Savannah tale hits DNA snag

But in a final throw of the dice, Dermot O’Regan has sent a sample of his own DNA to the U.S. in the hope that it will prove a familial link to Mary Sheehan, who died intestate in Savannah in 1983, leaving an estate that reports in Irish newspapers have put at $165 million.
DNA tests already carried out on the remains of O’Regan’s grandfather ran into a dead end last week.
Dermot O’Regan, who is 64 and from Crookstown, Co. Cork, was recently allowed to exhume the remains of his grandfather Jeremiah O’Regan, buried in St. Finbarr’s Cemetery in Cork.
The exhumation was a last-ditch attempt to prove that Jeremiah, who died in 1966, was the brother of Ellen O’Regan, who married a William Sheehan in Savannah and whose last surviving daughter was Mary Sheehan.
After Mary Sheehan’s death, at age 79, it was discovered that she had lived out her final years in squalor despite her wealth. Her estate has been legally frozen since her death.
The exhumation of Jeremiah O’Regan in May also resulted in the unearthing of the remains of his parents from the same grave.
It is this multiplicity of remains that had prompted Dermot O’Regan to send his own DNA sample across the Atlantic.
After the exhumation, forensic anthropologist Dr. Karen Ramey Burns, of the University of Georgia, took three DNA samples back to Savannah to match against samples taken from the remains of Mary Sheehan’s mother, Ellen O’Regan Sheehan, which were exhumed at Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah in January.
That exhumation aroused the ire of a Savannah-based Irish-born priest, Fr. Jeremiah McCarthy.
“Here I have a poor woman who died in Savannah and I have these idiots in Ireland who have dug up family members trying to get some money,” McCarthy told the Savannah Morning News.
McCarthy believes that the estimate placed on the value of the Sheehan estate has been heavily exaggerated.
Roughly $200,000 was distributed to various claimants by the Georgia courts in the early 1990s, but the O’Regans in Cork have argued that the estate was far more extensive and included as many as 17 properties in Savannah.
The fact that there was no DNA match was confirmed last week by Savannah genealogist Joan Flowers and Dr. Burns, both of whom were assigned to the case by the Chatham County Coroner’s office.
However, Dermot O’Regan told the Irish Times that he believed further DNA tests would prove the family link.
“The situation in the ([St. Finbarr’s] grave wasn’t very clear in terms of remains and bones, and I’ve now sent over a sample taken from myself and I’m confident that that will prove positive and provide a match that will prove my grandfather and Ellen were brother and sister,” O’Regan said.