Man claims Missouri hospital at the heart of ‘cash for children scheme’ stole his twin brother
Man claims Missouri hospital at the heart of ‘cash for children scheme’ stole his twin brother
Another man has come forward believing his family were the victims of an alleged ‘cash on delivery’ scheme being run out of a Missouri hospital in the 50s and 60s, where black babies were sold straight after they were born and the mothers told their children had died.
Jessie Ferguson was born in 1957 at Homer G. Phillips Hospital, a St. Louis facility built to service African-American families that is at the center of the sensational claims.
His mother was 15 at the time and was told the first of her twin boys was stillborn – but now Ferguson believes his brother may be alive and was raised by another family.
The suspicions arose from the story of Zella Jackson Price, who said she was 26 in 1965 when she gave birth at Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis. Hours later, she was told that her daughter had died, but she never saw a body or a death certificate.
But Price managed to find her daughter, Diane Gilmore, and on April 9 the two met for the first time after almost 50 years apart.
Ferguson’s mother, Joyce McKinley, 73, said she never got to see the child doctors told her had died.
‘The first baby came out and said he’s dead and got up and ran out the door with him,’ she told KTVI.
She does admit she never heard the baby make any noises, but said she was not given a death certificate and told she could not bury the child.
Furthermore, Ferguson believes he actually saw his brother
‘A guy who looked just like me coming into one of my buildings we stared at each other we didn’t say nothing,’ he said.
Lawyer Al Watkins represents Zella Jackson Price .
He is fighting to have the birth records of her daughter Diane unsealed in the hope of understanding what happened at the hospital all those years ago.
It is unclear who is responsible.
‘There was absolutely, available on the market, infant black children – pay for play, cash on delivery, you want a baby get some money,’ Watkins told KTVI.
Since Price’s story became public, more than 18 women who gave birth at Homer G. Phillips Hospital have been left questioning whether the children they were told died may actually be alive.
