BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Forensic experts extracted DNA samples Friday from the body of a former president, Juan Peron, for a paternity test being sought by a woman who claims to be his daughter.

Removing 12 locks and a bulletproof plate that guarded his coffin, investigators took bone samples under the watchful eye of a judge handling the paternity claim of a woman who went public long ago saying she was the product of a brief affair between Peron and her mother.

Thwarted for decades by Argentina’s military leaders and then by Peron’s family, Martha Holgado finally got her chance to obtain the DNA now that Peron’s body is being moved to a new $1.1 million mausoleum outside Buenos Aires to honor his legacy.

“This for me is the end of a long lapse of time that was real agony, just agony,” Ms. Holgado told the Associated Press on Friday.

Ms. Holgado’s lawyer Santos Cifuentes and medical adviser Dr. Gustavo Penacino watched workers remove bone fragments from Peron’s body — enough material for thorough DNA tests by laboratories in Argentina and abroad that should be completed in six weeks, Dr. Penacino said.

Elected president three times before dying on the job in 1974, Peron radically reshaped economic and political life by founding Argentina’s still-dominant Peronist party 61 years ago. An authoritarian leader still widely admired by many and reviled by others, he and his glamorous wife, Evita directed their nation’s wealth to grateful legions of poor, urban workers.