A woman claims she has DNA evidence to prove she's a 7-year-old girl who went missing 21 years ago

• In 2000, Brittany Renee Williams, a 7-year-old in Virginia, disappeared from her foster home.
• Kaylynn Stevenson, of Fort Wayne, Indiana, now says she had DNA evidence that she's Brittany.
• She said she'd lived in Ohio with her adoptive parents before researching her biological family.

A woman in Indiana said she had DNA evidence that she's Brittany Renee Williams, a 7-year-old who went missing in Virginia more than two decades ago, WWBT reported on Tuesday.

In 2000, Brittany disappeared from the independent foster home in Henrico where she lived. The police searched for Brittany, who was being treated for AIDS, but to no avail, leading authorities to assume she was dead, especially without her medication, the WWBT report said.

But Kaylynn Stevenson, of Fort Wayne, Indiana, recently came forward to say she has DNA evidence to prove she's Brittany, WWBT reported.

Stevenson told WWBT that she had forgotten most details from her past except for her last name, Williams. She said that when she did a Google search for missing children with that last name, her life was revealed to her through reports and information about Brittany's disappearance.

"And Brittany Renee Williams' photo popped up," Stevenson said. "I woke my wife up out of her sleep and was like, 'This is me! I know me when I see me. This is me!'"

-NCMEC (@MissingKids) October 6, 2021

Ladajah Kelly, Stevenson's wife, told WWBT that she saw the resemblance between her partner and the photos of Brittany, "from the hairline to the ears, to the smile, to the chin."

"Even the mole on her neck … I started putting the pieces together that that was really her," Kelly said.

Stevenson said she had a spotty memory of her time at the foster home, Rainbow Kids, run by Kim Parker.

Lt. Kevin Howdyshell, a cold-case detective with the police in Henrico, told WWBT that multiple people had contacted the county's child protective services to express concern for the children in Parker's care.

"Concern of potential neglect, concern of potential maltreatment of some of the children," Howdyshell said.

WWBT cited court documents saying Parker had been indicted on 73 counts of fraud and accused of taking $24,000 in government benefits meant for Brittany. She took a plea deal that included a 10-year jail sentence, WWBT said.

Parker had told the police she sent Brittany to live with two women in California, but the police said that wasn't true, WWBT reported.

Stevenson told WWBT that she'd lived most of her life in Ohio with her adoptive parents and recently started researching her biological family in Richmond.

Stevenson also said she did a DNA test with Anastasia McElroy, the first daughter of Brittany's mother, Rose Marie Thompson. The in-lab test found that they had a 95.83% probability of being half-sisters, WWBT reported.

However, the birthdate on Stevenson's birth certificate doesn't match Brittany's, and Stevenson hasn't been diagnosed with HIV or AIDS, the report said.

But Stevenson told WWBT that "blood does not lie and a DNA test does not lie at all."

"So, I don't have AIDS, but I am Brittany Renee Williams," she continued.

Lt. Matthew Pecka, a spokesperson for the police in Henrico, said in a statement that authorities were "committed to a thorough investigation into this cold case and any new leads," adding, "We are actively investigating and working alongside our Federal partners."