The captioned story is unverified, but who cares if it's true or not? Yes, the truth will set us free, but our healed perception of the truth allows us to see God's Messengers everywhere we cast our eye.
This story yields great compassion within us, and that's a beautiful thing. True or not, it is like our own lives. There's what happened to us and what we THINK happened to us. Perception is everything. I do not possess a Universal Skeleton Key to unlock the secret temples of the human mind, but like Houdini who spent hours struggling to unlock an open door, we eventually realize freedom is an inside job.