Stolen At Birth | The Ties That Bind | 4

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It's the afternoon of September 7th, 1950.

The gilded lobby of the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles is full of life.

Underneath a vaulted ceiling, bellhops load luggage onto their carts.

Guests line up to check in, while others enjoy a drink at the bar.

In a corner of the long room, two men sit playing cards, cups of coffee in their hand.

Robert Taylor and Earl Morgan are waiting.

Watching.

They position themselves carefully so that they've got a clear view of all the entrances to the lobby.

They don't want their quarry to slip past them again.

A little over 24 hours ago, the men spotted Alma Walton, a case worker from the Tennessee Children's Home Society, carry a baby on board a flight bound for Los Angeles.

The men couldn't get a seat on the flight themselves, so they started calling hotels in LA until they found the one that Alma was staying at.

They were on the first flight out of Memphis this morning and rushed straight to the Biltmore.

They've been sitting in the lobby ever since.

Robert's just thrown down his cards in defeat when Earl flicks his chin up toward the main entrance to the lobby.

Robert follows his gaze to see Alma Walton.

She's just walked in off the street and stops to dab at her forehead with a handkerchief.

It's hot out there.

The two investigators, though, play it cool.

They don't want to spook Alma, so as Earl deals another game, Robert suddenly watches Alma walk across the lobby and up the stairs.

The guys give Alma a few minutes head start, then follow her.

It's a big hotel, but Robert and Earl have already asked which room is Alma's, so they know exactly where to go, even when they lose sight of her.

And when they knock on the door, they know they've got her cornered.

Alma seems surprised to see Robert and Earl, surprised that someone would follow her all the way to California.

But when they explain who they are and that they're investigating on behalf of the governor of Tennessee, she gets talkative and fast.

It's clear that she doesn't want any trouble.

She tells the two men that she's just delivered a baby to a happy couple here in the city.

It's something the TCHS does for its clients, brings their adoptive children right to their doors.

For a fee, of course.

Robert and Earl exchange a look at that, then press Alma for more details.

She explains that adoptive parents are charged expenses to cover the cost of the travel, the paperwork, and any other incidentals that TCHS has paid for during the adoption.

It's usually a few hundred dollars, she says.

Whatever Robert and Earl were expecting, it wasn't that.

There had been suspicions that children might have been mistreated somehow, but no one ever expected that the babies were being sold.

Robert asks Alma where the money goes, and she pulls out a check to show them.

It's made out for $350 and is addressed to Miss Georgia Tann.

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As the Great Depression pushed American families to their breaking point, Georgia Tann found a way to do what so many people in the country were desperate to do, make money.

But it wasn't survival on her mind when Georgia started charging people to adopt children.

It was greed.

Greed nurtured by the knowledge that she was untouchable.

Since first arriving in Memphis, Georgia had built herself a network of allies that included the city's most influential and powerful families.

She didn't start trying to earn money from her schemes until she felt certain that she was insulated from any consequences.

Once she began, there was no stopping her.

Over the years, there were some who tried to curb Georgia's behavior, who tried to speak up about the strange things she was doing.

But time and time again, their complaints were ignored or swept aside by the corrupt and the unconcerned.

That allowed Georgia to build her wealth like she'd build her influence, slowly at first, but then with unchecked abandon.

And for all that she told people how she wanted to help children, wanted to be a lifeline for unmarried women who found themselves pregnant, there was only ever one person Georgia Tann was out to help, herself.

This is episode four in our four-part series on Georgia Tann, The Ties That Bind.

It's 1939 in Memphis, Tennessee, and Grace Gribble is at home with her six children.

At 31, Grace is recently widowed and struggling to support her large family.

Her eldest is 10, and her youngest just three.

Growing kids just eat more and more, and it's stretching Grace's already meager budget to its breaking point.

It was hard enough when her husband was alive, but now mere survival is a daily battle.

Luckily for Grace, the Memphis Family Welfare Agency has been able to help her out.

In particular, a woman named Sarah has been a great comfort to Grace.

She regularly calls on the Gribble Home to check how Grace and her family are doing, making sure they're not going hungry.

So when Grace hears a knock at the front door, she isn't surprised to see Sarah on her porch, smiling as ever.

What's unusual, though, is that she's not alone.

Sarah introduces Grace to the middle-aged woman standing beside her, Helen Rose.

Inviting the women in, Grace leads Sarah and Helen into the kitchen where she starts boiling water to make coffee.

As Grace works, Sarah explains that Helen's brought papers with her that will entitle Grace's children to free medical care.

It's all part of the widow's assistance program, she says.

When she hears that, Grace is eager to fill in the forms.

She can't count the number of times she's wished she could afford to take one of her babies to see a doctor for sore throats or ear infections.

Now, she'll finally be able to do what she feels is her duty as a mother, give her children the very best.

So, while Sarah and Helen sip their coffee, Grace carefully writes in the names of all six of her children, then flips to the back page and signs her name.

She slides the papers back towards her guests with a smile, already feeling like she can breathe a little easier.

But her joy is short-lived.

Helen flips through the papers just to make sure everything's in order, then slips them into her coat pocket.

Standing up, she turns to Sarah and announces that she'll take Grace's three youngest children, then and there.

Grace is confused.

Her children aren't sick right now, they don't need a doctor.

Then Sarah explains that Helen Rose doesn't work for the Memphis Welfare Agency.

She actually works with a woman named Georgia Tann, who Grace has just signed over custody of her children to.

Horrified, Grace screams that they can't do that, but she's outnumbered.

Sarah and Helen each pick up one of Grace's children and start carrying them outside where a limousine is waiting.

Looking at Grace's four-year-old son Kirby, Helen tells Sarah that they've had a special request for a child just like him.

Red hair, blue eyes, exactly this age.

He's perfect.

The women ignore Grace's cries as they bundle the children into the back of the car and send the driver in to retrieve a third.

Watching all this happen, Grace feels utterly powerless.

She's heard stories of this Georgia Tann woman snatching children from Memphis parents, but she never expected something like that could happen to her.

She knows she can't waste time, though.

As soon as the car pulls away from the curb, Grace runs to her neighbor's house.

She asks the woman to keep an eye on her three eldest kids for a couple hours.

When the woman asks where Grace is going, she simply says that she has to go to court right now.

Grace Gribble does indeed chase her stolen children to the juvenile courthouse, desperate to reverse whatever those forms did.

Inside, she meets Georgia Tann herself and begs to know where her babies are.

But Georgia's apathetic.

She tells Grace that the children are gone, that they're already on their way to lives far better than anything Grace could have given them.

Then she adds shamelessly, In the coming weeks, Grace finds a lawyer willing to take on her case.

Like so many other parents Georgia's targeted, they file a habeas corpus suit.

But the judge doesn't seem interested in the merits of the case, or in whether what Georgia did was right.

Instead, the trial turns into a debate about who has more money to raise Grace's children, Grace herself or the new adoptive parents Georgia sold the kids to.

Grace doesn't stand a chance.

She never sees her children again.

While Grace Gribble fights in vain to get her children back, the woman who sold them is living the kind of life she believes she deserves.

In the years since she first started turning a profit from her adoption scheme, Georgia Tann has raked in tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.

A year ago, in 1938, she bought a 17-acre estate outside of Memphis, where she and her partner Anne ride horses every morning.

She's also gotten into canning and brags to her friends about the hundreds of jars of preserved fruits and vegetables she has at her farm.

Georgia's life is a good life.

For years, she's been basically untouchable, protected by friends in high places and the grateful parents who've adopted children through her.

And even when things look a little dicey for her, she manages to spin the story to make herself seem like the winner.

In 1941, two years after Georgia takes possession of Grace Gribble's children, the Child Welfare League of America expels Georgia from its ranks.

Or, more accurately, they expel the Tennessee Children's Home Society, mostly due to the actions of the Memphis branch, which Georgia basically runs.

The Welfare League is a charitable organization that campaigns for and supervises the delivery of services to children.

It cites Georgia's popular Christmas baby giveaways as one of the reasons for the expulsion.

They're also not happy that the TCHS has consistently failed to properly assess hopeful parents' suitability before placing children with them, nor that the society doesn't supervise those children once they're in their new homes.

But Georgia shakes off the expulsion.

She tells people that she withdrew from the league because she didn't see eye to eye with them on certain matters.

Delivering that in just the right way, Georgia makes it sound like it's the league that has lacked standards, not her.

Other developments that same year make things even easier for Georgia.

Until now, a parent's surrender of their child had to be witnessed by a judge to verify that both parents have consented to it.

But in 1941, the law in Tennessee is changed, so that only a notary public needs to witness the documentation.

Georgia and her staff have long been ignoring the old rule anyway, but they jump at the chance to legitimize their practice of stealing children from parents.

As many of Georgia's staff are already notaries, it's oh so easy for them to falsify the paperwork they need.

It creates an ironclad paper trail that will come in handy should things ever go sideways.

But while the law seems to bend to Georgia's will, not everything in her life is so easily managed.

In 1941, despite how well her career is going, 50-year-old Georgia experiences what she and her family describe as a near nervous breakdown.

It's not the first time it's happened, though.

She's had similar episodes over the years, but unlike the parents she victimizes, Georgia has plenty of resources to take care of herself.

She retreats from public life, steps back from work, and holds up at home with Ann for a few weeks.

Around this time is also when Georgia has the first of two heart attacks.

She'll have another one in 1943, but neither of them slowed Georgia Tann down.

She has babies to steal and eager couples to sell them to.

That kind of work doesn't happen on its own, and it's work that doesn't just benefit Georgia financially.

By this stage, her own adopted daughter June has married and is trying to start a family of her own.

Sadly, she miscarries twice.

After the second, Georgia decides to take matters into her own hands.

Working her connections in Memphis' orphanages and boarding homes, she sources a blonde, blue-eyed infant and brings them home to June.

It's not the last time Georgia will use her expertise and adoption laws to benefit her family.

In 1943, still reeling from her second heart attack, Georgia turns her attention to her will.

She's 52 now and figures it's time for her to get her affairs in order, just in case.

But it's the 1940s, so she can't just marry her partner Anne to make her her next of kin.

Instead, she thinks a little creatively.

The two women have always told people that they're just like sisters, so they decide to make things as official as they can, and Georgia adopts 44-year-old Anne.

It might not be a conventional move, but it's one that works, legally speaking.

Unfortunately for the children of Memphis, Georgia pays a lot less attention to their well-being than she does to the security of her own family.

And despite building her reputation as a campaigner for children's welfare, Georgia Tann's let things in her adoptive home get very, very bad.

Most of the kids in the care of the Tennessee Children's Home Society are housed in various boarding homes and orphanages throughout the city.

Some of them are okay and are run by caring staff.

Others are just the opposite.

They're overcrowded and dangerous.

Not places for children at all.

It's been this way for a while, but someone finally starts paying attention.

In the mid-30s, Dr.

Ella Oppenheimer from the US.

Children's Bureau visited Memphis.

She made some recommendations about how to improve conditions for the children passing through the city's welfare system.

Now, the Memphis Department of Public Welfare is finally looking at implementing one of Dr.

Oppenheimer's suggestions, that all the city's boarding homes be licensed by the state.

As part of research for what that might look like, the organization conducts a study on about 10 random boarding homes.

What they find is alarming.

One of the boarding homes is a two-bedroom apartment.

There are 10 children living there.

Another of the homes has six babies crammed into a single crib.

One home doesn't have a refrigerator, so the babies are fed spoiled milk.

And another boarding house has already been condemned as a fire trap.

But the people running that establishment have decided that the attic is a great place to house 16 children.

The children living in these boarding homes aren't just being neglected through oversight, though.

They're being neglected with something approaching malice.

When one child is diagnosed with tuberculosis and another with syphilis, Georgia refuses to allow either of them to receive treatment.

It's too expensive and might draw too much attention.

The maddening thing is, plenty of these children could have been at home with loving families had Georgia not stolen them.

She's told devastated parents, judges and social workers that she can offer the kids better lives.

Instead, they're actively mistreated because of Georgia's greed and arrogance.

And in the face of these terrible conditions, Georgia's not going to try to improve things for the kids in her care.

She's going to take it to the next level.

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It's the fall of 1943 in the Lenox neighborhood of Memphis.

On the corner of Poplar Avenue and North Willett Street, a small crowd stands on a lush sloped lawn in front of a stately mansion.

Mostly, the gathered are members of the board of the Tennessee Children's Home Society, along with a few of their family members and some of the society's employees.

Today's an exciting day for everyone at the TCHS, but especially for 53-year-old Georgia Tann.

She's standing on the porch of the three-story building, a gleaming pair of scissors in her hands.

She steps forward to address the small audience.

It's a proud moment for their organization, she says.

Until now, they've had to rely on public institutions and boarding homes to house the children in their care.

But thanks to the kindness of a local businessman, the TCHS will have its very own space to look after some of their charges.

After a smattering of applause, Georgia cuts the bright red ribbon strung between the porch's Greek style columns, then steps back to welcome people into the new Memphis headquarters of the Tennessee Children's Home Society.

As Georgia's guests and employees walk into the space, they take in the polished floors and beautiful furnishings downstairs, including an office for Georgia and a sitting room just for prospective adoptive parents.

Upstairs, bedrooms have been converted into nurseries, with pink walls and metal cribs adorned with pictures of teddy bears.

Based on appearances alone, the orphanage will be a model institution for Memphis, a place all others like it can aspire to.

But as always, Georgia is only concerned with optics.

She doesn't care about how well her orphanage is run, so long as it looks like it's top notch.

To that end, Georgia insists that the women working at the home on Poplar Avenue wear nurses' uniforms and caps.

None of them have medical qualifications at all, but no one ever guesses.

Most people who visit the house are just there briefly to see Georgia, or to meet their future child in one of the downstairs rooms.

There, everything seems homely and serene.

But if these visitors were able to stay a little longer, and maybe take a look around, upstairs, they'd soon see another side to Georgia's perfect seeming orphanage.

They'd see the abuse that some of the orphanage's fake nurses are doling out to the children in the house.

They'd see the toddlers who are locked in closets for crying too much, or the older children who are tied up and hung from coat racks.

They'd hear the screams of the children bathed in scalding hot water, or the tears of the six-year-old child who's forced to watch a TCHS employee drown a stray cat in a barrel.

But they don't look upstairs.

They don't hang around.

So they don't see or hear any of this.

And nothing is done about it.

There are some people in Tennessee who are trying to make life better for kids in the welfare system.

At the end of January 1945, the new bill regulating boarding homes in Tennessee is finally introduced to the state legislature.

The proposed law would bring Tennessee into line with many other states, who have similar licensing requirements for boarding homes.

Coincidentally, the bill is introduced on the same day that 16 infants and one adult are killed in a fire in a Maine boarding home.

That tragedy is fresh in everyone's mind, as legislators consider the bill.

At the same time, though, welfare workers in Memphis are calling for more people to open their homes to children orphaned by the ongoing war in Europe.

So, there's plenty for lawmakers to consider, as they balance the need to care for children properly with the need for rapid responses to a child's change in circumstances.

But eventually, in July of 1945, the bill passes, with one glaring amendment.

Over the last six months, Georgia and her lawyer Abe Waldauer have lobbied hard against the law, which they insist will hinder the Tennessee Children's Home Society's operations.

And thanks to Georgia's connections to the state's political kingmaker, Edward Boss Crump, she gets her way.

When the bill becomes law, all boarding homes in Tennessee have to comply with safety checks, meet minimum requirements for the care of children, provide play programs, meet fire and accident prevention standards, and have confident adult supervision at all times.

All boarding homes, that is, except for Georgia's.

The Act specifically and exclusively exempts institutions used by the TCHS from the new restrictions.

Once again, Georgia Tann has proven herself a master at the political game.

She's turned her adoption business into real power and seems untouchable in Tennessee.

Now, she's determined to test just how far she can go.

At the same time, the Tennessee's lawmakers are passing the bill to regulate boarding homes, children in Georgia's new orphanage on Poplar Avenue are dying at an alarming rate.

Over a period of about four months in the summer of 1945, between 40 and 50 children die while living at the home.

The cause is dysentery, a gastrointestinal infection.

The infant's tiny bodies dehydrate so quickly that without trained medical staff on hand, the disease rips through the home on a seemingly endless loop, killing dozens of children before anyone outside the establishment even notices.

Eventually, though, one person does see the problem.

Dr.

Clyde Croswell is a pediatrician with nearly two decades of experience.

He's also a regular volunteer at the Poplar Orphanage.

And when he makes a visit in the middle of one of the dysentery outbreaks, he recognizes what's going on immediately.

Speaking with Georgia, Dr.

Croswell tells her in no uncertain terms that she should not admit any more children while the problem persists.

And whenever a child does fall sick, they should be taken to the nearest hospital immediately for proper treatment.

Simple enough, right?

Well, Georgia Tann's never liked being told what to do, especially not when doing so would interfere with her ability to make money.

So she ignores Dr.

Croswell's instructions.

Children keep arriving at Poplar Avenue, and children continue to die.

Understandably, Dr.

Croswell is frustrated.

He's also desperate for things to change.

So, hoping that he can make someone see reason, he sets up a meeting with George's lawyer, Abe Waldauer, and invites along the TCHS Board of Directors.

Dr.

Croswell comes to the meeting prepared.

He has information about the best ways to treat gastrointestinal infections, charts explaining how close quarters lead to rapid spread of disease, and even a list of every child who's died at the home in the last few months.

But the board refuses to even look at what Dr.

Croswell has brought them.

George has stacked the panel with some of her closest political allies and friends.

They are not interested in what the doctor has to say.

After that, Dr.

Croswell stops volunteering at the orphanage.

What would be the point?

His advice is ignored and he can't bear to watch on helplessly as children die.

But Dr.

Croswell isn't just giving up.

He knows that other doctors who offer their services to the orphanage share his concerns.

One of them, Dr.

Charles Carter, once prescribed penicillin for a sick infant.

Later, he found out that Georgia ordered her employees to stop administering the drug, and to just fudge the kids' charts so no one would notice.

So when Dr.

Croswell comes to him with his own stories, Dr.

Carter is on board to take action.

Together with four other doctors, Croswell and Carter submit an official complaint about Georgia to a Memphis judge.

They don't just highlight the serious concerns they have over the children's medical care at the TCHS.

They also point out their alarm that Georgia advertises certain children for adoption over others, as if they're fashionable accessories in a department store catalog.

Nobody, the doctors note, is checking up on the children once they reach their adoptive homes.

Perhaps the most unnerving accusation comes from Dr.

Croswell, though.

He comes to the conclusion that Georgia Tann is deliberately covering up the deaths of children in her care.

The number Georgia's been reporting to the government just doesn't tally with what he's seen with his own eyes.

What she must be doing with the children's bodies is a mystery, but Croswell is sure that things aren't adding up.

As a judge in Memphis' probate court, Samuel Bates has presided over a lot of Georgia's adoptions.

So when he reviews the report from six respected doctors, he's alarmed.

In May of 1946, Judge Bates sends a lengthy letter to the Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Public Welfare, explaining in careful detail each of the complaints the doctors have made.

At the end of the document, he informs the Commissioner that he'll stop approving any adoptions from Georgia and the TCHS unless the doctors' accusations are shown to be false, or Georgia herself is removed from her position.

It's yet another opportunity for someone in a position of power to do something to stop Georgia.

But instead, the Commissioner shirks his responsibility.

He could conduct an investigation into the TCHS and its practices, or even shut the whole place down if he wanted to.

What he does, though, is delegate someone else to look into the doctor's claims.

And who does he get for the job?

Georgia's lawyer, Abe Waldauer, and the rest of the TCHS Board.

To be fair, the Board do ask Georgia about the charges against her, but she simply denies everything, insisting that only two babies have died in her care.

Then Abe and the Board interview each of the doctors about their concerns.

After that, the Board issues a report on their findings.

They decree that the doctors' accusations are quote, irresponsible, valueless and false.

So the Department of Public Welfare closes the book on the matter and moves on.

For his part, Judge Bates makes good on his vow and refuses to approve any more adoptions that come to him through the TCHS.

But while that's an inconvenience to Georgia, it's an obstacle she can overcome easily enough.

There are plenty of judges in more rural areas, men without any legal training, but who were elected to their positions just the same.

They're more than happy to sign anything that's put in front of them, just so long as Georgia invokes the name of her powerful ally, Boss Crump.

So as the 1940s continue, it seems like there's no one and no thing that can stop Georgia Tann.

She's adopted out thousands of babies to delighted parents who sing her praises.

And her client list doesn't just include the rich and powerful of Memphis.

Hollywood stars like Joan Crawford, Lana Turner and Dick Powell adopt children with Georgia's help.

Even New York's governor comes to the TCHS when he's looking to adopt.

Together with her political connections and her cutthroat lawyer, Georgia is well insulated against anything the world throws at her.

But there is one thing that can stop Georgia Tann.

And it's the thing that comes for all of us in the end.

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It's the spring of 1945, at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida.

53-year-old Georgia Tann sits in a bland office, watching a doctor flip through a folder of test results.

Georgia wishes he'd hurry up and tell her what's wrong so she can get out of this stifling room.

Recently, she's noticed blood in her underwear, and it's been years since her last period she's concerned.

Really, it was Ann who talked her into coming.

If it were up to Georgia, she probably would have ignored the problem and hoped it went away.

But her partner is persistent, stubborn, like Georgia.

She purses her lips as the doctor finally looks up at her.

Georgia can tell right away that it's not going to be good news.

Then he says the words, uterine, cancer.

After that, the doctor launches into descriptions of various treatment options and schedules.

He says things like quality of life, and Georgia's already checked out.

When he asks if she has any questions, Georgia shakes her head.

She doesn't have time for cancer.

She's got a job to do.

Following her cancer diagnosis, Georgia Tann refuses treatment.

All she asks for is medication to help manage the pain.

Spending long periods of time in and out of hospitals isn't something she wants to deal with.

And she figures that she could beat the odds and live for another couple decades.

That would be plenty of time to drag thousands more children out of the crushing circumstances of their birth and place them with worthy, rich families instead.

That's a legacy Georgia would be proud to leave.

But the truth is, Georgia's legacy is already taking shape.

By the time of her diagnosis, the state of adoption in America has completely changed.

In the 1920s, the system was sluggish, unpopular and struggled to place children with new families.

Now it's a whole different ball game.

Georgia's national campaign to normalize adoption has worked incredibly well.

The children of unmarried mothers were once seen as miniatures of their morally bankrupt parents, but now they're a valuable commodity for the middle and upper classes.

Single mothers used to receive active encouragement to raise their own children.

Now they're basically expected to give them up for adoption.

And that's not just society's verdict.

It's an official position taken by leaders of organizations like the Child Welfare League of America, the American Public Welfare Association, the Salvation Army, and most of the country's psychologists and psychiatrists.

With the national mood so tilted in her favor, Georgia barely has to work to get her hands on children anymore.

Instead, she can concentrate on campaigning against new laws that might change the industry in a way that doesn't suit her vision.

Before Georgia popularized adoption, adoptees were generally allowed to access records in the event that they wanted to find their birth families.

Georgia changed all that, though.

For decades, she's been refusing to divulge such information.

Her belief is that if children are allowed to know who their birth parents are, they'll want to return to them.

It's a line she feeds directly to adoptive parents to scare them off asking too many questions about the origins of their children.

Of course, the real reason Georgia doesn't want anyone to know where adopted children come from is because she's forcibly taken so many of them from loving families.

She's spent thousands of dollars fighting parents in court who've sued to regain custody.

She can't have those children then upend the entire business model just to satisfy their curiosity.

So publicly, Georgia tells people that as a rule, parents don't want the children who've been adopted.

Allowing adoptees access to their birth parents will only cause heartache for the children when they're rejected again.

And single mothers will face being ostracized if their communities ever find out that they had a baby outside of marriage.

It's fear-mongering, but it works.

And it's helped make Georgia a very rich woman.

As the 1940s draw to a close, Georgia's made in the region of a million dollars from the adoptions she's facilitated, from the children she sold.

Adjusted for inflation, that would be closer to 13 million today.

Now though, knowing that her days are numbered, she starts spending that fortune in earnest.

She already owns several homes and gets to work refurbishing all of them.

She splashes out on fancy new cars and luxurious furs.

She even sends her daughter and son-in-law on vacations around the country, footing the bill for expensive hotels wherever they land.

But while Georgia's doing her best to empty out her bank accounts, it seems like her crimes might finally catch up to her.

In September of 1950, with the list of complaints against Georgia growing by the month, Tennessee's governor opens an official investigation into the practices of the Tennessee Children's Home Society.

However, the lead attorney is forbidden from interviewing Georgia Tann herself, or from viewing any court records about her.

Still, there are other ways for people to figure out what's going on.

The previous winter, a pair of housewives noticed one of Georgia's employees transporting children through Memphis' airport, which seems suspicious to them.

Now, the state's investigators follow that clue all the way to Los Angeles, where they get the full story from a TCHS worker, Georgia's charging families to adopt children.

It's enough to go public.

On September 12th, the governor announces to the press that the state believes Georgia made a million dollars from illicit activities related to the TCHS.

He says the government will be seeking to recover the money.

It seems that at last the empire that Georgia had built is under threat.

But Georgia herself has no idea what's happening.

Her illness has caught up to her.

She's bedridden, and her family and nurses shield her from the news about the investigation.

It's the sort of kindness that Georgia rarely showed to others.

But those around her don't have to keep the secret for long.

Just three days after the governor announces the results of his investigation, Georgia Tann dies at the age of 59.

As soon as she's gone, the spell she's cast over Memphis seems to break.

The veil lifts, people start talking.

The board of the Tennessee Children's Home Society announced that they've conducted an investigation, and concluded that Georgia was definitely making money on the side.

Acting scandalized, they insist that had they only known, they would have fired her years ago.

But of course, they did know something was wrong.

They had to know, but they did nothing.

Now, Georgia's not around to face charges, or explain the full extent of what she did.

And when investigators start digging into the rest of her affairs, they don't have much luck either.

It seems like Georgia didn't keep any files on the children she sold, or if she did, she had the paper trail destroyed before she died.

Plenty of people come forward to tell their stories, though.

The governor's inbox is flooded with letters from parents telling him about their stolen children.

Other families say that they paid Georgia for inspections, but didn't receive a child.

Some even say that their adopted child was taken back when they couldn't pay extra fees Georgia demanded after the fact.

The sheer number of these stories is staggering, but it isn't surprising.

Given that Georgia made possible the adoption of over 5,000 children during her career.

Most of them went out of state to places like California and New York, further complicating matters for the people trying to untangle the mess left behind in Georgia's wake.

In December of 1950, just three months after Georgia's death, the Tennessee Children's Home Society closes.

Its other branches in places like Jackson and Nashville weren't wrapped up in Georgia's scheme, but their reputation's been tarnished all the same.

Desperate parents hope that this is the break they've been waiting for.

That justice will now be done.

That they'll finally be reunited with their lost sons and daughters.

But despite the accepted fact that Georgia was stealing and selling children, the state does nothing.

There are limited attempts to probe the matter further, but these are killed off by Georgia's remaining supporters and the influential adoptive parents who use Georgia's services.

It's not in any of their interests to have the full truth laid bare.

So it isn't.

In the months following Georgia's death, Tennessee legislators passed laws that legalized all of the adoptions Georgia supervised.

All of the out-of-state transactions, the forged surrender papers, they're all legal now, effectively sealing those records forever.

In the years that follow, the world forgets about Georgia Tann.

There was no trial to read about, no punishment to debate, no answers to the many questions.

So she fades from memory.

Though that doesn't stop her ruining lives and dividing families even from beyond the grave.

As they grow up, many of Georgia's adoptees try and track down their birth families.

But they're blocked by Tennessee's adoption laws, the ones that Georgia lobbied so hard for.

They can't even get access to their birth records to trace their family health histories.

Other states follow Tennessee's lead and enact similar laws.

And by the 1960s, it's virtually impossible for any adoptee in America to find out where they came from.

It's not until 1991, over 40 years after Georgia Tann's death, that her story makes a real dent in the national consciousness.

That year, author Barbara Raymond publishes a magazine article about Georgia's crimes.

After that, 60 Minutes runs a segment about Georgia.

Then Oprah does an episode.

As word gets around, passed along on answering machines and at the water cooler, adoptees finally learn where they can start looking for answers.

Some of them are lucky.

They find families they never knew they had, parents and siblings who've spent lost decades wondering about their fate.

For others, though, the revelations come too late.

Their birth parents are gone, and the woman responsible for keeping their family apart never had to face justice.

Georgia Tann's legacy remains a complicated one to unravel.

She profited off the misery of some of the poorest people in her community.

Not all of the children Georgia sold were abused.

Not all of them longed to meet their birth parents.

And not all of them were ripped from loving homes.

But the fact that any of them were is an indictment of the society Georgia lived in.

She was able to exploit her position and the law to her advantage, and silenced her victims when they dared to fight back.

At the same time, Georgia undoubtedly changed the way Americans felt about adoption and about orphans.

Piece by piece, she created a scaffold for the modern adoption industry, which has resulted in millions of happy families.

Maybe those changes were inevitable with or without Georgia Tann.

Maybe things would have moved slower.

Or maybe they would have evolved differently, evolved into something better.

Frustratingly, that's something we'll never know.

Just like the children Georgia ripped from their parents, we'll never know what could have been if she just stayed away.

From Airship, this is Episode 4 in our series on Georgia Tann.

On the next episode, I'll be talking with a special guest about the history of the adoption industry in the United States, the legacy of Georgia Tann, and where things stand 70 years after her death.

We used many different sources while preparing this episode.

We can recommend The Baby Thief, The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, The Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption by Barbara Raymond, as well as The Extensive Reporting in the Memphis Press Cemetery and The Tennessean.

This episode may contain reenactments or dramatized details.

And while in some cases, we can't know exactly what happened, all our dramatizations are based on historical research.

American Criminal is hosted, edited and produced by me, Jeremy Schwartz.

Audio Editing by Mohammed Shazeeb.

Sound Design by Matthew Filler.

Music by Thrum.

This episode is written and researched by Joel Callan.

Managing Producer Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are Joel Callan, William Simpson and Lindsey Graham for Airship.