well respected, and the woman who ran it, Georgia Tann, operated in powerful circles, socially and politically. She was well thought of publicly. People admired what she was doing. She changed the general perception that orphans were damaged goods. But the reality is that the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in Memphis was rotten to the core. It’s no wonder Granddad never wanted to talk about what he did in this little building. The stories are sad, and they’re gruesome, and there are literally thousands of them. Kids were brokered. Georgia Tann made money by charging huge fees for adoptions, transportation, delivery out of state. She took children from poor families and sold them to celebrities and people with political influence. She had law enforcement agencies and family court judges in her pocket. She duped women in hospital maternity wards into signing surrender papers while they were still under sedation. She told people their babies had died when they hadn’t.” He pulls a folded piece of paper from his back pocket and hands it to me. “There’s quite a bit more than that. I printed this off today between appointments.”
The paper is a printed scan of an old newspaper story. The title pulls no punches. It reads, “Adoption Matron May Have Been Most Prolific Serial Killer.”
Trent stops with his hand on the doorknob. He’s waiting for me to look over the article. “Nobody ever came out here but my grandfather and, occasionally, clients—not even my grandmother. But she didn’t share his interest in the topic either. I told you that she felt that the past should have been left in the past. Maybe she was right. My grandfather must have felt that way in the end too. He told me to clean this place out and destroy whatever was still here. Just be warned before we go in. I have no idea what’s on the other side of this door.”
“I understand. But I am…was a federal prosecutor in Maryland. Not much shocks me.”
Yet just the title of the article is shocking. I can tell that Trent’s not letting me through the door until I’ve read the story—until I’ve been warned. He wants me to understand that what lies inside won’t be warm and fuzzy stories about lonely orphans finally finding homes.
I turn back to the article, and begin scanning the text:
Once heralded as the “Mother of Modern Adoption” and consulted by the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt in efforts to reform adoption policies in the United States, Georgia Tann did, indeed, facilitate the adoptions of thousands of children from the 1920s through 1950. She also guided a network that, under her watch, allowed or intentionally caused the deaths of as many as five hundred children and infants.
“Many of the children weren’t orphans,” said Mary Sykes, who, along with an infant sister, was stolen from the porch of her unmarried mother’s home at only four years old and placed in the care of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. “Many had loving parents who wanted to raise them. The children were often literally kidnapped in broad daylight, and no matter how birth parents tried to fight in court, they were not allowed to win.” Mrs. Sykes would live for three years in a large white house operated by Georgia Tann and her network of helpers.
Mary’s infant sister, just six months old when a woman claiming to be a social services nurse took them from the family’s porch, would live in the TCHS facility for only two months.
“The babies weren’t given proper food or medical care,” said Mrs. Sykes. “I remember sitting on the floor in a room full of cribs, reaching through the bars and just patting my sister’s arm. She was too weak and dehydrated to even cry. No one would help her. Once it was clear that she was too far gone to recover, a worker put her in a cardboard box and carried her away. I never saw her again. I heard later that, if babies got too sick or cried too much, they’d set them in the sun in a carriage and leave them. I have children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren now. I can’t imagine how anyone could do those things to kids, but it happened. We were tied to beds and chairs; we were beaten, held under the bathwater; we were molested. It was a house of horrors.”
Over the course of three decades, children under the care of TCHS are reported to have disappeared en masse, their paperwork often