Robert Mays sat quietly after hearing proof that he and his wife left a hospital 10 years ago with someone else's baby, leaving behind their real daughter who later died from a heart defect.
Moments after receiving the news, he asked where his biological daughter was buried, according to his attorney."I think it depressed him he had a child he never met that died," said Mays' lawyer Arthur Ginsburg after genetic test results made public Sunday proved Kimberly Michelle Mays is the daughter of another couple.
The 10-year-old girl has been the focus of a custody battle between Mays - a Sarasota roofing contractor whose wife, Barbara, died in 1981 - and Ernest and Regina Twigg, who claim they lost their newborn in a baby swap at a rural central Florida hospital in 1978.
John Blakely, the Twiggs' attorney, said the tests give a 99.9 percent certainty that Kimberly is the Twiggs' daughter and a 98 percent chance that the girl who died last year of a congenital heart defect, Arlena, was Mays'. The tests left no doubt about parentage, lawyers said.
Arlena, raised by the Twiggs as one of their own, was buried in Pennsylvania. Just before her death in August 1988, the Twiggs learned through genetic testing that she wasn't related to them.
In the search for their biological daughter, they discovered that Kimberly and Arlena were born three days apart at Hardee Memorial Hospital in Wauchula.
During a subsequent court battle, Mays resisted the Twiggs' efforts to subject Kimberly to genetic testing. The impasse was broken last month, when the Twiggs promised not to seek custody regardless of the outcome. But they kept the option to seek visits with the hazel-eyed fifth-grader.
Mays, who was in seclusion Sunday, planned to take his only daughter away to break the news privately and to reassure her that she would never have to leave him, Ginsburg said.
"I think the thing he's going to emphasize is `just don't worry about anything. . . . I'm going to stay your daddy and we're going to stay together for the rest of our lives,"' the attorney said.
The Twiggs have sued Hardee officials in U.S. District Court in Tampa, claiming employees switched their baby shortly after birth. They also persuaded the FBI to investigate the hospital and its employees, but the agency failed to find sufficient evidence that federal law had been violated.
The hospital Sunday referred questions to attorney Janet Adams, who could not be reached at her office. Her home telephone number in Orlando is unlisted.
Attorneys for both families believe a switch occurred at the hospital but don't know how.
The Twiggs and their seven other children, ages 6 through 21, attended a news conference with Blakely in Clearwater to announce results of the tests by Johns Hopkins University. They talked about the long ordeal and said they were overwhelmed and anxious to meet Kimberly.
Both sides will have psychologists talk with Kimberly and draw up a visitation schedule to be approved by a Sarasota Circuit judge.
Regina Twigg, a substitute elementary teacher, said when she meets Kimberly she plans "to take things very slow and chat with her about what she likes to do."
She said she and her husband, a railroad ticket agent, feel cheated. "All of us have suffered enormously. There is anger and outrage."