Carla Downing
Real Name: Mary (last name unknown at time of broadcast)
Case: Lost Mother
Location: Alexandria, Virginia
Date: December 1948
Case[]
Details: Forty-two-year-old Carla Jean Downing of Nashville, Tennessee, is searching for her birth mother, Mary, whom she met only once as a teenager. While growing up, Carla always felt like an outsider in her own home, as if she were separate from her own family. Her feelings of alienation were compounded by the tragic death of her mother, Mildred Libby, when Carla was just sixteen. In June 1965, shortly after Mildred's death, Carla and her younger brother, Ronnie, went to live with their grandparents in Alexandria, Virginia. Carla's father, Chester Libby, was in the Army and stationed overseas.
One day, shortly after Mildred's funeral, Carla's grandmother let Carla go shopping with friends. She gave Carla $20 to get a quart of milk and told her she could use the rest of the money for herself. Before leaving, Carla met a woman named Mary; her grandmother said that Mary was a friend of Mildred's from high school.
Carla told Mary that she looked very familiar. Mary told her that she had seen her when she was a baby. Carla remembers that Mary looked "shaken up," which she assumed was because of Mildred's death. Looking back on that day, Carla can remember what Mary wore, where she sat, and what they were doing at the time. She wishes she had paid more attention at that moment. But at the time, she had no idea who Mary really was.
Carla was born in December 1948. Her father, Chester, was an Army sergeant. Her mother, Mildred, was a secretary. In 1951, Carla's brother, Ronnie, was born. But within a few short years, she began to feel that she somehow did not fit in. She noticed that she and Ronnie were very different. He had blue eyes and curly blond hair, while she had dark eyes, straight dark hair, and an olive complexion. It was obvious to her that they were not alike. She knew something was not right.
Carla kept her troubling suspicions to herself. After Mildred's death, Chester moved back to the United States and remarried. Carla graduated from high school, married, and had a son. But even as a grown woman, she never stopped feeling out of place in her own family.
On July 21, 1990, Chester died at the age of seventy, and Carla traveled to Arlington, Virginia, for his funeral. While there, a relative gave her a briefcase that belonged to Chester; the relative said that Chester wanted her to have it. The relative also said that it contained Chester's military papers, along with a few others. When Carla got the briefcase, she wanted to go over every piece of paper and remember all the places they lived together. But in the back of her mind, she knew there was something else in there that she was looking for – something that had to do with her past.
That night, when she was finally alone, Carla began to sift through the contents of Chester's briefcase. Two documents, in particular, caught her attention. The first, dated November 1945, listed Chester as married. The second, filed in November 1948, listed him as divorced. She was shocked to find out that he had been married before he met Mildred and had been divorced just one month before her own birth.
The discrepancy between the two documents heightened all of Carla's suspicions from childhood. Two days later, she called her uncle Norman, Chester's only living brother. She asked him to tell her the truth, and a surprising saga began to emerge. He told her that she was not Chester's biological daughter. He said Mildred already had her when the couple met.
At that point, Carla felt a sense of relief because she finally knew something about her past and had a direction to go in her search. An hour later, her brother, Ronnie, called with more unsettling news. He told her that Mildred had been married before. At that point, she assumed she was Mildred's child from her first marriage. But then, Ronnie told her that he had noticed something peculiar on his birth certificate. It said that Mildred had not given birth to any children before him.
Carla realized Chester and Ronnie were not related to her; at that point, she was not sure about Mildred. Finally, Carla's tangled family history began to unravel. She learned from her uncles (Mildred's brothers) that Mildred had suffered a series of miscarriages during her first marriage.
In 1948, Mildred met a recent immigrant from Belgium named Mary, who was pregnant and unmarried. At that time and place, Mary knew that she would be unable to keep her baby. According to Mildred's brothers, the two women concocted a scheme to switch ID cards in the hospital.
By switching the cards, Mildred would be listed on the birth certificate as Carla's mother. Ed Norris, Mildred's brother, says he was about twelve when this occurred. From that time on, he felt that Carla should know the truth about her past. He says he almost had a sense that someday the truth would come out.
Carla thinks that it must have been very hard for Mary to give her up. She feels that Mary was concerned enough about her that she went to "extremes" to make sure that she ended up with a good family. Carla says she needs to find Mary. She wants to be in the same room with someone she resembles.
Today, Carla desperately wishes to find the woman she knows only from that fleeting encounter in her grandparents' kitchen. There are no known photographs of Mary, but family members say Carla bears a close resemblance to her. They believe that Mary's last name may have been "Hellmans." She was born in Antwerp, Belgium, and came to the United States shortly after World War II to apparently marry an American GI.
Extra Notes:
- This case first aired on the September 18, 1991 episode. It was updated in the November 20, 1991 episode.
- The update was followed by a Lost Loves roll call, which featured Ellie Taylor, Patrick Ackles, and Fred Gardner.
Results: Solved - Thanks to a viewer's tip, Carla learned on the night of the broadcast that her birth mother, Mary Maxwell, was still alive and anxious to see her. The two spoke on the phone the next day. Carla was also overjoyed to discover she had two half-sisters, Karen and Simone.
Eight days later, on September 26, 1991, Carla traveled from her home in Tennessee to Mary's home in Temple Hills, Maryland, where they were finally reunited. When Mary first saw Carla come out of the car, she knew that was her daughter, but she still could not believe it was happening. All she could say was, "Carla, oh Carla!" She says she ran out the front door, and Carla almost fell out of the car because she was so excited. They could not do anything else but hold each other and cry.
Carla says she had an "indescribable" feeling when she saw Mary for the first time. She feels that she is "home at last" and can breathe again. She says the reunion has been the happiest moment of her life. Mary says it is like a miracle. For the longest time, she could not believe that Carla had been found. She said, "This is not happening to us. It only happens to other people that they find somebody they're looking for, not us. But yet it happened to us."
Carla says that when she found out Mary was alive and healthy, it was the best news in the world. But the "extra bonus" was finding out that she has two half-sisters and a nephew. She describes it as a happy ending and a "fairy tale come true".
Sadly, on May 6, 2010, Mary passed away at the age of eighty-eight.
Links:
- Variety TV: Unsolved Mysteries - September 20, 1991
- Mary Maxwell's Obituary
- Chester Libby's Obituary