So, a white supremacist decides to release the results of his DNA test to prove just how much white he is only to discover that he is in fact 14% Sub-Saharan African. That is how Craig Cobb, was ashamed online while trying to prove that his little racist cult was some pure race of sorts. DNA tests are getting easier and cheaper to take every day with self-testing kits now available online in almost every country. While it is awesome to ascertain your lineage and trace your roots, the truths that come with the tests may not be what you expect. From someone that discovered that her mum’s fertility doctor was her dad to a mum that discovered that her children didn’t have her DNA, here is a look at the 10 most shocking DNA results ever.
Lydia Fairchild
Lydia Fairchild made global news in the early 2000s when she discovered that she wasn’t the mother of the children she had given birth to according to DNA tests. She was a single mother of two expecting another baby, and since finances were a problem, she applied for help from social services. However, when she met a social worker after the DNA results were out, they started interrogating her because DNA proved that the children could not be hers.
While on the verge of going to prison for fraud and losing her own children, Lydia decided to invite a government official to witness the birth of her third baby. Even after watching her give birth, Lydia’s DNA didn’t match that of the baby. Doctors solved the mystery after determining that Lydia was a Chimera, meaning she had absorbed her own twin before being born and that her unborn twin was the mother of her children. She had to agree to being both the mother and the aunt to her children from that day.
Kelli Rowlette
Ancestry.com is one of those online genealogy-checking sites where you can send your DNA and get the names of your relations based on the company’s database. When Kelli Rowlette sent her DNA to the company in 2018, she discovered that her father wasn’t related to her by DNA and that her biological father was a retired fertility doctor from Idaho.
Kelli later discovered that the doctor was her mother’s obstetrician-gynaecologist who was hired to help her mother conceive back in the 1980s by inseminating her mum with her dad’s sperm mixed with that of a donor selected by the parents. The doctor instead used his own sperm to inseminate Kelli’s mum. The angry family went ahead to sue the doctor for every wrong he had committed. That is probably the saddest way to discover that someone is your dad.
The Delayed Deserved Divorce
An unnamed reproductive biologist spoke to Vox in 2014 about how taking a 23andme DNA test in 2014 caused his parents to divorce. After taking the test, the site showed him an unnamed man named Thomas and listed him as his grandfather, but that was only because the DNA match between you and your siblings and grandparents are usually more or less the same at about 25%. He then discovered that his father had had an affair that his mother never knew about and was the beginning of troubles that led to a divorce.
Craig Cobb
Craig Cobb was trying to create a whites-only enclave in North Dakota and believed that his local community needed “a little purifying” by expelling all non-whites. He agreed to take a DNA test to prove that he was 100% white and even agreed to have the results opened publicly on live TV on the Trisha Goddard show. He was wanted in Canada for committing hate crimes when he came to the show where he got the shocking news.
He discovered that he was only 86% European and that the rest of his roots traced back to Sub-Saharan Africa. Cobb was ashamed of his non-white roots and tried to wave it off by claiming that the results were not scientific and that the 14% was only statistical noise. His plans for a whites-only enclave were dead on arrival though as he embarrassed the entire movement on TV.
Oh Brother
What are the chances that someone you meet on a dating site is your long lost half-brother? Well, that is what happened on The Jeremy Kyle show in 2018 where two lovers named Lee and Paul went to reveal their DNA test results. When the couple went to be introduced to Lee’s parents, his mother who had Alzheimer’s said that Paul had a striking resemblance to her ex-husband. Lee’s mother had had a child with her husband and given it up for adoption, so the possibility of her claims being true was high. The brothers decided to take a DNA test and have the results revealed on live TV and sure enough, Lee discovered that his lover was actually his half-brother. They had to end their relationship and just become brothers instead.
The Test That Almost Ruined Christmas
When buying Christmas gifts, you should probably keep DNA test kits off the list to prevent breaking up the family. One Redditor bought six ancestry.com DNA test kits for the family during Christmas but realized that his mom was scared about taking the test. It turned out that the four siblings were not all related to their father because his dad and mum only met after their mum’s first husband passed. His father helped his mother through the grieving period and the two fell in love and proceeded to create the rest of the family. It was a happy Christmas in the end as everyone understood their roots and that they were all born out of true love.
Related To A Serial Killer
Another Reddit user explained how a DNA test destroyed his relationship. After getting his 23andme test kit results, he went through the list of names for people he was related to. Somewhere in the list was an uncle or someone of such relation to happened to be a known serial killer. The man’s family confirmed that he was truly related to the serial killer but that they had kept their distance from the evil man for decades. His girlfriend wasn’t reasonable though and went on to leave him because she couldn’t date someone with such “evil blood.”
The Golden State Killer
Sometimes, discovering that you are related to a serial killer may help law enforcement arrest one of your distant relatives as it happened in the case of Jessi Still. She purchased a 23andme kit and uploaded the results on the website only to be told by law enforcement that she was the closest DNA match to a serial killer from the 70s and 80s who had never been arrested. After following her family tree, the police were finally able to arrest Joseph DeAngelo in 2018, for the murder of Helene Pruszynski which happened in 1980.
I Am Not The Father
The Maury Povich Show has seen lots of bizarre DNA test reveals but none was funnier than the 2008 paternity test reveals between a 19-year-old woman named Alejandrina and her husband Jose. The woman claimed that she had never slept with another man and that Jose was the father of her twins. However, the show revealed that the man was only related to one of the twins. It was a medical anomaly that has only 0.001% chance of happening. However, it was obvious that Alejandrina had in fact cheated on her husband and now had some serious explaining to do.
I’m Sorry Dad But You Are Going To Jail
Many critics say that using the DNA match of one person to solve other murder cases is illegal but in 2010, it helped solve a cold case from the 80s involving the infamous Grim Sleeper. The person arrested at first was Christopher, the son of Lonnie David Franklin Jr. The serial killer killed over 12 women before stopping his killing spree and never got arrested. His DNA had been saved in the FBI database though, and when Christopher was swabbed, the authorities discovered that he was in fact related to the person whose DNA they found at the scene of the Grim Sleeper’s murders. They went undercover to find Franklin Jr’s DNA and discovered that is was a match and now the father had to join his son in custody.