Hi, I see that @szyk and @WatcherWatcher were interested into trying to dig into Alefantis' early years. They posted some helpful links, such as obituaries for those who turned out to be Alefantis' likely grandparents.
Here are their posts: https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/1439057 and https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/1439624
Using the obituaries, and getting on Ancestry and Newspapers.com, I was able to find out a bit about Alefantis and construct a family tree with some short branches. My frustration is that on his mother's side I could not trace him past his mother, and on his paternal side I only traced back to a set of great-grandparents.
Here is the family tree: http://docdro.id/IRO6ywJ
I found several articles in the Newspaper Archives on Alefantis. It seems he graduated from St. Francis High School in Hamburg, NY in 1992, along with his cousin who is the same age. Alefantis' aunt and uncle also worked at the high school.
Here's those articles in PDF form:
http://docdro.id/zvwAS92
http://docdro.id/qmOdPoD
http://docdro.id/DIyw2z6
Also, there was an 1968 article which mentions and includes a photograph for James' grandmother Helen Pappas Alefantis:
http://docdro.id/1AaD2M6
I hope this helps in some way. My life was ruined by a pedo in the family so obviously I want to see justice done here. Since I have Ancestry and Newspapers.com subscriptions and have experience with searching them, if anyone needs some genealogical research or a specific newspaper article or a Newspapers.com search, please let me now.
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CaroleLandis ago
Something interesting but perhaps unconnected: Since I tried but was unable to figure out the identity of Alefantis' maternal grandparents, at one point I tried googling "Shoemaker James Alefantis" to see if I could turn up something. I wasn't able to, but I did get results that mentioned James Alefantis and the Shoemaker-Levy Comet. However none of the results suggested that Alefantis' mother had any relationship to the naming of the comet, and the interview here http://metroweekly.com/2015/04/from-scratch-james-alefantis/ suggests that Alefantis had something else other than Shoemaker-Levy in mind when he named Comet Ping Pong.