What We Know About Lauren Boebert’s Complicated Quest For Her Biological Father

When she was born in 1986, Lauren Boebert’s birth certificate did not include any information about her father. However, the Colorado rep’s mother, Shawn Roberts Bentz, believed her daughter’s father was Stan Lane, a then-pro wrestler. Bentz and Lane had been in a relationship, but Lane broke up with Bentz after she told him she was pregnant. Lane wanted her to terminate the pregnancy, citing concerns about his use of steroids at the time of conception. 

As early as 1987, Bentz took legal action to obtain child support from Lane, and by 1990, he took a court-ordered paternity test. While the results came back negative, Bentz was skeptical. “I knew there was either a mistake made in the testing or that fraud was involved,” she recalled in a 2012 letter to the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation. A decade later, when Lauren was 13, she called Lane’s mother in an attempt to reach out and form a connection to the man she believed was her father. 

In addition to Bentz’s doubts about the test results, by 1993, there was an additional wrinkle: the phlebotomist responsible for getting Lane’s blood sample was found guilty of tampering with a different paternity case. In exchange for $500, the technician agreed to swap out an NFL player’s sample.  In the wake of this development, free retests were provided to put people’s minds at ease. However, Bentz was unaware of this opportunity.