Sex and other Mysteries
Naughty today, pay tomorrow
Case Study: Nobleman versus Musician
When José Antonio Larios Franco, the Fourth Marquis de Larios, died in 1954, he wife and her son from a previous relationship were his main heirs.
They inherited a tidy fortune: José Antonio's father was the founder of Larios gin, and his forefathers were prosperous factory owners, industrialists and property developers.
If Larios had fathered any children of his own, they would have had a strong claim on the estate. And many decades after his death, a claim to that effect was made.
Raised in an orphanage, Jose Collado is a trumpet player who does odd jobs when the musical opportunities dry up.
He also figured in a 1997 television programme which traced long-lost people. Jose and his mother were reunited, and she told her son - now 49 years old - that he was the illegitimate son of the Marquis.
His mother, Emilia, explained that when she was a young woman - some five decades earlier - she was Larios' cook, and also his lover. Their intimacy resulted in a child.
At first Larios supported Emilia and her infant financially, but he stopped taking care of her, and she placed her nine-month-old son in an orphanage. She vanished, and if not for the television programme, they probably never would have met. Emilia Collado died in 2002.
in 2010 a judge finally yielded to arguments from Collado's legal team to conduct DNA tests to determine paternity. In May, Larios was disinterred in the presence of Collado and members of the Larios family.
UPDATE OCTOBER 2010: DNA tests revealed that Larios was not Collado's father. However, Collado is disputing the DNA test, arguing among other things that Larios' body might have been relocated, and the test was done on remains that were not those of Larios.
Chess Great Bobby Fischer: Checking but no Mate
In mid-June 2010, just after the Larios exhumation, news broke that DNA testing would be performed on the body of Bobby Fischer (1943-2008).
The eccentric former World Chess Champion died intestate.
Since his death and burial in Iceland, the estate of the American-born Fischer has been mired in controversy and legal conflict. A Japanese woman, Miyoko Watai, claims that she and Fischer were married in 2004. A Filipino woman claims that Fischer is the father of her 9-year-old daughter, Jinky. His nephews and, for back taxes, the American government, also have claims on the estate, which may run into the low millions, pre-tax.
If Fischer had made a will, his remains may have rested in peace.
UPDATE AUGUST 2010: DNA tests revealed that Fischer was not Jinky's father.
" . . . "
"All this was the impression of an instant, simultaneous with the reading
of the words of form with which the last testamentary disposition of the
Marquess of Monmouth left the sum of £30,000 to Armand Villebecque; and
all the rest, residue, and remainder of his unentailed property,
wheresoever and whatsoever it might be, amounting in value to nearly a
million sterling, was given, devised, and bequeathed to Flora, commonly
called Flora Villebecque, the step-child of the said Armand Villebecque,
'but who is my natural daughter by Marie Estelle Matteau, an actress at
the Théâtre Français in the years 1811-15, by the name of Stella.'"
Benjamin Disraeli, Coningsby (1844)
