Woman digs up dead dad to get ‘real’ father’s $50M
She dug up her dead father so she could swap him for a rich one.
A Brooklyn-raised woman could reap as much as $50 million after exhuming the body of the man she had always called “Dad” and using his DNA to prove he really wasn’t her father, The Post has learned.
The dig allowed Nina Sebastiana Viola Montepagani, now 62 and living upstate, to make room on her birth certificate for the wealthy Italian physician she believes is her biological father.
But she may yet need to dig up one more grave — this one in Rome — before she can claim her eight-figure inheritance.
The physician she believes to be her dad, Dr. Sebastiano Raeli, has been dead for five years.
Montepagani is certain that he had an affair with her mother, Anna Viola, 62 years ago in Rome and that, as his only child, she is due half his $100 million fortune.
“I’m just digesting this all,” Montepagani, a retired teacher, told The Post on Friday.
A Manhattan court decision handed down this week as a result of the negative DNA test allows her to now expunge the name of the man who raised her, Giuseppe “Joseph” Viola, from her birth certificate.
Whether she’ll have to dig up Raeli’s grave “remains to be seen,” she said, speaking from the doorstep of her home in the Albany suburb of Slingerlands.
“This is all very new,” she said.
The Brooklyn-born Montepagani has believed for decades that she is Raeli’s daughter — and with good reason.
The affair between the wealthy Italian and her mom was a thinly veiled family secret.
Anna Viola had met the well-to-do Raeli in Rome in 1951. It is unclear why they did not marry, but Anna was eight months pregnant with Nina Sebastiana when she sailed for the United States to marry Joseph Viola, who lovingly raised the girl as his own.
“At the time of my conception, Joseph Viola had no physical contact with my mother. They were an ocean apart,” Montepagani wrote in a 2010 affidavit.
“Sebastiano Raeli told everyone that I was his daughter,” she wrote. “My middle name is Sebastiana, a diminutive form of Sebastiano.
“Sebastiano Raeli also sent me photographs of himself which he endorsed with the proclamation: ‘to Nina, my adored daughter.’”
Joseph Viola, she insisted, would have approved of her seeking out her birthright.
“He would have wanted me to go to Italy and claim what is mine,” she wrote.
A Brooklyn-raised woman could reap as much as $50 million after exhuming the body of the man she had always called “Dad” and using his DNA to prove he really wasn’t her father, The Post has learned.
The dig allowed Nina Sebastiana Viola Montepagani, now 62 and living upstate, to make room on her birth certificate for the wealthy Italian physician she believes is her biological father.
But she may yet need to dig up one more grave — this one in Rome — before she can claim her eight-figure inheritance.
The physician she believes to be her dad, Dr. Sebastiano Raeli, has been dead for five years.
Montepagani is certain that he had an affair with her mother, Anna Viola, 62 years ago in Rome and that, as his only child, she is due half his $100 million fortune.
“I’m just digesting this all,” Montepagani, a retired teacher, told The Post on Friday.
A Manhattan court decision handed down this week as a result of the negative DNA test allows her to now expunge the name of the man who raised her, Giuseppe “Joseph” Viola, from her birth certificate.
Whether she’ll have to dig up Raeli’s grave “remains to be seen,” she said, speaking from the doorstep of her home in the Albany suburb of Slingerlands.
“This is all very new,” she said.
The Brooklyn-born Montepagani has believed for decades that she is Raeli’s daughter — and with good reason.
The affair between the wealthy Italian and her mom was a thinly veiled family secret.
Anna Viola had met the well-to-do Raeli in Rome in 1951. It is unclear why they did not marry, but Anna was eight months pregnant with Nina Sebastiana when she sailed for the United States to marry Joseph Viola, who lovingly raised the girl as his own.
“At the time of my conception, Joseph Viola had no physical contact with my mother. They were an ocean apart,” Montepagani wrote in a 2010 affidavit.
“Sebastiano Raeli told everyone that I was his daughter,” she wrote. “My middle name is Sebastiana, a diminutive form of Sebastiano.
“Sebastiano Raeli also sent me photographs of himself which he endorsed with the proclamation: ‘to Nina, my adored daughter.’”
Joseph Viola, she insisted, would have approved of her seeking out her birthright.
“He would have wanted me to go to Italy and claim what is mine,” she wrote.
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