She took a DNA test as a joke — and found her biological father, Alabama woman says

Laura Barnes, 19, wasn’t expecting to make a life-changing discovery when she took the DNA test — it was supposed to be a joke, she told WBRC.

The ancestry.com test taken by Barnes, who’s adopted, matched her with a Tuscaloosa, Alabama, dentist, the news station reported, and she noticed that they looked alike.

“The very top result was JC Bennett, DMD, is your father, so I was like this is crazy,” Barnes told WBRC.

Barnes reached out to John Bennett, and he responded, the news station reported. Now, almost a year later, the two are getting to know each other, discovering their similarities and “completing each other’s sentences,” Barnes told WBRC.

Bennett, who’s married with two sons, told the Tuscaloosa News he didn’t know he had a daughter. He’d heard her biological mother was pregnant but didn’t think he was the father. The woman moved back to Louisiana, where Barnes would eventually be raised, the newspaper reported.

“I felt apologetic because I hadn’t participated in her life,” Bennett told the Tuscaloosa News. “I didn’t know she was alive, but I felt guilty for not participating,” Bennett said. “I felt like I owed her adoptive parents an explanation and almost an apology because they had raised a child that was mine, but I had no knowledge of it.”

Others have made similar discoveries through DNA tests in recent years. A Fresno, California, woman took a DNA test and found out she’s half Armenian, which led her to her biological father.

A Douglas, Georgia, man met his daughter for the first time last year after she submitted her DNA to ancestry.com. Yevette Matthews reportedly found the identity of her father, John Ellis, after she was matched with his sister.

This story was originally published July 5, 2018 at 5:04 PM with the headline "She took a DNA test as a joke — and found her biological father, Alabama woman says."