American Notes MINNESOTA

Jerry Sherwood was a 17-year-old runaway living in a reform school in 1961 when she gave birth out of wedlock to a son she named Dennis. As a ward of the state, Sherwood was forced to give up her child for adoption. Nineteen years later, she set out to find him. The search led her to Ramsey County, where the welfare department informed her that Dennis had died in 1965 of peritonitis. But adoptions are confidential in Minnesota, and other agencies refused to give out further information.

Sherwood, now 42, gave up her search until last September, when, she says, a "friend convinced me I didn't have to be afraid of the system, that I had a moral right to know." Poring over old newspapers with one of her other four children, she found articles that made her suspicious about her son's death. She took her case to police in the town of White Bear Lake, a suburb of St. Paul. After a medical examiner and other experts scrutinized Dennis' autopsy report, they determined that the boy had been beaten to death. Late last month Dennis' adoptive mother, Lois Jurgens, 61, was indicted for killing the child.

Why authorities did not investigate Dennis' death more thoroughly in 1965 remains a mystery, particularly since welfare workers subsequently had other children removed from the Jurgens household. Sherwood's explanation: "He was just an adopted illegitimate child, and it didn't matter. Nobody cared." Except a mother who kept his memory alive for 25 years.