An Italian beautician hired a private detective to collect the saliva from a straw used by an heiress to the Lamborghini fortune to fight a defamation battle in Italy.
Flavia Borzone, 35, is being sued by the son of the founder of the legendary luxury car manufacturer for defamation, after she publicly claimed he slept with her mother and was her real father.
Borzone, a beautician from Naples, says Tonino Lamborghini, the son of Ferrucio Lamborghini, met her mother, Neapolitan opera singer Rosalba Colosimo, in the late 1980s when she was 17.
Borzone said Lamborghini stopped and offered a ride to Colosimo as she waited for a bus in Milan.
The pair allegedly had a relationship, and in 1988 Borzone was born.
But after going public with her claims in 2019 on TV programmes and gossip magazines, she has faced several setbacks in proving that she is related to the Lamborghini family.
She has even gone as far as hiring private detectives to collect heiress’ saliva from an iced coffee cup to show they are sisters.
Detectives said they found a straw used by the 29-year-old socialite to drink a cold coffee frappuccino.
Experts from the University of Ferrara said the DNA sample from the straw, dubbed by Italian media as ‘the straw of a thousand secrets’, proved a genetic match between Borzone and Lamborghini.
But lawyers for the automobile family have claimed that the sample was taken without consent and was therefore ‘unlawful’ and should not be considered proper evidence.
A lawyer for the beautician, Sergio Culiersi, said: ‘We brought to court the proof that she is not lying.’
He added that the DNA match proved ‘100 per cent that the women are sisters’.
‘For us, it was important to show that Flavia Borzone did not want to offend Mr Lamborghini, she just wants to be recognised [as his daughter)]. She has lived for years without knowing who her father is.’
Borzone told the court that in 2019, she drove form her home in Naples to Bologna to meet Tonino, hoping to meet the man she believes is her father.
One of her lawyers, Gian Maria Romanello, said: ‘She had had this niggle for a long time. She did not have the same physical features as her supposed father.
‘When he and her mother argued, she would often hear her mother say: “She’s not even your daughter”.’
Borzone secretly recorded a conversation with the Lamborghini heir, who runs the €400 million luxury goods offshoot that makes products inspired by the brand, upon meeting him.
‘In the conversation, Mr Lamborghini admitted to having had a relationship with Colossimo,’ one of her lawyers told the court.
Her mother said that Borzone was not pursuing the case for financial gain: ‘She just wants the truth. If it had been all about the money, I would have done all this when Flavia was two years old.’
The trial has been adjourned until March.
