this is long and just included a fee excerpts. ya gotta read it. horrifying
For 20 years, a Tennessee baby thief kidnapped more than 5,000 children from the streets, hospitals, and shanty towns of Memphis. Now, 70 years later, survivors of her 'house of horrors' are confronting the past.
For over 20 years, Georgia Tann ran a lucrative child-kidnapping and -adoption ring.
As the executive director of the Tennessee Children's Home Society, Tann got rich by stealing babies from their parents and adopting them out to unsuspecting families.
More than 5,000 children were snatched by Tann, and at least 500 children are believed to have died while under her care.
Surviving adoptees from the Children's Home Society spoke with Insider about what they endured and how they found out who they really were.
Tann was calculated in her approach and targeted the rich and famous, who paid premium prices for their adopted children. Actors, authors, and entertainers, including Dick Powell and June Allyson, Lana Turner, Pearl S. Buck, Smiley Burnette, and New York Gov. Herbert Lehman, all adopted Tann babies. In 1947, Joan Crawford adopted twins, Cathy and Cindy, from Tann.
A network of corrupt social workers, police officers, doctors, lawyers, and judges helped Tann get away with the scheme
Drug addicts and pedophiles were hired to watch over them. One male caretaker was known to take little boys into the woods, while Tann molested countless girls.
Tann was brutally unsparing in her cruelty. Former Home Society employees revealed to Taylor that if an infant was deemed too weak, it might be left in the sun to die. If a child had a congenital disability or was considered "too ugly" or "old" to be of use, Tann had people get rid of them. Many were buried on the property, though about 20 children were buried in an unmarked plot of land within Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis.
The children's deaths did little to stop Tann's baby-adoption juggernaut.
https://news.yahoo.com/20-years-tennessee-baby-thief-134448084.html