From the truth is (a lot) stranger than fiction files comes this disturbing story, which interweaves—in ways that would be deemed implausible, if they appeared in a fiction manuscript—several of the topics I've written about here before: legal academia, human subjects research (sort of), reproductive technologies, direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing, and preference heterogeneity.
Recently, a family—wife, husband, 21-year-old daughter—with an interest in genetic genealogy decided to avail themselves of 23andMe's DTC services. They received the results and were surprised to learn that the daughter is the biological child of the wife, but not the husband (and confirmed these results through clinical testing). So far, not so fantastic a story. Rates of non-paternity in the general population are traditionally said to be about 10%, although recent studies have suggested much lower rates. And the fact that the family discovered non-paternity through DTC genetic testing? Welcome to 2013.
The couple, it turns out, had had difficulty conceiving, and in 1991 had sought the help of Reproductive Medical Technologies, a fertility clinic associated with the University of Utah. Several times, clinicians there inseminated the wife with her husband's sperm. Alas, no pregnancies resulted. They decided to give artificial insemination one final try and—success. Some twenty-one-years later, they reflected on their newfound knowledge of the husband's nonpaternity and figured that there must have been a mix up in the clinic. They imagined the life now perhaps being lived by another 21-year-old, created from the husband's sperm and another artificially inseminated client. Unfortunate though they are, accidental mix-ups in fertility clinics are known to happen.
In this case, the family took its nonpaternity results beautifully in stride; the daughter knows that the man who raised her is her "real" dad, and he knows that she is his "real" daughter. Indeed, the family decided to go further and seek out their daughter's biological father—and perhaps the husband's biological daughter. To do so, they used the other two major DTC genetic genealogy companies, Family Tree DNA and AncestryDNA, to find close paternal relatives of the daughter. Searching for biological relatives through DTC genetic genealogy is increasingly common. Here's a great story about one adoptee's search, for instance, and only yesterday, I agreed to share my 23andMe profile with an adoptee looking for biological relatives. We're not quite yet at truth-stranger-than-fiction status yet.
The AncestryDNA testing yielded a predicted second cousin for the daughter, and the family made contact. The second cousin was at a loss to explain their genetic connection, except to note that her first cousin, an only child now deceased, had lived in Salt Lake City at the time and told the family that he'd been a sperm donor. When she shared his name—Thomas Ray Lippert—and an older picture of him, the husband and wife recognized him as Tom, who had worked at the front desk of the fertility clinic as well as in the back, as a technician. The wife
remembered [Tom] proudly displaying dozens of photos of babies behind his desk, boasting that he had helped all of their parents conceive. Looking at all of those beautiful babies and Tom’s confidence gave [the wife] hope that she and [the husband] could have the baby that they so desperately wanted as well. She never could have imagined how far Tom apparently would go to “help” couples conceive. [The husband] too remembered him and recalled thinking that Tom was a bit odd when he handed him the sample receptacle and the magazine.
Admittedly, discovering that someone in the fertility clinic substituted his sperm for the husband-client's is slightly more fantastical, but hardly unheard of in the real world. Tom's mother, still living, consented to genetic testing, which confirmed that Tom was indeed the daughter's biological father.
What happens next, however, reads like the kind of fantastical plot elements that would get a fiction manuscript tossed.
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 Southwest 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.
According to this People article from 1975, which the family discovered:
It all began . . . when Sue Cochran left a yellow "ride-wanted" card on a student bulletin board. She hoped to go to Boston to visit her boyfriend, Doug Grant, a student at Tufts. Meanwhile, Professor Lippert had conceived his "experiment in love" and persuaded a student, Harold Ross Tenneson, 21, to assist him. "We came to Purdue on February 19," Tenneson has since admitted, after turning state's evidence and pleading guilty to kidnap charges, "to find a girl, preferably good-looking, for his experiment." They spotted Sue Cochran's "ride-wanted" card, made contact and picked her up that night at the Alpha Chi Omega sorority house. "We got 30 miles out of town," Sue recalls with a shudder. "And, well, that was it."
Cochran spent some three weeks with Tom, at times staying at the home of his well-to-do parents or at the homes of his other relatives, and often appearing on campus together, riding in the Porsche Tom's parents had given him. Relatives and Southwest professors would later say that they had assumed that Cochran was Tom's girlfriend, and that she hadn't seemed under duress. Indeed, three weeks after her parents filed a missing persons report, FBI agents found her calmly reading art books in the library at Southwest State.
This all took place against the backdrop of, and bore a strange resemblance to, the Patty Hearst case. Tom's Minneapolis lawyer was
convinced [Cochran] "turned on to the idea of being wined and dined around the country. I think Tom talked her into coming along and she decided she was having a good time. Tom never threatened her—she may have misunderstood him. Tom even paid her $100 and promised to give her three round-trip tickets to Boston to see her boyfriend for cooperating in the experiment." He adds that Susan agreed to the shock treatment: "She thought it would be groovy, but after one test she decided she didn't like it and Tom didn't do it again." Lippert says the "black box" is actually his photo darkroom, and adds, "she decided she'd been kidnapped when the FBI turned up and said, 'Thank God we've found you.' Then she realized her parents were probably teed off at her for taking off with me."
Cochran, by contrast, said that Tom had threatened both her and her family:
"They had done terrible things to my mind," says Sue. "He [Lippert] kept telling me that if they ever found me he would do terrible things to my family." Tenneson's lawyer, Joseph Trench, says Lippert "took her up to the University of Minnesota Burn Unit and showed her people who had been burned terribly in industrial accidents. He told her that if she tried to get away that would happen to her family." . . . "I didn't know if [the FBI agents] were people on his side or on my side," she says. She was afraid to admit she had been kidnapped "until they showed their badges." Then, she says, she wept.
After his arrest by the FBI in March of 1975, Tom's attorney brought F. Lee Bailey onto the case. Bailey negotiated a plea under which Tom pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to kidnap. He received a sentence of six years in prison, serving two, and agreed to 90 days of psychiatric treatment. His student accomplice, Tenneson, who turned state's evidence, faced 10 years for his role in what he had admitted was a kidnapping; according to this alumni update, he received four years probation.
Just months later, Bailey would change tacks; in December of 1975, as he and others prepared to defend Hearst against charges stemming from the Symbionese Liberation Army bank robbery, they would essentially argue that the government, given its position and the expert witnesses it called in the Tom Lippert (and one other) case, was estopped from denying that kidnap victims can become brainwashed into remaining with their captors.
After serving his time in prison, Tom married—three times—and, for nine years, found work at Reproductive Medical Technologies.
Which brings us back full circle. The family has come forward (anonymously) in order to warn others who used the University of Utah's fertility services between 1986 and 1995. It's possible that Tom substituted his sperm for a client's only once. It's even possible that this one-time substitution was an accident, a genuine mix-up. But the family feels that the rest of Tom's life story makes that less likely. Their worry is that Tom, like others, may have fathered hundreds of children in the Salt Lake City area, some of whom may meet, marry, and procreate, never knowing that they are half-siblings. The family has created a website, Lippert's Children, in an attempt to reach out to Tom's other potential children. Although Tom's surviving family disputes some aspects of the kidnapping story, they have been extraordinarily cooperative, agreeing to DNA testing and inclusion in 23andMe and AncestryDNA to help confirm any additional offspring.
The family would also like to prevent this kind of thing from occuring again. The wife suggests that there be mandatory DNA testing following the birth of all babies created through reproductive technology, to disincentivize those who would—to increase the clinic's success rate or for other reasons—substitute their sperm for clients' or switch embryos.
To end this already-remarkable story with a final twist, I note that despite everything the family has endured upon receiving their 23andMe results, they insisted that CeCe Moore, the genetic genealogist to whom they turned to publicize their story, convey to readers
that this is not intended as a negative DNA testing story and that they are thankful for the knowledge gained through their tests. . . . “We still believe wholeheartedly in DNA testing for genealogy,” [the mother] told me. “The three of us have said we are glad we now know and if we had it to do over, we would do 23andMe again.” . . . She is steadfast in her conviction that this is something that her family needed to know. She added, “My husband also said that he was glad to find out while he is alive. He wouldn’t want [the daughter] to ever think that if he had known the truth, maybe he wouldn’t have loved her. He had that opportunity and he made sure she knew he loves her just as much and to him it is insignificant. He is her father and always will be.”
Which is a pretty striking example of risk preference heterogeneity.
UPDATE: After initially appearing to stonewall (see my comment below, quoting CeCe Moore's original blog post), Business Insider reports that the University of Utah responded to its inquiries with the following statement:
Since April 2013, the University of Utah has been investigating credible information regarding the possible mislabeling or tampering of a semen sample at RMTI (Reproductive Medical Technologies, Inc.), a private andrology lab owned by a University faculty member (now deceased). The facility was a private laboratory located in Midvale, Utah. While not owned or operated by the University, the University contracted with RMTI for specimen preparation and semen analysis. Additionally, RMTI prepared semen samples for private physician offices throughout the community, not University physicians.
Through genetic testing, a woman who received artificial insemination (AI) in 1991 discovered the biological father of her child was not her husband, as she had assumed. She traced the genetics of her child to a man who was a former employee of the now-defunct RMTI, which may have prepared the AI sample. The man in question was also a part-time employee of the University from 1988-94.
There are no remaining records from RMTI to prove the claim and the man in question has been deceased since 1999. Consequently, it is unknown how this incident might have happened. In addition, there is no evidence to indicate this situation extends beyond the case in question.
We understand this information has been upsetting for the family and other clients of RMTI. We want to help alleviate this distress by providing professional genetic testing for RMTI clients who were treated between 1988 through 1994.
Concerned individuals should contact the University of Utah Andrology Lab at 801-587-5852.
* Southwest State College of Marshall, Minnesota, is now apparently known as Southwest Minnesota State University (SMSU). SMSU does not have a law school, but it does have a School of Business and Public Affairs. This article about the Hearst case describes Lippert as a "business law professor," while this alumni retrospective from SMSU itself—probably the most accurate with respect to Lippert's academic position—describes him (at page 12) as an "assistant professor of business administration."
I wonder how Tom died, only because I have a hard time picturing someone who lived this type of life dying of natural causes. What a bizarre and fascinating story.
Posted by: Franita Tolson | January 09, 2014 at 09:27 AM
Franita, you're correct (it seems). From CeCe Moore's blog post, some details about Tom's death and the University of Utah's (non)response to these revelations:
Tom is in an early grave due to alcoholism (perhaps brought on by a guilty conscience?) and the clinic in question is no longer in business. When contacted and informed of Tom’s alleged treachery, the University of Utah claimed that he was, in fact, a “popular donor”. With his criminal background, this seems highly doubtful. When pressed for his donor number, they have been unable or unwilling to supply it to [the wife], [the daughter] or even Tom’s widow, although all should be legally entitled to it if it indeed ever existed. [The wife] was reportedly told that they were unable to release it due to privacy concerns. However, when Tom’s widow requested it, which is her right as his next of kin, she was reportedly told that they did not have that information. (Sperm donor registries were searched under the name of the clinic and the university for any donors fitting Tom's description - none were found.) Further, the university has so far declined to contact the families who conceived at this clinic during the years that Tom worked there and advise them of the situation.
Posted by: Michelle Meyer | January 09, 2014 at 10:10 AM
Tom Lippert was my next door neighbor during the 1990's and I can confirm that he was heavily dependent on alchohol, paranoid and delusional. He also had violent tendencies. Beyond that, he made references to people that he knew could 'hurt' you and told wild stories of 'mafia' type that were after him. Along with other neighbors on our street, we suffered substantial property damage as a result of his own personal terror campaign against us. He was always clever enough to avoid being caught. Eventually we were forced to move. There is so much more to tell about our story as victims of this deranged individual, however the point I'd like to make is that it is easy to think that Miss Cochran felt intimidated in 1975 and was indeed afraid for her and her family's safety. I have no doubt that the threats he made were visceral and real. He must have terrified her at the innocent age of 21.
Posted by: L. Nielson | January 10, 2014 at 02:47 AM
Fascinating story. I have nothing to say, except to thank you for sharing it.
Posted by: Nancy Leong | January 14, 2014 at 10:07 AM
The family members have now gone fully public, identifying themselves as Pam, John, and Annie Branum of Texas. You can watch an interview with them here: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fertility-fraud-discovered-20-years-later-it-almost-seems-surreal/
The video also includes a brief segment with Tom Lippert's widow, who says she is not surprised at the allegations and suspects that he probably deliberately substituted his semen for clients' multiple times. For more from her, see http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/10/utah-sperm-switchers-thomas-lipperts-widow-he-threatened-my-life-every-day/
Posted by: Michelle Meyer | January 15, 2014 at 02:34 AM