Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
But not just because she was going to have a baby for the first time.
A court officer stood just a few feet away from her and her eyes never left the expectant mother. And as soon as the baby was born and its umbilical cord was cut, that officer quickly took a vial of the mother and child's blood and then immediately raced out of the room. What that vial contained could save this mother's family or it could send her to prison.
Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, or expert advice, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds and new ways of thinking. Find the genres you love and discover new ones along the way. Explore bestsellers, new releases, plus thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and originals that members can listen to all they want with more added all the time. Audible makes it easy to be inspired and entertained as part of your daily routine without needing to set aside extra time.
There's more to imagine when you listen. One of my most recent favorite titles is The Lost City of Z. It's nonfiction, but it totally reads like a thriller. It follows this very famous explorer named Percy Fawcett, who went out looking for this legendary lost city in the Amazon in 1925 and then mysteriously vanished. The writer, David Gran, uses Percy's actual diaries and goes deep into the green hell of the Amazon himself, the actual author, to find evidence of what could have happened to the explorer.
As an Audible member, you can choose one title a month to keep from the entire catalog, including the latest bestsellers and new releases. New members can try Audible for free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash ballin or text ballin to 500-500. That's audible.com slash ballin or text ballin to 500-500 to try Audible free for 30 days. audible.com slash ballin
From Ballin Studios and Wondery, I'm Mr. Ballin, and this is Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, where every week we will explore a new baffling mystery originating from the one place we all can't escape, our own bodies. If you liked today's story, please replace the follow button's mouthwash with hot dog water. Today's episode is called Chimera.
On a cold, gray morning in December of 2002, 26-year-old Lydia Fairchild stepped out of her modest apartment in Richland, Washington. Her thick, reddish-brown hair was tied back in a ponytail, and there were dark circles under her blue eyes. Lydia had not slept much the night before because there was a lot on her mind. She and her longtime boyfriend, Jamie Townsend, had just broken up again.
Their relationship had been through many ups and downs over the last several years. They loved each other, but lately they just couldn't seem to get along, and so they had finally decided to just end things. It was a tough situation, especially because they shared two kids, a two-year-old boy and a one-year-old girl. And things had become even more complicated because Lydia had recently found out that she was pregnant again.
Lydia walked off the front steps and headed to her car, trying her best to ignore her overflowing mailbox. She didn't need to look at what was in her mailbox to know it was a whole bunch of bills that were all past due. The bills were another reminder of how challenging life had become lately. She was newly single, pregnant, and also unemployed. While Richland, Washington was a comfortable and safe place to call home, trying to find a job there had been a struggle for Lydia and her savings were now running low.
But she did have one thing she was counting on to keep her going. Several weeks ago, she'd applied for welfare benefits, and this morning, she finally got a phone call about her application. Lydia thought everything had been approved, but the person who called her said there was a problem and she would have to come down to the office to talk about it. And so that was where she was going this morning. So Lydia got into her car, and she drove to the social services department a few miles away.
Meanwhile, the social worker who had called Lydia waited for her in his office. Sitting next to him was his colleague, a woman dressed in a conservative dark blue suit. Neither of them said very much. They were too focused on studying Lydia's case file. The two of them had seen hundreds of welfare applications over the past few years, but never one like Lydia's, and so they were very curious to see what she would have to say. A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door, and Lydia entered.
Once she sat down, the social worker who had called her got right to the point. There was a problem with the DNA tests that Lydia and her kids had submitted in order to receive these welfare benefits. The results showed that Lydia was not actually the children's mother. For a long moment, Lydia didn't say anything. Then she let out an awkward laugh and told them there had to be some mistake. But the social worker shook his head. DNA testing had a 100% accuracy rate.
Lydia just sat back in her chair with this look of total disbelief in her eyes. And it was at this point the social worker's colleague, who was dressed in the dark blue suit, finally spoke up and introduced herself. She told Lydia she was not a social worker, she was a lawyer, and she was with the prosecutor's office. The lawyer got right to the point. Lydia had clearly committed welfare fraud.
She had claimed children that were not hers as dependents on her welfare application, and this was a serious crime. And so the lawyer asked Lydia point blank if she was trying to pass these kids off as her own in order to collect a higher welfare payment. And Lydia said, no, of course not. Then the lawyer suggested that Lydia must have stolen someone's identity. But Lydia immediately pulled out her driver's license, which had her name on it and all of the information she had included on her application,
and Lydia promised the license was real. Lydia insisted that her kids were her natural-born children. She claimed she even had proof since she had their birth certificates and the baby's footprints from the hospital.
The lawyer flashed a worried look over at the social worker. Technically, they both knew it was possible that Lydia could have given birth to these kids without actually sharing their DNA, but that could only happen if she was a surrogate mother. And the social worker realized that if that was the case, that could open up a whole other set of very dark possibilities. Lydia could have been paid to be a surrogate, and then when she actually delivered the kids, she could have kidnapped them from their real mother.
If that was the case, this situation could go beyond welfare fraud. The real mother could be out there somewhere desperately looking for her kids. Or even worse, perhaps the mother was harmed. The social worker cleared his mind and tried to stay objective.
Lydia's horrified reaction to all of their questions made it hard to believe that she was some hardened criminal. But the best scammers could be great actors, and in his career, the social worker had seen plenty of criminals put on Oscar-worthy performances.
Finally, after Lydia continued to deny that she had done anything wrong, the social worker and the lawyer told her that she was free to go. But as she gathered her things, the woman from the prosecutor's office gave her a dire warning. Prosecutors were preparing a criminal case against her, and they could take her kids at any moment. Lydia's hands were shaking as she drove home from the interview. She didn't know what to think. All she knew was that she had to get home and figure out what to do next.
Lydia rushed through the front door of her apartment and called her mother, Carol. Carol tried her best to calm Lydia down, reminding her that the stress would not be good for her current pregnancy. Lydia promised she would try to relax, and admittedly, it did make her feel better just to talk to her mom. After they hung up, Lydia took a deep, calming breath and then started looking for evidence that could help prove her side of the story.
She dug up the children's medical records and birth certificates. She grabbed photos of her with the babies. Then she set it all aside to present to the prosecutor. She was sure it would convince the authorities that she really was the real mother.
The next day, about 600 miles away, inside of a prison in Montana, an inmate was lying on his bunk bed. The gray-haired, 50-year-old man looked up when he heard the familiar sound of a guard rapping on the bars. The guard told him that someone named Carol was calling him. The inmate's name was Rod Fairchild, and he was Lydia's father. Carol was Lydia's mom and Rod's ex-wife. If she was calling, Rod knew it meant something was wrong.
Rod sat up and followed the guard to the prison's call center. The moment he picked up the receiver, he could tell that Carol was very upset. She told him everything that was happening to Lydia, that she was in trouble over a DNA test and was now being accused of committing welfare fraud. Rod told her to stay calm and that he was sure there must have been some mistake and he was positive it would all get cleared up soon.
But after the call ended, Rod dropped the optimism he had shared with Carol. As he headed back to his cell, he couldn't help but think about the DNA evidence. He wanted to believe his daughter, but he knew DNA didn't lie. And if she tried to fight DNA evidence in court, he was afraid she would lose. As her father, Rod felt terrible about the whole situation, and he even felt a little bit guilty.
After all, he was serving time for business fraud, and now his daughter was in trouble over welfare fraud, and so he knew he had not set a great example for his child. Either way, Rod wondered if his daughter had gotten herself into trouble and was now trying to cover it up.
The following week, the prosecutor who was now in charge of Lydia's case was busy building a case against her. He had to be absolutely certain that there had not been an error with Lydia's DNA test. Although it was highly unlikely, Lydia's samples could have been accidentally switched with someone else's, or maybe they had been tainted somehow. So just to be safe, he ordered Lydia and her kids to come in and submit three more DNA samples for testing.
It took a few months to process the tests, but sometime around March of 2003, the prosecutor had his answer. And it was exactly what he expected. The prosecutor phoned Lydia to tell her the results. According to this second round of testing, Lydia was still not the children's biological mother.
Lydia insisted these results were wrong too, and she began to argue with the prosecutor. She asked if the authorities had seen the birth certificates, the baby footprints, and all the photos of her with the kids. The prosecutor told Lydia that yes, they'd seen them, but it didn't matter. Nobody was denying that she gave birth to the kids. They're denying that they are her kids. At this point, the authorities were convinced that Lydia was running some sort of surrogacy scam.
With the newest rounds of DNA tests in their hands, they had everything they needed to convict Lydia. The prosecutor informed her she'd be receiving a court summons and advised her to hire a lawyer. Lydia hung up from the prosecutor in a total daze. She knew she was in deep trouble. Mr. Ballin Collection is sponsored by BetterHelp.
When your schedule is packed with kids' activities, big work projects, and more, it can be easy to let your priorities slip, even if you know doing so will make you miserable. But when you feel yourself losing control over your time and your sanity, that's when you need to remind yourself that certain priorities are non-negotiable. Things like taking care of your mental health.
That said, I always make sure to step back and spend time away from work with my family or friends. This is because my therapist always stresses how important it is to recharge whenever I can. That way I don't burn out. This is why I think therapy can be so helpful for people whose lives feel very hectic, which is basically all of us. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try.
It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash mrballandpod today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash mrballandpod.
Shopify has already taken the cash register online, helping millions sell billions around the world. But did you know they can do the same thing at your retail store? Give your point of sale system a serious upgrade with Shopify.
With Shopify, you get a powerhouse selling partner that effortlessly unites your in-person and online sales into one source of truth. That way, you can track every sale across your business in one place, and you know exactly what's in stock. Shopify also helps you drive store traffic with plug-and-play tools built for marketing campaigns on TikTok, Instagram, and beyond.
And you get the hardware that fits your business. Take payments with your smartphone, transform your tablet into a point-of-sale system, or use Shopify's POS Go mobile device for a battle-tested solution. Plus, Shopify's award-winning help is there to support your success every step of the way. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash mrballin, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash mrballin.
Go to shopify.com slash mrballin to take your retail business to the next level today. shopify.com slash mrballin Lydia didn't have any time to waste, so she pulled out a phone book and started going through the yellow pages looking for family law attorneys. She explained her situation to each one, but they all said the same thing. There was no sense in fighting DNA evidence, and so none of the lawyers she contacted would agree to represent her. They knew they would lose.
By the end of April, when Lydia was eight months pregnant, she was a total nervous wreck and basically wasn't eating. She had to borrow money since she never got her welfare benefits, and she couldn't get a job because of all the legal trouble she was in. Her first hearing was in a few weeks on May 16th, 2003, and somehow she'd have to argue her case in front of a judge without a lawyer. On May 16th, 2003, Lydia's case went to court.
This was a preliminary hearing to determine what would happen to her kids while her case proceeded. The judge overseeing the hearing sat in his chambers, reviewing the evidence against Lydia. He thought it was the strangest case he'd ever seen. The prosecution wanted to put her son and daughter in foster care, and it was now up to him, the judge, to decide. He put on his robe and walked into the courtroom, curious to meet the mother. Lydia, who was now nine months pregnant, struggled to stand up when the judge entered the courtroom.
When the judge sat down, he took a closer look at Lydia. She looked ready to give birth at any moment. The judge asked Lydia when she was due, and she told him she was scheduled to be induced into labor in just three days. The judge thought about this. Taking the kids away from her at this point, even if they were not technically her kids, seemed unnecessarily cruel.
And so he told Lydia that he was prepared to let her keep custody of the kids for the moment, but he had conditions. He needed her and the newborn baby to submit a fresh round of DNA samples. A court officer would literally be present for the birth of this third kid, and the second that baby was born, they would take its DNA to be tested. The following Monday, May 19, 2003, Lydia checked into the hospital.
She was induced into labor, and sure enough, the court officer who was in the room witnessed her give birth to a baby boy, who Lydia named Jamie II, after her former boyfriend and the father of the baby. As nurses huddled around the newborn, the court officer tapped a lab technician on the shoulder. Before Lydia could hold little Jamie for the first time, the tech drew a vial of blood from the baby.
He handed the vial to the court officer, who promptly turned and headed for the door. Before the officer left the room, she looked back for a moment. As Lydia now cuddled with her newborn son for the first time, it was hard for the court officer to believe that this woman was anything but a genuine loving mother. The officer looked down at the vial in her hand. It would prove whether Lydia was this baby's biological mother, or if she was really the scheming liar that prosecutors claimed she was.
Two weeks later, the results from Lydia and her new baby's blood tests came back. It showed that, once again, she and her child did not share any DNA, so she could not be the baby's biological mother. Prosecutors were more sure than ever that Lydia was in fact running some kind of surrogacy scam. Now Lydia was in even bigger trouble than before. And without a lawyer, she ran an even bigger risk of losing her case.
Just a few days after Lydia's newest DNA results came back showing she was not the biological mother of her newest baby, a 41-year-old attorney named Alan Tindell sat down at his cluttered desk with his morning coffee. He had a stack of paperwork that he was not looking forward to doing that day, so when his secretary patched through a potential client, he was happy to take the call.
It was Lydia. And as Alan listened to her story, he wasn't sure what to make of her. Like any good lawyer, he knew DNA evidence was the gold standard. But Alan enjoyed a challenge. He was a proud military veteran and former public defender. He was used to taking on tough situations. Alan was especially curious about Lydia's most recent DNA test.
To his knowledge, the only way a woman could give birth to a baby that was not hers was if she was a surrogate. But Lydia said she wasn't, and this child and the other two were really her biological children. Alan had never heard of someone successfully overturning DNA evidence, but he believed everyone had a right to legal representation. And somehow, he believed that Lydia had to be telling the truth. And so he told her he would take her case.
With Lydia's next court date looming, Alan got straight to work. He spent long nights at his office looking for any logical way to defend her. But he kept arriving at the same conclusion: there was no fighting DNA evidence. After several weeks, Alan was still no closer to finding a way to defend Lydia, until one morning, his secretary brought him a recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. It came with a note from a colleague. There was an article they thought could be relevant to Lydia's case.
At first, Alan shrugged it off. Lydia's case was starting to make the local news because it was so unusual, and so as a result, Alan had been getting a lot of unsolicited advice from people who had seen her story on the news.
But Alan was not making much progress on his own, so he picked up the thick journal and started to flip through it. And by the time he got to the end, his eyes were wide. He could not believe what he had just read. It was a long shot, but if what he had read was true, it could be the key to winning this impossible case.
Allen's first step was to convince the judge to postpone the trial. He explained that Lydia needed to undergo more in-depth testing to try out this new theory he had, and it could take months to get the results. The judge agreed to delay the court date until April of 2004, nearly a year away. Allen was confident that would give them enough time. And so right away, he sent Lydia off to lab after lab where she underwent a battery of tests. Then they waited.
Almost a year went by and Alan was still waiting for the results. And the date for Lydia's hearing was fast approaching. One night, Alan was in his office working on his opening statement for Lydia's case when his phone rang. It was the doctor overseeing Lydia's lab work. And he told Alan he had some bad news. There was still too much data to analyze and Lydia's test results wouldn't be ready in time for her hearing.
Alan could not hide his disappointment. This was a huge setback, but he knew the judge wouldn't delay the trial any longer. And so, in April of 2004, Alan and Lydia walked into the courthouse where her trial would finally take place. Once they were seated, Alan leaned over to reassure her. Then he stood up and faced the judge. Alan didn't have the science-based evidence that he'd been counting on this whole time.
What he had instead was a very strange story to tell, and everything in the whole case came down to whether he could get the judge to believe it. He began to explain why a schoolteacher who lived 3,000 miles away in Boston, Massachusetts, and who had never met or even heard of Lydia, could prove his client was innocent. That schoolteacher's name was Karen Keegan. And in the late 1990s, Karen was sick and needed a kidney transplant.
Hoping her sons would be a match, they all took a DNA test. And just like Lydia, the results showed there was a 0% chance that Karen was the mother of her kids. But unlike Lydia, Karen was able to find out why. A Harvard doctor looked into her case and suggested an extremely bizarre scenario. Karen was something called a human chimera.
This condition was named after a creature from Greek mythology who had a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail. So basically it was several different animals rolled into one. When a woman conceives twins, it's because two eggs in her womb have been fertilized.
On extremely rare occasions, the two eggs then fuse a few days after fertilization. And when that happens, the resulting embryo becomes one fetus with two different genetic codes. This is a human chimera. And once it's born, different parts of its body have unique strands of DNA.
That explained why Karen Keegan didn't come up as a genetic match for both of her sons. The sample they had tested came from her other set of DNA. But then they tested different parts of Karen's body, her hair, her skin, even her bladder. And eventually they found DNA that did match her sons. And it came from Karen's thyroid gland. Alan argued that Lydia had to be a chimera too. Essentially, he was telling the judge that Lydia was her own twin.
And because of this, samples may have been taken from a part of Lydia's body that had a different set of DNA than her kids. Unfortunately, they still had not found any tissue within Lydia that matched her kids' DNA yet. But they did have something. Alan had gotten Lydia's mom tested, and that test proved that at least she, the mother, shared DNA with Lydia's children.
That meant either Lydia or Lydia's sister had to be the kid's mother. The judge took a moment to digest the evidence. If all his years on the bench taught him one thing, it was that DNA tests were always right. But Alan's argument was very compelling. Then the judge made his announcement.
He told the court he believed Lydia Fairchild was indeed the mother of these kids. In his opinion, the story of Karen Keegan, paired with the new DNA results of Lydia's mother, proved that Lydia had to be a human chimera. And so the judge dismissed Lydia's case and admitted that he was wrong. After almost two years, Lydia's ordeal was finally over.
She burst into tears as Alan put his arm around her. She had been telling the truth, as crazy as it sounded, the whole time. A few months later, doctors were able to finally show that Lydia's DNA did match her kids. They found the matching DNA from a cervical smear. Lydia Fairchild went down in textbooks as only one of a hundred human chimeras ever identified.
And while her ordeal would forever haunt her, it did bring her family closer together than they ever had been before. Lydia and her ex-boyfriend, Jamie Townsend, did get back together long enough to have a fourth child. This time around, because the world knew that Lydia was a human chimera, nobody questioned if she was the mother. From Ballin Studios and Wondery, this is Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, hosted by me, Mr. Ballin.
A quick note about our stories. We use aliases sometimes because we don't know the names of the real people in the story. And also, in most cases, we can't know exactly what was said, but everything is based on a lot of research. And a reminder, the content in this episode is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
This episode was written by Matt Marinovich. Our editor is Heather Dundas. Sound design is by Matthew Cilelli. Coordinating producer is Sophia Martins. Our senior producer is Alex Benidon. Our associate producers and researchers are Sarah Vytak and Tasia Palaconda. Fact-checking was done by Sheila Patterson.
For Ballin Studios, our head of production is Zach Leavitt. Script editing is by Scott Allen and Evan Allen. Our coordinating producer is Matub Zare. Executive producers are myself, Mr. Ballin, and Nick Witters. For Wondery, our head of sound is Marcelino Villapondo. Senior producers are Laura Donna Polivoda and Dave Schilling. Senior managing producer is Ryan Lohr. Our executive producers are Aaron O'Flaherty and Marshall Louis for Wondery.
He killed at least 19 people during the 1980s in South Africa. Very dark times. People were desperate. We were looking for him. We couldn't find him. And nobody knew where he was. Every single one of his victims was black. He reached such a stage where he was now hunting. World of Secrets from the BBC World Service. Season 3, The Apartheid Killer. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
