In July 1978, an article titled “Paid To Do It, But Fails To Make His Friend’s Wife Pregnant After 72 Attempts” was published in Jet magazine.
It discussed the case of German resident Demetrius Soupolos and his neighbor Frank Maus, a married man with two children. Soupolos was sterile, but he and his wife Traute (described as a former beauty queen) desperately wanted a child, so he paid Maus $2,500 to impregnate Traute. Maus was said to bear a strong physical resemblance to Soupolos.
When Maus’ wife expressed her unhappiness with the arrangement, he reportedly told her, “I don’t like this any more than you do. I’m simply doing it for the money. Try and understand.”
Maus met with Traute three times a week over a six-month period. When Traute still hadn’t conceived after 72 attempts, Soupolos insisted Maus get a medical exam, which he subsequently did.
Everyone was shocked by the results: Maus was also sterile. Perhaps not so shocked was Maus’ wife, who was forced to admit that her husband was not the biological father of their two children.
Soupolos wanted his money back and sued Maus for breach of contract. Maus refused to return the payment, arguing that he never promised conception, only that he would make an “honest effort.”
********
This story was resurrected three decades later on a variety of blogs and news sites, including Yahoo News and HuffPost. From what I’ve seen, they reported it as if it was a contemporary story. At least one site published a photo of a bikini-clad woman who was purported to be Soupolos’ beauty-queen wife. The story also went viral on social media.
Unsurprisingly, the veracity of this story has been questioned, and some have called it a hoax, citing various reasons for their belief. I have my doubts too. People are weird and crazy and do bizarre stuff, but this reads more like a pornographic soap opera than a real news story.
One thing that doesn’t lend credibility to the story is the previously mentioned photo. It’s supposedly of Soupolos’ wife, but it’s in fact a picture of Laura Zúñiga, a Mexican model and beauty queen who was born in 1985 – seven years after the Jet magazine article was published.
