DNA Test Meets Match in Twins' Paternity Case

For once, the ability of DNA testing to act as the great mediator between warring human factions has proved inadequate to the task. This one even has the scientists baffled.

When one of a pair of identical twin brothers was identified by a mother as her baby's natural father, and local authorities stepped in to demand child support from him, he denied it and refused to pay any money.

Attention then swung to his brother who, it emerged, had also been having sex with the mother at around the time of conception. But he too denied paternity of the child, now aged three.

So in the way of these things in modern times, the cry went up for DNA testing. Raymon and Richard Miller duly gave a blood sample and the analysis went ahead. In a matter of days, the definitive result of who was the father would come back, and the authorities could then extract regular payments from whichever one was the relevant party.

But the results appeared to show that each of the brothers has more than a 99.9% probability of being the father. Stumped, the case went back to court as the mother, Holly Marie Adams from Missouri, demanded financial help from one or other.

The court ruled that Raymon, the brother first named by Ms Adams as the father of her child, would continue to be liable, despite the ambiguity in the DNA results.

"When you are on the bench long enough, you see a lot of strange things," the judge hearing the case, Fred Copeland, told ABC News.

As for Raymon, he has vowed to press on to the supreme court. "If they can't prove it's me then they should throw it out of court," he said, adding of the maintenance claim: "The state should eat it."