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Genealogy can reveal more than just ancestors—it can unearth chilling family secrets and shocking truths. From fertility fraud and stolen identities to serial killers uncovered through DNA, these dark tales show how the search for roots sometimes leads to terrifying discoveries. Join us as we explore some of the most twisted and haunting stories uncovered through genealogical research and genetic testing.
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00:00If you're not the father, have a DNA test and prove to them, and he wouldn't.
00:05Welcome to Ms. Mojo, and today we're looking at some of the darkest genealogical discoveries ever made.
00:11How we found them was revolutionary using genetic genealogy, and that's now solved a thousand cases around the world.
00:19Ted Wood's Double Discoveries
00:21In the 1990s, Ted Wood set out to locate his birth parents.
00:26By searching records, Wood quickly found his birth mother.
00:29The weirdest thing is, my grandparents lived two blocks from where she lived from 1969, 70, 72.
00:37He met his mother and other relatives, but it would be decades before he found out anything about his father,
00:43Linwood Woody Gray.
00:44In 2013, Wood signed up for Ancestry and connected with distant relatives who knew his father.
00:50He discovered that in 1982, Gray killed his partner, Michael J. McKean, and then took his own life.
00:56Despite the shocking truth about his father, Wood's story does have a silver lining.
01:02As a college student, he donated sperm for some quick cash, and in April 2018, Ancestry sent him a new
01:09DNA match.
01:10I got an email through Ancestry, just, hey, you may not know me, but I know you, and it pops
01:16up with a parent-child relationship, and I'm thinking, oh, man.
01:20It was Melissa Daniels, his donor-conceived daughter, whom he welcomed with open arms, along with two more daughters.
01:27It's good to be able to provide that kind of closure for them, much like I got on my search.
01:34Danny Shapiro's Family Secrets.
01:37Danny Shapiro wasn't looking to find any relatives when she sent off her DNA to Ancestry.
01:42But in 2016, the best-selling author made a discovery that led her to question her entire identity.
01:48We use the expression a lot, the rug was pulled out from under me.
01:52Shapiro, who grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family, found out that her late father was not her biological father.
01:59She learned that her parents were unable to conceive and consulted Pennsylvania Ferris Institute for Parenthood,
02:05where they underwent confused artificial insemination treatment.
02:09I had to go inside of what it must have been like to be them in the early 1960s,
02:16and there was so much shame surrounding infertility, especially male infertility.
02:23The controversial method combines the father's sperm with anonymous donors,
02:27giving parents hope that their child could be linked to the father biologically.
02:31Shapiro wrote about the emotional journey in her 2019 book, Inheritance, a memoir of genealogy, paternity, and love.
02:39I grew up with a powerful sense that something wasn't quite right. Things didn't add up.
02:45Fertility Fraud in Idaho
02:46In 2017, Kelly Rowlett received a DNA match on Ancestry linking her to a stranger named Gerald Mortimer,
02:55claiming he was her biological father.
02:57She was unaware that her parents, Sally Ashby and Howard Fowler,
03:01sought fertility treatments from obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Mortimer in Idaho Falls.
03:06I've been to him, and my family's been to him, and we wouldn't think that he would have done anything
03:12like this.
03:13Rowlett and her family were horrified,
03:15alleging that the now-retired doctor used his own sperm to artificially inseminate Ashby
03:20instead of mixing Fowler's with anonymous donors.
03:23In 2018, the family sued Dr. Mortimer for medical malpractice, fraud, and emotional distress, among other actions.
03:31The suit was filed in 2018 after genetic testing on the daughter found Dr. Gerald Mortimer was her biological father.
03:41He first denied the allegations, but eventually admitted to secretly using his sperm and fertility treatments
03:46for Rowlett's parents and many other couples without their knowledge or consent.
03:51However, a judge dismissed the case in 2021.
03:54He's seen thousands of women. I'm sure thousands of women. How many other kids does he have out there?
04:01Baby Abandoned in Ohio
04:03I have two kids, and they're always really curious about, uh, Dan, you know, where are you from, you know?
04:11Like, what is your heritage?
04:12When Arizona resident Steve Dennis' children encouraged him to send his DNA to Ancestry,
04:18he didn't expect to find himself at the center of a decades-old mystery.
04:22He connected with a cousin who told him the family knew that a relative had been abandoned as a baby.
04:27He wrote, um, an email to me and said, you know, I think I know who your mother is.
04:34In January 1954, delivery men in Lancaster, Ohio, found an infant swaddled in blankets,
04:41placed inside a cardboard box, and left in a telephone booth.
04:45The shocking discovery made headlines.
04:47The baby was adopted by a loving couple, but the identity of the birth parents remained unknown.
04:52Dennis learned that his mother was young and left him behind at the behest of his father,
04:57who disappeared shortly after.
04:59Over 60 years later, Dennis finally met her and his half-sister.
05:04These sisters are half-sisters.
05:05But to me, that's a lot, because considering growing up an only child, you know, it's better than nothing.
05:11The Abduction of Carlina White
05:13Who's missing?
05:15Me.
05:16I am.
05:17When Nedra Nettie Nance was pregnant in 2005,
05:21an inquiry into her own birth certificate uncovered the shocking truth she'd long suspected.
05:27She was not the biological daughter of Anna Geta Ann Pettway, the woman who raised her.
05:33Nettie was born Carlina Renee White on July 15, 1987, at Harlem Hospital,
05:38where Pettway posed as a nurse and kidnapped her as a 19-day-old.
05:43I hope she's all right.
05:45Love you God, I hope she's taking good care of my baby.
05:49In 2010, she searched the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children website,
05:54eventually finding her baby photo.
05:57Nettie reunited with her birth parents, Joy White and Carl Tyson, in January 2011.
06:02They became temporarily estranged after disagreeing about Pettway.
06:06Nettie was supportive, while White and Tyson rightfully sought justice.
06:10I love her.
06:12I wish she'd never go back.
06:14I wanted to stay here.
06:16Pettway only served part of her 12-year sentence before her release in 2021.
06:21Catching the Grim Sleeper
06:22From around 1985 to 1988, a serial killer terrorized South Los Angeles,
06:29taking the lives of at least 10 black women and leaving their bodies in the garbage.
06:34Due to his 14-year hiatus and re-emergence in the early 2000s,
06:38the press dubbed him the Grim Sleeper.
06:40That this Grim Sleeper, as he's known, who was quiet, it seems, for 14 years,
06:46may not have been quiet for those years?
06:48I don't believe for a minute he was quiet.
06:50It wasn't until 2010 that investigators finally got a break in the case.
06:55Using a new method called familial DNA analysis,
06:58the LAPD got a partial match with convicted felon Chris Franklin,
07:03leading them to his father, Lonnie.
07:05This is him.
07:08It's a match.
07:10The DNA from all the victims match him.
07:12Although it's believed he killed more,
07:14Lonnie Franklin Jr. was charged and found guilty of 10 counts of murder
07:18and one attempted murder, resulting in multiple death sentences.
07:22Franklin died in 2020, though the cause of death was never made public.
07:26Just because they have Lonnie doesn't mean this is over with.
07:30South Korea Adoption Fraud
07:32In the 1980s, South Korean adoptions were at an all-time high,
07:37with 200,000 Korean children sent to parents in other countries,
07:42namely the United States, Europe, and Australia.
07:45One of the reasons that Korean adoption is important to understand
07:49is that it represents the first large-scale adoption program in the world.
07:58What seems like the government finding loving homes for orphaned children
08:01was much more nefarious.
08:03For decades, Korean adoptees have searched for their birth parents,
08:08some with more success than others,
08:10with many learning that their parents didn't willingly give them up for adoption.
08:14Adoption workers were touring poor neighborhoods,
08:17looking for financially struggling parents
08:19who could be persuaded to give away their babies.
08:22Most importantly, they were sending adoption workers
08:26to hospitals and maternity homes and other birth venues.
08:29Agencies like Korea Social Services, KSS,
08:32Eastern Social Welfare Society,
08:34and Holt Children's Services
08:36targeted impoverished neighborhoods and unwed mothers,
08:40even telling some parents their babies didn't survive birth
08:43when really they'd been sent overseas.
08:52Between falsified adoption papers and swapped identities,
08:56the road to truth and justice continues to be devastating.
09:00Lydia Fairchild's Chimerism
09:02When Lydia Fairchild applied for public assistance
09:05from Washington State in 2002,
09:08she couldn't have imagined the nightmare ahead of her.
09:10A required paternity test confirmed that her former boyfriend,
09:15Jamie Townsend, was the father of their fraternal twins.
09:19However, Fairchild's DNA did not match,
09:21leading to a welfare fraud accusation,
09:24putting her at risk of losing custody.
09:26He goes, well, he's 99% the father.
09:28And I'm like, okay, good.
09:30Okay, we know he's the father.
09:31And they go, well, there's a problem.
09:33And they go, there's no way you're the mother.
09:34With a court-ordered witness present,
09:36she gave birth to her and Townsend's third child.
09:39The DNA results showed the baby was not a match,
09:43proving Fairchild was the mother.
09:45I went home, still scared because this was still going on,
09:48still scared that they can come any minute and take my kids.
09:52After more tests, scientists discovered that she was likely a chimera,
09:56a rare medical condition where one person has the cells of two,
10:00meaning her kids were genetically linked to her twin she absorbed in the womb.
10:04I don't think that I'm like this weird person and whatever,
10:07because I'm still a person, I still, I don't have different personalities.
10:10I'm still, I'm a normal person.
10:13Finding the Golden State Killer
10:14He was the boogeyman.
10:16He was the man in the bushes that we didn't know who he was,
10:19and we didn't know when he was going to strike again.
10:21In the 1970s and 1980s, California was plagued by multiple serial killers,
10:27including Edmund Kemper and Richard Ramirez.
10:30One of the most prolific murders went by an array of nicknames like the Vesalia Ransacker
10:35and more famously, the Golden State Killer.
10:38Working with our editor at Los Angeles Magazine, they said,
10:41you know what, this Golden State Killer, it shows just the breadth of him
10:44having hit Northern California, Southern California, and then sort of right in the middle.
10:49Across the state, he ransacked over 100 homes,
10:53sexually assaulted at least 50 women, and murdered over 10 people.
10:57The case went cold for decades, until investigators utilized genetic genealogy via GED match,
11:04finding dozens of the killer's distant relatives.
11:06They soon identified former police officer Joseph D'Angelo
11:10as a match to DNA collected from the crime scenes.
11:13The DNA from Janelle Cruz's case matches the DNA in the Whithun case five years earlier,
11:20and then they started getting hits on other DNA in Ventura County, Santa Barbara County.
11:27An elderly D'Angelo was apprehended in 2018.
11:31Two years later, he pleaded guilty to 13 counts of first-degree murder and kidnapping,
11:36earning him consecutive life sentences without parole.
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11:55Dr. Donald Klein's decades-long fertility fraud.
11:59In 2014, Jacoba Ballard met her first half-sibling on a website for donor-conceived children,
12:05and the number kept growing.
12:07It came back that I was related to seven siblings.
12:14It was actually immediate excitement, um, with concern.
12:20She confirmed with 23andMe that their biological father was Donald Klein,
12:25an Indiana fertility specialist their parents consulted.
12:28For decades, he secretly fathered over 90 children, many of whom lived within 25 miles of each other,
12:35meaning they could have unknowingly dated their half-siblings.
12:39There's the concern for consanguinity, uh, having too many people in a certain geographic area
12:47that could potentially be your brother or your sister, and you didn't know it.
12:51The remorseless Klein was only charged with obstruction of justice for lying to the attorney general,
12:57resulting in a one-year suspended sentence.
12:59Despite violating nearly 100 women and admitting as much,
13:03he faced no jail time, though he paid over $1.3 million in civil suits.
13:09Klein was stripped of his medical license in 2018 and can never reapply.
13:13I don't look at these people and consider them to be my children.
13:21Which of these genealogy horror stories shocked you the most?
13:24Let us know in the comments below.
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