Disappearance of Sky Metalwala
Solomon said he believed that his son was alive, but perhaps not in the U.S. In spring of 2011, after the visit to the doctor that was the last independent record of Sky's presence outside of Biryukova's household, he recalled that her estranged father came from Ukraine to visit her. He wondered to the "Weekly" if the older man could have taken the boy back to that country with him at the time. But in 2013, he said that he did not know how that could have happened.
Judgment of Solomon
According to the Midrash, the two women were mother- and daughter-in-law, both of whom had borne sons and whose husbands had died. The lying daughter-in-law was obligated by the laws of Yibbum to marry her brother-in-law unless released from the arrangement through a formal ceremony. As her brother-in-law was the living child, she was required to marry him when he came of age or wait the same amount of time to be released and remarry. When Solomon suggested splitting the infant in half, the lying woman, wishing to escape the constraints of Yibbum in the eyes of God, agreed. Thus was Solomon able to know who the real mother was.