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11 months ago
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A DENTIST who bought John Lennon’s tooth for £20,000 could be on the brink of finding any secret love children of the late Beatles star after destroying it to extract DNA.
Dr Michael Zuk will use crushed fragments of decaying gnasher for comparative DNA testing as he looks to claim a slice of the Liverpudlian‘s £490 million estate.
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Sandra Olson
Dr Michael ZukThe 61-year-old, from Alberta, Canada, snapped up a tooth belonging to the legendary songwriter, who was assassinated 43 years ago, by telephone bid in 2011 for almost £20,000.
Included in the whacky auction purchase was what was believed to be one of his son Julian’s baby teeth.
But Dr Zuk said it has been revealed as another of Lennon‘s molars and matches one missing in the upper left of his mouth.
The dad-of-two, who was born three months before The Beatles’ first single Love Me Do was released, said this tooth is now the key component to his mission.
He told The Sun: “This tooth was totally ground down and treated to extract remaining DNA.
“It is only a bit of dust now.
“The good news is the DNA company stated it is sufficient to do any comparative testing.”
Lennon had two children, his first Julian with Cynthia Powell, who he was married to from 1962 to 1968, and his second Sean with Yoko Ono, who he wed in 1969.
But the ambitious dentist believes the Imagine singer could have unknowingly fathered more offspring as women threw themselves at the Fab Four at the height of Beatlemania.
Dr Zuk said: “It’s no secret the Beatles were all popular with the ladies.
“Hush money was discussed in various books and while mothers may have been silenced and compensated this does not address a child’s potential rights.
“Seeing the tooth for sale was a lifetime opportunity for me.”
Dr Zuk, who is retired and splits most of his time between Mexico and the US, is now hunting for potential heirs for testing – and is looking for a slice of Lennon’s multi-million-pound estate.
Despite being killed by gunman Mark David Chapman on December 8, 1980, outside the New York apartment he shared with Ono, Lennon’s estate is understood to be worth more than £490 million.
His widow, Japanese-born artist Ono, 90, solely managed the estate for decades before passing the reigns to son Sean, 48.
But the hitmaker’s estate is still raking it in and just last year had an income of more than £17 million.
Dr Zuk, which actually means “beetle” in Ukrainian, said should he achieve the unimaginable and find a Lennon love child, he will want part of their inheritance.
He added: “There seems to be some expectation that I should be paying for people’s comparative testing – but that’s not what I’m offering.
“My intention is to work with a paternity lawyer and have a fee attached to a successful match and settlement from the estate.
“A New York City lawyer stated he was interested in collaborating.”
Dr Zuk’s plot has already rattled Ono – who previously sent him a legal letter after he outrageously claimed he was interested in cloning the Scouser.
But he said the idea of cloning Lennon wasn’t exactly serious, and more out of his frustration at how his son Julian, 60, was treated.
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AlamyOno was embroiled in a lengthy legal wrangle with musician Julian in the 1990s.
He was abandoned by troubled songwriter Lennon in the 1960s and only received a portion of his estate when Ono settled out of court almost 20 years after Lennon’s murder.
Dr Zuk said: “I did get a legal warning from Yoko ‘not to clone’ John Lennon, but it wasn’t a serious project.
“I only heard of the mammoth cloning and thought it would be an interesting idea to propose.
“The idea of cloning came to me as a scientific possibility with interesting futuristic legal arguments – beyond what current laws even consider.
“If the Beatle was cloned, it could be argued he would have a right to part of his estate.
“This was for theoretical banter and perhaps was taken too seriously at the time.
“But it was a wake-up call to the estate that the tooth could be upsetting their control.
“Most Lennon fans were likely irritated by the way Julian was treated by the estate and it seems unfair.”
Lennon was gunned down by crazed fan Mark David Chapman on December 8, 1980, just hours after signing a copy of his recently released album Double Fantasy for him.
The musician and his wife were returning to their Upper West Side apartment when Chapman, who was lying in wait, fired five bullets as they entered the Dakota building archway – four of which hit him in the back.
Chapman, who had been enraged by Lennon’s infamous comment in 1966 that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus”, sat reading a paperback copy of The Catcher in the Rye until he was arrested.
He claimed he had been inspired by the protagonist of the J D Salinger novel, Holden Caulfield, who despised hypocrisy.
But the prosecution claimed Chapman simply wished to be famous.
In one confession, he said: “I thought I would turn into somebody if I killed somebody.”
Chapman was sentenced to 20 years to life imprisonment – and has been denied parole 12 times since he became eligible in 2000.
Sandra Olson
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English (US)