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James Brown Broods On
The results are in and it looks like papa's got some brand new kids.
DNA testing on a dozen people who have claimed they were fathered by the late James Brown has revealed two who are legitimate offspring, the executor of James Brown's estate has revealed.
Buddy Dallas, Brown's longtime attorney, told the Augusta Chronicle that tests came up negative for some individuals and other results are still pending. But two so far have conclusively established that the Sex Machine had fathered at least two children out of wedlock.
Citing privacy reasons, Dallas refused to identify the people with matching genes. However, the Chronicle fingered one of them as LaRhonda Petitt, a 45-year-old retired flight attendant and teacher from Houston.
"I broke down crying," Petitt said upon learning that the DNA test established a 99.99 percent certainty that she was indeed the Mr. Dynamite's daughter.
Petitt told the Chronicle that her mother, Ruby Shannon, met Brown at a concert in the early 1960s and the two carried on an affair while the singer was still married to his first wife, Velma Warren.
Shannon became Brown's on-the-road girlfriend, even occasionally ironing his shirts before his gigs, Petitt said. But Shannon eft him after becoming pregnant and moved to Houston to raise her daughter.
Petitt recalled how her mother would often point to the music legend on television and tell her that was father and also bring her to his concerts to meet him. But she expressed resentment over the fact that Brown never acknowledged being her father.
"I was angry that he was out there making all this money, and he wasn't doing anything for my mother and me," she told the paper "I could have had a better life."
Pettit, who is the oldest of Brown's kids, says she has become more forgiving as the years passed.
"I love my daddy," she said. "When I hear my daddy's music, it just freezes me."
Brown died last Christmas of heart failure at age 73. Following his death, his heirs have been fighting with the trustees over the estate, a posthumous showdown that's become more bitter as the months have gone by.
Meanwhile, his final partner, Tomi Rae Hynie, has claimed to be Brown's fourth wife and sued the estate on behalf of herself and her son, five-year-old James Brown Jr. The two are seeking a share of Brown's fortune after both were left out of the will.
In a sworn affidavit, Dallas swore that the funk icon always denied fathering the boy and referred to him as "little man" instead of "son."
Before his burial in March however, the family and Hynie reached a deal to have DNA samples taken from Brown's body to establish paternity of James Jr. and in case anyone else decided to come forward asserting lineage.
The younger James is awaiting his own DNA test.
Petitt's Columbia, South Carolina-based attorney, Jim Griffin, told E! Online he would take a "wait and see approach," allowing Hynie's claims to play before filing any legal papers contesting the will on behalf of Petitt.
"What my client has done is work with lawyers for the estate to have her DNA tested and match up with the DNA the estate has procured," Griffin said. "If [Hynie's] challenge is successful, that'll open possibilities for her."
At the very least, he added, Petitt's two daughters, 26-year-old Cherquarius Williams and 16-year-old Ciara Petitt, should be entitled to money from the James Brown Education Trust, which was set up to help pay for his grandchildren's educations.
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