Norman Mushari, Jr.

Norman Mushari, Jr. was an attorney and, by his own later admission, a "bounty hunter" who sought rich people who had been institutionalized without cause by wealthy relatives. He would then gain the release of the patient, sue the relatives and the institution for damages, and recover any inheritances that might be due, which he did for Eliza Swain upon the death of her father. He was described by Eliza's brother Wilbur as "fat and shifty-eyed", and about the "size of Napoleon Bonaparte". Wilbur and the twins' mother Letitia sent Eliza a telegram professing their love for her via Mushari. He bought her an old confessional booth from a church that was being torn down, so she could give interviews on television without appearing on camera.

Her family did not oppose her actions and so Eliza easily regained her share of the inheritance, which she used to buy half-interest in the New England Patriots professional football team. After this, Mushari assured the public that inside her confessional booth she was now wearing a Patriots jersey. Some time later, Eliza was first seen in public walking across the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge with Mushari, wearing such a jersey. He was wearing a white suit with a red rose in his lapel, carrying a cane. The two met with her brother, and Eliza said Mushari, whom she called "Normie", was her only family and someone who actually knew how to help people. Saying he brought her "the gift of life", she described him as her "mother and father and brother and God, all wrapped in one." It was he who suggested suing her family, even though money, he said, would not make her feel better.

A tap shoe

He was unaware of the connection the twins shared which made them a genius until the two reconnected on this visit. Like the twins' mother and Wilbur's servants, Mushari was held captive for five days while Wilbur and Eliza engaged in the mental "orgy" that produced the pediatric book So You Went and Had a Baby. All of them were tied to wooden chairs set around the dining room table, gagged except when fed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and not allowed to use the bathroom. Afterward, Mushari and Wilbur's lawyers were required to pay off the servants for their suffering. The twins never came in physical contact again, with Eliza moving to Machu Picchu, and Mushari briefly acted as their go-between. He stated that after this event he nearly had to put her away again, "for good cause this time". While held captive, he began hallucinating that the twins began looking more and more like Frankenstein's monsters and was convinced that a switch somewhere controlled them. Once he freed himself, he tore the thermostat from the wall, thinking it was the switch. He stated that almost everyone he got out of institutions "went insane almost immediately afterward". Eventually, he handed over Eliza's affairs to the same people used by Wilbur and his mother. Two years later, he was briefly in the news for developing, during a national craze for tap dancing, a set of taps that could be glued to the soles of shoes and peeled off again.