The DNA detective: Tracing your family 7. Julia Bell, 4. 7, a self- styled ‘DNA detective’ who has helped dozens trace relatives.

1. Ethan Nichtern was 9 when The Princess Bride hit the big screen 30 years ago. He saw the film back then because of a family connection—Nichtern’s father was best.
2. · The Asahi Shimbun is widely regarded for its journalism as the most respected daily newspaper in Japan. The English version offers selected articles from.

The official site for Miramax highlighting our movies and television shows with trailers, video clips, photo galleries and blog posts. Carnival Cruise Hurricane Season.

The smartly- dressed lady tightly clasping her tiny baby on a street near London’s King’s Cross towards the end of World War II looked the epitome of middle- class respectability. Her baby was just two weeks old, and as she seemed agitated, a kindly resident offered her water for her newborn daughter and a cup of tea. As she sipped her tea she explained that she was waiting for her husband to arrive on the train from Edinburgh. He’d asked her, she said, to book a hotel for them. At this point, the Good Samaritan offered to mind the now sleeping baby for a few minutes while she made the necessary arrangements. The mother thanked her for her kindness, handed over her baby, and said she’d return promptly. She never did. In fact, she vanished, leaving the baby to be taken into care and later adopted.

She was given the name Linda. With no clue to her mother’s identity, Linda, now 7.

Until now. Step forward Julia Bell, 4. DNA detective’ who has not only discovered Linda’s father was an American GI in the bomber squadron, but believes she might have found her birth mother, too. As a result, Linda has found a half brother and sister in the USA — with whom she is in happy contact.

She is one of dozens who Julia has helped to trace long- lost relatives. Many are the descendants of American soldiers stationed in the UK during the war, who left local girls in a spot of bother. Others are the product of decades- old mysteries, including the case of a baby boy abandoned in a Birmingham cinema in 1. The key to unlocking the puzzles came with a simple saliva test, from which their DNA profile was taken and compared to millions stored on databases all over the world. From there, Julia used her years of expertise to sift through data looking for patterns and possible matches.‘Advances in DNA testing mean databases can reveal even very distant matches,’ she explains. If you have a close match such as a half sibling it’s quite straightforward but the difficulty comes when there are a series of more distant matches. You need someone who knows how to interpret everything that’s there.’And that’s what Julia, a former teacher, with no background in genetics, has become expert at.

It’s painstaking work, but she doesn’t charge private clients. She says helping people find a missing part in their family jigsaw is reward enough. With no clue to her mother’s identity, Linda, now 7. Driving Miss Daisy Movie Watch Online. Until now‘It brings about an amazing sense of completion for people who have been waiting their whole lives to find out who they really are,’ she says. I feel very strongly that people have a right to know where they come from.’It has a deeply personal resonance for Julia, who lives in Ascot with her husband Ian, who works in pharmaceuticals, and their daughters Imogen, 1.

Isadora. Her own mother, Helen, now 7. World War II. Even as a young girl, Julia remembers reassuring her mother she would help her to find her birth parents one day.‘Mum had been adopted by a nice middle- class couple as a baby,’ explains Julia.

She only knew that her father was a U. S. serviceman.’ Helen’s adoption file shed a little more light on the matter. In it was a letter from her birth mother, my grandmother — Margaret — who explained how she had met Helen’s father at a party in March 1. She was only 2. 1, the only child of very Victorian parents, and very naive. Then suddenly here is this handsome GI looking like a film star,’ says Julia.

She said he was called Arthur Revers, that he was 2. After a short romance he’d returned to America, leaving Margaret scandalously ‘with child’.‘Later I discovered he had a different surname, jet- black hair, and was only 1. Intrigued by the letter, Julia, who was a teenager at the time, joined support groups for the children of American GIs, and spent years liaising with America’s National Personnel Records Centre in Missouri looking for Arthur Revers, and poring over the resulting paperwork.‘This was pre- internet, so everything was done by snail mail. I had a line of filing cabinets just filled with paperwork,’ she says. At first, she fared no better tracing Margaret, her grandmother. With the trail apparently cold, Julia despaired of ever helping her mother — especially when, in the early Noughties, she managed to track down Margaret via birth and marriage records, only to discover she had died in 2. She’d had no more children.

I thought that was quite poignant,’ says Julia. Then in 2. 01. 3 came a breakthrough: a new website called Ancestry DNA that allowed you to compare your DNA to that of approximately four million others on there — all curious strangers, tracing their family tree.‘Unlike previous DNA tests, which only showed a direct genetic link to, say, a sibling, this one could link you to distant cousins,’ Julia explains. Watch Adrenaline Mediafire. A newspaper cutting from 1. Linda and how she was abandoned by her mother in King's Cross‘I knew it was worth a try.’Julia uploaded her mother’s DNA via a saliva sample provided by the site — and found a number of matches. She was linked to a number of families. I saw the name Garrett featured a lot,’ she says.

Months of detective work followed, until the trail led to an Arthur Garrett Junior, an ex- soldier from Arizona. He wasn’t a Revers, but in my gut I knew he was the man,’ says Julia.‘He’d also been in the same part of the UK as my grandmother at the right time.’Arthur Garrett Junior died in 2. Faye and Ralph — who agreed to a DNA test, which revealed he was Helen’s half- sibling. So Arthur was her father and my grandfather,’ says Julia. Arthur married again and had two more sons, called Dallas and Mike.

In November 2. 01. Helen and Julia travelled to North Carolina for an emotional meeting with the U. S. branch of their new family.‘It was very emotional for Mum,’ says Julia. They all said my mother favours her father more than any of them — the same mannerisms, expressions. She’s now in regular contact with her siblings.’That success spurred Julia to try to help others, and she is now contacted regularly by people desperate to find long- lost relatives.

As an adoptee in the UK you can find something about your birth mother when you grow up, but if you are a foundling there is a giant hole where all the information should be — you don’t know your birthday, your surname, anything. It’s hard for people,’ says Julia. One such person was great- grandmother Linda Wright.

When Linda contacted Julia last year she was struck by the mystery. A hatted, gloved, middle- class woman who walks onto the equivalent of a housing estate, leaves her baby and just vanishes,’ she says. It’s extraordinary.’After taking a sample of Linda’s saliva, months of wading through DNA records led to Carl Durnen, a U. S. serviceman — who was married to an English girl with a baby about the same age as Linda. Carl had gone AWOL in June 1. Linda was conceived.‘It seems he had a girl in two ports, as it were, one of them Linda’s mother,’ Julia says, wryly.

Pictured is Linda's father Carl Durnen (aged 2. Air Force GI stationed in the UK during the Second World War‘It was a period when many didn’t think they would survive, so social mores were different.’A DNA test of Clyde, one of Carl’s two children, confirmed Julia’s beliefs — he was Linda’s half- brother. Carl died in 1. 99.

Linda, who lives in Essex, has been welcomed into the extended Durnen family, who had no idea of her existence.‘It’s been wonderful for Linda, who has a renewed sense of belonging,’ says Julia, who now believes she is ‘steps away’ from establishing the identity of Linda’s birth mother. It makes all the hours of wading through paperwork worthwhile.’Another success story is that of Robert Weston, who in 1. Birmingham cinema toilet cubicle, his head resting on a cushion.