Tiffany took a consumer DNA test. The results came back: , 46% Indigenous Colombian . That was a shock. Lori was white. Mark was white. But Tiffany had always been olive-skinned, with dark, thick hair. She had assumed it was from Mark’s ambiguous Mediterranean heritage. But no—her biological father was Colombian.
That is the deep story of Tiffany Stasi’s biological father: a man named Juan Carlos Vélez, who was never allowed to be a dad, but who waited twenty-two years to hold his daughter anyway. tiffany stasi biological father
Lori cut Juan Carlos out completely. She moved, changed her number, and never told him Tiffany existed. He searched for her for years, she later learned, but gave up after being told by a mutual friend that Lori had moved to Florida and “didn’t want to be found.” Tiffany took a consumer DNA test
When Lori married Mark Stasi when Tiffany was three, Mark adopted her. The adoption was meant to be a fresh start—a new name, a new family, a new identity. But for Tiffany, the adoption papers were a locked door. Every time she asked Lori about her biological father, the answers were vague: “It didn’t work out.” “He wasn’t ready to be a dad.” “You’re better off not knowing.” Lori was white
In 2014, when Tiffany was a teenager, Mark Stasi was arrested for the murder of his second wife, , a Colombian immigrant and mother of two young children. The case was brutal. Ana Maria had been missing for months before her dismembered remains were found stuffed into suitcases and dumped along the Southern State Parkway. Prosecutors painted Mark as a controlling narcissist who killed Ana Maria when she threatened to leave him—just as his first marriage had collapsed under similar accusations of abuse.
The DNA matches led her to a cluster of second cousins in Bogotá. Through patient messaging and old-school detective work—Facebook stalking, obituaries, immigration records—she pieced together the story.