NH NH - Allenstown, Adult Female, 23-33, & 3 Children, under 11, Nov'85 & May'00 #3

[doyoulovemepfg]

I personally don't think TR knew anything about the middle child until the mother/relative/caregiver showed up on his doorstep with her shortly before she was murdered.

I wasn't thinking of a formal adoption so much as the kind of arrangement families often make within themselves to deal with death, incarceration, scandal, etc. So maybe something like the mother meets a guy who doesn't know about the baby and the caretaker decided she didn't want to permanently raise the child and took her to the father. Given when TR started to use aliases, it seems possible he might still have been in occasional touch with others at that point.

I agree it's somewhat less likely than other explanations, but at this point the likely options haven't panned out...

At this point this looks like it would possibly work but the only place we would find birth records would be Texas or California. Very very unlikely to get any in MS or LA as public records.

 

[Alleykins]

I personally don't think TR knew anything about the middle child until the mother/relative/caregiver showed up on his doorstep with her shortly before she was murdered.

I wasn't thinking of a formal adoption so much as the kind of arrangement families often make within themselves to deal with death, incarceration, scandal, etc. So maybe something like the mother meets a guy who doesn't know about the baby and the caretaker decided she didn't want to permanently raise the child and took her to the father. Given when TR started to use aliases, it seems possible he might still have been in occasional touch with others at that point.

I agree it's somewhat less likely than other explanations, but at this point the likely options haven't panned out...

A similar scenario played out in my family. In the 70s, my mom's friend brought her kids over to spend the weekend while she went out and partied. Two were our age, one was a 4 month old. Well, the friend never came back, leaving my mother to care for a total of six kids under 10, and an infant. Eventually, the dad of the oldest two came and picked them up, leaving only the baby (different dad). My mother worked full time and couldn't handle a baby, and passed her off to another good friend, who was a SAHM. She was there for about two months when the other friend decided she wanted to move to Florida, so she called DHHS to come and pick up the baby, because nobody could find mom. They were able to track down the kids' mother, and told her to come get them or she would lose them, so she did. I think she was missing for six months. Had the baby's father wanted her, my mother would have handed her over to him, no questions asked, and let the friend deal with tracking him down. Frankly, all three kids would have been better off with their dads, they had a horribly crappy and abusive childhood.
And my sister never let the dad of the baby forget it.

 

[doyoulovemepfg]

A similar scenario played out in my family. In the 70s, my mom's friend brought her kids over to spend the weekend while she went out and partied. Two were our age, one was a 4 month old. Well, the friend never came back, leaving my mother to care for a total of six kids under 10, and an infant. Eventually, the dad of the oldest two came and picked them up, leaving only the baby (different dad). My mother worked full time and couldn't handle a baby, and passed her off to another good friend, who was a SAHM. She was there for about two months when the other friend decided she wanted to move to Florida, so she called DHHS to come and pick up the baby, because nobody could find mom. They were able to track down the kids' mother, and told her to come get them or she would lose them, so she did. I think she was missing for six months. Had the baby's father wanted her, my mother would have handed her over to him, no questions asked, and let the friend deal with tracking him down. Frankly, all three kids would have been better off with their dads, they had a horribly crappy and abusive childhood.
And my sister never let the dad of the baby forget it.

Yes. This happened similarly in my family too, except it was four kids "sold off" to different families in an informal adoption of sorts in the 1920's-30's. No real record of it because the four kids were too young to be on the census. There were eight or nine kids total and the older ones never forgot about their younger siblings and told their kids about them, with one of them eventually submitting DNA to GEDMatch after his father passed. The older kids did not have a good childhood AT ALL from what I understand - but my great grandmother (the youngest) got really lucky. My mom didn't submit any DNA anywhere until about ten years after my great grandma's death, but we have gotten to reconnect with that side of the family and have found three out of the four other siblings so far - we are just missing a brother. That being said if anyone else is related to an A. J. Pettit who sold off his kids around that time, please reach out lol.

 

[Alleykins]

Yes. This happened similarly in my family too, except it was four kids "sold off" to different families in an informal adoption of sorts in the 1920's-30's. No real record of it because the four kids were too young to be on the census. There were eight or nine kids total and the older ones never forgot about their younger siblings and told their kids about them, with one of them eventually submitting DNA to GEDMatch after his father passed. The older kids did not have a good childhood AT ALL from what I understand - but my great grandmother (the youngest) got really lucky. My mom didn't submit any DNA anywhere until about ten years after my great grandma's death, but we have gotten to reconnect with that side of the family and have found three out of the four other siblings so far - we are just missing a brother. That being said if anyone else is related to an A. J. Pettit who sold off his kids around that time, please reach out lol.

Very interesting family history, for sure.

 

[doyoulovemepfg]

I'm about 5000 people in on the Livings/Mitchell tree and am doing a second run through to get whereabouts and names/dates. This should be done sometime within the next week or so and then hopefully I will be able to have some sort of data targeting list to narrow things down further by location and whereabouts.

 

[Irish_Eyes]

Y'all have been busy! So glad there's new life in this.

But please, lets all be careful. I trust the information from the gentleman who was told that he's too distant of a match for MC to have come from his branch of the family, because that information was allegedly imparted to him directly from investigators.

Beyond that, nothing is eliminated. Some things I'm reading here about branches that can or cannot be ruled out are in direct contradiction to what I heard from the investigator directly.
I haven't put that out here before now and those of you who've been around get why.

I can say that it was mentioned not to lean to heavily on the isotope information.

 

[doyoulovemepfg]

Y'all have been busy! So glad there's new life in this.

But please, lets all be careful. I trust the information from the gentleman who was told that he's too distant of a match for MC to have come from his branch of the family, because that information was allegedly imparted to him directly from investigators.

Beyond that, nothing is eliminated. Some things I'm reading here about branches that can or cannot be ruled out are in direct contradiction to what I heard from the investigator directly.
I haven't put that out here before now and those of you who've been around get why.

I can say that it was mentioned not to lean to heavily on the isotope information.

I think I know what branch specifically you are referring to and that is now the main one I’m focusing on. I also trust that guy’s info because I’m familiar with who he is.

Right now I’m placing most of my research emphasis on Nederland TX and the general area around it. There was a set of four brothers who I believe descended from a Mitchell and then another bunch of descendants from a Mitchell-Spiers union that ended up down there and most of them worked on… oil rigs. At this point I’m definitely of the opinion it might be an NPE but I’ve found a couple illegitimate children through TX birth records and also a fairly strong tradition of multiple marriages and divorces in MC’s moms generation. I think the answer lies somewhere in the Texas birth index and we’ve just got to dig.

 

[Alleykins]

Y'all have been busy! So glad there's new life in this.

But please, lets all be careful. I trust the information from the gentleman who was told that he's too distant of a match for MC to have come from his branch of the family, because that information was allegedly imparted to him directly from investigators.

Beyond that, nothing is eliminated. Some things I'm reading here about branches that can or cannot be ruled out are in direct contradiction to what I heard from the investigator directly.
I haven't put that out here before now and those of you who've been around get why.

I can say that it was mentioned not to lean to heavily on the isotope information.

I apologize, but how are you hearing from the investigator directly? Which agency? And, does that mean you're one of their official researchers? Just curious, because there's quite a few of us trying to answer that call to help, too, and we could use some direction.

 

[Irish_Eyes]

I apologize, but how are you hearing from the investigator directly? Which agency? And, does that mean you're one of their official researchers? Just curious, because there's quite a few of us trying to answer that call to help, too, and we could use some direction.

I came across something at one point that I thought could possibly be relevant. I reached out to the investigator. I then had a call back to follow up so he could ask some follow-up questions about it, that's all. If it had turned out to be relevant, we'd all be having a very different discussion right now.

 

[Alleykins]

I came across something at one point that I thought could possibly be relevant. I reached out to the investigator. I then had a call back to follow up so he could ask some follow-up questions about it, that's all. If it had turned out to be relevant, we'd all be having a very different discussion right now.

True. Thanks for clarifying.

 

[carbuff]

I would add, nobody should be hesitant to reach out to the investigators if they have something that's more than speculation. I've found them to be invariably polite, open-mined, and grateful for the help even when the tip doesn't pan out.

 

[doyoulovemepfg]

I would add, nobody should be hesitant to reach out to the investigators if they have something that's more than speculation. I've found them to be invariably polite, open-mined, and grateful for the help even when the tip doesn't pan out.

FYI just called in a tip about an oil rig that looks like it had a bunch of Livings/Mitchells/Spiers working on it in Port Arthur TX that could very well be where TPR was.

 

[doyoulovemepfg]

Okay, so I know I've been sharing some of my theories/genealogy work with some of you, but I want to bring a couple things to the forefront here on the main thread that I feel are big developments I've found over the last few days.
This is the area I believe TPR was living and working when he was in Texas: Jefferson County, Texas - Wikipedia
Specifically I believe he was either living in Port Neches, Port Arthur or Nederland for a period of time long enough to impregnate MC's mother, skip town for a bit, but come back for long enough that MC would kind of know who he was. This lines up with the timeline of him working at Brown and Root (which had a presence in that area) as well as the oil rig - Gulf Oil was the big employer in Port Arthur at the time, and guess who worked there - 6-8 out of the ten or fifteen possible men I believe could be MC's grandfather!
I am continuing to go through public records, including birth certificates, marriage certificates and death certificates to see what I can dig up about the area and the family during that time, and I did find something really alarming: There was a double murder in Nederland with TPR's exact MO in January of 1975. I am fairly sure that Jefferson County arrested someone in connection with it, but knowing TPR's actions going forward, I almost wonder if they arrested an innocent person for the deaths of these two young women... I'm going to keep digging through newspapers from around that time to see what they are saying about it, but it's something I wanted to bring up.
If TPR was in the area at that time, I have it narrowed down to roughly twenty women, barring an NPE, that could be the mother. However, I have found 3-4 possible NPE/illegitimate children from would-be MC grandfathers and know that there are likely more I need to keep digging for, but I'm not sure how far I will be able to go as most of these likely NPE candidates have been deceased since the 1980's and I have pretty strong doubt that most of these would have siblings.

 

[Earth]

Okay, so I know I've been sharing some of my theories/genealogy work with some of you, but I want to bring a couple things to the forefront here on the main thread that I feel are big developments I've found over the last few days.
This is the area I believe TPR was living and working when he was in Texas: Jefferson County, Texas - Wikipedia
Specifically I believe he was either living in Port Neches, Port Arthur or Nederland for a period of time long enough to impregnate MC's mother, skip town for a bit, but come back for long enough that MC would kind of know who he was. This lines up with the timeline of him working at Brown and Root (which had a presence in that area) as well as the oil rig - Gulf Oil was the big employer in Port Arthur at the time, and guess who worked there - 6-8 out of the ten or fifteen possible men I believe could be MC's grandfather!
I am continuing to go through public records, including birth certificates, marriage certificates and death certificates to see what I can dig up about the area and the family during that time, and I did find something really alarming: There was a double murder in Nederland with TPR's exact MO in January of 1975. I am fairly sure that Jefferson County arrested someone in connection with it, but knowing TPR's actions going forward, I almost wonder if they arrested an innocent person for the deaths of these two young women... I'm going to keep digging through newspapers from around that time to see what they are saying about it, but it's something I wanted to bring up.
If TPR was in the area at that time, I have it narrowed down to roughly twenty women, barring an NPE, that could be the mother. However, I have found 3-4 possible NPE/illegitimate children from would-be MC grandfathers and know that there are likely more I need to keep digging for, but I'm not sure how far I will be able to go as most of these likely NPE candidates have been deceased since the 1980's and I have pretty strong doubt that most of these would have siblings.

Can you please provide the evidence?

 

[doyoulovemepfg]

Can you please provide the evidence?

Evidence of where these men were working is findable in the Texas death certificate index prior to 1983. I was able to find death certificates for most of the men in that family that were deceased prior to then and Texas as a state lists their occupation and workplace.
Of the double murder? It's easily searchable in public records. I went through roughly 5000 death certificates yesterday to see if there was anything of interest, and this seemed to be the only case that really stood out. Both murders happened on 1/27/75 and the victims were 18 year old Janet Saide and 27 year old Sandra Dugas. They both died from blunt force trauma to the head and were found in the car of a man who apparently committed suicide inside the house they were found at by drinking poison. Investigators called it a murder-suicide but did not investigate further since the man who lived in the house where the car was found was dead. Again, I have no idea if TPR had any involvement, but wanted to bring it to the thread because of (a) the timing and (b) the manner of death for these women. The poison element also seemed relevant because of D/L talking about how she had siblings but they "ate mushrooms"... If TPR was indeed in town he would have either seen this in the news, heard about it from others, or (there's a slim chance) committed the crime himself. This could have been where TPR got his MO from in the first place.

 

[pixiepixel]

Okay, so I know I've been sharing some of my theories/genealogy work with some of you, but I want to bring a couple things to the forefront here on the main thread that I feel are big developments I've found over the last few days.
This is the area I believe TPR was living and working when he was in Texas: Jefferson County, Texas - Wikipedia
Specifically I believe he was either living in Port Neches, Port Arthur or Nederland for a period of time long enough to impregnate MC's mother, skip town for a bit, but come back for long enough that MC would kind of know who he was. This lines up with the timeline of him working at Brown and Root (which had a presence in that area) as well as the oil rig - Gulf Oil was the big employer in Port Arthur at the time, and guess who worked there - 6-8 out of the ten or fifteen possible men I believe could be MC's grandfather!
I am continuing to go through public records, including birth certificates, marriage certificates and death certificates to see what I can dig up about the area and the family during that time, and I did find something really alarming: There was a double murder in Nederland with TPR's exact MO in January of 1975. I am fairly sure that Jefferson County arrested someone in connection with it, but knowing TPR's actions going forward, I almost wonder if they arrested an innocent person for the deaths of these two young women... I'm going to keep digging through newspapers from around that time to see what they are saying about it, but it's something I wanted to bring up.
If TPR was in the area at that time, I have it narrowed down to roughly twenty women, barring an NPE, that could be the mother. However, I have found 3-4 possible NPE/illegitimate children from would-be MC grandfathers and know that there are likely more I need to keep digging for, but I'm not sure how far I will be able to go as most of these likely NPE candidates have been deceased since the 1980's and I have pretty strong doubt that most of these would have siblings.

So, based on doyoulovemepfg's research and hypothesis, I've spent the weekend combing through the Texas Birth index for baby girls born in Jefferson County, TX between 1975 and 1977 with no father listed. From there I quickly and tentatively eliminated anyone with matches to other records (marriage certificates, directories, etc.) that indicated that they had lived to adulthood. That left me with about 30 names - and with some deeper research, I was able to rule out most of those 30, again by finding them in the record post-1981.

That leaves me with seven possible matches; seven girls born 1975-1977 in Jefferson Co, TX, with no father listed, who I cannot find in the public record after their birth. I'm going to start digging deeper into records on these 7 girls and their families to see if any of them have a connection to the Livings-Mitchell line. I don't think TOS allows me to post the names, but if anyone wants to help me research send me a message. It'd be great if someone with a Newspapers.com subscription could scan that database.

 

[doyoulovemepfg]

So, based on doyoulovemepfg's research and hypothesis, I've spent the weekend combing through the Texas Birth index for baby girls born in Jefferson County, TX between 1975 and 1977 with no father listed. From there I quickly and tentatively eliminated anyone with matches to other records (marriage certificates, directories, etc.) that indicated that they had lived to adulthood. That left me with about 30 names - and with some deeper research, I was able to rule out most of those 30, again by finding them in the record post-1981.

That leaves me with seven possible matches; seven girls born 1975-1977 in Jefferson Co, TX, with no father listed, who I cannot find in the public record after their birth. I'm going to start digging deeper into records on these 7 girls and their families to see if any of them have a connection to the Livings-Mitchell line. I don't think TOS allows me to post the names, but if anyone wants to help me research send me a message. It'd be great if someone with a Newspapers.com subscription could scan that database.

I'm going to add you to the genealogy thread we are working on this on. This is incredible thank you so much.

 

[taramarie]

So, based on doyoulovemepfg's research and hypothesis, I've spent the weekend combing through the Texas Birth index for baby girls born in Jefferson County, TX between 1975 and 1977 with no father listed. From there I quickly and tentatively eliminated anyone with matches to other records (marriage certificates, directories, etc.) that indicated that they had lived to adulthood. That left me with about 30 names - and with some deeper research, I was able to rule out most of those 30, again by finding them in the record post-1981.

That leaves me with seven possible matches; seven girls born 1975-1977 in Jefferson Co, TX, with no father listed, who I cannot find in the public record after their birth. I'm going to start digging deeper into records on these 7 girls and their families to see if any of them have a connection to the Livings-Mitchell line. I don't think TOS allows me to post the names, but if anyone wants to help me research send me a message. It'd be great if someone with a Newspapers.com subscription could scan that database.

I have a newspapers subscription if you still need help!

 

[doyoulovemepfg]

I have a newspapers subscription if you still need help!

Give me one sec.

 

[Kitsey]

Thank you all for what you are doing. You are making such a difference.