Mystery Baby : Adopted Son Hopes to Find Self at End of Trail of Clues

The mystery has been slowly unfolding in front of thousands of newspaper readers for more than a year.

In a series of tiny classified ads, a man named Charles has asked for information about a baby abandoned more than 56 years ago in Los Angeles. Each new ad has included a tantalizing new piece to the puzzle.

The first one contained only the date that the infant was found: Sept. 25, 1935. The second one added the location: 3539 Siskiyou St. in the Boyle Heights area.

Subsequent ads disclosed that the child was discovered on the seat of a parked car and that he was wrapped in a blue blanket. The most recent one revealed that a woman named Gladys Rosswurm found the infant.

In fact, each time 56-year-old Charles S. Stubin learns something new about himself, he adds it to the 10-line announcement that he periodically runs under “Missing Persons” in The Times’ classifieds.

His stubborn, do-it-yourself detective work is starting to pay off.

Stubin, a retired government Chinese linguist who is a foreign trade consultant from Falls Church, Va., has traced Rosswurm and Roxie B. Doyle, the police officer Rosswurm summoned to rush Stubin to the hospital after he was discovered shivering on her car’s seat.

He has retrieved the specially embroidered man’s linen handkerchief that Rosswurm and Doyle found wrapped around him.

He has scoured dusty court records--and has gone to court to get a judge to order a private adoption agency to show him his skimpy file.

He has studied seemingly miles of newspaper microfilm at libraries in Washington and Los Angeles for snippets of information about authorities’ original search for his mother.

Baby John Doe “is the cutest little rascal that ever shook a tiny dimpled fist into the face of a prim nurse” at General Hospital, reported the Herald Express on Sept. 27, 1935. “He’s just about the cutest baby we’ve ever had here,” maternity ward nurse Josephine Schenk told the Examiner the same day.

Along the way, he has learned that officials speculated on his religion (they decided he was partly Jewish) and that a prominent Los Angeles family agonized over whether to adopt him (they decided not to).

All of this has encouraged Stubin. And it has helped him narrow his search for his roots to five possible names--including one belonging to one of the most curious self-made millionaires in Los Angeles history.

“I just want to know who I am,” Stubin said. “Somebody out there knows. I want to find out where I come from.”

Although he had long had a hunch that something in his background was unusual, Stubin said he did not learn for certain until after his adoptive mother died two years ago. His adoptive father had died years before.

“Of course, my parents never said a word about me being adopted,” he said. “I think my mother had convinced herself I was her natural child. To bring it up would have killed her. I didn’t want to say anything that would upset her.”

He did not look like anyone else in the family, however. During World War II days, he had learned that his blood type was different from either of his parents. And when he attended Los Angeles’ Washington High School in 1953, his folks had panicked when he told them he needed to show his birth certificate in order to join the campus ROTC.

“When they finally gave it to me, it was missing the name of the hospital and the delivering physician,” Stubin said. “It turns out that they’d had to create the document at that time. Until I’d asked for it, I’d never had a birth certificate.”

Stubin admits to tricking a longtime family friend into confirming his past after his mother died. He casually mentioned that he could not find all of his adoption papers. The friend told him where to look.

The papers led him to Children’s Home Society, the 101-year-old private adoption agency that until 1949 handled placement of abandoned and unwanted children for Los Angeles County. The agency showed Stubin his file last January after he obtained a court order.

He was astounded to find the linen handkerchief neatly folded and stored along with the 1935 paperwork and police forms. There was a notation that it had been tied to his body when he was found.

“After 50 years, it was still sitting there in that envelope. It was absolutely amazing. It was embroidered with the letter W in purple thread,” he said. “It was a clue: It told me that whoever left me was hoping someone would hunt for her.”

Typewritten reports and letters included in the file told of how Stubin had initially been placed with a Mrs J. Stillwell. A handwritten notation on one letter included the curious words: “Talk to Mrs. W. about Stillwell home.”

The file contains a letter sent a few days later to Stillwell by a rabbi who had been asked to examine the infant. “I am satisfied to state that I have all reasons to believe, and I do believe, that the child in question is of Jewish parentage,” wrote Rabbi S. M. Neches of the Western Jewish Institute.

Neches’ letter of Nov. 11, 1935, ended cryptically: “My opinion should . . . be taken into consideration in this matter.” After that, Stillwell returned the baby for placement in a Jewish home.

Stubin tracked down Stillwell’s daughter last year in Atascadero. She remembered how a baby lived briefly with her family in late 1935.

The W on the linen handkerchief took on added significance when Stubin learned something else about the Stillwells. They had been business associates of wealthy land developer and investor Ben Weingart, who died in 1980 at age 92. In fact, the Stillwells apparently sold Weingart the downtown hotels that later helped form the basis for his purported $200-million fortune.

Weingart’s newspaper clippings refer to him as “the Casanova of his time” who “simply loved women--a lot of them.” His obituary quoted a friend who recalled that Weingart had a vasectomy when he was in his early 70s. The friend said Weingart explained: “Who needs trouble?”

Stubin learned from the old newspaper stories that the Jewish-born Weingart had married, but never had children. But Weingart had a mistress in 1935--an attractive divorcee named Hazel Walsh. Could Walsh be his mother and Weingart his father?

“You can’t discount it,” said Stubin, who plans to travel to Sacramento soon to check records about Weingart and the other names on his list. They are last names starting with W of baby boys born in Los Angeles County about the same time that Stubin calculates he was: Sept. 16-18, 1935.

Those names are Wiseman, Wells, Weston and Weiner. Stubin thinks there is a possibility that he could be one of them--abandoned by his mother after being discharged from the maternity ward.

Officials of Children’s Home Society said they wish Stubin well in his search. But because he was a foundling, they do not know who his mother is.

The agency has handled about 44,000 adoptions in the past century; these days, it gets about 1,500 requests a year from adoptees and birth mothers hoping to be reunited with one another. Reunions occur in only about 20% of those cases, said Ray Cheroske, director of adoption services for the society.

“Your heart does go out to them,” Cheroske said, adding that it is against the law for his agency to tell an adoptee who his mother is unless both parties want the information revealed.

“In the ‘30s, ‘40s, ‘50s and even ‘60s, adoptions were something that carried a lot of secrecy and taboos. Birth parents would come to us and want to be assured of confidentiality. And adopting families wanted no ‘interference’ from birth parents.”

Stubin acknowledges that it is possible that his birth mother is dead by now. But he said he still wants to learn who she was--and who he is.

“People don’t abandon babies unless they’re really in a fix,” said Stubin, himself the father of two grown children. “There must have been a combination of circumstances that put this lady in a terrible bind. I’m not accusing anybody. I don’t have any hard feelings.”

He plans to return to Los Angeles Jan. 29 to resume his search through old city phone books and county records.

First, though, he will visit the graves of his adopted mother and father.

“They did a 110% job. My parents did everything for me they could,” he said. “I owe them a lot.”