Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

DNA Solves Bobby Fischer Paternity Case

Well that settles it. It turns out that Jewish chess-champ-turned-rambling anti-Semite Bobby Fischer is not the father of a 9-year-old Filipino girl, Jinky Young, whose mother claimed to have been impregnated by Fischer.

As we reported in June, four parties, including young Jinky, were caught in a legal battle over Fischer’s $2 million estate following the chess champ’s death in 2008 from kidney failure. The other claimants included a Japanese chess official named Miyoko Watai, who says she was married to Fischer in 2004; Fischer’s two American nephews, Alexander and Nicholas Targ, and the American government, which claims Fischer’s money in compensation for unpaid taxes.

To settle the matter, the Supreme Court of Iceland — where Fischer spent his final days — decided to exhume Fischer’s corpse for DNA testing. According to Icelandic law, if the girl was indeed his daughter, she’d be entitled to two-third of his estate.

But it turned out that Fischer was not the father, as reported in a BBC article yesterday. “The DNA report excluded Bobby Fischer from being the father of Jinky Young, and therefore the case has come to a close,” lawyer Thordur Bogason was quoted saying in the article.

With three claimants remaining, the court case over the inheritance is still before an Icelandic court. Proceedings will continue next month, according to the article.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.