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She took a DNA test to find out about her birth parents. She found something more sinister

Kathy Gillcrist took a DNA test to find out more about her birth parents. She'd come to learn her father's name and something much darker.

Grace Holland

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Published: 10:46 PM EDT May 5, 2022
Updated: 11:54 PM EDT May 5, 2022

You may have taken one of those 23 and Me or Ancestry DNA tests to find out more about your family tree or your health. When a North Carolina woman took hers, she found out something much more sinister.

Her birth father - never found - but wanted by the FBI for 46 years.

"I am a child of this man who did horrible, horrible things," Kathy Gillcrist said.

Gillcrist was given up for adoption and raised in Massachusetts by parents she describes as humble, modest and wholesome.

"It was great except that I was really, in a lot of ways, not like them at all. I was very ambitious, very dramatic," Gillcrist said.

She went on to study theater and teach high school drama and English. She now lives in Carolina Shores, NC, and said she never really cared to find out who her birth parents were until she retired.

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