INFANT CAUGHT IN ADOPTION SCHEME FINALLY GETS A HOME

The Dallas Morning News

February 16, 1986

A 14-month-old girl caught in the middle of an alleged black-market adoption scheme was on her way to her official new home Saturday after a Dallas court granted custody to a Huntington, N.Y., couple, the judge said Saturday.

Rachael Ann Hagge was officially turned over Friday to Neil and Virginia Dauler-Phinney, District Court judge Craig Penfold said Saturday. He said the child has been in the couples' custody for eight months since they first received her after what they believed was a legal adoption.

Last year, the infant's mother, Tammy Hagge of Grand Prairie, asked her brother and sister-in-law, Larry and Donna Blanton of Cedar Hill, to take her baby, saying she did not feel she could adequately care for the child.

Dallas lawyer Robert I. Kingsley was later charged with paying the Blantons to give him the baby, then selling her to the New York couple. Criminal charges against Kingsley, his wife, Kit, and the Blantons are still pending, Penfold said.

Friday's action ended months of legal wrangling, and came after agreements by both the child's natural mother and the adoptive parents that her best interests were being served, Penfold said.

"It was a tremendous way to resolve what had been a difficult legal entanglement,' Penfold said.

Neither the Kingsleys, the Blantons nor Ms. Hagge could be reached for comment Saturday. A family member at the Dauler-Phinneys' home in Long Island said the couple was on their way back.