For those who had been arguing against the prince theory on historical and documentary grounds, this was confirmation. For those committed to the theory, it was not so simple. The objections centered on the sample itself. How could anyone be certain that the blood on the underwear was Hauser’s blood? The clothing had been held in a museum for over 160 years. Museum curators and handlers had access to it. Some theory supporters argued — without documentary evidence — that the bloodstain had been renewed or contaminated, either accidentally or deliberately, by modern blood from someone not related to Hauser.
This objection was theoretically possible. It was also untestable in any direct way, because there was no comparison DNA from a confirmed biological relative of Hauser against which to verify the sample’s authenticity. The 1996 results stood in the literature, but they did not close the debate.
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## The Complication: 2001-2002
The second round of testing, conducted by researchers at the University of Münster in 2001 and 2002, did not resolve matters. It made them more complicated.
The Münster team tested hair samples from items in the Kaspar Hauser collection — specifically, locks of hair that had been preserved in private collections and attributed to Hauser. They also tested clothing items. When they compared their mtDNA results against DNA from Astrid von Medinger, a living female-line descendant of Stéphanie de Beauharnais, they found results that were close — close enough that a mutational difference between the samples could be interpreted as consistent with a family relationship.