Chess player Bobby Fischer to be exhumed for paternity test

The body of chess master Bobby Fischer, who died in exile in Reykjavik in 2008, has been ordered to be exhumed by a judge following a paternity claim involving nine-year-old Jinky Young of the Phillipines.

Along with Young and her mother Marilyn; head of the Japanese Chess Association Miyoko Watai (who claimed to have married Fischer in 2004) and Fischer’s nephews Alexander and Nicholas Targ are currently all trying to claim a portion of the chess player’s $2m estate. (There is also a tax claim pending on his remaining fortune.) Fischer died intestate, and never returned to the US after an arrest warrant was issued for him in 1992 for violating economic sanctions against Yugoslavia.

Parties advocating for Jinky Young have submitted documents to the court to support their claim of Fischer’s paternity:

Marilyn Young filed her claim in Iceland last November. Among the documents she provided were pictures of her, Fischer and Jinky, and postcards to Jinky signed “Daddy” that she said were from Fischer. She has also produced records showing that Fischer gave her money in 2006 and 2007 for Jinky, according to RUV, a public broadcaster.

Young had hoped to retrieve DNA from the Reykjavik hospital where Fischer died of renal failure, but none had been preserved after his death.