In New York, a man from Long Island had a nagging feeling all his life that something was off – he suspected he might not belong to his own family. Then, his sister decided to take a DNA test, and his suspicions were confirmed – he had been switched at birth.
“My siblings used to tease me, saying things like ‘maybe you’re the mailman’s child’ because I looked so different from them,” Kevin McMahon disclosed. “It was a light-hearted joke, but it turned out to be true.”
McMahon’s younger siblings were fair, had straight hard hair, blue eyes and freckles. McMahon had none of those traits.
“If this had happened nowadays, my parents would have noticed right away that something was amiss,” he mused. “They would have seen that the baby they brought home was completely different from them and questioned it immediately.”
It was May 1960, at Jamaica Hospital, when Kevin McMahon was issued a birth certificate ending in 2710.
Ross McMahon was born within hours, with his birth certificate ending in 2711.
The infants were switched at birth. McMahon is now suing Jamaica Hospital.
“They’re completely responsible,” McMahon said. “They made one calamitous mistake, and it just changed the entire course of my life.”
Jamaica Hospital declined to comment.
“They’re two Caucasian mothers with the same last name, in their 30s, that both gave birth to baby boys at the same hospital on the same day within two hours of each other,” said attorney Jeremy Schiowitz.
McMahon, pictured to the left in the photo below, found out when his sister Carol received her Ancestry.com results, which revealed an unknown biological brother.
The brother standing next to Carol is Ross, the other baby McMahon switched at birth.
Ross is really Kevin, and Kevin is really Ross.
“She was so fearful, so anxious about telling me,” said Kevin McMahon about when his sister told him. “When she told me, I couldn’t process information, I’m like, I feel nothing. Like, I honestly, I have no feelings here. I think I was in sort of a state of shock at that point.”
Cece Moore is a genetic genealogist at Parabon Nanolabs, and has been featured on “Finding Your Roots” on PBS, and on the ABC series “Genetic Detective.”
She says she’s seen dozens of cases like these in the U.S.
“It’s so incredibly sad that we’re seeing so many surprises like this through direct-to-consumer DNA testing,” she said.
For Kevin McMahon, it answers the long-held question of why it always felt like he was treated differently than his siblings.
“You know, even with that knowledge, it feels like it’s too late for me,” he said. “It doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change my insecurities.”
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