Adoptee Solves Mystery of Herself and Learns She Was Baby Found in Paper Bag in 1972 (Exclusive)

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Woman Found in Shopping Cart as a Baby Tracks Down Birth Mother and Learns the Truth About What Happened (Exclusive)

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Pearl Marshall grew up not knowing where she came from. Then a quirk of fate led her to the story of a little girl left in a paper bag in 1972

NEED TO KNOW

• More than 50 years after two strangers discovered her, alone, in a paper bag, Pearl Marshall got herself some answers
• It started with finally getting her original birth certificate — the first clue in a yearslong process
• Her quest ended in only the past few weeks with the truth about her birth parents, both of whom are still alive

One evening in August 1972, after watching a movie at a theater in Fairview Park, Ohio, Darlene Gilleland and Rita Marshall spotted something strange: A shopping cart was resting against the front of Marshall’s Ford Galaxie with a brown paper bag inside, its top neatly folded down as though beckoning the women to peer within.

Then it began to rustle.

“There she was — this darling baby, as calm as could be,” Marshall recalls in this week’s issue of PEOPLE.

Courtesy Rita Marshall; Matt Eich

An infant girl who looked to be only hours old, she was clean, dressed in a onesie and swaddled in a blanket. The two friends quickly called police, and the child, nicknamed “Baby Westgate” after the shopping center where she was found, was whisked away to the hospital.

Within four months she was adopted. But big questions remained: Where did she come from? Why was she left behind? And by whom?

More than 50 years later, Pearl Marshall — that little girl, all grown up — got herself some answers. “I realized that if I was going to find these people and make any kind of connections,” she says, “that really now is the time.”

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Pearl Marshall’s case made headlines in 1972.

Courtesy Chris Gerrett

For most of her life, Pearl (no relation to Rita Marshall) did not know her own beginnings. Raised in Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., Pearl was stymied by Ohio law, which kept her birth certificate sealed, even from her, because she’d been adopted through a closed process in December 1972.

“I hadn’t even considered trying to find anything because I didn’t think there would be a place to start,” she says.

In 2015 the state opened many adoptees’ records. “That’s the thing that spurred me to actually do it,” says Pearl, who began tracing her roots all the way back to that night in the parking lot.

Her birth certificate turned out to be just the first clue in a yearslong process, ending in only the past few weeks with the truth about her birth parents, both of whom are still alive.

Pearl, a 53-year-old music teacher in Salem, Va., found help in unexpected places: from a dogged historian, from kind commenters on a local news story, even from the son of one of the women who first found her as a baby.

Looking back at the twists and turns, she marvels: “There’s all kinds of circumstances out there. I’m not anybody to judge. But I can say that knowing all that makes me very grateful for the fairy-tale story I have.”

Pearl Marshall in the sixth grade.

Courtesy Pearl Marshall

‘Oh my God’

Pearl knew from a young age that she was adopted. She also knew that, unlike other friends who were adoptees, her backstory was a mystery.

“Oftentimes they would have a fact sheet about their bio parents,” she says. “And I didn’t have one.”

When Pearl was in college, her adoptive mom revealed a long-held suspicion that Pearl was the same newborn from headlines in the summer of 1972.

Everything began to change in 2023, when Pearl finally obtained her birth certificate. Though it didn’t list her biological parents’ names, it included her birthday and an unusual birthplace: the Westgate Shopping Center.

Using those details, Pearl and her husband, Jack Marshall, a 59-year-old who worked in video production and is “brilliant on the Internet,” found an old article about her. Her adoptive mother had been right all along.

From left: Pearl and Jack Marshall in 2008.

Courtesy Pearl Marshall

But where to go from there? Pearl reached out to Fairview Park police and eventually connected with Chris Gerrett, a 72-year-old member of the city’s historical society. An engineer with a matter-of-fact personality, Gerrett calls it a “thrill” to hunt for answers in the past.

“I know chances are slim,” Pearl wrote in an email forwarded to Gerrett. “I’m just trying to learn anything I can about the incident.”

With Pearl’s unsealed birth certificate as a guide, Gerrett dug through newspaper archives until she discovered the names of the two friends who found Pearl at Westgate. She pieced together their whereabouts through probate and property records as well as yearbooks.

Unable to reach her directly, Gerrett called Gilleland’s son. “Just please hear me out,” she told him, rushing to explain herself. The call went silent.

“I expected to hear the phone click,” Gerrett says. “But instead he said, ‘Oh my God, that was my mother.’ ”

Chris Gerrett, a local historian and engineer in Ohio who assisted Pearl Marshall.

News 5 Cleveland

Surprises kept coming. Armed with new information, Pearl used genetic testing to locate her birth father in 2023. He said he didn’t know who her biological mother was. Last summer Pearl shared a tearful reunion in Ohio with Gilleland and Rita, who’d made a ritual of pulling out old news clippings and wondering what ever happened to “Baby Westgate.”

Says Rita, 74: “For her to find us was like our baby coming home and giving us closure.”

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Their meeting made local news this spring, and in the comment section of one story, Pearl stumbled upon a suggestion to contact The Fronczak Files, an investigative podcast with a team of researchers, to find her birth mother through genetic genealogy, historical research and other techniques.

It didn’t take them long: Pearl met her birth mother for the first time over lunch in June, and “neither one of us had any idea what to say.”

Pearl’s husband broke the ice, gently steering the conversation until the women found their footing. Pearl, who says she never harbored resentment, offered forgiveness. “It’s probably the best thing I’ve ever done for another person,” she says. “I didn’t think she needed forgiveness, but she needed it ... and she’s still working on it.”

Pearl Marshall in Salem, Va., in July.

Matt Eich

Having tracked down her biological parents, Pearl has been busy filling in her biography. (She says both her biological and her adoptive families have asked for privacy and that they not be named as she shares her story.)

Her birth mother was 22 and single when she delivered Pearl. While pregnant, she sang lullabies to her unborn daughter each night, and, after placing Pearl in the shopping cart, she circled in her own car until Pearl was found.

Later she got a job at the shopping center and every day parked in the same spot where she had left her daughter.

“What she did for me was a good thing,” Pearl says. “She knew she couldn’t keep me, as much as she wanted to.”

Pearl has learned there are even more branches to her family tree: Her birth mom married and raised a daughter and a son, the latter of whom Pearl has met. And she’s met a half sister on her biological dad’s side who, like her, is a music teacher.

“I’m still working through this whole process,” she says. “There’s a lot of emotions, and they keep coming at different times. Of course, I’m happy. I’m delighted to know my biological parents. I was just so lucky to have both of them alive.”

Pete 🤓 and Zeke 🐶