Will leaves mansion to British nanny

A British nanny has been left €627,000 and the lifetime use of a seaside mansion by the wife of a murdered millionaire US financier.

Kathryn Ann Mayne, 57, was also given custody of the couple’s two children under the terms of the will completed by Generosa Ammon Pelosi, who died of cancer last week.

Ted Ammon, one of Manhattan’s most successful self-made bankers and friend of former President Bill Clinton, was found bludgeoned to death in his mansion near New York City in October 2001. The murder investigation is still continuing.

His wife’s will made no mention of her new husband, electrician Danny Pelosi, whom she married a few months after Mr Ammon’s death.

He is reported to have signed a postnuptial agreement in July limiting his inheritance to €1.9m and barring him from access to the children and her lavish seaside mansion in East Hampton, Long Island.

But Mr Pelosi has already disobeyed his late wife’s request that her ashes should also be given to the nanny.

He removed the cremated remains from a Manhattan funeral home and was pictured with the urn in a hotel bar.

His lawyer, Gerald Shargel, said he may contest the terms of the will, which superseded an earlier will that left most of the €87m Ammon fortune to him.

“The documents I’ve seen seem to raise more questions then they answer,” he said.

Ms Mayne also faces a legal challenge for custody of the children from Mr Ammon’s sister, Sandi Williams, who wants to bring them up with her doctor husband in Alabama.

Most of Mrs Ammon Pelosi’s estate will be divided between her adopted twins Alexa and Gregory and the Ammon Foundation, a charitable trust set up after the murder of her husband.

She had been close to finalising a divorce settlement with Mr Ammon when he was found dead. She moved to Surrey, England with Mr Pelosi soon afterwards to escape media attention.

Following a diagnosis of ovarian cancer she returned to the US where she died last Friday.

Ms Mayne first worked as a housekeeper at the Ammons’ holiday home near Guildford four years ago, when the couple were still together.

She moved to the US last summer to continue working as the children’s nanny.