They were America's favorite couple - charming the country on screen and off - but Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz may have been hiding a secret so scandalous, it would have shattered their public image.
Cassandria Lucianna Carlson, 38, believes that she is the legendary comic couple's granddaughter - and that her mother was adopted in 1947 for fear that a baby would derail Ball's plans for stardom.
The Illinois woman nearly had a DNA sample to prove the claims, but the offer from an estranged Arnaz relative was suddenly rescinded under circumstances that have only deepened the mystery.
Madeline "Linda" Jane Dee, Carlson's mother, was born four years before the 1951 debut of "I Love Lucy" and immediately given up for adoption to California nurse Ruth Smith.
Birth records indicate Helen Elizabeth Barnes as the mother. There is no listed father.
"I believe [Carlson]," said Vito Colucci, a Stamford, Conn., private detective who has called on Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr. - the couple's only publicly known children - to "put this to rest" by providing DNA samples to test against Carlson. Desi Sr., died in 1986, and Ball died three years later.
Colucci cites facts that his client has "accumulated over the years" as the basis for his belief.
Carlson said she has vivid, early childhood memories of a brash, red-headed woman called "Mrs. Morton" coming to visit her at her mother's house in the mid-1970s. Smith, the grandmother, was often present.
Ball took the name Morton after divorcing Desi Sr. in 1960 and marrying Gary Morton.
Carlson remembers the women playing cards or taking her to the playground. She even remembers at least one visit by Mr. Morton.
Dee - whose troubled adult life included multiple drug and prostitution arrests, several marriages and domestic abuse - died in 2003 when she was hit by a bus in California.
Carlson phoned Smith from a funeral home to help locate Dee's birth records.
During that call, said Carlson, Smith asked, "Are you sitting down?" and told her that Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were her mother's parents. But Smith, who has since passed away, warned her that she would never find a record of their parentage.
In Carlson's mind, that shocking statement cemented what she had long suspected.
She said she once asked Dee if it was true, and her mom replied, "It could be, but what does it matter?" via
