There’s a lot of circumstantial evidence that suggests that Suri Cruise might not have been born on April 18, 2006 as claimed. First, her birth certificate wasn’t signed by anyone who actually saw Katie or Suri in the hospital and wasn’t issued for a full 20 days after her birth date. It took a full five months for anyone to catch a glimpse of little Suri, when she made her big debut in the October, 2006 issue of Vanity Fair. That seemed extremely suspicious back then, but Britney managed to hide Jayden James for a longer period of time so it’s not necessarily a red flag. The Scientologists also have this thing where babies can’t be exposed to negative influences or something, so that was also cited as a potential reason to have kept Suri under wraps for so long.

A lot of people speculated that Suri wasn’t born in April at all, and cited photos of Katie’s Holmes growing and shrinking bump to show that there was some funny business going on. One photo in particular that made us scratch our heads had Katie looking like she was smuggling a beach ball under her top. There are theories that Suri isn’t Tom Cruise’s biological baby and that Katie was instead pregnant with her ex Chris Klein’s child when she met Tom just a month after her breakup with Chris. Cruise was rumored to be sterile or at least unable to successfully reproduce, given the fact that he had no biological children with ex wife Nicole Kidman and she suffered some miscarriages during their marriage. The curious way that Suri was kept from the public and the lack of convincing evidence of her birthdate were used as evidence that she could be older than Holmes and Cruise claimed, which made her paternity up to question.

Now there’s some hearsay to add to the rumor that Suri is Chris Klein’s and not Tom’s baby. The National Enquirer has a source this week that claims to have had a conversation with Chris that suggested that Katie was pregnant when they broke up back in March of 2005. Their source also passed a lie detector test, but that’s possible with the help of some medication so you can’t put much faith in that. The Enquirer never says outright that Suri must be Chris’ baby, but they sure hint strongly at it:

“Mad Money” star Katie, 29, and Chris, 27, started dating in January 2000. They got engaged at Christmas 2003, but Chris has said they split in March 2005 because they fell out of love.

A month after the breakup, Katie flew to Los Angeles from New York to meet Tom. Two months after that – on June 17, 2005 – Tom announced Katie had accepted his wedding proposal.

But even before their engagement was made public, Chris told the source that he had impregnated Katie, says the pal. “Shortly after his relationship with Katie ended, Chris and I had a heart-to-heart,” the source – who passed a polygraph test – told The Enquirer.

“We were having dinner at Cafeteria, a restaurant in NY’s Chelsea district, when Chris blurted out ‘Dude, you know I got Katie preggers.’

“There was a long silence. I realized Chris had said more than he intended. My next thought was: What happened to the baby?”

Chris never said – and the source says he didn’t ask.

“From the look in Chris’ eyes, I realized this was highly personal. I didn’t want to probe any further. We quickly went on to another topic,” the source said.

“Chris never brought it up again, but I know he must be reminded of Katie’s pregnancy every time he sees her daughter Suri.”

[From The National Enquirer, print edition, February 4, 2008]

I really don’t believe that Katie Holmes ran the full NY Marathon or even walked it, but it feels kind of wrong to speculate whether Suri is Tom’s biological child or not. A lot of signs point to “no,” but this is a little girl who is being raised by a batshit crazy, but still completely attentive loving father who is doing his best to ensure that she’s indoctrinated in the manner he’s accustomed to. All we have at this point is some circumstantial evidence and the word of a person who may not even be real. Even if some friend of Klein’s heard him say this, it doesn’t mean that Suri is Kleins. Katie could have had a miscarriage or maybe she thought she was pregnant and really wasn’t. Maybe it doesn’t matter if Tom is Suri’s biological dad or not.

Thanks to Splash News for these photos and Pink is The New Blog for the composite image.