John finally learned the truth behind his murky past in early 2016, 30 years after arriving in Salem with no memory of it. He was born John Robicheaux in 1953 in rural Louisiana, the son of Timothy and Maude Robicheaux. Timothy was a kind, charitable, and modest farmer who had been drafted into the U.S. Army to serve in the Korean War, and was believed to have died heroically in battle a couple of months before John's birth. Unable to care for John on her own, Maude first allowed a wealthy neighboring couple to adopt him, but when the couple was killed in an automobile accident, she put John in an orphanage, where he was eventually adopted by the wealthy and powerful Leopold and Philomena Alamain, taken to their home in Europe, and given the name Forrest Alamain.