The job of telling Donna Freed where she came from, and who she was, fell to a sweet-natured social worker who was obviously nervous. “I need to prepare you for a very dramatic story,” she warned over the phone from the New York adoption service. Freed had been bracing herself for a typically sad tale of tragic circumstances – addiction, abuse, worse still incest or rape. Nothing could have prepared her for the truth: that she was the daughter of an infamous Bonnie and Clyde couple whose outlandish crime made headlines across America while she was in her mother’s womb.
Eleven years later Freed, 55, has written a memoir, Duplicity: My Mothers’ Secrets, revealing the full drama of her adoption, and her pursuit of
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