Sept. 30, 1955
Find Marcus baby alive; woman kidnapper confesses
The Marcus home is happy once more.
Little Robert Marcus, object of a dramatic nation-wide search since his kidnapping from the Mt. Zion Hospital nursery on Monday, Sept. 21, was recovered safe and well early last Wednesday morning in Stockton.
The infant, stolen from his crib three days after birth, was turned over to Father Allen McCoy in St. Mary’s Church in Stockton by his abductee, Mrs. Betty Benedito, who confessed that her frustrated hopes of becoming a mother had inspired the abduction. She was arrested at once.
The baby’s parents, Dr. and Mrs. Sanford Marcus, to whom the conscience-stricken kidnapper had telephoned before bringing the child to the church, dashed full-speed to Stockton and were overjoyed at finding their baby healthy and well.
Recovery of little Robert justified the abiding faith of Dr. Marcus that his baby would be found alive and well came as an answer to prayers offered throughout the country.
Mrs. Benedito surrendered the child after she had been spotted with him and her husband by Deputy Sheriff Kelly Vanecci at the boxing matches and trailed to their hotel where the woman showed a spurious birth certificate in a futile effort to prove the infant was hers.
To the authorities she made a full confession, explaining that grief over her inability to have a child of her own had impelled her to invade the Mt. Zion nursery and steal the Marcus baby.
Sept. 27, 1985
Israeli Conservative shul may be closed by zealots
Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom’s 120-member Conservative synagogue may be forced to close down. It is not in an Arab country or the Soviet Union. The beleaguered synagogue is in Israel and the danger comes from … Jews.
The 32-year-old American-born rabbi — son of nationally-known Rabbi Jacob Milgrom, a U.C. Berkeley professor of Near Eastern studies, and Dr. Jo Milgrom, who teaches at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley — came to the Bay Area for two days last week. He is in the United States for four weeks, trying to raise money to buy his building in Rehovot before Orthodox extremists do.
“This began over the summer when our landlord told us that he’d had inquiries from people who wanted to buy the building from him,” Milgrom said. “He told us who the prospective buyers were and said, ‘Listen, this is going to be the end for you.’ ”
According to the rabbi, the Orthodox extremist buyers “would rather keep a building empty than let us use it to pray.” The religious establishment in Israel does not recognize non-Orthodox rabbis and does not allow them to perform wedding ceremonies, handle conversions of non-Jews or officiate at other traditional functions.
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