Upon arriving at the family's home, the team was ushered into the kitchen. The 3-year-old, the youngest of four home-educated children, peeked out from behind her mother's legs and looked up shyly. She wore a baggy Minnie Mouse shirt and sat between her grandparents on the settee, watching everyone take their seats around the dining table.
“Let's start from the beginning,” Dr. Tucker said after the child's mother, Misty, 28, signed the papers. “Did it all start with a puzzle piece?”
A few months ago, a mother and child were looking at a wooden puzzle of the United States in which each state was represented by a cartoon of a person or object. Misty's daughter excitedly pointed to a jagged piece representing the state of Illinois with an abstract illustration of Abraham Lincoln.
“That's Pom,'' cried the girl. “He's not wearing a hat.”
This was indeed a picture of Abraham Lincoln without a hat, but more importantly, there was no name underneath the image to indicate who he was. After weeks of endless talk about how “Pom” was carried to a too-crowded bed, injured and bleeding, the family began to think it might be related to the Lincoln assassination. However, he began to think that his daughter might have been present at the incident. historical moment. This was despite the fact that the family had never believed in reincarnation and had no particular interest in Lincoln.
On the ride to Amherst, Dr. Tucker confessed to his hesitation about taking on this particular case, or any case involving a well-known individual. “For example, if you say your child was Babe Ruth, there's a lot of information online,” he says. “Usually when we get these cases, the parents are really into it. Still, it's a little weird coming out of a 3-year-old's mouth. If she said her daughter was Lincoln… I probably wouldn't have gone on this trip.”
Lately, Dr. Tucker has been giving drawing tests to children. “If you think they know the person they're talking about, show them a photo from their life and then show them another photo taken from a different location, a dummy photo, so they can choose the correct one. We’ll see if that’s the case,’” he said. “You need some pictures to make sense. He told me that he remembered a child who died in Vietnam. I showed him eight sets of pictures; Two he didn't get to choose, but the rest were 6 out of 6. So, you know, it makes you think, but this girl is so young that we can't. I don’t think I can do that.”
