Original subtitles

NARRATOR: This program is about unsolved mysteries.

Whenever possible, the actual family members

and police officials have participated

in recreating the events.

What you are about to see is not a news broadcast.

ROBERT STACK: Imagine the vast arid deserts

of the American West flowering into a modern-day Garden

of Eden.

Incredible as it seems, a former rocket scientist

believes he has found a vast underground river

in Nevada that could create just such a transformation.

After World War II, a trusting Polish couple

sent their only son off to America with friends.

They had no idea that they would never see him again.

In Los Angeles, Ted Loseff, a prominent surgeon,

was found dead in his garage.

The police ruled suicide, but Ted's

mother's Zel was not convinced.

Disturbed by the odd behavior of Ted's wife,

Zel began to suspect that her son

had been targeted for murder.

Zel Loseff embarked on her own investigation, an investigation

that ultimately forced authorities

to reclassify her son's death.

Perhaps someone watching tonight will

have that one vital clue that can

help end Zel Loseff's odyssey. Join me.

Perhaps you may be able to help solve a mystery.

[theme music]

The doorbell rang at 10 o'clock at night,

and my daughter and her husband were at the door.

I was startled.

Company at 10?

But I took a look at their face, I knew I was

going to hear something awful.

[speaking hebrew]

ROBERT STACK: On February 25, 1974,

Zel Loseff of Los Angeles, California

sat lonely through the funeral of her only son, Ted.

Two days earlier, the 40-year-old orthopedic surgeon

had apparently taken his own life.

Zel was devastated.

In her grief, she could not have imagined what lay ahead,

an all-consuming 19-year investigation

into her son's death that would ultimately

force authorities to back down from the official finding

of suicide.

ZEL: Of all people in the world, Ted

was not one to take his life.

My son was murdered, definitely.

The night Ted Loseff died, police found a suicide note,

apparently written to his wife Wilda.

The note said simply, "All I ever

asked for was one moment of compassion and understanding."

Zel Loseff now believes the note was

a finishing touch in a plot to cover up the murder of her son.

Congratulations, Ted.

This is quite a set up.

Well, thanks a lot, Bob.

I'm very proud of it.

ROBERT STACK: Ted Loseff was already

a well respected surgeon when he moved his practice in 1971.

Come on back here.

I'll give you the quarter tour of--

ROBERT STACK: During a private reception at his new offices,

Ted was introduced to a nurse named Wilda Lloyd.

You know Dr. Ted Loseff.

- No. - No, we don't know.

This is Wilda Lloyd.

How are you?

It's a pleasure.

ROBERT STACK: Ted and Wilda were married less than a year later.

At Ted's insistence, Wilda signed a prenuptial agreement.

She would get no property if the marriage ended in divorce.

Within six months, that seemed increasingly likely.

TED: How many drinks have you had?

WILDA: What difference does it make?

Oh, I know, 50, 100, 200!

ZEL: She she had problems with alcohol, and it wasn't good.

I soon learned that the marriage was a marriage not of love.

Wilda would go into histrionics and scream

and yell and carry on.

The fighting was just awful.

It's not fair to throw that in my face.

I've gotta go out and earn a living--

ROBERT STACK: Apparently, the bitter arguing

plagued the marriage up until the day Ted Loseff died,

February 23, 1974.

Officer!

POLICEMAN: Just relax--

Officer, you have to help me.

My husband, he's got a gun.

ROBERT STACK: That evening at around 8:00 PM,

an anxious Wilda Loseff had called

police saying her husband was armed.

Officer, officer.

Listen, let's go inside.

May I have the keys?

ROBERT STACK: Waiting with Wilda were

Edward Jay, a family friend, and the Loseff's housekeeper.

POLICEMAN: Now, did you see the gun?

EDWARD: No-- Ted?

ROBERT STACK: Ted didn't answer, and there was no sign of him

anywhere in the house.

EDWARD: Hello?

Well, I don't know where he is, but he's definitely not here.

He usually parks outside the gates out there.

Yeah, we'll file a report.

Do you hear that?

[suspenseful music]

Around the side here.

EDWARD: Oh, no.

Ted!

POLICEMAN: Stay back.

[glass shattering]

[car engine humming]

Call an ambulance!

They found him in his car in the garage.

It had to be suicide.

It wasn't until a little later when

things began to become so suspicious

that I wondered about it.

The car was running, the victim was behind the wheel,

and this hose was in the tailpipe

and fed in through the window.

ROBERT STACK: To authorities on the scene,

the evidence of suicide was overwhelming

and there was no further investigation.

No fingerprints were taken, no autopsy was performed,

no questions were asked.

I looked for Ted in the house.

ROBERT STACK: In the days following Ted's death,

Zel and Wilda rarely spoke.

He was in the car.

ROBERT STACK: When they did finally meet face-to-face

in March of 1974, Zel was totally unprepared

for Wilda's behavior.

Zel had asked Wilda for a keepsake, a watch she had given

her son as a wedding present.

I know it must be hard to talk about.

I know you're worried about this.

Oh!

I wasn't worried about this.

Look, Zel, I didn't care about Ted the way you did.

I'm glad he's gone.

What?

ROBERT STACK: Wilda's harsh comments

had awakened unfocused suspicions in Zel,

and her grief was slowly overtaken by doubts.

She began to feel that something was not quite

right about the suicide scene.

Incredibly, Zel says the discrepancies finally

became clear to her in a dream.

She recalled that Ted had never parked his car in the garage.

ZEL: I saw a garage filled with lots and lots of boat

equipment, cartons of boxes.

And I realized I was at Ted's garage.

And I knew that to put his car there,

he'd have had to move the things that were in that garage.

Ted had back surgery.

It was impossible for him physically.

And then I saw the gates, these great big double old iron

gates.

ROBERT STACK: In her dream, Zel remembered

that the driveway gates were damaged and difficult to open.

Ted had always parked in front of the house.

To Zel, the implications of the dream were simple but stunning.

Someone had cleared out the garage

and pried open the gates.

The suicide had been staged, her son murdered in cold blood.

Zel's suspicions alone are not nearly enough to get

the case reopened.

Taking matters into her own hands,

she tracked down her son's former housekeeper.

Her account of Ted's last day would

confirm Zel's worst fears.

Hello.

Yes?

I'm Zel Loseff and I've been looking for the housekeeper

who worked for my son, Ted.

Oh, Mrs. Loseff.

ROBERT STACK: To protect her identity,

we'll will call the housekeeper Mary.

The following recreations are based

on her sworn testimony before a Los Angeles

County coroner's inquest.

Well, I was supposed to arrive at 8:30,

but I didn't get there until around 10:00.

And When I arrived, Dr. Loseff was in the kitchen.

Those darn gas lines.

Oh, that's OK.

I hope your wife isn't angry that I wasn't here earlier

She's not, uh, going to be around here anymore.

We had a little misunderstanding and, well, we're

going to be getting a divorce.

Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.

But around 2 o'clock, she came in.

She parked her car directly in front of the door

and then she went right upstairs.

WILDA: Mary!

MARY: And then a few minutes later I heard

all this screaming and yelling.

What in the world is going on?

Dr. Loseff, let her go!

(CRYING) Let go of my hand.

Here, you can have your money back!

Mary, he's got a gun.

I'm scared.

MARY: Do you have a gun, Dr. Loseff?

No. She's crazy.

Wilda!

Wilda!

And I said, if you want me to continue to work with you,

you'll have to talk to my husband.

So he paid me for my work, and I got in my car

and I drove down the street, and there was Mrs. Loseff.

Mrs. Loseff, what are you doing?

Oh my God, Mary. What am I gonna do?

I can't go back there.

MARY: And then she asked me if she could go with me.

And I said, well, yes.

So I drove home.

She kept insisting that Dr. Loseff had a gun,

so I called the police.

No, officer.

No, I'm not the wife.

Well, she said that he had a gun.

He had a gun!

I saw a gun!

She insists that he has a gun.

Why don't you come talk to them?

They told me that they couldn't go over there if I hadn't seen

a gun, and I hadn't seen it. Thank you, officer.

I'm going to call Dr. Loseff.

ROBERT STACK: Mary says she tried to call Ted at least 20

times between 3:00 and 8:00 PM.

Every time, the line was busy.

About 8 o'clock, I called Dr. Loseff again.

It's ringing.

Finally.

No one's answering.

I'm going to call the police again.

ROBERT STACK: Within the hour, police had found Ted's body.

Their initial belief that he killed himself

was confirmed by the discovery of the note

in an upstairs bedroom.

However, to Mary, it was the first of several alarming

discrepancies.

MARY: I always thought that that note on the shirt cardboard

was kind of strange, because I had been ironing

Dr. Loseff's shirts for a long time

and I always used a hanger.

I never used a shirt cardboard.

What are you saying?

ROBERT STACK: As she stood with her husband

and gazed at Dr. Loseff's body, Mary was jarred

by another inconsistency.

MARY: When I last saw him, he was wearing brown pants

and a kind of a mustard shirt, and now he had on gray pants

and a dress shirt.

And do you know, that whole time that I worked there

after Dr. Loseff died, I never once saw those brown pants

and that mustard-colored shirt that he was wearing

the last time I saw him.

ROBERT STACK: The discrepancies became impossible to ignore.

In the kitchen, Mary found several empty beer

cans and four dirty glasses.

Ted Loseff rarely drank.

Mrs. Loseff!

Can you come here a minute, please?

ROBERT STACK: A week later, Mary found

unusual stains on some bedspreads in the guest room.

This looks like vomit.

Oh, uh, yes, this is-- this is the dog's vomit.

They were sick last night.

ROBERT STACK: However, Mary remembers the dogs

being in a kennel at that time.

When she later washed the bedspreads,

the vomit spots completely disintegrated.

ZEL: After hearing the housekeeper's many stories,

I knew there was foul play and something

terrible happened to Ted, and that I had to find out.

There is evidence of food fiber

in the bronchi of the lungs.

ROBERT STACK: In 1970, four years after her son's death,

Zel finally won a legal battle to have Ted's

body exhumed for an autopsy.

The pathologist found undeniable evidence

that Ted had suffered a violent vomiting spell in the moments

before his death.

There should have been vomitus on his clothing, his face,

and perhaps on the inside of the car.

Why wasn't it there?

This certainly strongly suggests to me

that this vomiting occurred someplace

other than in the car.

And there were a number of discrepancies that have never

been explained, but that very strongly

move away from the whole thought of suicide.

This, until proven otherwise, is a homicide.

ROBERT STACK: Fueled by the autopsy findings, Zel pieced

together a theory explaining her son's death, a scenario

of premeditated murder.

[kettle whistling]

Zel believes Ted was assaulted soon after Wilda

and Mary left the house.

ZEL: I believe that the people that killed my son

were close to the wife, because they knew that that

back door would be open.

ROBERT STACK: The autopsy indicated Ted had

been involved in a struggle.

Zel believes he was overpowered by at least two men who

forced poison down his throat.

Shut up and drink it. Give it to him.

ZEL: Ted was definitely fighting for his life,

according to the doctors.

Somebody took the phone off after they

made sure he was dead because it took a certain length of time

for this to happen.

It could be five, six, seven minutes.

Then they cleaned him up and they put

his gray dress shirt on him.

Then they went to the garage, emptied out the garage

to make room for the car, and they

had to open the gates to put his car into this garage,

carry his dead body into that garage, close the door,

and then go out and close the gates.

Then they went back into the house,

I think, again, put the receiver back on the hook.

It's ringing.

Finally.

ROBERT STACK: All afternoon, Mary

had been getting busy signals when she tried to call Ted.

Now the phone was suddenly ringing.

Zel believes that this was a prearranged

message from the killers to Wilda that their job was done.

In March of 1982, the Los Angeles County coroner

finally ordered an inquest.

Zel's murder scenario, which many

had dismissed as a grieving mother's fantasy,

began to gain credibility.

At the inquest, a witness who knew the family testified

that the note, the alleged suicide note,

was indeed written by Ted, however, he

had written it after an argument with Wilda

more than two years before he died.

The inquest ultimately ruled that Ted Loseff's death was

a homicide, but the most critical

witness in the subsequent investigation

would soon be lost forever.

On May 1, 1983, Wilda died from an overdose

of drugs and alcohol.

More than two years later, the police completed their inquiry.

They ruled that the cause of Ted Loseff's death

was undetermined.

However, Zel Loseff is convinced that someone

has gotten away with murder.

She is still hopeful a witness will come

forward with new information.

If the case would open up and they really get the criminal,

there'll be a peacefulness that'll come on me, I hope.

A desire to walk, to sing, to laugh.

I haven't been able to.

If I can do that again--

that's it.

ROBERT STACK: Next, controversy surrounds

a modern-day prospector and his claim

that he has found a vast untapped water supply

in the middle of the desert.

Even in a good year, precious little rain

will fall in the rugged deserts of the Western United States.

What doesn't evaporate instantly is quickly soaked up

by the few plants and animals evolution

has sentenced to live here.

However, numerous legends have sprouted

in this otherwise infertile land, tales

such as the lost Dutchman's mine, or the missing

gold of Peg Leg Smith.

In 1927, a prospector named Earl Dorr

drove deep into the Nevada desert,

lured by an old Indian legend.

It told of a secret cavern leading

to an underground river that sparkled with nuggets of gold.

Earl Dorr was just crazy enough to believe he could find it.

According to an affidavit Dorr later published,

he and his sidekick eventually found

the secret opening foretold in the legend

and squeezed on through.

The affidavit recounts a treacherous 3,500 foot descent

into a murky subterranean canyon.

Earl claimed that at the bottom they

found the legendary river running

as promised far below the cactus and the scorpions.

Earl said they explored for four days,

following the river for eight long miles.

Along every foot of it, nature had slowly concentrated

vast amounts of gold.

What he's describing is something like the world's

largest natural underground sluice, where light rocks are

carried away by the water, and the heavier minerals,

like your gold, your platinum group metals, rare earths,

would be settling out and concentrating.

So it's almost kind of a too good to be true thing.

ROBERT STACK: Earl claimed that the rich black sands

assayed out at a phenomenal 100 ounces of gold per cubic yard.

At today's prices, a bucket of this fancy dirt

would be worth close to $1,500.

It was the stuff dreams are made of.

However, Earl Dorr had one very major problem.

Someone else owned the land where the entrance

to the cavern was located.

Believing that he could find another way in,

Dorr decided to dynamite the original opening.

[explosion bangs]

Earl Dorr was never able to find his treasure again.

Over the next 50 years, others would follow in his path,

but the location of the river, if it existed,

seemed lost forever.

[rumbling]

Oddly, it was the space shuttle program of the 1980s that

suddenly opened the door to the rediscovery of what might

be Earl Dorr's fantastic river.

Successive missions brought back new and more remarkable

photographs of our planet.

Some of the pictures came to the attention of a scientist

named Wally Spencer.

For 30 years, Spencer had been involved

in the development of solid rocket motors

for NASA and other government agencies.

When he studied the space shuttle photographs,

Spencer was convinced they offered

a down-to-earth opportunity.

In one picture of Nevada, Wally spotted what he believed

was an ancient river channel, bone-dry

for some 500 million years.

But eons ago, plants would have flourished along such a river.

In the millennia since, those plants

would have slowly decomposed into black gold,

Nevada's own crude oil.

We ready to power up, then?

Let's do it.

ROBERT STACK: Wally jerry-rigged a prospecting device from

common laboratory instruments.

He based his design on two simple facts.

First, the earth naturally emits a low level of radiation.

Second, a large subsurface pool of liquid, such as oil,

will block this radiation.

Wally believed that his invention could detect such

a drop in radiation, thus revealing the location

of a hidden reservoir.

But Wally had no idea if his device actually worked.

In June of 1989, with the help of his wife and son,

Wally put it to the test.

For three weeks they bounced across the sands,

waiting for the device to react.

[beeping]

Whoa! Barry, stop!

Stop, hold it! Hold it.

We went off scale.

I don't know, something happened.

We went totally off scale.

ROBERT STACK: The wild response at first

suggested a monumental deposit of oil,

but further testing began to indicate to Wally that they had

actually found an immense underground river, perhaps

the same river Earl Dorr had boasted

about half a century before.

It's gotta be something huge.

It was very disappointing when we found out it wasn't oil.

Because once we started mapping it, it looked like the river.

Everybody says, hey, you found the river,

you didn't find a pocket of oil.

Very disappointing.

But it was so large that it had to be exciting.

ROBERT STACK: Wally became convinced

he had found a virtually inexhaustible water supply.

He estimated the flow could be an incredible 17

billion gallons a day.

In a parched region like Nevada, water is as precious as gold.

Wally Spencer was certain he had found a priceless resource.

There is enough water for 170 gallons a day

for 100 million people.

Now, that has got to be something that is extremely

of interest to the Western United States,

to Nevada, to our nation as a whole.

The land I'm standing on here in Los Angeles

was a virtual desert, but with water

piped from hundreds of miles away,

it became a flourishing garden.

Wally Spencer's river, if it does exist,

could likewise transform Nevada.

But for Wally, that remained just a pipe dream

when he found himself mired down in a bureaucratic standoff

with state officials.

Nevada law required that anyone drilling for water

first apply for a permit, and that meant

revealing the river's location.

Before doing so, Wally asked state officials

to guarantee that he would receive a finder's fee,

even though the state would own any water that he found.

However, authorities insisted that Wally apply

for a drilling permit just like anybody else,

no promises, no guarantees.

If I filed for appropriations permit,

then it could be denied on any kind of whim--

whimsical notion.

The state is not in the best interest of the people,

or not in the best interests of the state.

They would own it.

I would have nothing.

There's nobody trying to rob him of his water rights.

There might be other speculators out here that try to--

might also claim, but he has priority

if he files the proper documentation,

and a lawyer can help him do that.

You really think it's necessary--

ROBERT STACK: Wally and his wife Beverly were not convinced,

and they weren't taking any chances.

Concerned that others might try to steal the secret of their

find, the Spencers asked two experts to scan their house

for electronic bugs.

Ah, interesting books.

ROBERT STACK: At first, the sophisticated equipment

failed to locate any hidden listening devices,

but then one sensor picked up a bug on the phone line.

[beeps]

You see?

That's the kind of thing we're talking about.

[loud beeping]

ROBERT STACK: In addition, the investigators

found a high-tech listening device

secreted in the living room.

Beverly was convinced that only one thing would motivate

the electronic eavesdropping.

They were trying to probably find out the location.

We never discussed the location of the water.

It's not in our vocabulary.

So I don't know who did it, I don't know why they did it,

but they haven't gained from it.

ROBERT STACK: However, there are those

who question whether Wally Spencer has any information

that is truly worth stealing.

He has never revealed his technology,

he can't show where the water's coming from,

he can't show where the water's going,

and he won't reveal the location.

So it's not a lot different than the guy that's

walking around the desert with a whittle stick or a peach branch

and dousing for water, or the guy that's

walking around the crust of the Earth with a turquoise bead

on a gold chain witching for water.

I've known Wally for about 15 years,

and actually I've worked professionally with him

starting about 10 years ago.

Wally's one of the true scientist

problem-solvers that you can run into.

He's the type of guy that doesn't

run to the textbook to pull out the equation

to solve the problem.

He takes Newton's equations and he derives what he needs out

of them to solve the problem.

So he's a true scientist.

You know, I'd like it to be true.

I mean, I don't think you'll find anybody in Nevada that

wants to find water resources like Wally has described,

But you have to be practical at the same time.

And the way to be practical is just simple questions.

Wally, what have you found with that technology?

And the second thing is, let me see it.

ROBERT STACK: When we return, one of your tips

leads to the arrest of a murder suspect.

October 8, 1988, Los Angeles, California.

Four friends climbed on their motorcycles

to cruise the nearly deserted streets.

It was a frequent weekend ritual.

26-year-old Lee Selwyn, a popular local DJ,

always looked forward to the freewheeling late night rides.

But this night would be different.

One of the cyclists became involved in an argument

because he believed a vehicle was trying to run him down.

What are you trying to do?!

Huh?

What, you want to kill me?

ROBERT STACK: When the driver spit

in the face of Lee's friend, the altercation turned ugly.

[suspenseful music]

The four riders scattered.

Although Lee Selwyn had been a completely innocent bystander,

he became the target.

The chase went on for nearly 30 city blocks

at speeds of up to 100 miles an hour.

Lee Selwyn was thrown 180 feet and suffered

a massive skull fracture.

He was rushed to the hospital, but died within hours.

I received a call from Cedar's.

They said that he was in intensive care.

And I knew, I just knew--

but I don't believe it yet.

It's real, but it isn't real.

He was such a big part of my life.

He was my buddy, he wasn't just my son, he was my buddy.

ROBERT STACK: The Los Angeles police

began a citywide manhunt, but Lee Selwyn's killer

had skipped town.

Incredibly, four years went by before police finally

get the tip they'd been waiting for.

After a recent rebroadcast of the story,

a viewer called our phone center and told one of the operators

that there was a man in prison in Georgia

who had often bragged about running

down a biker in Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles police obtained a mug shot of the suspect.

Lee's friends picked the man out of a photo lineup.

His name is Franklin LaGraham Perkins.

On July 30, 1993, just five days before Perkins was scheduled

for parole, he was arrested.

One week later, he was brought back to Los Angeles

by detective Dan Andrews.

Most murder victims know their attackers, know their killers,

but this is a case that just wasn't that way.

This was a random event of a person who was basically

minding his own business and, unfortunately,

was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And I think it's very unusual to identify

somebody and be able to solve a case after five years.

It's a very good feeling.

Except for the most important fact, which is

nothing can ever bring Lee back, I

hope this will bring some closure

to this five years of uncertainty

and the pain that goes along with it.

Finally justice can be served, and also I'm

grateful that this man is not out there committing

other crimes and hurting other people

and killing other people's loved ones.

One portion of the grief will be closed or dealt with,

and I know that when I'm driving on the streets,

I won't be looking in other cars wondering

if that might be the guy.

ROBERT STACK: Next, a young boy is lost to his family

in the aftermath of World War II.

Plymouth, England, 1952.

Even though seven years have passed since the end of World

War II, this British port city is still surrounded by refugee

camps for families displaced by the ravages of war

in Eastern Europe.

Helena and Apolinary Kurowski, a Polish couple,

are sending their son Christopher off

to America with another family.

A tearful farewell would prove sadly prophetic.

Though Christopher Kurowski was only five years old,

he would never see his parents again.

For Helena Kurowski, the loss of her son

was a heavy blow in a life already marred by tragedy.

In 1928, Helena had married a dashing infantry

officer in the Polish army.

After the Nazis invaded in 1939, he was executed.

Helena was taken prisoner and forced

to serve as a nurse in a German prisoner of war

camp for six harrowing years.

Shortly before the end of the war,

a German officer helped Helena escape.

Alone, she crossed the border to Austria,

then occupied by the Allies.

It was a dramatic story which Helena would tell her daughter

Mechelle time and time again.

MECHELLE: My mother was walking down the road,

and then here comes this Polish Red Cross army truck.

And all of a sudden, the truck stops.

Would you like a ride to the town?

You look very tired.

Yeah.

OK, I help you.

A ride is good.

MECHELLE: She decided that she let this man help her.

And he took her to where all the Polish people were, looked

after her, did things for her that nobody

had done for her since the war had been going on.

Her heart was beginning to come alive

again, something it hadn't done since the war had happened.

I am Apolinary.

Helena.

MECHELLE: And he asked her to marry him, and so she said yes.

ROBERT STACK: Helena began a new life with Apolinary Kurowski.

They stayed on in Austria even after the war was over.

In October of 1946, they adopted an infant

and named him Christopher.

Within a month, the Kurowskis joined

thousands of war survivors flooding into England

and into refugee camps.

Apolinary found work as a mechanic.

In 1950, Mechelle was born.

Christopher finally had a sister to play with.

My only memory of Christopher is a real happy memory.

He would run around me, hide behind me, and all of a sudden

he'd come round to the front and he'd go, boo!

And I'd laugh and I'd laugh.

And I can still remember it to this day.

The giggles, the giggles.

I was giggling so hard.

It felt so good, so good.

MAN: Next please.

ROBERT STACK: Like so many other refugees,

Helena and Apolinary dreamed of a better life for themselves

and their children.

Take a seat.

Thank you.

How can I help you?

We want to go to America, to make a visa.

Just the two of you?

No, no.

We have also two children.

ROBERT STACK: As it turned out, the Kurowskis would wait months

for permission to immigrate.

--we will try.

[knocking on door]

ROBERT STACK: Another Polish family living in the camp

had better luck.

Oh, Yan. come, welcome.

Helena, Apolinary.

Listen, I have news for you.

Today I got the visa!

Now we will be going to America!

You're going to America?

Oh, congratulations, my friend.

We'll have a toast for you.

When do we get to go to America?

Christopher, you must be patient.

We will go soon.

You want to go to America too, huh I have an idea.

Why don't you let Christopher come with me

and my family to America?

He will play with my children, he will go to school,

and soon you will be going to America yourselves.

ROBERT STACK: The decision was made.

Christopher would go on before the rest of his family

so he could start first grade in the United States.

I'll miss you, Mama.

I'll miss you too, Christopher.

MECHELLE: My mother didn't really

want to send him with somebody else,

but my father kept saying, you know, education, education.

He's going to get a good education,

he's going to be able to start school.

So it was easier for him, but my mother I guess being a woman,

it just tore at her heart.

Helena, sit down.

I need to talk to you.

ROBERT STACK: Weeks went by.

Helena and Apolinary continued to wait for their visas.

They talked of little else but America,

and outlandish rumors about life in that unknown land

circulated throughout the camp.

--worry you, but, you know, I--

I got this letter from my friend, she went to America.

Yeah?

Well, she says that in California

if you leave your baby outside, it could get kidnapped.

Kidnapped?

By monkeys.

Apolinary, did you hear this?

Mother got scared.

She had gone through so much during the war,

and the things that she had seen had made her so scared

that this was another unknown to her

and she didn't know whether she could really make it.

ROBERT STACK: In the end, Helena and Apolinary

made the agonizing decision to withdraw

their visa application.

They wrote to the family who had taken Christopher asking them

to send him back to England.

Helena!

Helena!

I have received letter from America.

Yes, they are-- they don't send Christopher back.

What?

They don't send Christopher back.

My parents got a letter back from the family in the United

States saying that Christopher had already settled in school,

had made friends, and they weren't going to send him back.

I'm sorry to interrupt you, I have a very

big problem that cannot wait.

Sit down.

ROBERT STACK: Helena and Apolinary

immediately went to the refugee camp's Polish consul.

They will not send him back.

They cannot do this to us.

ROBERT STACK: He was sympathetic,

but all of Christopher's adoption records

had gone to the United States, making it nearly impossible

to bring the boy back.

The Kurowskis eventually left the camp

and settled near Nottingham.

They continued to write to the family

who had taken Christopher, but received no response.

In 1966, when Mechelle turned 16,

she decided it was time to find her brother.

It was hard to look for him.

I really didn't know where to start,

so I had to ask people where to look.

And one person told me to write to the American embassy,

and then put a letter inside there for Christopher

just in case they found Christopher.

And that's what I did.

ROBERT STACK: Two months later, Mechelle received a reply.

Mama!

Mama!

MECHELLE: I never thought in a million years

that I would actually find him.

I was jumping up and down, I was running around.

It was one of the happiest moments of my life.

Read it.

OK, he says, um, he says he's in the army in-- in Vietnam,

and--

and-- and he's changed his name to-- that he's

changed his name to Stan Smith.

MECHELLE: I wrote back right away,

but I didn't get an answer.

I waited and I waited, checked the postman,

always stopped the postman, asked

him if he had any letters for me that were coming from America.

Nothing.

I didn't get anything back.

No letter, return to sender, nothing.

ROBERT STACK: The Kurowskis were crushed

by the lack of further news.

In 1973, Mechelle moved to the United States.

After Apolinary died, Helena finally

came to America herself.

Last April, she passed away.

Helena's dying wish was that her children

would someday be reunited.

Join me next time for another edition of Unsolved Mysteries.

[eerie music]