Story highlights
Attorneys for Carlin Q. Williams say his mother had a child after having sex with Prince in 1976
Williams is in a federal prison, convicted of felony gun possession
Dividing up Prince’s vast estate just got more complicated.
Carlin Q. Williams, a 39-year-old inmate in federal prison, says he is the son of the music legend and the sole heir to his estate. His claims were filed by his attorney in the same court Prince’s siblings are seeking their share of the singer’s estate.
Williams says his mother in July 1976 had sex with Prince, then an unknown singer, at a hotel in Kansas City. Williams’ mother, Marsha Henson, says in an affidavit that she and the singer drank wine at a hotel lobby then got a room at another hotel.
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She said she knows Williams is Prince’s child because she didn’t have sex with anyone six weeks before her alleged encounter with the singer and until after her son was born. Prince would have been 17 or 18 at the time. The filing says Henson gave birth to Prince’s son on April 8, 1977.
Williams is asking that Prince’s DNA be tested in an effort to prove Williams is Prince’s child.
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Williams is serving 92 months in a Colorado federal prison for possession of a firearm by a felon.
CNN has not received a response from the attorney who is taking the lead in Williams’ paternity claim. CNN also reached out to attorneys for Prince’s siblings – who are considered his heirs – but didn’t get an immediate answer.
CNN went to a Kansas City neighborhood. A woman answered the door of the house Williams and Henson listed as a residence. When asked if she was related to Williams or Henson, she told CNN, “My daughter told me to say no comment.”
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Williams apparently is a musician himself. On one website promoting a rap song he calls himself Prince Dracula.
“I am Prince (rodger nelson) aka Prince the Singer’s son,” he writes, misspelling Prince’s middle name (Rogers).
Last week, a Minnesota court appointed a special administrator of the estate and determined that all possible heirs have been reached.
It also ordered a medical examiner to give a sample of Prince’s blood to the administrator, the Bremer Trust, for DNA testing to determine possible heirs of the estate.
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CNN’s Tony Marco, Stephanie Elam and Steve Almasy contributed to this report:
