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DNA request latest twist in Hannah Anderson abduction saga

Hannah Anderson arrives at a fundraiser on Aug. 15, left, and an undated booking photo of James Lee DiMaggio.
Hannah Anderson arrives at a fundraiser on Aug. 15, left, and an undated booking photo of James Lee DiMaggio.Howard Lipin/U-T San Diego/ZUMA24.com; San Diego Sheriff's Dept.

The family of kidnapping victim Hannah Anderson denied reports that her alleged abductor could have been the biological father of the girl and her brother, after a spokesman for the deceased suspect’s family requested DNA samples.

“Brett and Tina Anderson did not meet Mr. DiMaggio until the sixth month of Tina’s pregnancy with Hannah,” said Stacy Hess, a spokesperson for Brett Anderson, in a statement.

James DiMaggio allegedly kidnapped 16-year-old Hannah after killing her mother Christina Anderson and 8-year-old brother Ethan Anderson, authorities have said. Investigators later found the bodies of Anderson’s mother and brother among the remains of DiMaggio’s burned-out home outside San Diego.

“Brett Anderson’s DNA was used to identify the body of his dead son Ethan Anderson," Hess said in the statement.

DiMaggio died in a shootout with FBI agents after investigators tracked him and Hannah Anderson to a remote corner of the Idaho wilderness.

The response from the Anderson family came after a spokesman for the family of alleged abductor DiMaggio said that the man left his $112,000 life insurance policy to Hannah and Ethan Anderson’s paternal grandmother because “he expected the grandmother to take care of the two children with the money.”

“We are requesting DNA samples from Hannah and anything they can get from Ethan,” spokesman Andrew Spanswick told ABC News affiliate KGTV. “There are rumors Jim was the children’s real father. The parents didn’t marry until 2002. We think it’s strange he left them so much money with no explanation.”

The DiMaggio family’s request for DNA tests is not an attempt to contest the life insurance policy, Spanswick said, according to the KGTV report. DiMaggio removed his sister as his beneficiary in 2011, according to the report.

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