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Daily Mail
27-04-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
Long Island man learns jaw dropping truth about his family after 60 years of nagging suspicions
For most of his life, Kevin McMahon couldn't explain why he felt like a stranger in his own home - almost like a guest in a family where he was supposed to belong. Raised in Richmond Hill, Queens, Kevin remembers puzzled glances, stinging silences, and a grandmother's unspoken scorn that seemed to follow him. It wasn't just that he looked different with darker eyes, olive skin, a face that didn't look much like others in the family photo - it was something deeper, harder to name and impossible to prove, reports the New York Post. But in 2020, six decades after he was born at Jamaica Hospital in Queens, the suspicions that had nagged Kevin for most of his life were suddenly confirmed after his sister took a DNA test on a genealogy website. What Kevin learned upended everything he thought he knew about his identity: he had been switched at birth with another baby boy, born just 45 minutes after him, with the same last name - and placed into the wrong family. 'It was like the missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle,' McMahon told the Post. '[It] explained everything about why my childhood was the way that it was.' At the age of 64, McMahon has now filed a lawsuit in Queens Civil Court against Jamaica Hospital, accusing the institution of catastrophic negligence that tore two families apart before they had even left the maternity ward. On May 26, 1960, Kevin McMahon was born at Jamaica Hospital. Just 45 minutes later so was Ross McMahon. Both infants were tagged simply 'Baby McMahon.' Their birth certificates were even stamped with consecutive numbers. And it appears that somewhere in the chaos of a busy maternity ward, someone made a terrible error. According to Kevin's lawsuit, the mistake led to him being switched at birth, handed to the wrong parents, and growing up in a home where his presence seemed to be questioned from the very beginning. Kevin's childhood was marked not just by confusion, but by cruelty too. Family members, especially his grandmother, seemed to harbor an unspoken belief that he wasn't truly 'one of them.' 'She believed that I was not my father's child, and she was correct,' Kevin told the Post. 'It made me feel worthless. It destroyed my confidence.' His appearance, darker and more Mediterranean compared to the fair-skinned, blue-eyed family who raised him, became an invisible line between him and a sense of belonging. 'I had certain interactions with my grandmother that were abusive, physically abusive, and I learned to fear her and just stay away,' Kevin recalled. A chain of events soon unravelled the truth which began with a gut-held belief Kevin's sister, Carol Vignola, now 66. 'I was probably 7,' she told the New York Post. 'He was laying on his bunk bed without a shirt on... and I said, "Kevin, you came from the milkman."' Even as a child Carol noticed Kevin didn't look like the rest of them. She remembers confronting her mother, asking why Kevin's appearance was so different. The response was sharp and immediate: 'Don't you ever speak like that, Carol. That's your brother.' But the question never truly went away and in 2020, Carol submitted her DNA to The results revealed she had a biological brother - someone she had never met, and that man was not Kevin but Ross McMahon. When Carol showed the results to Kevin, he was in complete disbelief. '[It was] like a shock reaction. I literally couldn't come to terms with the information,' he said. 'I thought to myself, "I'm nobody … I don't exist."' Kevin took his own DNA test in January 2021 and confirmed that he was not biologically related to the family that raised him. Instead, he had a different family and even a biological brother named Keith McMahon. Additional blood tests confirmed what the DNA had already made plain. Kevin and Keith were brothers. Carol and Ross were siblings. The two 'McMahon' babies born on the same day had been accidentally swapped a horrifying mix-up hidden for decades under the matching last names. Neither Ross McMahon nor Keith have spoken publicly about the case, and all four parents involved have now died never knowing the truth about their children. Kevin can't help but wonder what his life might have been like had he grown up in the home that was rightfully his. 'I have a little bit of jealousy,' Kevin admitted. 'My [biological] father was Ross's biggest fan, always had his back. I would have loved to have that.' Instead, Kevin endured a boyhood of doubt, discipline, and distance. His supposed father, the man who raised him, never showed him the same warmth he extended to Kevin's younger and older siblings. 'I feared my father. I got hit a lot when I was a kid… I just thought my father didn't really care for me,' he said heartbreakingly. Kevin's attorney, Jeremy Schiowitz, isn't letting the hospital off the hook and says Jamaica Hospital's failure to ensure proper infant identification is a betrayal that has permanently scarred two families. 'This wasn't a fluke. This was a preventable tragedy,' Schiowitz said. 'With the rise of DNA testing, we're going to see more of these stories come to light. Kevin's just happens to be one of the first.' Kevin is seeking unspecified financial damages - but more than money, he wants an apology from the hospital and an acknowledgement that mistakes were made. So far, the hospital has not responded to his lawsuit. 'It makes them seem cold and heartless that they're not even coming across and acknowledging that this took place,' Kevin said.
Yahoo
07-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
LI man was switched at birth with baby who had the same last name — and discovered mix-up on ancestry site 60 years later: suit
A Long Island man was switched at birth with a baby born minutes apart who had his same last name — and only learned the awful truth through he told The Post in heartbreaking detail. Kevin McMahon, 64, who is suing Jamaica Hospital in Queens over the alleged screw-up that occurred May 26, 1960, said DNA tests confirmed his painful nagging suspicion that he wasn't his parents' biological son. 'It was like the missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle,' said McMahon, who works in telecommunications and was raised in Richmond Hill, Queens. '[It] explained everything about why my childhood was the way that it was.' McMahon said he grew up tormented by some family members because they suspected he wasn't a blood relative. The Selden man finally learned the devastating truth in 2020 when the woman he knew as his sister, Carol Vignola, 66, submitted her DNA to the genetic database and discovered she had a biological brother she was unaware of, according to Kevin's lawsuit filed in Queens Civil Court in November 2021. The other man was named Ross McMahon, and he had been born 45 minutes apart from Kevin at the same hospital, according to court papers. The infants were given consecutive birth-certificate numbers, both tagged 'Baby McMahon' — and then allegedly handed to the wrong parents. The DNA results confirmed Vignola's longtime gut feeling that Kevin wasn't related to her, in part because of his darker eyes and complexion. She took the news to Kevin, and he was rocked by disbelief and grief, having suffered through a tormented childhood. '[It was] like a shock reaction. I literally couldn't come to terms with the information,' Kevin said. 'For a long time, I'm like, I'm not really Kevin McMahon. I'm really Ross McMahon,' he said. 'I thought to myself, 'I'm nobody … I don't exist.' 'It's just hard to deal with, just hard,' he said. In January 2021, Kevin took his own test and got the results confirming he was not in fact genetically related to the family that raised him. He also learned he had his own biological brother named Keith McMahon, according to the suit. The two sets of biological siblings — Vignola and Ross, as well as Kevin and Keith — later took additional blood tests to prove that they were definitely a match to each other, the suit said. Kevin said that looking back, the woman he knew as his paternal grandmother and the man he called Dad had long suspected he wasn't related to them — and treated him like a loathed outsider. 'My grandmother, my father's mother, doted on Carol and my younger brother Donald and my older brother Raymond. But she seemed to hate me,' McMahon said, his eyes welling up with tears. 'She believed that I was not my father's child, and she was correct. '[It] made me feel worthless. It destroyed my confidence,' he said. His grandma assumed his mother had cheated on his father because Kevin's appearance was so different, Kevin said. He had olive skin and brown eyes while most of the rest of the family had blue eyes, fair skin and freckles. 'I had certain interactions with my grandmother that were abusive, physically abusive, and I learned to fear her and just stay away from her, really, to stay out of arm's reach,' McMahon told The Post of his late grandma. He said he didn't feel connected to his dad, either. 'I feared my father. I got hit a lot when I was a kid from my father, I did not look forward to him coming home,' he said. 'I just thought my father didn't really care for me.' 'I remember my father being affectionate and playful with my younger brother and me trying to get in on that and my father just – not being mean to me — but just kind of keeping me at arm's distance,' he said. Both sets of parents involved in the alleged horror switch are now dead. Kevin acknowledged that he harbors 'a little bit of jealousy'' toward Ross because he 'was the firstborn child to my [biological] parents, and they didn't question whether he was their child. 'They doted on him,' Kevin said. 'My blood brother Keith tells me that my [biological] paternal father was Ross's biggest fan, that he supported him, always had his back, was always there. I would have loved to have that.' Neither Ross nor Keith nor others involved in the situation wanted to talk to The Post. Vignola said she first started wondering if McMahon was actually her biological brother when she was around 7. 'He was laying on his bunk bed without a shirt on,' she recalled. 'I was probably 7, and I was looking at him, I said, 'Kevin, you came from the milkman.' 'And I turned to my mother and said, 'Mommy? Why doesn't he look like us?' ' she said. Her mom snapped back, 'Don't you ever speak like that, Carol. That's your brother,' according to Vignola. McMahon now wants the hospital to admit it made a mistake by placing him with the wrong family. 'It makes them seem cold and heartless that they're not even coming across and acknowledging that this took place,' he said. The lawsuit also seeks unspecified financial damages. McMahon's lawyer, Jeremy Schiowitz, said the hospital failed to 'double-check its procedures. 'This wasn't a fluke. This was a preventable tragedy,' said Schiowitz of the firm Isaacson, Schiowitz & Korson. 'With the rise of DNA testing, we're going to see more of these stories come to light,' the lawyer said. 'Kevin's just happens to be one of the first.' Jamaica Hospital didn't return a request for comment. — Additional reporting by Natalie O'Neill
