We continue from Part 1 of Blogger Local Kansas City‘s inside look at a case straight out the vault of Kansas City private investigator Doug Pearson. When Doug Pearson of Act Now Investigations began to dig into the case of the Colonel from Trieste, he had what now seems like a solid lead, a last name. In 1991 when Doug started the case there were many existing searchable data bases for government records but they generally hadn’t been connected to each other. When I spoke with the Kansas City private investigator, he told me that it took it around a year to get a substantial lead that he felt could develop into something. Doug’s investigation lead him to a military base in Florida where a man with the last name and ranking of Colonel had been located. At this point Doug’s cunning ability to extract information was put to the test. He had to approach the situation with reserve and tact. If Doug laid it all out for the Colonel and told him that Kay might be his daughter, the Colonel could deny it outright to protect his character and family or he might be worried that Kay wanted some sort of financial compensation for his absence. Doug had to figure out how to get the Colonel to divulge all the necessary information to confirm his relation to the facts from the letter but not present so much information that only parties intimate to the events from the letter could know them.
At this point the licensed private investigator had to call in some help from his family. Doug enlisted his mother to help him get the info he needed without blowing the investigation’s cover. The Kansas City private investigator had his mother pose as a person gathering historical information and accounts of people who were in WWII. His mother reached out to the Colonel and as she eventually got passed his initial skepticism, he began to answer her general questions. Eventually it became clear that he was a strong candidate for being a match to the Colonel from Kay’s mother’s love letter.
Contact Is Made
Doug’s mother gained the trust of the Colonel overtime and eventually set up an interview with the Colonel. Doug and his mother flew down to Florida to meet him on his own turf. The Colonel agreed to do an on camera interview with Doug’s mother the “historian”. In the interview she really honed in on some of the intimate facts that could help establish the connection between him and Kay’s mother Ruth. The Kansas City Private investigator and his mother returned back to Kansas City with what they believed to be enough evidence from the Colonel’s accounts that could link him to Kay’s mother. Doug told us that when comparing the physical resemblance between Kay and the Colonel, it seemed obvious to him that Kay was the Colonel’s progeny. Doug presented Kay with his findings and she concluded from the evidence that the Colonel was indeed her biological father. Now the next step towards reuniting the pair was to confront the Colonel in some capacity and see if he would admit to being the man from Kay’s mother’s letter.
In the next installment of the story we will find out the Colonel reacted to the investigation’s findings. Check back with your Kansas City blog to see how the story unfolds.
