The Children of Faith Brown

Real Name: Unrevealed
Case: Lost Siblings
Date: December 1964
Location: Flint, Michigan

Case

Details: In December 1964, young mother Faith Marie Brown went on a joyride outside of Flint, Michigan with two friends when the car went over an embankment and crashed; she was killed along with the other passenger. Faith was just twenty-six when she was killed; in addition to her parents and four brothers, she left behind six children, four sons and three daughters, under the age of ten. Two divorces and the fatal car crash scattered the children to five different families.

In 1992, April Kersjes, one of Faith's daughters, was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, a hereditary disease. Concerned about her own childrens' health, she began her search for her birth family. April knew that her birth name was Michelle Brown and that she was born on September 18, 1961. When at the records office, she noticed that she had a brother named Michael. However, she was not allowed to look at the other records; strict regulations govern adoption records. She petitioned the court for access to the records; a few days later, she received a letter that said she had four brothers and two sisters. However, the key details to find her siblings were omitted.
Mike Galloway, the husband of April's friend Deb, had also been adopted. He was especially curious about April's investigation. The two discovered that both of their birth last names were Brown. The records showed that one of April's brothers was born in Owosso in 1960; Mike was also born in Owoss in 1960. At first, they assumed it was a coincidence.
The next day, Mike told April about how his adoptive parents had told him that his birth sister's name was Michelle. At that point, the two realized that they had to be siblings. The two began searching for information about their birth mother. They discovered that Faith had dropped out of high school to be married. By the age of 20, she already had four children, including twin boys. When she divorced her husband, she lost custody of her four children. Her first husband believed that another man had fathered the twins. April and Mike discovered that their father was yet another man who was twenty-five years older than their mother.
April and Mike are now searching for their five other siblings: William, Wanda, Shannon, Keith and Kenneth.

Faith Brown's children reunited

Extra Notes: This segment originally aired on the January 12, 1994 episode.
Results: Solved. On the night of the broadcast, four of the five siblings were watching. Within a few hours, all five siblings had called the telecenter and talked to April and Mike. William, Shannon, and Wanda were the first to be reunited with April and Mike. Kenneth and Keith arrived soon after and the children of Faith Brown were finally together again. The reunion was one of the largest hosted by Unsolved Mysteries with thirty-three family members present.
Links: None

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