ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, April 1, 1996 TAG: 9604010069
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BEDFORD
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
note: above
A ROANOKE WOMAN wants to exhume the body of a Bedford County man for DNA testing to prove her claim that she is his illegitimate daughter and entitled to inherit part of his estate. The Virginia Supreme Court will hear the case in the fall.
Christine Majied says it was a known fact that Jim Brown was her father.
"Everyone who knew my mother and knew my father personally was aware of this, but it was just something you didn't blurt out and boast about," she said during a 1995 court hearing.
"He bought me my first bike," Majied said. "One time I went with him to Newport News to visit his brother. When he came back, before he took me home, he gave me an envelope, and he said, 'This is for your mother to buy you whatever you need for school....' [He] would always do things like that."
Majied and her mother, Mary Trent Langhorne, claim Majied is the result of an affair between Langhorne and Brown in 1955.
Now, three years after Brown's death, Majied is trying to claim what she says is her birthright as Brown's daughter and rightful heir.
Bedford County Circuit Judge William Sweeney granted her request last year to exhume Brown's body for DNA testing that may prove whether Brown is her father. But the exhumation order has been put on hold pending an appeal by Brown's estate to the Virginia Supreme Court.
The case is believed to be the first of its kind argued in Virginia's highest court and one of only a handful in the United States that address the issue of exhumation to prove paternity.
Mary Trent Langhorne married George Washington Trent in 1947. The two had a stormy relationship that produced six children before Christine was born in 1956.
For most of the early 1950s, Langhorne said in a sworn statement, Trent would drink and stay out all night, sometimes coming home without any money. By January 1955, she said, the two stopped having relations with each other at all.
Soon after that, Langhorne said, she met Jim Brown at a local restaurant and the two started dating exclusively until she reconciled with Trent that September.
"He was a nice, friendly, understanding person and you know, tried to understand my problems," Langhorne said of Brown. "I had relations with him for years after that because I, when I moved to Roanoke for good, I still would see him occasionally."
On Feb. 29, 1956, Langhorne gave birth to Christine.
"The second day after she was born, Jim was the first thing there to look at her [and] pick her up after my husband went to work," Langhorne said.
Trent "was so surprised that I had had the baby so quick, he didn't say anything for a couple of days," Langhorne said. "He said it wasn't his, and then he said she looked like Jim."
But Langhorne said she never told Trent that she thought Brown was Christine's father.
When Christine was still a baby, Langhorne said, Brown said to her, "Don't you worry about a thing, you ain't got nothing to worry about. Anything you need, you let me know."
``[Brown] gave me money if I needed to buy her milk, and he gave me money to buy her baby clothes and things when she was born," Langhorne said. "As she grew older ... he would give me money when she needed money to buy school clothes. ... Whatever she needed, she got it."
Christine grew up with the last name Trent, but Brown was often in the background. As soon as she was old enough to understand, Majied said, her mother and Brown told her that Brown was her biological father.
From then on, she said, Brown attended her birthday parties and high school and college graduations and took her on visits to his family, where he introduced her as his daughter. When she grew older, Brown and his wife came over to Majied's house for dinners and played with Majied's children, she said.
Jim Brown died in March 1993 without a will. His estate, most of which consisted of large tracts of Bedford County farmland valued at about $90,000, went to his wife, friends and relatives.
Nothing was left to Majied.
"I honestly believed my father left a will and I kept praying and hoping that a will would surface and it would settle everything," Majied said.
When it didn't, and when Brown's executor wouldn't legally acknowledge Majied as Brown's daughter and heir, she filed suit to exhume Brown's body to determine paternity.
Brown's estate, represented by Bedford lawyer Carl Boggess, declined to be interviewed for this story. Majied and her mother also would not be interviewed; their remarks come from sworn testimony.
In court records, however, Boggess made several arguments against Majied's claim.
Under legal doctrine, he said, Majied has waited too long to bring forth her complaint, given that she said that she had believed Brown to be her father for more than 20 years.
Second, he pointed out that Majied is listed as the legal child of George Washington Trent in several documents, including Majied's birth certificate and school records.
Langhorne and Trent were divorced in 1968, and Trent died in 1988: Majied was still listed as Trent's daughter in his obituary, Boggess pointed out.
Boggess also noted that Langhorne swore under oath that Majied was Trent's child in a court petition for child support.
Majied said she never before challenged her legal status as Trent's child out of respect for her mother and her shame of the affair. She also said that she didn't think it was necessary to change her last name to Brown because she had no reason to believe that Brown would ever cease to provide for her or that he would not acknowledge her as his child.
It's not that unusual for a body to be exhumed to prove parentage in an inheritance dispute, but it is rare for the dispute to find its way to a state's highest court.
State courts in North Carolina and Pennsylvania have ruled that DNA testing of a corpse is admissible proof of paternity.
"It's probably more commonly done than most people imagine," said Allison Garrison, head of sales and service for GeneLex Corp., the Seattle-based DNA-testing firm Majied has hired to determine if Brown is her father.
GeneLex is one of 15 certified parentage testing labs in the United States. It is often called on to perform DNA testing on the tissue samples of a deceased person, Garrison said, though the samples are usually taken before a person is buried.
GeneLex usually receives only three to four requests a year to test samples from an exhumed body.
As many people learned in the movie "Jurassic Park," DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the basic building block of life. People have millions of strands of DNA in every cell of their bodies that determine everything from hereditary features such as eye color to the fact that people have eyes in the first place.
Offspring inherit one half of their genetic material from each of their natural parents. In cases like Majied's, the first thing that is usually done is to take small samples of blood or tissue from the known parent and the child. Then a sample is taken from the person in question.
In the lab, technicians compare the offspring's sample to the samples from the known parent and the questioned. If half of each parent's DNA combined together matches the child's DNA, then both are parents.
Arlington lawyer Jerry Lyell specializes in DNA testing for criminal defense cases. He said, "It's entirely feasible to get a DNA profile from a deceased person and get blood from a living person and all that stuff will match very neatly, assuming the deceased person is the parent you're seeking."
"This will be a little more challenge for them because they're not going to have a blood sample," said Paul Ferrara, director of the Virginia Division of Forensic Science, which does DNA testing for state law enforcement agencies, usually in rape or murder cases.
But he added, "DNA can be retrieved easily from the pulp of a tooth or teeth, or bone marrow without great difficulty. So, technically, this isn't a great stretch."
As the case nears the Supreme Court, Majied has said she will not feel entirely victorious if the court rules in her favor and allows the exhumation.
"I would prefer not to do it that way, but if that is the only means I have left to do it, to resolve this, then, yes," Majied said. "It hurts me that I even have to go that step."
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