Post by abbey1227 on Jun 1, 2022 9:21:38 GMT
The Girl in the Front Seat: a 40-Year-Long Mystery Solved
By Rob Sussman May 31, 2022 | 7:15 AM
GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) — The Pecan Street Apartment complex is like many others in Green Bay. Other than the yellow siding, it’s unremarkable, slotted among so many other residential developments that it can be hard to tell them apart. However, something happened at this one. Something horrible.
It was the start of a mystery, a mystery that, at the time, was totally unsolvable.
Unsolvable…until now.
On February 18th, 1982, a newborn infant girl was found in the front seat of a car at that east side apartment complex. She was hours old. Police, at the time, were stumped.
Then-TV 11 reporter Chris Bond stands outside of the Pecan Street Apartment complex on February 18th, 1982, reporting on the discovery of an infant child left in the front seat of a vehicle. (Courtesy WLUK)
“The baby was on the seat of the car and wrapped in an old tablecloth,” said then-Deputy Chief of Detectives Fred Mathews in a story aired that day by Fox 11, then TV 11.
“The woman who found me called 911 and said ‘I found a baby in my car'” said Bethany Laska. “I was quite cold.”
Bethany is a hairstylist in San Francisco, California, but 40 years ago, the headlines called her Rachel Brown–the name a group of nuns gave her at St. Vincent hospital. The “Brown” came from Brown County. She was abandoned moments after she was born. She was put into the foster system, and eventually was adopted.
Bethany Laska as a child in the 1980s. (Laska Family)
“I grew up, I was still in Wisconsin, but down around Sheboygan,” Laska recalled. “I grew up mostly around the country, on the lake. It was lovely. I did a lot of swimming, skating and hiking.”
But throughout her childhood, questions remained. Who was she? Who were her parents? Her adopted family didn’t tell her the whole story until she was a teenager–and only after she demanded it.
“I wrote them a letter demanding they tell me everything they know, and then watched them read it,” said Bethany. “Then I watched them read it, and they kind of looked at each other and said ‘well, I guess it’s time.'”
They told her everything, but the whole truth left more questions than answers. Bethany asked when she was 17–the year was 1999–and any means to find her parents simply did not exist.
Bethany Laska as a teenager. (Laska Family)
“We didn’t have DNA, we barely had the internet,” Bethany said. “So at that point I was like, ‘well, I guess I’m never gonna know.”
That took time.
“It was almost like a grief. Like that person didn’t exist. There were no records to look up. It was just a question mark,” Bethany told WTAQ. “I went through a process of becoming more accepting of possibly never finding out who my biological family was.”
Meanwhile, just a county away, a man was at work. Greg Dietzen, when 1999 rolled around, was already building what would be a successful business. Things weren’t always on the up and up for Greg, however. He had a career working in the machining industry in the late 70s. He then decided to go back to school.
“I graduated from [UW] Whitewater in December of 1983, and in the meantime I had this relationship for a couple of years, and it broke off back in 1981,” Greg told us.
It was a sudden break up. It wasn’t an easy one.
“She wanted to move on. I was okay with that. I never held anything against her for that, because it wasn’t going to work. So we just parted ways,” he recalled.
Eventually, years down the road, Greg met and married his now-wife, Sara. He didn’t think much of his relationship back in the 80s. It was a memory, like any other. He wound up raising a family of his own.
Meanwhile, Bethany went to college. She spent time in Illinois, and then in Missouri. But every few years, she’d get the bug. She’d work feverishly, trying to track down something, anything, that would give her some idea of how she ended up in the front seat of that car, just hours after she was born, back in 1982.
“At one point I tracked down a social worker who had been assigned to my case, and at that point she was rather elderly,” said Bethany. “She was very confused as to why some 18 year old was calling her out of the blue.
As the years passed, technology changed. Years of research into DNA technology turned genetic profiles into consumer products. Laska, seizing the opportunity, bought a 23andMe kit, which allowed her to see not only her genetic makeup, but also get in touch with any family members.
Surely enough, she found them… on her mother’s side.
It took years, but she finally found out who her mother was. Some truths, however, are more painful than ignorance.
“It was a big aha moment. Like ‘Oh, wow, I know who this person is now,” said Bethany. “But, she has made it clear she does not want to talk to me.”
Bethany’s mother was the woman who called police on that day, more than 40 years ago.
It was her mother’s car that Bethany was found in.
Bethany’s mother had hid her pregnancy from her ex-boyfriend. In fact, she hid it from everyone, including her own immediate family. To this day she denies, despite clear DNA evidence, that she is Bethany’s mother.
“It sucks,” Bethany said, forcing a laugh. “It hurts, but I can’t say I’m completely surprised…This is a person who obviously was not in a good place when I was born, and I can only assume she is not in a good place now.”
That’s where things stayed, with part of the truth revealed. But there’s a curious issue with babies: like the tango, it takes two to make them.
“I thought, you know, I hit this dead end with my mom’s side of the family,” Bethany said. “But there’s another person here. There’s a father out there. I had figured there was a good possibility that he didn’t know I was even born.”
Bethany wound up getting in touch with a group that helps people like her. They’re called “Search Angels”.
“I had this wonderful woman named Elaine, and she recommended I get my Ancestry DNA done, because you get a different group of people,” Laska recalled.
So she did…and sure enough, there were matched on her father’s side. She was, in fact, able to narrow it down after finding a cousin on her father’s side.
“We knew for sure that this cousin of mine had uncles, and one of those uncles needed to be my father,” said Bethany.
So she started reaching out. She found one of them on Facebook, and sent a message.
Greg, almost half way across the country, got that message.
“I asked ‘Why is this pretty girl in California sending me a Facebook friend request when I have no mutual friends with her? Mmm… Delete!” Greg Dietzen laughed. “That’s trouble.”
I suppose you really can’t blame him for that one.
Nevertheless, Bethany persisted. Eventually, she found a breakthrough…in a very unlikely place.
“My partner’s friend founded a Facebook group for people to share pictures of cats,” explained Bethany.
Cats. Innocuous. Universal. Cats are all over the place. There are cats in California and Wisconsin alike. This was a big Facebook group. It’s name?
“It was called ‘Pussy Shots'” said Sara Dietzen, Greg’s wife and a known cat enthusiast. “It’s all about cats!’
Sara was a member of the group, and she had made a post. That prompted Bethany to reach out with a message.
“‘I know this is weird coming out of nowhere, but I see that we’re part of the same group, I am trying to get ahold of your husband,'” Bethany said, recounting the message she sent. “‘I don’t know how we’re related.’ And then I threw out some specific names of people.”
Sara connected Bethany with Greg. They started talking. Bethany told Greg her story…and told him about her mother.
“He’s like ‘oh, my gosh, I knew that person, we were in a relationship’, and then he interrupts me and says ‘Oh my God, do you think I’m your dad?’ And I said “Maybe?'” Bethany laughed as she recalled the discussion.
It didn’t match up, however, for Greg.
“I said ‘That can’t be. That can’t be Bethany. There’s too much time, there, and then she told me the rest of the story,” Greg said. “She said she was abandoned in a car…and my heart jumped out of my chest because I could remember that story like it was yesterday.”
Greg remembered, but things still didn’t match up in his head. It had been too long, he had thought, between Bethany’s birth and his breakup for him to be the father. He decided, at that moment, to bust out an Ancestry DNA kit that Sara had picked up a few years earlier and send in his DNA sample, just to be absolutely sure.
Greg was at dinner when the results came in. He looked at the phone. He opened the email.
He stood up from the table, dialing Bethany’s number.
“I had turned my phone off, because I was just trying to have a no media afternoon and work on my plants on my patio,” said Laska. “I came back in and there were three missed calls and texts from Greg, and I pick up and he’s like ‘where have you been?'”
“She had a nickname for me at the time, she called me Uncle Dad,” said Greg. “I said ‘well, there’s no need for you to call me Uncle Dad anymore, Bethany,’ and she asks ‘oh, why not?’ and I said ‘because I am your dad’.”
By Rob Sussman May 31, 2022 | 7:15 AM
GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) — The Pecan Street Apartment complex is like many others in Green Bay. Other than the yellow siding, it’s unremarkable, slotted among so many other residential developments that it can be hard to tell them apart. However, something happened at this one. Something horrible.
It was the start of a mystery, a mystery that, at the time, was totally unsolvable.
Unsolvable…until now.
On February 18th, 1982, a newborn infant girl was found in the front seat of a car at that east side apartment complex. She was hours old. Police, at the time, were stumped.
Then-TV 11 reporter Chris Bond stands outside of the Pecan Street Apartment complex on February 18th, 1982, reporting on the discovery of an infant child left in the front seat of a vehicle. (Courtesy WLUK)
“The baby was on the seat of the car and wrapped in an old tablecloth,” said then-Deputy Chief of Detectives Fred Mathews in a story aired that day by Fox 11, then TV 11.
“The woman who found me called 911 and said ‘I found a baby in my car'” said Bethany Laska. “I was quite cold.”
Bethany is a hairstylist in San Francisco, California, but 40 years ago, the headlines called her Rachel Brown–the name a group of nuns gave her at St. Vincent hospital. The “Brown” came from Brown County. She was abandoned moments after she was born. She was put into the foster system, and eventually was adopted.
Bethany Laska as a child in the 1980s. (Laska Family)
“I grew up, I was still in Wisconsin, but down around Sheboygan,” Laska recalled. “I grew up mostly around the country, on the lake. It was lovely. I did a lot of swimming, skating and hiking.”
But throughout her childhood, questions remained. Who was she? Who were her parents? Her adopted family didn’t tell her the whole story until she was a teenager–and only after she demanded it.
“I wrote them a letter demanding they tell me everything they know, and then watched them read it,” said Bethany. “Then I watched them read it, and they kind of looked at each other and said ‘well, I guess it’s time.'”
They told her everything, but the whole truth left more questions than answers. Bethany asked when she was 17–the year was 1999–and any means to find her parents simply did not exist.
Bethany Laska as a teenager. (Laska Family)
“We didn’t have DNA, we barely had the internet,” Bethany said. “So at that point I was like, ‘well, I guess I’m never gonna know.”
That took time.
“It was almost like a grief. Like that person didn’t exist. There were no records to look up. It was just a question mark,” Bethany told WTAQ. “I went through a process of becoming more accepting of possibly never finding out who my biological family was.”
Meanwhile, just a county away, a man was at work. Greg Dietzen, when 1999 rolled around, was already building what would be a successful business. Things weren’t always on the up and up for Greg, however. He had a career working in the machining industry in the late 70s. He then decided to go back to school.
“I graduated from [UW] Whitewater in December of 1983, and in the meantime I had this relationship for a couple of years, and it broke off back in 1981,” Greg told us.
It was a sudden break up. It wasn’t an easy one.
“She wanted to move on. I was okay with that. I never held anything against her for that, because it wasn’t going to work. So we just parted ways,” he recalled.
Eventually, years down the road, Greg met and married his now-wife, Sara. He didn’t think much of his relationship back in the 80s. It was a memory, like any other. He wound up raising a family of his own.
Meanwhile, Bethany went to college. She spent time in Illinois, and then in Missouri. But every few years, she’d get the bug. She’d work feverishly, trying to track down something, anything, that would give her some idea of how she ended up in the front seat of that car, just hours after she was born, back in 1982.
“At one point I tracked down a social worker who had been assigned to my case, and at that point she was rather elderly,” said Bethany. “She was very confused as to why some 18 year old was calling her out of the blue.
As the years passed, technology changed. Years of research into DNA technology turned genetic profiles into consumer products. Laska, seizing the opportunity, bought a 23andMe kit, which allowed her to see not only her genetic makeup, but also get in touch with any family members.
Surely enough, she found them… on her mother’s side.
It took years, but she finally found out who her mother was. Some truths, however, are more painful than ignorance.
“It was a big aha moment. Like ‘Oh, wow, I know who this person is now,” said Bethany. “But, she has made it clear she does not want to talk to me.”
Bethany’s mother was the woman who called police on that day, more than 40 years ago.
It was her mother’s car that Bethany was found in.
Bethany’s mother had hid her pregnancy from her ex-boyfriend. In fact, she hid it from everyone, including her own immediate family. To this day she denies, despite clear DNA evidence, that she is Bethany’s mother.
“It sucks,” Bethany said, forcing a laugh. “It hurts, but I can’t say I’m completely surprised…This is a person who obviously was not in a good place when I was born, and I can only assume she is not in a good place now.”
That’s where things stayed, with part of the truth revealed. But there’s a curious issue with babies: like the tango, it takes two to make them.
“I thought, you know, I hit this dead end with my mom’s side of the family,” Bethany said. “But there’s another person here. There’s a father out there. I had figured there was a good possibility that he didn’t know I was even born.”
Bethany wound up getting in touch with a group that helps people like her. They’re called “Search Angels”.
“I had this wonderful woman named Elaine, and she recommended I get my Ancestry DNA done, because you get a different group of people,” Laska recalled.
So she did…and sure enough, there were matched on her father’s side. She was, in fact, able to narrow it down after finding a cousin on her father’s side.
“We knew for sure that this cousin of mine had uncles, and one of those uncles needed to be my father,” said Bethany.
So she started reaching out. She found one of them on Facebook, and sent a message.
Greg, almost half way across the country, got that message.
“I asked ‘Why is this pretty girl in California sending me a Facebook friend request when I have no mutual friends with her? Mmm… Delete!” Greg Dietzen laughed. “That’s trouble.”
I suppose you really can’t blame him for that one.
Nevertheless, Bethany persisted. Eventually, she found a breakthrough…in a very unlikely place.
“My partner’s friend founded a Facebook group for people to share pictures of cats,” explained Bethany.
Cats. Innocuous. Universal. Cats are all over the place. There are cats in California and Wisconsin alike. This was a big Facebook group. It’s name?
“It was called ‘Pussy Shots'” said Sara Dietzen, Greg’s wife and a known cat enthusiast. “It’s all about cats!’
Sara was a member of the group, and she had made a post. That prompted Bethany to reach out with a message.
“‘I know this is weird coming out of nowhere, but I see that we’re part of the same group, I am trying to get ahold of your husband,'” Bethany said, recounting the message she sent. “‘I don’t know how we’re related.’ And then I threw out some specific names of people.”
Sara connected Bethany with Greg. They started talking. Bethany told Greg her story…and told him about her mother.
“He’s like ‘oh, my gosh, I knew that person, we were in a relationship’, and then he interrupts me and says ‘Oh my God, do you think I’m your dad?’ And I said “Maybe?'” Bethany laughed as she recalled the discussion.
It didn’t match up, however, for Greg.
“I said ‘That can’t be. That can’t be Bethany. There’s too much time, there, and then she told me the rest of the story,” Greg said. “She said she was abandoned in a car…and my heart jumped out of my chest because I could remember that story like it was yesterday.”
Greg remembered, but things still didn’t match up in his head. It had been too long, he had thought, between Bethany’s birth and his breakup for him to be the father. He decided, at that moment, to bust out an Ancestry DNA kit that Sara had picked up a few years earlier and send in his DNA sample, just to be absolutely sure.
Greg was at dinner when the results came in. He looked at the phone. He opened the email.
He stood up from the table, dialing Bethany’s number.
“I had turned my phone off, because I was just trying to have a no media afternoon and work on my plants on my patio,” said Laska. “I came back in and there were three missed calls and texts from Greg, and I pick up and he’s like ‘where have you been?'”
“She had a nickname for me at the time, she called me Uncle Dad,” said Greg. “I said ‘well, there’s no need for you to call me Uncle Dad anymore, Bethany,’ and she asks ‘oh, why not?’ and I said ‘because I am your dad’.”
It took 40 years. 40 years of questions for Bethany Laska. 40 years of heartbreak, of dead ends, of mysteries leading to further mysteries…it was finally over.
![[cheers]](http://storage.proboards.com/7182076/images/engyBVslEdpmpmdnBwZQ.gif)
