At-Home Genetic Testing Reveals An Alleged Sperm-Swapping Nightmare
Moore, a genetic genealogy blogger, kept her sources anonymous, so we haven't been able to verify the story in full. That said, we were able to confirm some specifics (see below), and Moore's consulting role on the PBS show Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr lends this twisted tale some credibility.
She details the story of a Utah couple, whom she calls Paula and Jeff, and their 21-year-old daughter ("Ashley") who was conceived using the help of a fertility clinic. Paula and Ashley took a 23andMe genetic test and then encouraged Jeff to do the same.
That's when the family got the first sign that something had gone wrong: Jeff "showed no genetic match to his daughter," Moore writes, something that traditional paternity testing soon confirmed.
Using another genetic networking site, AncestryDNA, the family found "Cheryl," who was related to Ashley but not to Paula. Cheryl responded to a message from Paula to offer some information: Her deceased cousin, Tom Lippert, had lived in Salt Lake City and been a sperm donor.
When Paula and Jeff saw Tom's picture, they recognized him: He had been a worker at their fertility clinic at Reproductive Medical Technologies, a clinic they thought was affiliated with the University of Utah. Tom's mother reportedly took a sperm test that confirmed Tom was Ashley's biological father.
That's when Cheryl thought Paula should know about Tom's sordid past. As Moore writes:
She told Paula that Tom had served time in prison for kidnapping a female college student ... Paula searched the Internet for any additional information [and] was shocked to find an article from People Magazine dated October 20, 1975. What she read was horrifying.
The article stated that Tom had been a brilliant law student at Notre Dame Law School and had gone on to a promising early career as a law professor at Southwestern State College. However all that changed, when at 25, he was accused of hatching a bizarre plan to kidnap a young Purdue student and hold her as a prisoner in a "love experiment."
The student was reportedly kept in a black box and subjected to electric shock therapy in an attempt to brainwash her into falling in love with Tom.
After serving two years of a six year sentence, Tom moved to Minnesota for a few years and then ended up in Salt Lake City. According to Moore, he worked at Reproductive Medical Technologies from 1986 to 1995 and displayed dozens of photos at his desk of children he said he'd "helped" couples conceive. Paula now is left wondering just what that meant - did he help through his work at the clinic, or in other, more deceptive ways?
They've set up a website to help others who think they may have been secretly fathered by Tom Lippert.
We reached out to a former employee of Reproductive Medical Technologies, who referred us to the University of Utah press office. While the University could not verify Moore's story in full, they confirmed that there is an ongoing investigation into a Reproductive Medical Technologies semen sample that may have been tampered with.
The University of Utah emailed us this statement: