In Uncorrected, our weekly series, we hunt for the media’s recent misprints — and imagine the possibilities in a world where the errors are reality.
A story in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette incorrectly reported that the parents of Jeffrey B. Mullan, who was named acting executive director of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, still lived in Worcester. Both parents are deceased.
Jeffrey B. Mullan thought his parents were dead. Twenty years ago, Bernard and Deborah Mullan disappeared on a research expedition in the Canadian Northwest Territories. Both were employed by the United States government, and were thought to be working on energy research. The details of the project, however, were kept under utmost secrecy.
After Bernard and Deborah made no contact for a year, they were declared deceased. Mullan, then 18 and a freshman at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., studying law and economics, began informal research into his parents’ death. The situation seemed suspicious — government officials had only offered only modest condolences and refused to entertain any further investigations.
Mullan graduated with honors from Clark and attended law school at Boston College. He began an illustrious career of public works, working at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Transportation, where he instituted an $8.7 billion bailout of state transportation. He never gave up the search for his parents’ whereabouts, although since his marriage in June 2001 and the birth of his son in 2003, the hunt has fallen by the wayside. His wife, Elizabeth, did mention the “hundreds of sleepless nights” that he spent in his home library, researching, Google-ing and making exasperated phone calls to a man known only as Charles X, the manager of his parents presumed energy research project.
So, Mullan was surprised when an article about his recent promotion to acting executive director of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette mentioned his parents still lived in Worcester. He initially blew it off as a factual error, but suspicion lingered.
“I’ve been suspicious about their disappearance for years. I couldn’t shake the itchy feeling that the Telegram found what I’ve been unable to,” Mullan said.
He called up the paper, and editor Harry Whitin directed him to Charlotte Tanner, a 23-year-old copy editor. Tanner was recently hired by the paper and assigned to check over the article. The author originally did say that Mullan’s parents were deceased, as stated by public record, but Tanner thought to double-check. She called Patricia Skogan, Deborah’s mother.
“In retrospect, it wasn’t the best decision,” Tanner said, as Skogan was diagnosed with dementia three years ago. When Tanner asked her if Bernard and Deborah were indeed deceased, she said no, and gave Tanner the couple’s cell phone number. When contacted, the two — shocked that the paper had tracked them down — admitted they were indeed Mullan’s parents, now known by the monikers Ross and Lola Smuchneitz.
Mullan believed his parents were working on a nuclear energy project; the truth is much more frightening. After a top-secret military experiment in the Yukon went drastically awry (the government has restricted relevant files), Lola and Ross were relocated to southern Manitoba and given their new identities. After 20 years (and, it has been speculated, the deaths of the four dangerous rebels involved in the program), the two were allowed to relocate back to their hometown of Worcester.
“We didn’t know how to tell Jeff,” Lola said. “We only had been in Worcester one day when the fact-checker called us up. Mom was supposed to keep it a secret, but the nurses hadn’t made me fully aware of her condition.”
The two had planned to surprise Mullan on his first day at his new job, May 20. But after speaking to Tanner, Mullan tracked his parents down and immediately drove to Worcester from his home near Boston.
Mullan said he paced outside his parents’ new home for “hours” before going inside. “What if these people weren’t my parents? What if they were impostors, designed to trick me into giving information? I know a lot,” he said. “And even if they were my parents… Why wouldn’t I be the first person they called?”
But when he finally entered the home last Friday, all enmity was erased. “These are my parents!” Ross recalls him shouting.
“It’s true,” Mullan laughed. “They were, even if they were much wrinklier than I remember.”