DNA results settle Bobby Fischer paternity case

Bobby Fischer talks to reporters in Japan in this photo taken in 2005.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Results show Fischer is not the father of a Filipino girl
• Girl's lawyer says it ends the paternity case
• Fischer's body was exhumed last month

DNA test on the remains of chess legend Bobby Fischer has determined that he is not the father of a Filipino girl, the girl's lawyer told CNN on Wednesday.

Results of the test "excluded" the possibility that Fischer, who died in January 2008, was the father of Jinky Young, lawyer Thordur Bogason said.

"This brings about the end of this paternity case," he said.

In June, Iceland's supreme court ruled in favor of a request by Young to exhume Fischer's remains in order to settle the question of paternity.

Video: Fischer's body exhumed

Fischer's body was exhumed in early July and reburied shortly after DNA samples were taken, law enforcement officials said.

Police in the Icelandic town of Selfoss, where Fischer is buried, said at the time of the exhumation that Young was 9 years old.

Fischer was 64 when he died in January 2008.

A child prodigy and chess master by the time he was 15, Fischer achieved international fame in 1972 when he defeated chess grandmaster Boris Spassky of Russia during the height of the Cold War, becoming the world champion.

The tournament was considered a symbolic battle between the two greatest powers in the world. It was held in Iceland, midway between the United States and the Soviet Union. Soviet chess masters had held the title since World War II -- until Fischer won. The victory, unequaled by an American since, was followed by tens of millions of chess fans around the world.

But Fischer's genius proved eccentric. Years after his historic win, Fischer gave up the title in 1975 and refused to defend it. He vanished and lived in a self-imposed exile for decades. He resurfaced in Yugoslavia in 1992 for a rematch against Spassky. It was another victory for Fischer, one that earned him $3.5 million.

The U.S. government claimed Fischer's participation had violated U.N. sanctions against Yugoslavia, imposed to punish Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic, and revoked his U.S. passport.

Fischer again disappeared. He was not heard from again until 2004, when he was arrested in Japan for traveling on an expired passport. When Iceland granted Fischer citizenship in 2005, he moved to that country and lived there until his death in a hospital.