Advances in DNA testing have improved society in several ways in the last two decades, especially in criminal justice, but in many states, one area remains a backwater, as News of the Weird has noted over the years: men’s obligation to pay support for children they did not father.
Ray Thomas of Houston is the most recent frustrated complainant, with a court refusing to relieve him of the $52,000 in back child support he owes for a “daughter” that DNA has subsequently shown is not his.
Ironically, the Texas legislature became one of the few to allow men like Thomas to present DNA evidence in order to end court-ordered support.
However, the state attorney general noted that the new law covers only prospective judicial orders.
So, Missouri
didn’t say
that Elvis
ISN’T alive   
Board-certified Kansas City, Mo., psychiatrist — and University of Kansas School of Medicine graduate — Dr. Donald Hinton told reporters in February, 2002 that “Elvis Aron Presley, the entertainer whom everybody believes died in 1977,” is alive and that Hinton has been treating him for migraine headaches, among other things, for five years.
Hinton, 35, said he has several items from Presley containing his DNA and has continually denied that he’s running a scam.
An Elvis Presley Enterprises official was unfazed, insisting that Elvis is still “in the garden at Graceland.”
UPDATE: Dr. Hinton subsequently self-published a book, co-authored with Elvis, explaining their relationship, and was subsequently investigated by the Missouri Healing Arts Board, which ultimately closed the investigation without charges.
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa Fla. 33679 or go to www.newsoftheweird.com.)