SALT LAKE CITY — Couples who used a specific fertility clinic in Utah in the early '90s are questioning the paternity of their children after one family discovered their daughter's DNA links to a clinic employee.

Now that employee's widow says she's not surprised by the allegations.

A Texas family accused clinic worker Tom Lippert of swapping client sperm specimens for his own. His former wife, Jean Lippert, says she was married to Tom for almost 20 years. During that time he worked at Reproductive Medical Technologies.

The Texas family says it used that facility for artificial insemination to help them conceive.

"I wasn't shocked that he would do such a thing," Jean Lippert said. "I was shocked that all of a sudden he was on the news. I mean, he's been gone for 15 years."

"I was in the other room and I heard them mention Reproductive Medical Technologies. I came into the living room and there was Tom's picture all over the TV screen," she said.

The allegations don't surprise her.

"Well, he drank a gallon of wine a day and was getting meaner and meaner and meaner," she said. "He threatened my life every single day. He said, 'I'll beat you to death with my cane.'"

She said she never reported him to police because she feared what he might do.

"There was another time when we were in the car, his friend was in the back seat. He was in the passenger side. He held a gun right up to my head and threatened to shoot me," she said.

The Texas family recently had their daughter take a DNA test for genealogical research and discovered the DNA didn't match the biological father. Instead, the family says they tracked paternity back to Tom Lippert.

Related:

Midvale fertility worker allegedly switched sperm sample with his own

One family got more than they bargained for when they decided to test their DNA for genealogy research.

Jean Lippert said she doesn't think this would have been an isolated incident.

"I'm sure he did it many, many times. I don't think this is something that he would have done just once," she said.

However, if another family did fall victim, she doesn't think it should change a thing.

"I think they should just love (their child) like their own and be happy they've got them," she said.

The clinic is no longer operating, but University Healthcare is offering free genetic testing for families that were clients of RPMI between 1988 and 1994.

Tom Lippert had a history as a convicted felon. He was convicted of kidnapping a student from Purdue, keeping her in a black box and making her undergo electric-shock treatment to get her to fall in love with him, according to People Magazine.

Lippert was a law professor at Southwest State College in Marshall, Minn., and during the three weeks he kept the student in captivity, they traveled through more than half a dozen states, according to the magazine.

According to Business Insider, Lippert served two years of a six-year sentence before ending up in Salt Lake City. He died in 1999.

Contributing: Shara Park

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