The state of Virginia didn’t know what to do with the children who died separated from their families and thrived together. There was no precedent, protocol, or legal framework for a situation that shouldn’t have been possible. So they did what institutions always do when faced with the inexplicable: they covered it up. In September 1968, Dalhart’s remaining eleven children were moved to a private institution in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The place was called Riverside Manor, though there was no river nearby and it was far from a mansion. It was a converted sanatorium, built in the 1920s for tuberculosis patients. Abandoned in the 1950s, it was quietly reopened under a state contract for cases that were meant to disappear. The children were housed in an isolated wing. There were no other patients, no visitors, just a rotating staff of well-paid nurses and caregivers who were asked not to discuss their work.
The official registry listed the institution as a group home for children with intellectual disabilities. The unofficial truth was that Riverside Manor was a holding cell for a problem the state couldn’t solve and didn’t want exposed. For the next seven years, the Dalhart children lived in that facility. They are older, but not in a normal way. Medical records show their growth was erratic. Some years they grew several inches. Other years they didn’t grow at all. Their physical development didn’t match their apparent age. The boy who looked 19 when they were found still looked 19 in 1975. The youngest girl, who should have been 11 by then, still looked no older than seven. Blood tests were inconclusive. Genetic testing, primitive in the early 1970s, showed abnormalities the lab couldn’t classify. Their DNA contained sequences that didn’t match any known human marker. A geneticist who reviewed the samples noted that certain segments resembled developmental remnants, traits that should have been eliminated from the human genome years ago. He was asked not to publish his findings. He agreed.
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