Lives Less Ordinary3 Feb 2025

The DNA request that revealed my child had gone missing

In April 2010, Cathy Terkanian received a letter that turned her world upside down. It revealed that her daughter, Alexis, whom she’d had to place for adoption in 1974, had gone missing. Then she was given more shocking news—the police had a new lead, could the unidentified body of a young woman found in Wisconsin be Alexis? They needed Cathy’s DNA to confirm it. As Cathy began to process this, her own painful past surfaced. She had run away from home as a teenager, joining a circus before getting pregnant with Alexis aged 15. In the years after Cathy was pressured to have Alexis adopted, she became a nurse and married, but never had any other children, always thinking about the daughter she had to say goodbye to.

Following the news of Alexis’ disappearance Cathy couldn’t sit and wait for the DNA test results, she needed answers. Determined to find them she turned detective, connecting with Carl Koppelman, an amateur sleuth investigating cold cases. Together they started to unearth evidence that made Cathy suspect the worst—that Alexis’ adoptive father, Dennis Bowman, had something to do with her disappearance.

Cathy had always hoped her daughter Alexis would come looking for her; instead she spent a decade searching for Alexis. This mother’s quest for truth and justice has also been made into a Netflix documentary called Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter.

Presenter: Jo Fidgen Producer: Thomas Harding Assinder

Get in touch: liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(227)

I had a baby – then lost my memory, part 1

When Samina Ali gave birth to her first child in California in 1999, what should have been a joyful moment quickly turned into a medical emergency.An undiagnosed case of the pregnancy disorder pre-ecl...

22 Jun 41min

Could a sitcom save a man from death row?

Juan Catalan was facing the death penalty for a murder he didn’t commit. There was one man he thought could save him: US comedian Larry David. On 12 May 2003, Juan attended a baseball game that he wou...

15 Jun 39min

I was kidnapped by North Korea

In the 1970s and 80s, a spate of mysterious disappearances were reported along Japan’s coast. One of those was 19-year-old nurse Hitomi Soga, who was walking with her mother when they were kidnapped. ...

8 Jun 33min

I was forced to rob my own bank, part 2

Many years after he’d held a gun to her daughter’s head, Michelle wrote to Robert Ortiz seeking closure. It took him years to write back – and then they met.In 2000, Michelle Renee was at home with he...

1 Jun 23min

I was forced to rob my own bank, part 1

In 2000, armed men burst into Michelle Renee's home and held her child hostage while she was forced to rob her own bank. None of them could have predicted what happened next. Michelle Renee was at hom...

25 Mai 38min

Kangaroo Dundee: I gave it all up to become a ‘kangaroo mum’

Chris 'Brolga' Barns fell in love with joeys and became a kangaroo 'mum'. He rescues orphaned baby kangaroos, or joeys, carrying them around in a pillowcase to mimic their mum’s pouch. While working a...

18 Mai 40min

I'm a champion boxer, but couldn't tell my mum

Ramla Ali's family fled Somalia and settled in the UK; she then went from overweight bullied child to champion boxer and model who later brought the sport back to her homeland.Ramla Ali was a baby whe...

11 Mai 40min

Strangers to coworkers to friends to...sisters?

Cassandra Madison and Julia Tinetti met working at the same bar in their 20s and were struck by how similar they looked. Their adoption records didn't match, but a surprise gift later revealed the ext...

4 Mai 39min