Over the decades, biographers floated a dozen potential candidates, from studio executives to itinerant actors. Solving the mystery required scientific tools that did not exist during Monroe’s lifetime. In 2022, director François Pomès partnered with Ludovic Orlando, a world-renowned professor of molecular paleobiology at the University of Toulouse, to conduct forensic DNA paternity testing.
The research team obtained three verified strands of Marilyn Monroe’s hair, saved by her mortician in 1962 and authenticated through chain-of-custody documentation. Hair shafts without roots contain severely degraded, highly fragmented genetic material, making nuclear DNA extraction notoriously difficult. Orlando’s laboratory utilized specialized protocols typically reserved for ancient hominid fossils, mapping fragments of Monroe’s autosomal DNA alongside mitochondrial sequences.
The comparative sample came from Francine Gifford Deir, the daughter of Charles Stanley Gifford Jr. and the direct granddaughter of Monroe’s alleged father. Living in Virginia, Deir provided saliva samples for deep genomic sequencing. The cross-comparison delivered an unambiguous conclusion: Monroe and Deir shared precise, non-random segments of the genome on identical chromosome arms, verifying a direct half-aunt to half-niece biological relationship. The probability index surpassed legal thresholds, closing the book on ninety-six years of speculation.
