Twins are Half Brothers

In order to understand the title, here's a new term for you....heteropaternal superfecundation. What it means is that, Mia Washington, the mother of 11-month-old twin boys, was having an affair. The twins have different fathers.

After noticing physical facial differences between the two boys, Justin and Jordan; Mia Washington and her boyfriend, James Harrison, decided to take a paternity test. They went to Dallas DNA Lab Clear Diagnostics.

According to the paternity test, there’s a 99.999 percent chance Justin and Jordan do not have the same father, and zero percent chance they do. The lab has never seen this type of result, nor do they expect to see it again.

“It is very crazy. Most people don’t believe it can happen, but it can,” said Clear Diagnostics President Genny Thibodeaux.

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When twins have two fathers, doctors call it heteropaternal superfecundation. It’s so rare; there are only a handful of documented cases in the world. Washington admits she had an affair that resulted in two babies, born at the same time, fathered by two different men.

“Out of all people in America and of all people in the world, it had to happen to me. I’m very shocked,” Washington said.

The medical marvel can happen when a woman releases multiple eggs during ovulation. If she has more than one sexual partner within the same time period, sperm cells can fertilize two separate eggs.

"Sperm can survive up to five days inside a woman's body, so a woman could sleep with different men several days apart, and get pregnant not once, but twice."

In the case of the Texas twins, there was never any health threat to the babies during the pregnancy because they were fathered by different men.

“It’s not a baby issue since they had different placentas,” Dr. Finkelstein, a Manhattan obstetrician, explains. “The two babies are totally separate entities. Babies can have different blood types even if they have the same father.”

Washington wants people to know she takes full responsibility for her actions.

“I’m trying to let everybody else know: Don’t put yourself in my shoes, because it can hurt and it does hurt, but you still have to go on with life,” she said.

James Harrison said he’s forgiven his fiancé's infidelity and has vowed to stay with her and raise both boys as his own. However for the record Jordan is James' son. Justin's father is someone else.

“It’s a day by day thing. It’s going to take time to build that trust like we had,” James Harrison said.

Washington and Harrison also have more news:

“Five months ago we found out that I was pregnant again and our new baby is due to arrive in the autumn,” she told the Daily Mail. “Right now I’m fully committed to taking care of my family and making sure their needs are met. I can guarantee there’ll be no questions raised this time around.”

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Kids Murdered and Dad Commits Suicide

James Harrison, 34, of Graham Wash. was found dead from an apparent rifle-shot to the head in his car, with the engine still running. His five children were also found dead - four of them in their bedrooms and one in a bathroom - from gunshot wounds. Neighbors identified the children as Maxine, 16; Samantha, 14 or 15; Jamie, 11; Heather, 8; and James, 7. The police are calling it a murder, suicide.

"This was not a tragedy. It was a rotten murder," said Pierce County Sheriff Paul Pastor. "This appears to be the terrible work of the biological father. If that doesn't break your heart, I don't know what does."

Police were called to the mobile home of James Harrison on Saturday, April 4, after a visiting relative found nobody answered the door and saw a child's body through a window.

Angela Harrison, Mr. Harrison’s wife, was not in the home at the time of the shootings. She had told her husband the day before that she was leaving him and she had left the house. Harrison and one of his daughters, Maxine, were able to track her to a convenience store in Auburn. Angela Harrison was there with the other man.

Both her husband and daughter confronted Angela and they began to quarrel. Angela refused to return to her family, saying that the man with her was her new boyfriend. James Harrison and his daughter returned home.

According to Detective Ed Troyer of the Sheriff’s Department, Mr. Harrison shot his children early Saturday. He then drove to an area near the convenience store in Auburn, where he shot himself. Sheriff Paul Pastor said late Saturday that the shooting was the worst in the history of Pierce County.

Ms. Harrison worked at a smoke shop and Mr. Harrison at the Emerald Queen Casino in Tacoma, possibly as a security guard. Neighbors said that the Harrison's largely kept to themselves but argued frequently and loudly, and that Mr. Harrison could be heard threatening his children.

Carolyn Bader, who said she lived a few houses down from the Harrison's until January 2008, said she and her husband, Raymond, called the police and state child protection officials more than once because they were worried that the children were being abused.

“We’d be in our home with the doors and windows shut,” Ms. Bader said, “and they would be inside their house and we could hear him yelling at the kids. It was out of control,” she added. “We would hear kids screaming in the house. I don’t mean playing screaming. I mean screaming.”

A neighbor, Ryan Peden, 16, said he had exchanged text messages with Maxine Harrison up until about 11 p.m. Friday. In the last text message he received from Maxine, Ryan said, “Maxine told me, ‘I’m tired of crying. I’m going to bed. I’ll talk to you in the morning.’ ”

Ryan said he knew Maxine from talking with her at a school bus stop. He said they were not particularly close but had been in contact more frequently recently. He said that she was a good student but that neither she nor the other children appeared to have been involved with many activities beyond school.

Another neighbor, Trisha Lund, said that her son, Robert, 8, sometimes played with James and that the two were in the same second-grade class this year at Orting Primary School. The boys also shared a regular session with a speech therapist at school. Ms. Lund said she and her parents had struggled to explain the shooting to Robert.

“I asked him how he felt about it,” Ms. Lund said. “He said, ‘I’m mad at his dad.’ ”

Both the State Children’s Administration and the police were investigating charges of child abuse against James Harrison. Spokeswoman, Sherry Hill, said Sunday that Mr. Harrison had been found to have physically abused one of the children in February 2007. She said it was not yet clear who had called the agency to the house or whether the state had taken action against Mr. Harrison, but none of the children were removed from the home.

This latest episode in Washington State caps off a week of extraordinary violence with gunmen committing mass murders in New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and California.