Salvador Dali’s Body Exhumed To Settle Paternity Lawsuit

As the Inquisitr previously reported, Salvador Dali’s body was ordered by the Spanish court to be exhumed in order to prove if he had fathered the woman who claims to be his daughter, and now courts have finally acted on the order.

Pilar Abel, a 61-year-old tarot card reader, has long claimed that her mother, who worked as a domestic for Salvador Dali, had an affair with him, which led to her birth. Dali and his Russian wife, Gala (birth name Elena Ivanovna Diakonova) had no children of their own, though Gala had a daughter from a previous relationship.

Dali passed away in 1989 and willed his estate to Spain. His body was buried in a local theater built to honor him, and now houses the Dali Theater Museum.

Dali’s body has been preserved with embalming fluids, so it is difficult to tell if this will disrupt the genetic samples necessary to prove whether or not Pilar Abel’s story holds up.

After the museum closed today, five people opened the crypt in order to examine his remains and see if his body would be in the condition to determine Abel’s paternity. According to experts, they planned to remove four teeth, some nails and the marrow of a long bone if they were able to do so. It has been reported that viable DNA samples were collected, but they have not specified which.

It took workers over an hour and 20 minutes to move the stone slab that covers the famous artist’s remains due to its sheer size, despite the museum’s objections to doing so, claiming they were not given enough time.

Joan Vehi, who worked as Dali’s personal photographer and was a close friend of Dali and Gala, believes that this case is totally made up by Pilar Abel and that the woman is doing this for her own publicity.

Enrique Blanquez, the attorney representing Pilar Abel, says that his client is both nervous and excited to find out if what she has been told all of these years is true. She hopes the test will offer over 99 percent proof that Dali is her father or not.

If Pilar is, indeed, Dali’s daughter, she may have access to his fourth estate, which currently belongs to Spain.

The DNA samples will now travel to Madrid in order to be further examined and it could take weeks for the results to arrive.

[Featured Image by Ron Gerelli/Stringer/Getty Images]