Outcomes of this investigation had been adverse.
That phrase seems all through the Nassau County Police Division data regarding the disappearance of Steven Damman, an East Meadow boy who was 2 years outdated on Oct. 31, 1955, when his mom advised police he vanished from a purchasing strip close to their house. Her report launched a dayslong search by 1000’s of officers and volunteers adopted by years of labor by Nassau police detectives, every new lead’s failure duly typed up and filed.
Steven was by no means discovered and, 70 years after his disappearance, no arrests have been made in his disappearance.
“That is nonetheless an energetic, ongoing investigation,” Det. Joseph Oginski, a Nassau police spokesperson, wrote Thursday in an e-mail to Newsday. The vice chairman of the nonprofit Nationwide Middle for Lacking and Exploited Youngsters advised Newsday it additionally considers the case open.
WHAT NEWSDAY FOUND
- Friday marked 70 years since East Meadow toddler Steven Damman disappeared from an East Meadow purchasing strip.
- Pages of Nassau police paperwork present perception into the investigation and a window into suburban life on Lengthy Island within the Fifties.
- Numerous clues and leads have didn’t yield outcomes concerning the boy’s destiny. His lacking particular person’s case with the Nassau police division stays open.
The paperwork — lots of of pages written by police, for police, summarizing suggestions from the general public and interviews with individuals of curiosity and potential witnesses — present a document of the division’s technique on a serious mid-century case. They comprise particulars not beforehand extensively reported, together with that police confronted Marilyn Damman with doubts about her story of her son’s disappearance. Newsday obtained them from Nassau police in 2009 via a data request and revisited them for the anniversary.
The investigation begins
The paperwork hint an investigation that centered for a time on a witness account of a bunch of Black kidnappers that resulted in years of police questioning of Black folks noticed with white youngsters within the Tri-State space and past. No such kidnappers had been ever discovered. The dragnet additionally snared, if solely briefly, lots of of households together with those that had stillborn youngsters, whose boys died within the years earlier than Steven’s disappearance or who adopted boys afterward, on the speculation that he might need been taken as a alternative.
Jerry Damman, holding Steven’s photograph, and his spouse, Marilyn, after the boy’s disappearance on Oct. 31, 1955.
Credit score: Newsday File Photograph, 1955/Newsday File Photograph, 1955
The paperwork are a window into postwar Lengthy Island life. Their flat-toned, declarative language will also be learn as a historical past of private frustration: for the younger boy’s dad and mom, alerted repeatedly to the invention of youngsters who resembled their son however turned out to not be him; for the folks who had been handled as potential suspects by police and their very own neighbors or acquaintances; and for investigators, who for years ran down leads as slim because the declare of a Minneapolis priest who mentioned his “magnetic searcher” confirmed Steven close by and alive.
Damman’s Nov. 3, 1955, assertion to police says that on the day Steven disappeared, at about 1:15 or 1:30 p.m. she left him napping at their Mitchell Avenue house and took his toddler sister, Pamela, in a carriage to a Woolworths division retailer close to Entrance Road and Merrick Avenue in East Meadow. At about 2:15 p.m. they returned house. At 2:45 p.m. she took each youngsters to the Meals Truthful grocery store close to that intersection. There, she “advised Steven that I’d be again in a couple of minutes and left him standing there holding the carriage,” with Pamela in it.
Steven goes lacking
Damman mentioned that when she returned about 10 minutes later, the carriage was gone and so had been her youngsters. A neighbor quickly discovered it close by holding Pamela however not Steven. He weighed 32 kilos, stood simply over three ft tall and wore a crimson sweater with white and blue ships on the entrance.
Shortly after 3 p.m., the neighbor referred to as Marilyn’s husband, Jerry Damman, an airman at Mitchel Air Force Base. At 3:40 p.m., Marilyn Damman referred to as police.
In interviews, a number of neighbors advised police they noticed Marilyn Damman and Pamela, however not Steven, that day. One neighbor advised police she noticed Steven outdoors the grocery store at 1 or 1:30 p.m., “standing close to the carriage rocking it and the child was inside this carriage crying.” In one of many final reported sightings of Steven by somebody apart from his mom, one other neighbor mentioned she noticed Damman and each youngsters close to the grocery store at about 2 p.m., roughly an hour earlier than Damman mentioned she took each of her youngsters there.
Nothing within the paperwork means that police thought it was odd to depart a toddler and an toddler alone in entrance of a retailer, although Damman might have been delicate to the opportunity of criticism. In a 1956 Saturday Evening Post story by columnist Jimmy Breslin, she mentioned that there have been “three or 4 different carriages, with infants in them, outdoors the shop” on the day Steven vanished. “It was one thing which I had completed a thousand instances, and different ladies nonetheless do,” she mentioned. Damman didn’t elaborate, however {a photograph} accompanying the story reveals a number of strollers parked outdoors the shop, all massive sufficient that they may have been troublesome to navigate inside. It’s unclear if the carriages are occupied.
“This was very a lot a child-centered setting — the streets had been constructed particularly with curves to gradual site visitors so youngsters may play outdoors,” mentioned Scott Eckers, a Long Island historian and trainer who has written about East Meadow. “There was this notion that this was a really protected place.”
An all-out search
Within the hours after they had been notified, police performed “probably the most intensive avenue by avenue” search in Nassau County historical past within the space the place he was final seen, in response to a Nov. 2, 1955, Newsday story. The story mentioned the search was ultimately referred to as off and police had been turning their investigation to “all ladies who’ve misplaced infants just lately and all ladies identified to have been unable to have youngsters.”
Navy private and police comb via an East Meadow nursery in November 1955 seeking Steven Damman. Credit score: Newsday Photograph, 1955
Police checked recommendations on households with boys that could be Steven via no less than 1964, with police ruling out some households via start data or interviews with neighbors. They questioned some dad and mom, like a Maryland lady with no obvious ties to Lengthy Island. Officers who interviewed the girl decided that whereas she had adopted a boy in 1955 after struggling a miscarriage, “her fifth such misfortune,” he was not Steven.
Police opened one other avenue of investigation, based mostly on an interview with Philena Potter, the witness who advised detectives that she had watched on Oct. 31 at about 3 p.m. as a Black man “picked up this little boy who had been standing close to the carriage and walked off.” Potter mentioned the person was one among six Black folks in a bunch that included one other man and 4 ladies.In a December 26, 1956, police interview, Potter’s daughter added a element that was not in Potter’s authentic assertion: “They picked up a little bit boy and he began screaming,” she mentioned her mom had advised her on the day Steven disappeared.
Not one of the different paperwork that Newsday reviewed recommend that anybody else witnessed this scene. Based on the Saturday Night Publish article, written in Damman’s voice as advised to Breslin, police and Damman herself “discounted” the account of the lady who claimed to have seen six Black kidnappers. Damman mentioned she believed, based mostly on “mom’s instinct, maybe,” that “a lady who misplaced a baby of her personal took my son to exchange him.”
On Nov. 30, 1955, police issued a information launch concerning the six “criminals,” asking anybody who noticed them with a “small blonde boy with blue eyes” to contact the authorities. Going public was a raffle: Many individuals who thought that they had helpful data to share supplied suggestions that had been obscure or not borne out by investigation.
One tip got here from a Valley Stream ironmongery store proprietor who referred to as police after a “coloured” lady purchased a padlock. Lots of the recommendations on Black adults with white youngsters turned out to be real however not nefarious. A Nassau police officer, calling Previous Brookville police to examine a tip a couple of Black lady seen with a white baby, realized that “most of the residents have governesses for the kids in that space, and lots of of them are taken for walks within the afternoon,” in response to the paperwork.
Police seem to have run down almost each potential lead, no matter plausibility, As soon as, they drove to the Bronx to look a neighborhood after a lady reported a potential sighting of Steven, solely to have the lady inform them she received “messages out of the air.” They searched the neighborhood anyway. Additionally they interviewed no less than two psychics who claimed to have had related visions.
“No data of any worth was obtained from this interview,” an investigator wrote after speaking to a psychic in New Jersey.
Leads go nowhere
Promising leads didn’t develop. An individual who despatched ransom notes to the Damman household was in all probability simply an opportunist with no data of Steven’s whereabouts, police decided, and a Michigan man who in 2009 claimed to be Steven was proved unsuitable by DNA proof.
An early disappointment got here in a Nov. 18, 1955, name that investigators took from the NYPD a couple of boy matching Steven’s description who had been discovered wandering alone in a New York Metropolis selection retailer. Police believed the resemblance was so nice that at 12:45 a.m. they drove Jerry Damman to Manhattan’s Foundling Hospital and collectively “seen the kid who was not Jerry Damman’s son.”
Marilyn Damman recounted that incident within the Saturday Night Publish article, beginning with a telephone name from police to her husband: “I may inform by his solutions that one thing good was taking place. I grabbed his arm and cried a little bit.” Alone at house after her husband drove with officers into Manhattan, Damman mentioned she was satisfied “he was going to deliver again Steven. I considered how I’d act and what I’d do.” As hours handed, “I mentioned, ‘Sure, it’s Steven, and Jerry is late as a result of he’s signing lots of papers so he can deliver Steven house. Jerry walked into the home alone at 4 o’clock” within the morning.
The Saturday Night Publish article presents a sympathetic portrait of a lady pushed to the boundaries of what any father or mother may bear.
Mom underneath suspicion
However in late 1955, police interviewed two ladies who mentioned Marilyn had crushed Steven. One lady mentioned that on a day within the spring earlier than Steven disappeared, she’d heard slaps and the boy crying from the Damman residence. The lady additionally cited an acquaintance who advised her she noticed “Marilyn beat Steven concerning the face, head and chest together with her fists.”
One other lady who advised police she witnessed the beating mentioned it was so troubling she had complained to an air base chaplain. When police interviewed the chaplain, he mentioned he’d had a number of complaints about Marilyn Damman beating Steven. The chaplain mentioned he had spoken with the Dammans “as a result of a number of the neighbors had complained about the way in which Marilyn had handled Steven.”
Different neighbors described Marilyn as a caring mom. However police reviewed Steven’s medical historical past, which included a go to to an air base physician in January 1954, by which the doctor was advised that Steven had awoke with a bruised face and a bruised, swollen arm after falling from a rocking horse. An X-ray confirmed his higher left arm was damaged. On different dates, the historical past famous a chin lower that required sutures and a ruptured eardrum. The physician was advised that Steven ruptured his eardrum after sticking a chunk of wooden into it.
Steven Damman’s tricycle at the door of the household house in East Meadow on the day he disappeared. Credit score: Newsday Photograph, 1955
The medical historical past was included within the paperwork with out remark from the police. Newsday’s evaluate of the data discovered no evaluation of the probability of abuse.
By November 1957, investigators gave the impression to be working from a brand new principle of the case that pointed to Marilyn as a suspect after they re-interviewed the Dammans, who had separated however had been each residing in Iowa.
Right here the language of the police report — concrete and particular throughout lots of of pages — turns obscure. “There are indications, as there have been from the inception of the case, that Marilyn has not taken the curiosity within the efforts to return Steven that Jerry has, and that the lack of Steven has not drastically (affected) her, which, in itself, seems unnatural, and on the similar time, in a obscure sense, could also be as a result of her sort of persona and make-up.”
What “indications”? What diploma or method of grief would, within the author’s judgment, seem pure? The report doesn’t specify.
The report continues: “Detectives advised Marilyn that the details of the case point out that she is the one that’s liable for the disappearance of Steven, and moreover that there was each indication that the therapy which she gave Steven was not of the routine self-discipline sort, and that it was felt that she was not telling all relating to the day in query,” in response to the paperwork.
Marilyn Damman advised police that “she had nothing to do with the disappearance of her son, and felt that she had no one to reply to however herself.”
Newsday was unable to succeed in Pamela Sue Horne, Steven’s sister, to debate her brother’s disappearance. The paperwork don’t deal with Damman’s therapy of Pamela, besides a passing statement by a neighbor that Damman “cuddled” her.
Exhausting to resolve
Joseph Giacalone, a retired member of the NYPD who commanded the division’s Bronx Chilly Case Squad and is now an adjunct professor at John Jay Faculty of Prison Justice, mentioned investigators working a case like Steven’s in 2025 would use instruments that did not exist when he disappeared, together with surveillance digicam footage and cellphone and web data.
Police then and now could be cautious of confronting the dad and mom of a lacking baby and even implying suspicion with out sturdy proof, he mentioned. “If you happen to’re unsuitable … you’ve turned this into a large number. We’re skilled to imagine victims, despite the fact that we’d have our antennae up.”
Had been he working the case, he mentioned, he would retrace the trail Marilyn Damman and her youngsters took on the day Steven disappeared and pull property data to seek out any close by websites with open land or building. Cadaver canine have been identified to detect decades-old stays, he mentioned, and ground-penetrating radar can support within the seek for buried proof.
With out DNA or forensic proof, he mentioned, Steven’s case “goes to be almost not possible to resolve.”
Steven Damman proven age-progressed to 65 years outdated. Credit score: Nationwide Middle for Lacking and Exploited Youngsters
John Bischoff, vice chairman of the nonprofit Nationwide Middle for Lacking and Exploited Youngsters, mentioned his group has {a photograph} of Steven as a toddler and an age-progressed picture of him as a 65-year-old man on its web site.
The group’s database holds simply 162 lacking youngsters who could be over 65 years of age if discovered alive right now, a fraction of the roughly 500,000 circumstances staffers have labored on, utilizing lacking posters and strategies like genetic family tree, age development and forensic reconstruction.
Steven is 72, if he’s nonetheless alive. Discovering somebody a long time after they went lacking is “fairly troublesome,” Bischoff mentioned. However “till we all know what occurred to a baby, we do not quit hope.”
Nicholas Spangler is a normal task reporter and has labored at Newsday since 2010.
