The nation's leading missing children’s organization has released an age progression image of a newborn who was kidnapped from a Chicago hospital in 1964 in hopes of bringing an end to a nearly 50-year-old mystery.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children on Tuesday posted an digital portrait of what Paul Fronczak, who was abducted from Michael Reese Hospital in April 1964, might look like today, the Chicago Tribune reported.
The FBI reopened its investigation into the kidnapping earlier this year after DNA tests revealed that a boy found in New Jersey fourteen months later and returned to Fronczak's parents wasn't actually their son.
The boy from New Jersey, who is now 49 years old and also named Paul Fronczak, told the Chicago Sun-Times in June that he had long wondered why he didn't resemble his parents, Chester and Dora Franczak, so they underwent DNA testing earlier this year to see if he was their biological son. He wasn't.
That Paul Fronczak is a married father of his own now and works as a college administrator and living in Henderson, Nev.
Joan Hyde, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Chicago office, told the Chicago Tribune in August that investigators decided to reopen the case after locating original evidence files from 1964 investigation.
"It was deemed appropriate to take a fresh look at the evidence that we have and possibly re-interview sources that are still around," Hyde told the newspaper.
In a recent interview with the Chicago Tribune, Fronczak said that his parents support his desire to discover his identity and find out what happened to his parents' biological child -- the other Paul Fronczak.
"I think that the perfect ending would be to find the real Paul, see that he's doing well and then on the same day find my real family. It would also be nice to have an actual birth date that I could believe in," he told the newspaper.
Hundreds of police officers and FBI agents searched for the Oak Lawn couple's newborn son after his abduction. The case came to an apparently happy end more than a year later when an abandoned child resembling the Fronczak's baby was found in New Jersey and returned to them.
Paul Fronczak told KLAS-TV in Las Vegas earlier this year that he is still trying to learn his true identity.
"I don't know how old I am, or who I am, or what nationality, all those things you just take for granted," Fronczak said.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the FBI or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.