February 13, 2024 • 34 mins
As a teenager, Steve didn’t dare ask his adoptive parents about his birth family. But once he was middle-aged and grieving the only father he’d ever known, Steve and his girlfriend decided it was time. What his mother told them opened a Pandora’s box of uncomfortable truths and led to a question: Why did a serial killer come up when Steve researched his family of origin online? Who was Franklin Floyd?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Previously on Hello John Doe.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
So we had the missing person case and name of
says phill at Brandenburg.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
Nobody knew if this missing infant was a live or dead.
The FBI had no paperwork on him, but I didn't
want to give up on looking for him. For fifteen years,
I continue my work investigating missing and unidentified people with
the Department of Justice, but I always wondered about the
fate of those missing voice until one day in twenty nineteen,
(00:30):
a man called me claiming that he was actually one
of them.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
And I told him I slept in our conversation. I said,
you don't have to believe this. I said, I don't
blame you if you don't believe it, because this sounds crazy.
And I started explaining. He took the time to listen.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
He said he was a missing infant.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
But now had to figure out if this was actually true,
and if so, how on earth had he gotten away
from a serial killer. After that phone call in twenty nineteen,
I had to prove that this man was actually who
he said he was. I have my work cut out
for me. The man who'd called went by the name
(01:09):
Steve Patterson, and it grown up in Charyble, North Carolina,
not so far away from me. But the person he
thought he was, the guy with the profile on the
DOE network, that was Philip Stephen Brandenburgh. He had last
been seen in Texas, not North Carolina. Could these two
be one and the same. I hoped in my heart
he was, but there's good reason to be skeptical. I
(01:32):
called up my friend Mike Nance, my coworker from NAMOS,
that's the national database run by the federal government. I
asked Mike to put step into NAMOS because it might
help match him with the person that he thought he was.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Throughout my tenure with NAMOS that we've had similar situations where,
for whatever reason, someone has contacted NamUs as an adult,
believing that they are a missing child from some agency,
some jurisdiction. So I don't know why if they believe that.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
I totally get that those of us in this business
have all hit dead ends, or rather we've hit the
wrong ends. We're all chasing hope that sometimes gets us nowhere.
You exam a body that ends up being the wrong person.
Someone vanishes and has never found Disk on the phone
who said he was a Brandenburg could have been the
same type of situation. He might be a liar who knows,
(02:27):
or maybe he had it all wrong and he was
another missing person, not the Brandenburg infant that I thought.
I've been exposed to my fair share of heartbreaking this
line of work, but you know what, I've also been
in situations where hope one out where the impossible happened,
even though it had no business going that way. So
I chose to focus on what seems unbelievable but possible.
(02:49):
For twenty years, I've been wondering if the Brandenburg infant
was alive or dead. Mike and I could wonder all
we wanted, but nothing would be more final than a
DNA test, and Steve was down to take it. Steve,
the guy who claimed you was still at Brandenburg, was
a little surprised at where he had to go for
the DNA.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
Swap, the Cherito Police Department, of all places.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
I mean, it's not every day goes to hang out
at the local police department.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
It was kind of funny because the guy that gave
it to me is like, this is the first time
I've ever done this. I'm like same here, I said,
I guess we're both gon be the first time and
gave a DNA test and the first time I've ever
taken one. We laughed about it. He just swapped it
around in my mouth and put it in this little pack.
(03:37):
I think he said it was going to send it
to Texas.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Yeah, the University of North Texas processed it. That's where
NAMES was located at the time. It's where all the
DNA went. We all waited several months, seemed like years.
Steve and I had all these phone conversations around that time.
They were used the kind of short Steve wasn't a
big talker like me. I was introducing him to tools
like ancestor dot Com, showing him what all was possible.
(04:08):
I didn't really know it then, but Steve had taking
a liking to me. I think it had something to
do with the fact that I'd taken the time to
search for the missing Brandenburg infant for years. If you
ask me, I think Steve has always had a feeling
of not being wanting. He felt like he'd been thrown away. Well,
we waited for the DNA tests come back. It dawned
on me that if this guy wasn't Philip Brandenburg, I'd
(04:31):
be devastating. But I already made up my mind that
even if he wasn't, I still wanted to help this guy,
whoever the hell he was always taking any astray anyway.
Then one day my nance gave me the definitive phone call.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
We were able to make the familial identification and determined
that yes, this is Philip Brandenburgh.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Steve Patterson was Philip Stephen Brandenburg, this once non existent
person somehow alive.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
He's really a real person and he was really born.
And it was just such an amazing feeling. Just so
many different dynamics that go into these cases, and you
just wonder what's going to be the next chapter and
this incredible story of this family.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
I'd waited almost twenty years for him to find my
message in a bottle. Even Mike, the season detective that
he is, was shocked.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
I guess you just have to understand maybe the mindset
of the homeleside detective, because you see stuff every day
that you think, you know, this is the craziest thing
I've ever seen, and this possibly can't can't be true,
But then you do your investigation, and sure enough it's true.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
That for the man in the center of it, It
wasn't a surprise at all.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
I knew the whole time, just in my mind, in
my heart, I knew that the Tesla will come back positive.
Was no doubt about it.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
You blew their minds, Yeah did You wasn't supposed to
be here, but you were.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
This baby somehow escaped the grasp of Franklin Floyd, the
serial killer. So how did he do it? How did
he get away? I knew the answer had to be
in his name. Stephen was born a brandy Bird but
ended up as a Patterson. That's because he was adopted
(06:23):
before he could even crawl or speak. It was an
informal adoption that seems to have taken place in a
trailer part without the usual paperwork, so formally connecting him
to his birth mother would take some serious detective work.
My name is Todd Matthews and this is Hello John Doe,
(06:43):
A sleuth, a family, and a serial killer.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
The story of a.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Family torn apart by a tragedy and my quest to
bring them back together. Chapter two, An unusual Adoption. Once
I figured out Steve Patterson was Philip Stephen Brandenburg, I
had a ton of questions, like how did he get adopted.
Why I had no one ever found him? And why
(07:07):
did his biological parents give him up in the first place?
Safe to say, he had a big question too.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
I want to let him my real mama dad word.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
It's not like there's a box of bones to hand
to someone the way there is when you idde a
dead body and find the family. A DNA test isn't
a bar code. You can't just scan it and name
pops out. It's a lot more complicated. The DNA test
would tell us who he might match to genetically, but
we had to go looking for Steve's biological family too.
Here's some old fashioned reporting. We had to do it together.
(07:40):
Part of the reason he trusted me is because I've
been searching for him all along.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
I think it's neat. I think it's cool somebody was.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Looking his girlfriend Janet O'Connor. What should I all go down.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
He feels that you've been a blessing in his life.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
But we couldn't go out into the world and get
answers immediately. There was a lot that had to line
up for us to meet each other first. The pandemic
lockdowns kept us apart for a really long time. On
the phone I tried to help him find some initial
answers about who he was, but there was a lot
I wanted to wait on until we could meet in person,
talk man to man. So the week of Memorial Day weekend,
(08:18):
almost four years after he first called, I finally made
the trip. I flew from Knoxville to Charlotte and met
my producer, Kate Michigan. We rented a car to meet
Steph near his hometown, about an hour west of Charlotte's.
So to complicate things even more, our hotel in Charlotte
had a water main late and kicked us out at
(08:38):
four am.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
What a nightmare.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
We spent the next few hours at a waffle house,
watching the small North Carolina town wake up, eating waffles
and eggs, and obsessing over the day ahead, the questions
we'd ask, What would he be like in person? Would
we be able to answer the questions that he had
for us? It was an unexpected start to a unique day,
A rainy spring day, not human enough to be summer,
(09:06):
but it was clear it was going to downpour a minute.
I was nervous. I chewed up al my fingernails on
the way over. In the car.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Todd, how you doing and how are you feeling about Stephen.
That's my producer, Kate.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
I think it's gonna have to be a man to man.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
You look in my eyes. You know it's gonna be
kind of emotional. I know it.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
The things that I do, the things that I have
urged to do, is sometimes it just seems supernatural in
a way. It's just like I don't know really exactly
what drives it, but it sounds like you.
Speaker 6 (09:39):
Do a lot of like you kind of have that
presence for like living people too.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
I won't lie.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
My job is taking me through so many different cases
over the years, but this time the stakes were higher
than a Georgia mine. There's a weight on you when
you're trying to get someone answers. This was different than
finding someone's name. I was trying to figure out why
Steve's parents gave him up for adoption. It's traumatic. By then,
I'd work for name Us, but I'd come from the
(10:07):
Dough network, where investigating what was done in groups and
family members helped solve and brainstorm new ways to help
find the missing. It was a community effort. I look
for Steve, I could prove it to him. I did
care for you. You didn't know you were lost, but
I did, and now we would finally meet.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Today's kind of starts a journey for you.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
I've got butterflies now because I feel like I'm going
to meet somebody that has been a part.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Of my life for a long period of time.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Do you think he feels the same way I do?
And I feel like in some ways I take the
place of somebody's missing out of his life, and I
think in some ways he's taken the place of somebody's missing.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Out of my life.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
He would have been close to the age of my
brother that has passed away, So it's and I'm not
replacing somebody with another person, but it's kind of nice
to have somebody in that spot.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
You merge on to my south toward Gastonia.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
I knew ahead of time this might be a hard
conversation that Steve had some complicated feelings about his past,
about his biological mom in particular. He told me before
that she threw him away like a piece of garbage.
And I said, maybe she put Moses in a basket.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
You never know.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
I mean, it's I think she might have been trying
to save him and not just get rid of him.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
No, I have butterflos. We're getting there, ain't we. So
we got to our meeting place.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
We couldn't meet it Steve in his girlfriend's house because
they got these little dogs barking NonStop.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Kate went outside to get him. How long was I
driving here?
Speaker 4 (11:45):
Oh? Tenes?
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Okay, Oh yeah, we just got I stood in our
meeting room waiting for him to come in, my heart
jumping out of my chest. And when we finally met
face to face, it felt like a reunion. He was
exactly what I expected. He was about my height five seven,
wore a ball cap and a gray Vess glasses, salt
(12:11):
and pepper beer go tea kind of reminded me of
Kevin Bacon. We stood there face to face.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
For a beat.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Where have you been all my life? Man?
Speaker 3 (12:22):
We hugged and I could feel he was trembling. I
guess I kind of was too.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
You must be you're nervous.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
Yeah, don't be nervous.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
I can see your chin quivering. You're fine.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
We're good.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
I'm your big brother now, so you can do this.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
It's not gonna be easy.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
There's gonna be some tough moments in it.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
Steve, You're all right, Okay.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
He came with this girlfriend, Jeanette the meeting.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
Just I've been excited all week because he has just
been a savior for us. Had it not been for
you when you were going through what we were at
the time and not being able to find any help
or anyone that wants to And then Todd just like
came in and just like swooped us up, and you
(13:16):
have been our saviors. So I appreciate it. But I mean,
I know how much he does too. He's just not
a big talker.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
They met in high school, just like me and my wife.
They reconnected later in life. Steve became a stepfather to
Jeanette's kids.
Speaker 5 (13:36):
There's not very many men that would do that, and
he's really good to my kids.
Speaker 6 (13:43):
I'm thankful for that too. Sounds like you guys have
a really strong foundation.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
Sometimes I'm just kinda definitely not perfect, but it's perfect
for us.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Here he was Steve with the girlfriend and kids of
his own. I wondered why he waited decades to call me.
Why hadn't you wanted answers before? What was standing in
his way? According to his own DNA, Steve was a
Brandyburg part of an other whole tribe of people. He
knew nothing about a group that had a serial killer
(14:19):
circle him like a buzzard. But before we get to
all that, I wanted to know what it was like
to grow up as a Patterson.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
It wasn't anything different thanybody else. Just rode bikes and
played baseball and just grew up on.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Them short stopping outfield.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Steve was raised in North Carolina by his mom, Mary
stab Bob, and he has a sister named Tammy.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Steve came in with some baby photos.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
He's got this big head of blonde hair, and some
pictures even looks up my grandson. There's one where he's
laying on this fluffy carpet smiling right into the camera.
Speaker 6 (14:54):
Do you remember when this photo was taken?
Speaker 4 (14:57):
It was probably at Sears.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
We did the Seers.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
I think that's a It wasn't old as me.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
All town's southern thing. It's going to Seers to get
your pictures made.
Speaker 5 (15:06):
It's like all the machiness right here.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Yeah, this crunch, this little crunchy scrunched up smile. In
high school, he's a pretty good student, straight a's for
the most part. His parents raised him good.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
Don't lie don't steal. Definitely, don't steal. Definitely, don't steal.
There were a big time into that.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Well.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
I didn't steal anything, but I guess because I listened
to him. Be on time, be early.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
He took eight Stephen Jeanett were about thirty minutes early
to our meeting. Growing up, Steve really looked up to
his dad, Bob, my dad.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
He worked a lot. He worked out of town. He'd
be gone, you know, weeks at a time. And sometimes
when he worked in Raleigh, we'd go up there and
he ran a house and we'd all stay there for
weeks of time. He was a construction worker, a meal wright.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Growing up, no one ever talked about Steve's adoption.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
I didn't know for sure, but I knew in the
back of my mind. I mean, it was never brought up. Never.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Then there was this one important day. He was a
teenager by then, and he was prowling around in his parents' bedroom.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
I was running through the closet one day, just just
sleeping around, looking for guns, probably to go out shoot.
Was nobody there, and I found this packet, this manilla envelope,
and it had it had that I was adopted.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
He had to open the envelope to see.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
No, it was writing inside that said that. It said
that was adopted and I had my real name. My
name was Philip Stephen Brandenburg. And I read it that
day and didn't think about it until all this came out.
I mean, it never dawned on Melbourne. I wasn't interested
in finding then you know, here's Kate again.
Speaker 5 (17:03):
And did you feel if you're holding a secret in
after you found out?
Speaker 4 (17:08):
Just one? In my life?
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Steve didn't confront Mary and Bob. He just tucked away
the m blow.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Now.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
I didn't want to upset my mom and dad asking
him who my real mom and dad is, because I
thought maybe that would upset them, you know what I mean.
I didn't want to undermine them.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
He was worried that had been salted.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
I didn't want to roughly feathered hurt any feelings, if
that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
But as he settled in the middle age, it was
harder and harder to keep the Manila and bloke tucked away.
Life started to creep up on him. I know that feeling.
You start to enter your forties and fifties and there
are these questions you start to have about your own life.
Who you are where you came from.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Maybe it was now that I'm older, I'd like to
find out who I am. I kind of want to
know who my mom and dad were to see, you know,
for health reasons, for personality reasons, just to find out
where I came from.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
And then he came face to face with it when
the only father he had ever known died. Now, I'm
not entirely sure why things were this way, but my
guess is it's equal parts Bob and Steve. Steve's not
the kind of guy to push for answers. Maybe Bob
didn't want him to ask. It's not like Steve's a stranger.
When the family raised him, he sees it's mom Mary
(18:27):
a Ton. Jeanette considers her as her own mama. They're
that close.
Speaker 5 (18:32):
Mary is just as much my mom as you know,
I lost my mom about seven years ago, and so
having Mary in my life, I definitely think that you
choose your family. I don't think you're born into it.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
She and Steve had been learning about Steve's past. Jeanette's
been like a little family carrier pigeon.
Speaker 5 (18:53):
I feel like I'm kind of the go between between
him and his mom. So he asked me the question,
and she answers, and then I just kind of relay
back and forth on everything, not just the story.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
When I sit down with Steve and his family to
ask questions about his past, they were so open to me,
so matter of fact. Maybe because I'm a stranger. This
wouldn't be the first time or last time I'd encountered
this a family that was so open to tell me
secrets that they couldn't tell each other. So around here
in the South, there are some things you just don't
talk about, some things you don't question, not out loud anyway.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
I think Steve's origin story is one of them. Or
was things changed when Steve's dad died.
Speaker 5 (19:39):
I think if his died hide and passed away, then
he wouldn't it wouldn't have even come up.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
I could see how Steve and Jeanette get along. They're
both as sweet as can be, but they're also kind
of opposites. Steve's more reserved on Jeanette pushes for answers.
She's a little more assertive. Put it this way, Steve
didn't have the gumption to ask his mom about his adoption.
He sure didn't mind of Jeanette. Then the way Stephen
Jeanette remembering they were all hanging out of his family
(20:07):
after the funeral. They were at a church. Here in
the South, you either do the funeral at the church
or go to the church afterwards for a meal. It's
never super fancy, but you go to spend the time
with the loved ones and begin a new life with
someone missing from it. They're all hanging out eating chicken,
pop pie, green beans, veggies. When Jeanette brought it up, and.
Speaker 5 (20:27):
We were just talking in general, and I just said,
you know, Steve is a little curious about who his
birth parents are.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
And his mother Mary took a moment, collected herself and
said something she had known for half a century but
never said out loud.
Speaker 6 (20:43):
My husband said he's ours to leave it alone. That's
the way he felt about it. And after he died,
did not watch Steve. Do you want to know the truth?
Jeanette said, yeah, he's been waiting to hear the truth.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
What did she tell you?
Speaker 5 (21:00):
My name, which was the Phillip Stephen Brandenburg, And at
that time she didn't give me anything else. Really, it
was just a name, and that's what we started with.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
She didn't have a ton of emotion when she said it,
She just said it. It came out so easy, as
if Mary had been waiting all alone to tell Steve
his real name was Philip Stephen Brandenburgh. I think it
was a combination of three things that day. One Mary
was realizing she had a new normal now, one without
her husband Bob. Two steve simmering curiosity, and three Jeanette's bravery.
(21:42):
Three people all had to be at this particular place
in their lives to finally have this conversation almost half
a century later. Nobody at the funeral knew what was
coming next, certainly not Mary.
Speaker 5 (21:57):
I'm not sure that she knew that all of this
big story, you know, was going to come out of this.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
I don't think so.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
But later that night, Steve finally did the thing he
could have done years ago. He got on his phone
and googled his original name, and.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
That's when the bomb exploded.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
And just like that, he found his own page on
the Dough Network, posted online by a group of citizens
sleuth volunteers. That page lifts him a baby as missing,
it endangered, maybe dead. It had become clear at one
point in his life, very early on, Steve was at
a fork in the road. Of course, he didn't know
it was a fork. He was only a baby. Mary
(22:40):
had been through a lot by the time she met Steve.
As it turns out, so it a the first time
she saw and Mary decided to take Steve home right
then and there. That's next the story of Steve's unusual adoption.
Mary Patterson is tougher than woodpick her lips. She's super gruff.
Sometimes i'd ask her a question, she'd just look at me, like,
(23:02):
are you sure you want to ask me that. Nowadays
she drives a school bus in North Carolina, and I
gotta say, I'd hate to be the kid that pissed
her off. You kind of have to work for Mary's love.
But once you got it, you got it. The first
thing she told us that she was married almost fifty
years to Bob Patterson. They met on a blind date.
Speaker 6 (23:22):
Double date. No, that's been too long ago, as almost
fifty years ago.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Like I said, she'll tell you when she thinks it's
a silly question. In nineteen seventy four, she was pregnant
with a girl, Mary Michelle, but she lost the baby.
It was the second time a baby of hers had died.
Right after they were born.
Speaker 6 (23:44):
Five and a half months. As far as I could
go with these, one of they were born alive, one
lived three hours, one lived to hoower. That must have
been really hard for you, it was, And I've got
to see the want of the doctress. Wouldn't let me see.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
Her health and well being, particularly or somebody just lost
a baby, was dismissed outright. No one ever asked her
what she needed in that moment. As you can imagine,
it was an emotionally painful experience. It reminds me a
lot of my mom and her experience with my siblings
who died much too soon. It's the kind of thing
that just doesn't leave you.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
You live with it.
Speaker 6 (24:18):
My daughter said he'd be best fight in Sel, and
I think that's wrong. That is wrong.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
When she was at the hospital, she recognized somebody she knew,
Sandy Brandenburgh, who said a few missions away from her
at the garment factory, Mary was a seamstress third in
nineteen seventy four. Both women were pregnant at the same time.
Speaker 6 (24:42):
She was a beautiful woman when she was young, beautiful,
little short, peteep little lady. Oh, she was beautiful.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
You wouldn't say they were friends, but they chatted like coworkers.
Speaker 6 (24:53):
I wasn't wild, but she was. She liked mem and
drugs and now call. She wasn't in that scene. I
ain't never smoke that, I don't drink. I try not
to cuss, but sometimes it comes out.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
This wasn't really a coincidence. Running into someone you knew
in a small North Carolina town in the seventies. Mary
recognized her, but wasn't really in a state to engage.
She'd just lost her baby, plus, she says, she'd been
heavily medicated. As far as she remembers, she didn't even
talk to Sandy in the hospital. After that, Mary says
(25:28):
she went on with her life, went on to her
husband and a two bedroom, single wide trailer where they lived.
She tried to recover. Then about six weeks later, one
of her friends read a LORI call. She also knew Sandy,
and said Sandy needed help. She needed someone to come
and adopt her children. She couldn't take care of them.
Rita since passed away, so I couldn't confirm it with her.
(25:52):
This is how Mary remembers it. It's been fifty years,
so you might want to take it with a grain
of salt or a spoonful of sugar. What Mary remembers
is that she showed up to a trailer park with
her husband Bob, and saw these four little kids. The
youngest was six weeks old, The oldest might have been
in kindergarten.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Mary wasn't really prepared for what she saw next.
Speaker 6 (26:14):
That had never been potty trained, None of them had.
When I went in that trailer, there was feces all
over the place. They just peed wherever they wanted to
pee because she hadn't trained them. They were kind did
go from trailer trailer baging for food every day, and
that's said. She wanted me to take all four of them,
(26:37):
and I wouldn't tell them. I couldn't because I didn't
have a two bedroom trail.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
But her eyes were fixed on the infant Philip Stephen Brandenburgen.
Speaker 6 (26:45):
If you'd have seen him, you'd morna know, you'd know one.
He was pitiful, maggot's in his pants and his diaper
was stuck slammed to him. Bob's grandma, maul Mary Quinn
stood over him and washed him, and tears running all
down her on him. She said, this bitch ought to
be killed.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
It was a horrifying situation. She walked out of the
trailer with Steve and tried to nurse him back to Hell.
Months later, Mary said that Sandy needed to sign paperwork
saying she was given Steve away. Mary and Bob broke
the law by taking him back. Then in North Carolina,
(27:27):
there was a rule that babies had to be adopted
into a different county than they were born. He created
a separation between birth families and the folks who adopted
a child. Mary kept him a secret for two years
and then went before the court.
Speaker 6 (27:41):
We went through Gaston County and they came in, checked
house out and qualified us, and we adopted him.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
And after that life went on. She raised Steve and
finally had the child she had been longing for. You
can tell by the way she talks about Steve. She's
just crazy about him.
Speaker 6 (28:00):
Chose him. If he hadn't been born, I wouldn't have
got him. I couldn't love him anymore if he is
mine or not. Just love him is all you can do.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
They live real close to each other, talk on the
phone and text all the time. As Steve grow older,
she never brought up the adoption, not because of the
rough condition of the trailer park, or even her own pregnancies,
but because he just never asked. Instead, she focused on
giving Steve the best life he could possibly have.
Speaker 6 (28:32):
He had them hard metal, tonk of toys and all
them good ones, roach scrapers and all kind of toys.
We took him to all kinds of museums while he's
growing up. If my husband was working in Raleigh, we
went to every museum down there.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
After she picked up Steve, Mary never saw Sandy again.
Speaker 6 (28:51):
I don't think she even you realized she had given
them to me. I really don't, because she was out
there and law Alan.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
She suspects Sandy was drinking and on drugs. But Mary
I also knew something Steve didn't. She knew Sandy, and
based on her experience, Mary wasn't sure if Sandy would
even be a comfort to Steve.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
He wanted answers and she might not have him.
Speaker 6 (29:15):
I don't think she really remembers, be honest with you,
I don't think she remembers what went on.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
In her own way, Mary might have wanted to protect
Steve from the heartbreak that might come from knowing.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
His own mother.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
There was a million ways that Sandy might break his heart.
So while Mary knew all along about Sandy, she said nothing.
Speaker 5 (29:34):
So all these years later, like, how do you feel
about this woman?
Speaker 6 (29:38):
I don't hate her. God says forgive and forget, you know,
and she brought him into my love.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
So be it.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
What.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Steve didn't know his biological mom and sisters were all living.
Just one stayed over about six hours by car a
day trip. I had to understand her side of the story,
how she'd come into this weird adopt and if she
ever looked for her son again. Once Stephen Janette started
(30:10):
learning about Steve's past, it was hard to stop. That's
the nature of Internet rabbit holes. There's always one more
thing to read. In their searches, Stephen Janette realized Steve
had siblings, siblings whose fate were much worse than Steve's.
Some of them are forced to go on the run,
changed their names. Some of the end up being raised
(30:31):
by their mother, and others would never see her again.
And there was one name that kept showing up in
their search. Franklin Floyd, the man sitting on death row
into Florida prison. He was the serial killer. Floyd was
a man I contact you back in two thousand and
four when I was looking for Steve Stephen Jeanette didn't
understand how, but Floyd was linked to the family in
(30:53):
some way. Google just kept suggesting his name.
Speaker 5 (30:57):
It was just kind of unbelievable, like like we didn't
even know. I don't there were really not even words.
It was just like shock and confusion. I guess a
little confused worried, you know, because I didn't know what
all he was about to start going through.
Speaker 6 (31:16):
But it worried me.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
A little bit.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
It was enough that Steve found out he was adopted
in his original family for strangers doing it was another
thing that he found his own missing person's page, but
to be linked to a serial killer, it was.
Speaker 6 (31:36):
A very big deal.
Speaker 5 (31:38):
You know, you're adopted and you think you're going to
find your parents. You don't think you're going to have
all this that comes along with it. It was emotional.
I'm emotional anyway, so.
Speaker 6 (31:51):
Yes, I can't help it.
Speaker 5 (31:54):
But I was very worried, because you know, it changes
a person when you find out so many crazy things.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
This killer, Franklin Floyd didn't just cross past with the
family for the blink of an eye. It was longer
than that. He was married to Sandy Brandenburg, Steve's original mother.
Next time on Hello John Doe.
Speaker 7 (32:19):
So, I was in Charlotte and that's where I met
Franklin Floyd, but I knew him as Brandon Williams. And
he said that he would help me get the kids.
He would go with me to get the kids, and
everything would be all right. Now that I look back,
I was so stupid and so naive.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
He's creepy.
Speaker 7 (32:42):
He was always creepy.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Hello John Doe is an original productions by Revelations Entertainment
in association with First and Last Productions from Revelations. Our
executive producers are Morgan Freeman and James Younger. From First
to Last. Lindsay Moreno is the executive producer. Our producing
partner is Neo on Hume Media. It was written and
produced by Kate Michigan. Our editor is Katherine Saint Louis.
(33:10):
She is also nil on Home Media's executive editor. Our
executive producer is Sharah Morris. Our development producer is Ian Lindsay.
Our associate producer is Rufaro Faith Maserua. Sound design and
mixing by Scott Summerville. Theme and original music composed by
Jesse Pearlstein. Additional music came from Epidemic Sound and Blue
Dot Sessions. Frendall Faulton is our fact checker. Our production
(33:33):
manager is Samantha Allison from my Heart Media. Dylan Fagan
is our executive producer.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Special thanks to.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Adelia Ruben at NEI on Hum and Carrie Lieberman and
Will Pearson at iHeartMedia. I'm Todd Matthews. You can learn
more about name us at NamUs dot com. The number
for the National Center for Missing Exploited Children's Call Center
is one eight hundredth the loss that's one eight hundred
eight four three five six seven eight. The National Section
(34:00):
Soil Potline from the Rate of Use and Incest National
Network is one eight hundred sixty five six four six
seventy three. Okay, guys, this is the end of the show.
If you didn't like it, don't do anything. But if
you did like it, you make sure that you rate
and review the show. It helps more people to find
it and hear this wonderful story. Thanks again for listening.
Previously on Hello John Doe.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
So we had the missing person case and name of
says phill at Brandenburg.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
Nobody knew if this missing infant was a live or dead.
The FBI had no paperwork on him, but I didn't
want to give up on looking for him. For fifteen years,
I continue my work investigating missing and unidentified people with
the Department of Justice, but I always wondered about the
fate of those missing voice until one day in twenty nineteen,
(00:30):
a man called me claiming that he was actually one
of them.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
And I told him I slept in our conversation. I said,
you don't have to believe this. I said, I don't
blame you if you don't believe it, because this sounds crazy.
And I started explaining. He took the time to listen.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
He said he was a missing infant.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
But now had to figure out if this was actually true,
and if so, how on earth had he gotten away
from a serial killer. After that phone call in twenty nineteen,
I had to prove that this man was actually who
he said he was. I have my work cut out
for me. The man who'd called went by the name
(01:09):
Steve Patterson, and it grown up in Charyble, North Carolina,
not so far away from me. But the person he
thought he was, the guy with the profile on the
DOE network, that was Philip Stephen Brandenburgh. He had last
been seen in Texas, not North Carolina. Could these two
be one and the same. I hoped in my heart
he was, but there's good reason to be skeptical. I
(01:32):
called up my friend Mike Nance, my coworker from NAMOS,
that's the national database run by the federal government. I
asked Mike to put step into NAMOS because it might
help match him with the person that he thought he was.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Throughout my tenure with NAMOS that we've had similar situations where,
for whatever reason, someone has contacted NamUs as an adult,
believing that they are a missing child from some agency,
some jurisdiction. So I don't know why if they believe that.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
I totally get that those of us in this business
have all hit dead ends, or rather we've hit the
wrong ends. We're all chasing hope that sometimes gets us nowhere.
You exam a body that ends up being the wrong person.
Someone vanishes and has never found Disk on the phone
who said he was a Brandenburg could have been the
same type of situation. He might be a liar who knows,
(02:27):
or maybe he had it all wrong and he was
another missing person, not the Brandenburg infant that I thought.
I've been exposed to my fair share of heartbreaking this
line of work, but you know what, I've also been
in situations where hope one out where the impossible happened,
even though it had no business going that way. So
I chose to focus on what seems unbelievable but possible.
(02:49):
For twenty years, I've been wondering if the Brandenburg infant
was alive or dead. Mike and I could wonder all
we wanted, but nothing would be more final than a
DNA test, and Steve was down to take it. Steve,
the guy who claimed you was still at Brandenburg, was
a little surprised at where he had to go for
the DNA.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
Swap, the Cherito Police Department, of all places.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
I mean, it's not every day goes to hang out
at the local police department.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
It was kind of funny because the guy that gave
it to me is like, this is the first time
I've ever done this. I'm like same here, I said,
I guess we're both gon be the first time and
gave a DNA test and the first time I've ever
taken one. We laughed about it. He just swapped it
around in my mouth and put it in this little pack.
(03:37):
I think he said it was going to send it
to Texas.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Yeah, the University of North Texas processed it. That's where
NAMES was located at the time. It's where all the
DNA went. We all waited several months, seemed like years.
Steve and I had all these phone conversations around that time.
They were used the kind of short Steve wasn't a
big talker like me. I was introducing him to tools
like ancestor dot Com, showing him what all was possible.
(04:08):
I didn't really know it then, but Steve had taking
a liking to me. I think it had something to
do with the fact that I'd taken the time to
search for the missing Brandenburg infant for years. If you
ask me, I think Steve has always had a feeling
of not being wanting. He felt like he'd been thrown away. Well,
we waited for the DNA tests come back. It dawned
on me that if this guy wasn't Philip Brandenburg, I'd
(04:31):
be devastating. But I already made up my mind that
even if he wasn't, I still wanted to help this guy,
whoever the hell he was always taking any astray anyway.
Then one day my nance gave me the definitive phone call.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
We were able to make the familial identification and determined
that yes, this is Philip Brandenburgh.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Steve Patterson was Philip Stephen Brandenburg, this once non existent
person somehow alive.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
He's really a real person and he was really born.
And it was just such an amazing feeling. Just so
many different dynamics that go into these cases, and you
just wonder what's going to be the next chapter and
this incredible story of this family.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
I'd waited almost twenty years for him to find my
message in a bottle. Even Mike, the season detective that
he is, was shocked.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
I guess you just have to understand maybe the mindset
of the homeleside detective, because you see stuff every day
that you think, you know, this is the craziest thing
I've ever seen, and this possibly can't can't be true,
But then you do your investigation, and sure enough it's true.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
That for the man in the center of it, It
wasn't a surprise at all.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
I knew the whole time, just in my mind, in
my heart, I knew that the Tesla will come back positive.
Was no doubt about it.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
You blew their minds, Yeah did You wasn't supposed to
be here, but you were.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
This baby somehow escaped the grasp of Franklin Floyd, the
serial killer. So how did he do it? How did
he get away? I knew the answer had to be
in his name. Stephen was born a brandy Bird but
ended up as a Patterson. That's because he was adopted
(06:23):
before he could even crawl or speak. It was an
informal adoption that seems to have taken place in a
trailer part without the usual paperwork, so formally connecting him
to his birth mother would take some serious detective work.
My name is Todd Matthews and this is Hello John Doe,
(06:43):
A sleuth, a family, and a serial killer.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
The story of a.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Family torn apart by a tragedy and my quest to
bring them back together. Chapter two, An unusual Adoption. Once
I figured out Steve Patterson was Philip Stephen Brandenburg, I
had a ton of questions, like how did he get adopted.
Why I had no one ever found him? And why
(07:07):
did his biological parents give him up in the first place?
Safe to say, he had a big question too.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
I want to let him my real mama dad word.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
It's not like there's a box of bones to hand
to someone the way there is when you idde a
dead body and find the family. A DNA test isn't
a bar code. You can't just scan it and name
pops out. It's a lot more complicated. The DNA test
would tell us who he might match to genetically, but
we had to go looking for Steve's biological family too.
Here's some old fashioned reporting. We had to do it together.
(07:40):
Part of the reason he trusted me is because I've
been searching for him all along.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
I think it's neat. I think it's cool somebody was.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Looking his girlfriend Janet O'Connor. What should I all go down.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
He feels that you've been a blessing in his life.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
But we couldn't go out into the world and get
answers immediately. There was a lot that had to line
up for us to meet each other first. The pandemic
lockdowns kept us apart for a really long time. On
the phone I tried to help him find some initial
answers about who he was, but there was a lot
I wanted to wait on until we could meet in person,
talk man to man. So the week of Memorial Day weekend,
(08:18):
almost four years after he first called, I finally made
the trip. I flew from Knoxville to Charlotte and met
my producer, Kate Michigan. We rented a car to meet
Steph near his hometown, about an hour west of Charlotte's.
So to complicate things even more, our hotel in Charlotte
had a water main late and kicked us out at
(08:38):
four am.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
What a nightmare.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
We spent the next few hours at a waffle house,
watching the small North Carolina town wake up, eating waffles
and eggs, and obsessing over the day ahead, the questions
we'd ask, What would he be like in person? Would
we be able to answer the questions that he had
for us? It was an unexpected start to a unique day,
A rainy spring day, not human enough to be summer,
(09:06):
but it was clear it was going to downpour a minute.
I was nervous. I chewed up al my fingernails on
the way over. In the car.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Todd, how you doing and how are you feeling about Stephen.
That's my producer, Kate.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
I think it's gonna have to be a man to man.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
You look in my eyes. You know it's gonna be
kind of emotional. I know it.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
The things that I do, the things that I have
urged to do, is sometimes it just seems supernatural in
a way. It's just like I don't know really exactly
what drives it, but it sounds like you.
Speaker 6 (09:39):
Do a lot of like you kind of have that
presence for like living people too.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
I won't lie.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
My job is taking me through so many different cases
over the years, but this time the stakes were higher
than a Georgia mine. There's a weight on you when
you're trying to get someone answers. This was different than
finding someone's name. I was trying to figure out why
Steve's parents gave him up for adoption. It's traumatic. By then,
I'd work for name Us, but I'd come from the
(10:07):
Dough network, where investigating what was done in groups and
family members helped solve and brainstorm new ways to help
find the missing. It was a community effort. I look
for Steve, I could prove it to him. I did
care for you. You didn't know you were lost, but
I did, and now we would finally meet.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Today's kind of starts a journey for you.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
I've got butterflies now because I feel like I'm going
to meet somebody that has been a part.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Of my life for a long period of time.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Do you think he feels the same way I do?
And I feel like in some ways I take the
place of somebody's missing out of his life, and I
think in some ways he's taken the place of somebody's missing.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Out of my life.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
He would have been close to the age of my
brother that has passed away, So it's and I'm not
replacing somebody with another person, but it's kind of nice
to have somebody in that spot.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
You merge on to my south toward Gastonia.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
I knew ahead of time this might be a hard
conversation that Steve had some complicated feelings about his past,
about his biological mom in particular. He told me before
that she threw him away like a piece of garbage.
And I said, maybe she put Moses in a basket.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
You never know.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
I mean, it's I think she might have been trying
to save him and not just get rid of him.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
No, I have butterflos. We're getting there, ain't we. So
we got to our meeting place.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
We couldn't meet it Steve in his girlfriend's house because
they got these little dogs barking NonStop.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Kate went outside to get him. How long was I
driving here?
Speaker 4 (11:45):
Oh? Tenes?
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Okay, Oh yeah, we just got I stood in our
meeting room waiting for him to come in, my heart
jumping out of my chest. And when we finally met
face to face, it felt like a reunion. He was
exactly what I expected. He was about my height five seven,
wore a ball cap and a gray Vess glasses, salt
(12:11):
and pepper beer go tea kind of reminded me of
Kevin Bacon. We stood there face to face.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
For a beat.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Where have you been all my life? Man?
Speaker 3 (12:22):
We hugged and I could feel he was trembling. I
guess I kind of was too.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
You must be you're nervous.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
Yeah, don't be nervous.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
I can see your chin quivering. You're fine.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
We're good.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
I'm your big brother now, so you can do this.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
It's not gonna be easy.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
There's gonna be some tough moments in it.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
Steve, You're all right, Okay.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
He came with this girlfriend, Jeanette the meeting.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
Just I've been excited all week because he has just
been a savior for us. Had it not been for
you when you were going through what we were at
the time and not being able to find any help
or anyone that wants to And then Todd just like
came in and just like swooped us up, and you
(13:16):
have been our saviors. So I appreciate it. But I mean,
I know how much he does too. He's just not
a big talker.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
They met in high school, just like me and my wife.
They reconnected later in life. Steve became a stepfather to
Jeanette's kids.
Speaker 5 (13:36):
There's not very many men that would do that, and
he's really good to my kids.
Speaker 6 (13:43):
I'm thankful for that too. Sounds like you guys have
a really strong foundation.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
Sometimes I'm just kinda definitely not perfect, but it's perfect
for us.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Here he was Steve with the girlfriend and kids of
his own. I wondered why he waited decades to call me.
Why hadn't you wanted answers before? What was standing in
his way? According to his own DNA, Steve was a
Brandyburg part of an other whole tribe of people. He
knew nothing about a group that had a serial killer
(14:19):
circle him like a buzzard. But before we get to
all that, I wanted to know what it was like
to grow up as a Patterson.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
It wasn't anything different thanybody else. Just rode bikes and
played baseball and just grew up on.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Them short stopping outfield.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Steve was raised in North Carolina by his mom, Mary
stab Bob, and he has a sister named Tammy.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Steve came in with some baby photos.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
He's got this big head of blonde hair, and some
pictures even looks up my grandson. There's one where he's
laying on this fluffy carpet smiling right into the camera.
Speaker 6 (14:54):
Do you remember when this photo was taken?
Speaker 4 (14:57):
It was probably at Sears.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
We did the Seers.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
I think that's a It wasn't old as me.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
All town's southern thing. It's going to Seers to get
your pictures made.
Speaker 5 (15:06):
It's like all the machiness right here.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Yeah, this crunch, this little crunchy scrunched up smile. In
high school, he's a pretty good student, straight a's for
the most part. His parents raised him good.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
Don't lie don't steal. Definitely, don't steal. Definitely, don't steal.
There were a big time into that.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Well.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
I didn't steal anything, but I guess because I listened
to him. Be on time, be early.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
He took eight Stephen Jeanett were about thirty minutes early
to our meeting. Growing up, Steve really looked up to
his dad, Bob, my dad.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
He worked a lot. He worked out of town. He'd
be gone, you know, weeks at a time. And sometimes
when he worked in Raleigh, we'd go up there and
he ran a house and we'd all stay there for
weeks of time. He was a construction worker, a meal wright.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Growing up, no one ever talked about Steve's adoption.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
I didn't know for sure, but I knew in the
back of my mind. I mean, it was never brought up. Never.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Then there was this one important day. He was a
teenager by then, and he was prowling around in his parents' bedroom.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
I was running through the closet one day, just just
sleeping around, looking for guns, probably to go out shoot.
Was nobody there, and I found this packet, this manilla envelope,
and it had it had that I was adopted.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
He had to open the envelope to see.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
No, it was writing inside that said that. It said
that was adopted and I had my real name. My
name was Philip Stephen Brandenburg. And I read it that
day and didn't think about it until all this came out.
I mean, it never dawned on Melbourne. I wasn't interested
in finding then you know, here's Kate again.
Speaker 5 (17:03):
And did you feel if you're holding a secret in
after you found out?
Speaker 4 (17:08):
Just one? In my life?
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Steve didn't confront Mary and Bob. He just tucked away
the m blow.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Now.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
I didn't want to upset my mom and dad asking
him who my real mom and dad is, because I
thought maybe that would upset them, you know what I mean.
I didn't want to undermine them.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
He was worried that had been salted.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
I didn't want to roughly feathered hurt any feelings, if
that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
But as he settled in the middle age, it was
harder and harder to keep the Manila and bloke tucked away.
Life started to creep up on him. I know that feeling.
You start to enter your forties and fifties and there
are these questions you start to have about your own life.
Who you are where you came from.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Maybe it was now that I'm older, I'd like to
find out who I am. I kind of want to
know who my mom and dad were to see, you know,
for health reasons, for personality reasons, just to find out
where I came from.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
And then he came face to face with it when
the only father he had ever known died. Now, I'm
not entirely sure why things were this way, but my
guess is it's equal parts Bob and Steve. Steve's not
the kind of guy to push for answers. Maybe Bob
didn't want him to ask. It's not like Steve's a stranger.
When the family raised him, he sees it's mom Mary
(18:27):
a Ton. Jeanette considers her as her own mama. They're
that close.
Speaker 5 (18:32):
Mary is just as much my mom as you know,
I lost my mom about seven years ago, and so
having Mary in my life, I definitely think that you
choose your family. I don't think you're born into it.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
She and Steve had been learning about Steve's past. Jeanette's
been like a little family carrier pigeon.
Speaker 5 (18:53):
I feel like I'm kind of the go between between
him and his mom. So he asked me the question,
and she answers, and then I just kind of relay
back and forth on everything, not just the story.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
When I sit down with Steve and his family to
ask questions about his past, they were so open to me,
so matter of fact. Maybe because I'm a stranger. This
wouldn't be the first time or last time I'd encountered
this a family that was so open to tell me
secrets that they couldn't tell each other. So around here
in the South, there are some things you just don't
talk about, some things you don't question, not out loud anyway.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
I think Steve's origin story is one of them. Or
was things changed when Steve's dad died.
Speaker 5 (19:39):
I think if his died hide and passed away, then
he wouldn't it wouldn't have even come up.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
I could see how Steve and Jeanette get along. They're
both as sweet as can be, but they're also kind
of opposites. Steve's more reserved on Jeanette pushes for answers.
She's a little more assertive. Put it this way, Steve
didn't have the gumption to ask his mom about his adoption.
He sure didn't mind of Jeanette. Then the way Stephen
Jeanette remembering they were all hanging out of his family
(20:07):
after the funeral. They were at a church. Here in
the South, you either do the funeral at the church
or go to the church afterwards for a meal. It's
never super fancy, but you go to spend the time
with the loved ones and begin a new life with
someone missing from it. They're all hanging out eating chicken,
pop pie, green beans, veggies. When Jeanette brought it up, and.
Speaker 5 (20:27):
We were just talking in general, and I just said,
you know, Steve is a little curious about who his
birth parents are.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
And his mother Mary took a moment, collected herself and
said something she had known for half a century but
never said out loud.
Speaker 6 (20:43):
My husband said he's ours to leave it alone. That's
the way he felt about it. And after he died,
did not watch Steve. Do you want to know the truth?
Jeanette said, yeah, he's been waiting to hear the truth.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
What did she tell you?
Speaker 5 (21:00):
My name, which was the Phillip Stephen Brandenburg, And at
that time she didn't give me anything else. Really, it
was just a name, and that's what we started with.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
She didn't have a ton of emotion when she said it,
She just said it. It came out so easy, as
if Mary had been waiting all alone to tell Steve
his real name was Philip Stephen Brandenburgh. I think it
was a combination of three things that day. One Mary
was realizing she had a new normal now, one without
her husband Bob. Two steve simmering curiosity, and three Jeanette's bravery.
(21:42):
Three people all had to be at this particular place
in their lives to finally have this conversation almost half
a century later. Nobody at the funeral knew what was
coming next, certainly not Mary.
Speaker 5 (21:57):
I'm not sure that she knew that all of this
big story, you know, was going to come out of this.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
I don't think so.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
But later that night, Steve finally did the thing he
could have done years ago. He got on his phone
and googled his original name, and.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
That's when the bomb exploded.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
And just like that, he found his own page on
the Dough Network, posted online by a group of citizens
sleuth volunteers. That page lifts him a baby as missing,
it endangered, maybe dead. It had become clear at one
point in his life, very early on, Steve was at
a fork in the road. Of course, he didn't know
it was a fork. He was only a baby. Mary
(22:40):
had been through a lot by the time she met Steve.
As it turns out, so it a the first time
she saw and Mary decided to take Steve home right
then and there. That's next the story of Steve's unusual adoption.
Mary Patterson is tougher than woodpick her lips. She's super gruff.
Sometimes i'd ask her a question, she'd just look at me, like,
(23:02):
are you sure you want to ask me that. Nowadays
she drives a school bus in North Carolina, and I
gotta say, I'd hate to be the kid that pissed
her off. You kind of have to work for Mary's love.
But once you got it, you got it. The first
thing she told us that she was married almost fifty
years to Bob Patterson. They met on a blind date.
Speaker 6 (23:22):
Double date. No, that's been too long ago, as almost
fifty years ago.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Like I said, she'll tell you when she thinks it's
a silly question. In nineteen seventy four, she was pregnant
with a girl, Mary Michelle, but she lost the baby.
It was the second time a baby of hers had died.
Right after they were born.
Speaker 6 (23:44):
Five and a half months. As far as I could
go with these, one of they were born alive, one
lived three hours, one lived to hoower. That must have
been really hard for you, it was, And I've got
to see the want of the doctress. Wouldn't let me see.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
Her health and well being, particularly or somebody just lost
a baby, was dismissed outright. No one ever asked her
what she needed in that moment. As you can imagine,
it was an emotionally painful experience. It reminds me a
lot of my mom and her experience with my siblings
who died much too soon. It's the kind of thing
that just doesn't leave you.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
You live with it.
Speaker 6 (24:18):
My daughter said he'd be best fight in Sel, and
I think that's wrong. That is wrong.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
When she was at the hospital, she recognized somebody she knew,
Sandy Brandenburgh, who said a few missions away from her
at the garment factory, Mary was a seamstress third in
nineteen seventy four. Both women were pregnant at the same time.
Speaker 6 (24:42):
She was a beautiful woman when she was young, beautiful,
little short, peteep little lady. Oh, she was beautiful.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
You wouldn't say they were friends, but they chatted like coworkers.
Speaker 6 (24:53):
I wasn't wild, but she was. She liked mem and
drugs and now call. She wasn't in that scene. I
ain't never smoke that, I don't drink. I try not
to cuss, but sometimes it comes out.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
This wasn't really a coincidence. Running into someone you knew
in a small North Carolina town in the seventies. Mary
recognized her, but wasn't really in a state to engage.
She'd just lost her baby, plus, she says, she'd been
heavily medicated. As far as she remembers, she didn't even
talk to Sandy in the hospital. After that, Mary says
(25:28):
she went on with her life, went on to her
husband and a two bedroom, single wide trailer where they lived.
She tried to recover. Then about six weeks later, one
of her friends read a LORI call. She also knew Sandy,
and said Sandy needed help. She needed someone to come
and adopt her children. She couldn't take care of them.
Rita since passed away, so I couldn't confirm it with her.
(25:52):
This is how Mary remembers it. It's been fifty years,
so you might want to take it with a grain
of salt or a spoonful of sugar. What Mary remembers
is that she showed up to a trailer park with
her husband Bob, and saw these four little kids. The
youngest was six weeks old, The oldest might have been
in kindergarten.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Mary wasn't really prepared for what she saw next.
Speaker 6 (26:14):
That had never been potty trained, None of them had.
When I went in that trailer, there was feces all
over the place. They just peed wherever they wanted to
pee because she hadn't trained them. They were kind did
go from trailer trailer baging for food every day, and
that's said. She wanted me to take all four of them,
(26:37):
and I wouldn't tell them. I couldn't because I didn't
have a two bedroom trail.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
But her eyes were fixed on the infant Philip Stephen Brandenburgen.
Speaker 6 (26:45):
If you'd have seen him, you'd morna know, you'd know one.
He was pitiful, maggot's in his pants and his diaper
was stuck slammed to him. Bob's grandma, maul Mary Quinn
stood over him and washed him, and tears running all
down her on him. She said, this bitch ought to
be killed.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
It was a horrifying situation. She walked out of the
trailer with Steve and tried to nurse him back to Hell.
Months later, Mary said that Sandy needed to sign paperwork
saying she was given Steve away. Mary and Bob broke
the law by taking him back. Then in North Carolina,
(27:27):
there was a rule that babies had to be adopted
into a different county than they were born. He created
a separation between birth families and the folks who adopted
a child. Mary kept him a secret for two years
and then went before the court.
Speaker 6 (27:41):
We went through Gaston County and they came in, checked
house out and qualified us, and we adopted him.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
And after that life went on. She raised Steve and
finally had the child she had been longing for. You
can tell by the way she talks about Steve. She's
just crazy about him.
Speaker 6 (28:00):
Chose him. If he hadn't been born, I wouldn't have
got him. I couldn't love him anymore if he is
mine or not. Just love him is all you can do.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
They live real close to each other, talk on the
phone and text all the time. As Steve grow older,
she never brought up the adoption, not because of the
rough condition of the trailer park, or even her own pregnancies,
but because he just never asked. Instead, she focused on
giving Steve the best life he could possibly have.
Speaker 6 (28:32):
He had them hard metal, tonk of toys and all
them good ones, roach scrapers and all kind of toys.
We took him to all kinds of museums while he's
growing up. If my husband was working in Raleigh, we
went to every museum down there.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
After she picked up Steve, Mary never saw Sandy again.
Speaker 6 (28:51):
I don't think she even you realized she had given
them to me. I really don't, because she was out
there and law Alan.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
She suspects Sandy was drinking and on drugs. But Mary
I also knew something Steve didn't. She knew Sandy, and
based on her experience, Mary wasn't sure if Sandy would
even be a comfort to Steve.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
He wanted answers and she might not have him.
Speaker 6 (29:15):
I don't think she really remembers, be honest with you,
I don't think she remembers what went on.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
In her own way, Mary might have wanted to protect
Steve from the heartbreak that might come from knowing.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
His own mother.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
There was a million ways that Sandy might break his heart.
So while Mary knew all along about Sandy, she said nothing.
Speaker 5 (29:34):
So all these years later, like, how do you feel
about this woman?
Speaker 6 (29:38):
I don't hate her. God says forgive and forget, you know,
and she brought him into my love.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
So be it.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
What.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Steve didn't know his biological mom and sisters were all living.
Just one stayed over about six hours by car a
day trip. I had to understand her side of the story,
how she'd come into this weird adopt and if she
ever looked for her son again. Once Stephen Janette started
(30:10):
learning about Steve's past, it was hard to stop. That's
the nature of Internet rabbit holes. There's always one more
thing to read. In their searches, Stephen Janette realized Steve
had siblings, siblings whose fate were much worse than Steve's.
Some of them are forced to go on the run,
changed their names. Some of the end up being raised
(30:31):
by their mother, and others would never see her again.
And there was one name that kept showing up in
their search. Franklin Floyd, the man sitting on death row
into Florida prison. He was the serial killer. Floyd was
a man I contact you back in two thousand and
four when I was looking for Steve Stephen Jeanette didn't
understand how, but Floyd was linked to the family in
(30:53):
some way. Google just kept suggesting his name.
Speaker 5 (30:57):
It was just kind of unbelievable, like like we didn't
even know. I don't there were really not even words.
It was just like shock and confusion. I guess a
little confused worried, you know, because I didn't know what
all he was about to start going through.
Speaker 6 (31:16):
But it worried me.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
A little bit.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
It was enough that Steve found out he was adopted
in his original family for strangers doing it was another
thing that he found his own missing person's page, but
to be linked to a serial killer, it was.
Speaker 6 (31:36):
A very big deal.
Speaker 5 (31:38):
You know, you're adopted and you think you're going to
find your parents. You don't think you're going to have
all this that comes along with it. It was emotional.
I'm emotional anyway, so.
Speaker 6 (31:51):
Yes, I can't help it.
Speaker 5 (31:54):
But I was very worried, because you know, it changes
a person when you find out so many crazy things.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
This killer, Franklin Floyd didn't just cross past with the
family for the blink of an eye. It was longer
than that. He was married to Sandy Brandenburg, Steve's original mother.
Next time on Hello John Doe.
Speaker 7 (32:19):
So, I was in Charlotte and that's where I met
Franklin Floyd, but I knew him as Brandon Williams. And
he said that he would help me get the kids.
He would go with me to get the kids, and
everything would be all right. Now that I look back,
I was so stupid and so naive.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
He's creepy.
Speaker 7 (32:42):
He was always creepy.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Hello John Doe is an original productions by Revelations Entertainment
in association with First and Last Productions from Revelations. Our
executive producers are Morgan Freeman and James Younger. From First
to Last. Lindsay Moreno is the executive producer. Our producing
partner is Neo on Hume Media. It was written and
produced by Kate Michigan. Our editor is Katherine Saint Louis.
(33:10):
She is also nil on Home Media's executive editor. Our
executive producer is Sharah Morris. Our development producer is Ian Lindsay.
Our associate producer is Rufaro Faith Maserua. Sound design and
mixing by Scott Summerville. Theme and original music composed by
Jesse Pearlstein. Additional music came from Epidemic Sound and Blue
Dot Sessions. Frendall Faulton is our fact checker. Our production
(33:33):
manager is Samantha Allison from my Heart Media. Dylan Fagan
is our executive producer.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Special thanks to.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Adelia Ruben at NEI on Hum and Carrie Lieberman and
Will Pearson at iHeartMedia. I'm Todd Matthews. You can learn
more about name us at NamUs dot com. The number
for the National Center for Missing Exploited Children's Call Center
is one eight hundredth the loss that's one eight hundred
eight four three five six seven eight. The National Section
(34:00):
Soil Potline from the Rate of Use and Incest National
Network is one eight hundred sixty five six four six
seventy three. Okay, guys, this is the end of the show.
If you didn't like it, don't do anything. But if
you did like it, you make sure that you rate
and review the show. It helps more people to find
it and hear this wonderful story. Thanks again for listening.
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