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Heirs chosen from phone book
Lisbon - A wealthy
Portuguese bachelor, who had no children, left his fortune to 70
strangers selected at random from a telephone book, a newspaper
has reported.
Luis Carlos de Noronha Cabral da
Camara drew up his unusual will in 1988 in front of two
witnesses at a Lisbon registry office, 13 years before he died
of natural causes at the age of 42, reported the weekly
newspaper, Sol, on Saturday.
"I am sure he just wanted to
create confusion by leaving his belongings to strangers. That
amused him," said one of the witnesses and one of the man's few
friends, Anibal Castro Vila.
"The registry office employee was
shocked when Da Camara asked for the Lisbon telephone book and
started choosing names at random. She asked him several
questions to check his sanity, but he was really lucid," he
said.
Da Camara's heirs are still
waiting for his estate, which includes a 12-room flat in the
centre of Lisbon, a house near the historic northern town of
Guimaraes, a car and nearly 25 000 euros (about R231 000) in a
bank account, to be divided up.
One heir was frightened
At first, most doubted the
authenticity of a letter informing them that they had been named
as heirs by a total stranger.
"I became frightened because I
thought it was a scam. Every day you hear of pranks people play
on old people," said 76-year-old Helena, one of the heirs.
Da Camara was born into a wealthy
Lisbon family in 1959 and never married or held a job.
He led a solitary life spending
most of his time indoors reading and listening to music, his
neighbours told the newspaper.
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