The crying was relentless. She never knew what her baby wanted. Her body still hurt from just giving birth. She hadn’t slept in weeks. And on top of that, she had no idea how she was going to afford this child without help from its father. She had to pay for the laundry, for food, for the electricity and water and rent. But how could she ever return to work? She was truly fighting for her life
At some point, through this haze of fatigue and piercing infant screams, there was a knock at the door . It was probably frightening. Theresa couldn’t imagine who it could be, except her landlord looking for the rent. She slowly opened the door and was surprised to find a smartly-dressed, gray-haired woman on the doorstep. The woman didn’t seem annoyed by the sound of the angry baby inside, or disgusted by Theresa’s haggard appearance. Instead, she smiled reassuringly.
This woman introduced herself as a social worker. She said It was her job to help women just like Theresa. She understood how difficult Theresa’s situation was – no one should have to recover from birth and look after a newborn on their own. It was too much for one person. Theresa deserved a chance to rest. The woman said the city offered services for women like Theresa, and she said she could take the baby, just for a few days, while the new mother got back on her feet. Free of charge, of course.
To Theresa, this woman was like an angel from heaven. She could have cried from relief and gratitude. She quickly signed the paperwork the woman presented, too tired to read the fine print, and gathered her baby’s things. She was asleep before the woman’s car – a sleek, black limousine – pulled away from the curb, with her baby inside it.
Over the next few days, Theresa began to feel a little more like herself. After some rest and time to process her new life, she found herself excited about the future. And she missed her baby.
But the woman didn’t leave a phone number for her to call. Actually, Theresa never got the woman’s name, or where she worked. She closed her eyes and remembered seeing a name on the paperwork towards the bottom, the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. She opened her phone book and got the address. Then, she baked a fresh loaf of bread to thank the social worker and put on her best dress to go get her baby.
But when she arrived, the woman at the front desk told her the same thing she had told Mary–she had no idea what she was talking about. There was no service offered by the city to help poor, single mothers.
Both Mary and Theresa were told to leave the Tennessee Children’s Home society that day without their children. They were told that they couldn’t be helped. After all, they were both poor, single mothers. What kind of life could they have given their children, anyways?
As the two women walked down the steps of the mansion, completely defeated, they saw another woman wearing scuffed work boots under a tattered, old dress, heading inside all alone. Dark circles under her eyes as if she had been up for days. They suspected they knew exactly why she was here, and what was about to happen to her.
How many other women in Memphis had lost their children?
Across town, a 6 year old girl named Nelda Sue was playing in her yard with her siblings. A twin sister, her three year old brother, her four year old middle sister, and their baby sister.
The five kids played in the tall grass without a care in the world. They hadn’t heard about the strange social workers who had taken children in the area.
But that’s when Nelda saw a long black limousine turn onto her street. There had never been a limo in this neighborhood, so the kids ogled it for a moment. But then, it parked right in front of their home.
The driver side door popped open , and out walked a short, stout woman with neatly cropped gray hair. She approached the children who were watching her with their mouths open. “Hi children, do you want to go for a ride?” she asked.
Of course they did! Nelda helped round up the siblings and got them into the vehicle. Wow, a real limousine, she felt like Kathrine Hepburn. She couldn’t wait to tell her mother about this later. Nelda turned around and watched as her home faded from view. It would be the last time she ever saw that house.
Nelda didn’t know it, but earlier that day, her mother had signed a piece of paper that was put in front of her face at a hospital. She had a quick stay there while she healed from the wounds of a domestic dispute. And while she was there, a woman, claiming to be a social worker came into her room and approached her, saying that she had a way to help her children.
She said that if the woman signed some papers, the children could be placed into foster care with the Tennessee CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY for a few days until she was well.
And just like all of the other mothers, she signed the paperwork without giving it a second thought. The social worker seemed so nice, and she was desperate for her children to have a place to stay while she couldn’t take care of them.
But when she was healed, she went to the TCHS headquarters, and just like all of the other women, she was told by a receptionist, that she had no idea what the mother was talking about. Eventually, she was asked to leave
There was no legal recourse for her to take, she was a poor mother with an abusive partner in the 40’s, no cop was going to look kindly on a woman like that. You shouldn’t even have five kids under your care, they would say. Look what happens when women like you have children, they go missing, they would tell her.
With no other option. She stood outside of the TCHS building for days, her nose pressed to the fence that surrounded the building, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of her children. She could see kids through the second story windows, and she wondered if they were there under similar circumstances.
One day, while she was waiting by the fence, she saw her middle daughter walking outside of the building with one of the women who worked there. She started banging on the fence and screaming, open the gate, open the gate, there’s been a mistake! She was so close to her daughter, if only she could get in she could go grab her. But no one came to let her in, and the fence was too high for her to climb. Instead, the woman led her daughter back into the building.
That was the last time she ever saw any of her children. The next time she came to the building, they were gone.
It was becoming clear that someone was preying on vulnerable mothers in Tennessee.
Now, It’s never been easy to be a single mother. Historically, it was considered immoral and offensive. Communities shunned them, but still expected them to somehow survive on their own. Many states, including Tennessee, passed laws in the 18th century forcing single mothers to raise their children, or face jail time.
Things were a little better during the 30’s and 40’s, but single mothers still carried the same stigma of indecency. Their families often hid them away from their communities in so-called “maternity homes” where they waited out their pregnancies and births in secret, and then hoped to pass their babies off as another relative’s, or perhaps even a sibling. The state of Tennessee, and many others, had a special category for the birth certificates of every child born to a single mother: illegitimate.
But that’s what was so confusing about what was happening to these poor mothers. That’s what Mary and Theresa, and so many other women like them, couldn’t understand. Their kids were basically rubber-stamped ‘undesirable’ at birth.
Why was someone taking them?
Well, while a few women ran into each other in the lobby of the TCHS, the epicenter for these strange disappearances, in general, they weren’t talking to each other and didn’t realize how big of a widespread problem this had become. But some women were starting to piece together WHY their specific children were being targeted. Like in the case of Alma Sipple
Alma Sipple was exhausted. Her 10 month old baby, Irma, hadn’t slept well in several days. She had a bad cold. And it kept getting worse. But Alma didn’t have any money to bring Irma to a doctor. All she could do was worry. Even when a cough or sniffle didn’t wake the baby, it startled Alma out of bed to check on her.
The next day, when Baby Irma was finally napping and Alma was trying to get some shut eye herself, a sharp knock at the door startled them both awake. Alma wasn’t expecting anyone. Annoyed, she scooped up the fussy baby and opened the door, squinting in the light. There was a woman she didn't recognize on the doorstep.
She smiled at Alma, gray-haired and conservatively dressed. She told Alma she was a social worker who was here to help her sick child. Behind her, parked on the street, was a long Raven black Limousine.
The woman asked if she could come in and look the baby over? Free of charge, of course. Alma was grateful to have another set of eyes on Irma. She welcomed the woman in.
The woman instructed Alma to lay Irma down so she could examine her. But she didn’t look into the baby’s nose or throat, or listen to her breathing. Instead she felt the texture of Irma’s blonde, straight hair, and checked the color of her eyes, a cool icy blue. Alma couldn’t help but feel It was as if she was inspecting how the baby looked, rather than what could be making the baby sick. After that odd exam, she declared Irma dangerously ill. She needed to be taken to a hospital immediately.
Alma was taken aback. She’d been concerned about the baby, sure, but she hadn't felt like her life was at risk. She admitted to the social worker that her family didn’t have the money to pay for a doctor. The old woman understood. She was willing to do Alma a special favor.
She could forge some paperwork in order to identify Irma as her ward. That way, the state would pay for her care. But that meant Alma couldn’t come with them. If the hospital found out that Irma had a parental figure, they’d hit Alma with a huge bill. And they could both get in trouble for fudging the paperwork. The social worker could bring the baby to the hospital, get her the treatment she needed, and Alma could pick her up in a few days.
Alma was hesitant to give up her baby. But Irma cried and coughed in the social workers arms, she didn’t seem to be getting better. What if Alma gave up this chance to get her to a doctor when she really needed it? The social worker pressed Alma. She knew how hard it could be to accept help. But Alma should do what’s best for her child.
Alma couldn’t argue with that. She signed the paperwork the social worker needed to pass off Irma as her ward. She got Irma bundled up and gave her a kiss. She promised the baby that she’d feel better soon, and then see Mama again.
The next couple of days were torturous. Alma had never been away from Irma before, and she couldn’t stop thinking about what was happening to her in the hospital. She must be so afraid without her mama. On the day Alma was scheduled to pick her up, she arrived outside an impressive mansion at daybreak. The front door was still locked.
In the quiet of the early morning, Alma could hear babies crying inside the building. One of them sounded exactly like her own child. She knocked, urgently. A harried woman in a nurse’s uniform opened the door. She didn’t seem to know who Alma was, or care, really. She told her to wait outside.
Alma paced between the pillars lining the porch. Finally, another woman came outside, and introduced herself as another social worker. Alma just wanted to know where her baby was. The social worker told Alma she had some bad news. Irma took a turn for the worse, and passed away in the hospital.
For a moment, Alma probably felt numb. The news was completely shocking. But then she heard the babies crying from upstairs again, and she swore one of them sounded JUST like Irma. She knew that cry, she had listened to it every night.
There was no way her daughter died from a cold, in just two days, at a hospital. There was no way. Alma demanded to speak to the woman who brought Irma to the hospital, the stout gray haired woman. She demanded to speak to the doctors who treated her. She demanded to see the records.
But the social worker slammed the door in her face. Alma waited a few minutes, but now she wasn’t feeling so patient. She banged on the door, over and over. No one answered. Instead, a man came up onto the porch. He told her to leave. Alma told him she’s just there to get her baby. But he didn’t care. He took her arm and forced her down the steps. He warned her not to come back.
But Alma didn’t listen. She didn’t believe that Irma was dead, and wouldn’t believe it until she got some proof. She didn’t know why, or how, but for some reason that woman with the gray hair wanted Irma, and Alma was not about to just let her have her baby. She returned to the mansion again and again, each time insisting on some kind of information about Irma. Eventually, the staff grew so familiar with her, they’d stop her from entering the building as soon as they saw her.
Every time she was forced out of that mansion, Alma would hear the babies crying. And she’d wonder – hope – that one of those voices might belong to her daughter.
And she kept thinking about the strange social worker that showed up to her house to inspect the baby. How she didn’t really care about how sick her child was. Instead, she just seemed to care about how her child looked. And she wondered if that could possibly hold a clue as to why her baby was taken from her.
She didn’t know it, but across town, another woman, Grace Gribble, got another clue as to why this might be happening to their children.
Grace was a widow, and mother of six children, aged three to ten. She kept her head above water however she could, and that included accepting government assistance. The family had regular in-home visits from a social worker named Sarah Semmes. Sarah worked for an organization called the Memphis Family Welfare Agency and she helped Grace access any benefits the family might qualify for.
On one particular day, Sarah arrived with another woman named Helen. Grace assumed she was another member of Memphis Family Welfare Agency, and welcomed both of them into her home. This time, Sarah presented Grace with paperwork she said would help her children access healthcare. Grace gratefully signed everything, why shouldn’t she? She trusted Sarah, she had worked with her for years.
But then, instead of the usual chat about how the family’s holding up, Sarah and Helen put away the paperwork and stood. Sarah announced that she’d take the three youngest children now.
What? Grace didn't understand what that meant. But Sarah and Helen didn’t explain. Instead, they walked down the hall toward the children’s room. They proceeded to round up Cricket, 3, Kirby 5, and Doris Ann, 6, and herd them toward the front door. The children looked to their mother for an explanation. Grace wanted one herself. She ran to the door and blocked the exit. What exactly is going on here?
Sarah kept a firm grip on a squirming kid’s arm as she explained it was all right there in the paperwork Grace signed. If Grace had bothered to read it first, she wouldn’t have so many questions. The children had full health coverage now, because they were wards of the state. When Grace signed, she relinquished her parental rights.
Absolute horror spread Grace’s body like ice. She felt faint. The children were all upset now, screaming, crying and thrashing as they tried to get loose. Grace was in tears too, as she tried to protest, tried to take it back. But Helen and Sarah simply hauled the children out the door.
Grace followed them outside, where there was a large black limousine waiting. There, a gray haired woman was holding the back door open. Grace tried to pry her frantic children away, but she couldn’t overpower three other adults. They manhandled the screaming children into the car and slammed the door. Grace could still hear them, crying and pounding on the windows.
Helen stared into the car at Kirby, studying him like a judge in a dog show. She confirmed with Sarah: he’s four? When Sarah said yes, Helen nodded, satisfied. She said, “We have an order for a boy of this age and type.”
That statement stopped Grace right in her tracks. Now she knew what this was. And exactly what to do next.
Grace hastily got dressed and rushed over to Juvenile Court. She was sure she would see one of the women there processing her children’s paperwork. She scanned every face in the courthouse until she spotted the one she was looking for: The stout, gray-haired woman in a conservative long dress. Grace ran up to her and grabbed the old woman roughly, demanding “Where are my babies??”
The woman responded calmly, like she was used to this kind of confrontation. “You should thank me.”
Grace was hysterical. She pleaded for her children. This was all a mistake. The old woman simply untangled herself from Grace, and advised her: “Forget them.”
Every one of these parents did everything they could to get their children back.
Mary Reed spent months, and probably more money than she could afford, searching for a lawyer that would take her case. Their best shot was a habeas corpus lawsuit, which is usually used to challenge unlawful imprisonment by law enforcement. In this case, Mary’s lawyer hoped it could be used to expose the illegitimate methods the Tennessee Children’s Home Society used to take custody of Mary’s son Steven. If they could prove that Mary never authorized the state to take the baby, they could leverage his release.
But when Mary’s doctor took the stand to testify, he didn’t back up Mary’s story that she’d been too addled by anesthetics in the hospital to understand what she was signing. Instead, he claimed that Mary was given a full explanation of the paperwork, and that the drugs administered during the labor couldn’t affect her judgement.
So Mary lost the case. She still had no information about her son’s well being, or his whereabouts.
Once Alma Sipple couldn’t get into the mansion, she tried going to the police to report a kidnapping. But it was tricky – Alma had willingly given Irma to the social worker. And, it had been with the intention of defrauding the state. It was easy for police to brush her off, or threaten her with prosecution of their own.
Alma tried another angle: hospitals. She approached administrators, nurses, anyone who would listen to try and get access to any records about Irma’s supposed treatment. It was hard to get anyone to pay attention, and when they did, they never found anything.
When hope wore really thin, Alma walked through cemeteries, looking for gravestones that might match her daughter’s age. Maybe the social workers were telling the truth, and Irma did pass away. But if that’s what really happened, why couldn’t they show her any proof? Alma’s gut was stubborn. Something else was going on here.
Grace Gribble’s fight for her kids got her more answers. But she did not like what she found.
Like Mary, Grace had to search for months before she could find a lawyer willing to take her case to court. Her attorney laid out a solid argument that the paperwork Grace signed was invalid because it was presented to her under false pretences. But instead of focusing on that valid legal argument, the judge chose to focus on something else: the lifestyle Grace provided for her children. It wasn’t anything fancy, but Grace owned her home and had the means to adequately care for her kids. Presumably, all that was well-documented in Sarah’s frequent home visits. And all that material stuff aside, Grace loved her children fiercely.
But in the judge’s opinion, what Grace could offer couldn’t measure up to the lives her children now had. With their new adoptive families.
See, When Sarah and Helen hauled off Cricket, Kirby, and Doris Ann months ago, it was so they could be placed with other parents, anxious to adopt. Grace learned that Doris Ann, age 6, now lived in Orlando FL with a newspaper publisher and his wife. They brought Doris Ann into their family because they were looking for a friend for their biological daughter. Cricket, age 3, was still in Memphis, living with a doctor and his wife. And Kirby, age 4, was now in Blytheville, Arkansas, with the couple that had put in a special order for a blonde-haired, blue-eyed four-year old boy, just like Kirby.
The judge ultimately ruled that Grace’s children should stay in their “new homes.” The judge attempted to comfort Grace in his ruling by writing, “This is one of the sad tragedies of life that even a mother must endure for the best interests of her children.”
This had been happening to poor, single mothers all over Tennessee for 20 years, but no one knew the extent, or why. Some women never even knew what happened to their children after they disappeared, and no one believed them. That the same, strange woman in a raven black limo had taken off with their children.
That is, until 1950, when people all over Memphis opened their newspapers and read the headline: “Money Racket in Adoption of Babies.” And there, on the front page of the newspaper, was a picture of the boogeyman women had been warning each other about. The gray haired social worker, Georgia Tann.
What these women would all eventually learn, now that the truth was coming out, was that their children, all blonde haired, blue eyed and white, were sold to high paying families, sometimes for as much as $200,000 in today’s money. And all of it was being organized by Georgia Tann.
Tann was a well-known figure in Memphis. She was the de-facto head of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, a state-funded agency dedicated to the care, and when possible, adoption, of orphaned or abandoned children. Supporters and friends knew her as a selfless champion of her wards.
But those who disliked Tann – or even feared her – described her as:
“a relentless, cold-blooded demon, a female smiling Buddha, a very wicked woman”
“Pompous, self-important – She was like Hitler... She terrorized everyone.”
“Domineering, tyrannical… ”
Tann believed it was her responsibility to place children – any and all children – into the most ideal home possible. To Tann, that meant a wealthy, white household with two heterosexual parents. She thought poor children, and especially the children of single mothers, were destined to become worthless drains on society, just like their parents. By changing their circumstances, she thought she was not only improving the child, but improving society as a whole.
Of course, the whole thing was illegal. And it was destroying loving families. But none of that mattered to Tann. She arranged unauthorized adoptions with impunity for over two decades. During that time, the parents whose children were swept up in Tann’s net were virtually powerless. Most of them had some sense of what had happened to their children, and that Tann was involved, but there seemed to be nothing they could do to stop her.
It wouldn’t be until after Tann’s death that this would all start coming to light. And the effects would shatter families across the country.
Because in Philadelphia, a young girl named Nelda Suzanne remembered being loaded into a black limousine one day. She remembered being put on a train by Georgia Tann, and ending up with a family in another state. Her siblings nowhere to be found.
So how did Georgia Tann get away with this for so long? Well, join me here next week because we are going to do a deep dive into who Georgia was, how she got all of the cops, judges, and hospital staff to work for her baby trafficking scheme, and how the families she pulled apart tried to find each other. You’re not going to want to miss it.