Exclusive | LI man was switched at birth with baby who had the same last name — and discovered mix-up on ancestry site 60 years later: suit

A Long Island man was switched at birth with a baby born minutes apart who had his same last name — and only learned the awful truth through ancestry.com, he told The Post in heartbreaking detail.

Kevin McMahon, 64, who is suing Jamaica Hospital in Queens over the alleged screw-up that occurred May 26, 1960, said DNA tests confirmed his painful nagging suspicion that he wasn’t his parents’ biological son.

“It was like the missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle,” said McMahon, who works in telecommunications and was raised in Richmond Hill, Queens. “[It] explained everything about why my childhood was the way that it was.”

McMahon said he grew up tormented by some family members because they suspected he wasn’t a blood relative.

The Selden man finally learned the devastating truth in 2020 when the woman he knew as his sister, Carol Vignola, 66, submitted her DNA to the genetic database ancestry.com and discovered she had a biological brother she was unaware of, according to Kevin’s lawsuit filed in Queens Civil Court in November 2021.

The other man was named Ross McMahon, and he had been born 45 minutes apart from Kevin at the same hospital, according to court papers.

The infants were given consecutive birth-certificate numbers, both tagged “Baby McMahon” — and then allegedly handed to the wrong parents.

The DNA results confirmed Vignola’s longtime gut feeling that Kevin wasn’t related to her, in part because of his darker eyes and complexion.

She took the news to Kevin, and he was rocked by disbelief and grief, having suffered through a tormented childhood.

“[It was] like a shock reaction. I literally couldn’t come to terms with the information,” Kevin said.

“For a long time, I’m like, I’m not really Kevin McMahon. I’m really Ross McMahon,” he said.  “I thought to myself, ‘I’m nobody … I don’t exist.’

“It’s just hard to deal with, just hard,” he said.

In January 2021, Kevin took his own ancestry.com test and got the results confirming he was not in fact genetically related to the family that raised him. 

He also learned he had his own biological brother named Keith McMahon, according to the suit.

The two sets of biological siblings — Vignola and Ross, as well as Kevin and Keith — later took additional blood tests to prove that they were definitely a match to each other, the suit said.

Kevin said that looking back, the woman he knew as his paternal grandmother and the man he called Dad had long suspected he wasn’t related to them — and treated him like a loathed outsider.

“My grandmother, my father’s mother, doted on Carol and my younger brother Donald and my older brother Raymond. But she seemed to hate me,” McMahon said, his eyes welling up with tears. “She believed that I was not my father’s child, and she was correct.

“[It] made me feel worthless. It destroyed my confidence,” he said.

His grandma assumed his mother had cheated on his father because Kevin’s appearance was so different, Kevin said. He had olive skin and brown eyes while most of the rest of the family had blue eyes, fair skin and freckles. 

“I had certain interactions with my grandmother that were abusive, physically abusive, and I learned to fear her and just stay away from her, really, to stay out of arm’s reach,”  McMahon told The Post of his late grandma.

He said he didn’t feel connected to his dad, either.

“I feared my father. I got hit a lot when I was a kid from my father, I did not look forward to him coming home,” he said. “I just thought my father didn’t really care for me.”

“I remember my father being affectionate and playful with my younger brother and me trying to get in on that and my father just – not being mean to me — but just kind of keeping me at arm’s distance,” he said.

Both sets of parents involved in the alleged horror switch are now dead.

Kevin acknowledged that he harbors “a little bit of jealousy’’ toward Ross because he “was the firstborn child to my [biological] parents, and they didn’t question whether he was their child.

“They doted on him,” Kevin said. “My blood brother Keith tells me that my [biological] paternal father was Ross’s biggest fan, that he supported him, always had his back, was always there. I would have loved to have that.”

Neither Ross nor Keith nor others involved in the situation wanted to talk to The Post.

Vignola said she first started wondering if McMahon was actually her biological brother when she was around 7.

“He was laying on his bunk bed without a shirt on,” she recalled. “I was probably 7, and I was looking at him, I said, ‘Kevin, you came from the milkman.’

“And I turned to my mother and said, ‘Mommy? Why doesn’t he look like us?’ ” she said. 

Her mom snapped back, “Don’t you ever speak like that, Carol. That’s your brother,” according to Vignola.

McMahon now wants the hospital to admit it made a mistake by placing him with the wrong family. 

“It makes them seem cold and heartless that they’re not even coming across and acknowledging that this took place,” he said.

The lawsuit also seeks unspecified financial damages.

McMahon’s lawyer, Jeremy Schiowitz, said the hospital failed to “double-check its procedures.

“This wasn’t a fluke. This was a preventable tragedy,” said Schiowitz of the firm Isaacson, Schiowitz & Korson.

“With the rise of DNA testing, we’re going to see more of these stories come to light,” the lawyer said. “Kevin’s just happens to be one of the first.”

Jamaica Hospital didn’t return a request for comment.

— Additional reporting by Natalie O’Neill