DETROIT — The FBI says DNA testing has confirmed that a 54-year-old Michigan man is not a toddler kidnapped in Long Island, N.Y., in 1955.
The FBI said Thursday that testing showed John Barnes of Kalkaska, Mich., is not Stephen Damman, who disappeared at age 2 from outside a bakery while his mother shopped.
Barnes says he has long suspected the couple who raised him are not his biological parents, and the FBI took his DNA sample. He says he began investigating his origins years ago and found photos on the Internet that led him to believe he could be Stephen.
Barnes says he was born the same year the boy disappeared but that he only saw his birth certificate once.
In Iowa, Stephen’s father, Jerry Damman, said the news was disappointing.
“It’s too bad we had to go through all of this for actually nothing in the end,” he said.
Barnes’ father, Richard, has called the speculation “a bunch of foolishness.” He said John Barnes was born in a Navy hospital in Pensacola, Fla., on Aug. 18, 1955.
