June 3, 2019 ▸ History, True Crime

Episode 391: Georgia Tann: Queen of Black Market Babies

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On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we take a look at some true crime by delving not into a serial killer but a serial kidnapper. Her name was Georgia Tann. She ran an adoption racket in the 1920s through 1940s. She kidnapped, stole, abducted, and faked the death of over 5000 children while she ran the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. She took from the poor and gave to the rich, for a hefty price tag. She sold kids for $5000 a pop, to people like the governor of New York and the actress Joan Crawford. She even sold the baby Rick Flair of professional wresting fame to his adoptive parents. So how did Georgia Tan pull all of this off?

First, she insulated herself with powerful, evil people who were in it for a buck. She used the political powerhouse E.H. “Boss” Crump who ran Memphis. She also used the juvenile court judge Camille Kelley. Between the two of them, cops were made to look the other way, suing parents were silenced by a corrupt version of the law, and Georgia Tann was never put on any investigator’s radar.

Her methods were pretty sick. Sometimes, she’d take the newborn of a single mother to a hospital under the guise of being a social worker who can get free medical attention. The baby would be reported dead days later and be sold to some other family. She had doctors and nurses who would claim the baby died in the night to new mothers and fathers, and off the baby went. She’d even straight up kidnap older kids from the street and tell them their parents died and move them to her orphanage until they could be sold.

She molested some of the girls under her care. Hundreds of children died from lack of health care and even malnutrition. Others were sold as slave labor to large farms, and some were little girls sold to suspected pedophiles. Eventually, Georgia Tann died of cancer (that I hope was very painful) before anyone could bring her to justice. Her legacy is one of misery, death, and destroyed families.

But how did the classic TV show Unsolved Mysteries help some families? How did she meet her lesbian lover? Even though she passed the bar exam, what kept her from becoming a lawyer? What did her newspaper ads say that she used to sell the babies? What was the one positive social change that this monster accidentally brought about? Listen, laugh, learn.