James Brown's body cut up for paternity test, relocated several times - Widow

The singer's widow, Tomi Rae, laments that her husband didn't get the burial he would have wanted. His body was dismembered after a judge ordered a DNA test to determine whether Brown was the father of Rae’s son, James Jr., and his remains were moved around because of family feuding, she says.

The body of James Brown has suffered a superbad fate — dismembered as part of a paternity dispute and relocated 14 times because of family in-fighting.

Brown’s widow, Tomi Rae, described the tragic turn of events in an interview with London’s The Mail on Sunday.

Nydailynews The body of the legendary singer was cut up after a judge ordered a DNA test to determine whether Brown was the father of Rae’s son, James Jr.

“They couldn’t do the normal DNA test because of all the embalming fluid in his body,” Rae said. “So they had to cut off his legs to get to his bone marrow. I wept uncontrollably when I found out. My husband, the greatest dancer in the world, had his legs hacked off in death.

A family feud caused the Godfather of Soul’s body to be moved again and again in the six months after his death, finally ending up in the garden of his eldest daughter Deanna’s home in Georgia.

“That is the final insult to James,” Rae said.
Brown’s current resting place is nothing like what he envisioned, Rae said.
She said Brown wanted a memorial on par with Graceland, Elvis’ estate in Memphis, Tenn.
“He and I would often talk about his legacy,” Rae said.
“He wanted our home – a 230-acre estate on Beech Island in South Carolina – to be turned into a living memorial, like Graceland. That’s where he wanted a proper mausoleum.”

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James Brown's widow Tomi Rae says the legendary singer's body was dismembered to determine the paternity of her son, James Brown Jr. (right), and his remains have been relocated several times because of family in-fighting.

Brown died of congestive heart failure in December 2006. His body remained on ice for more than two months before he was finally laid to rest.
His death set off a frantic fight for his estate. His will was signed Aug. 1, 2000, 10 months before James Jr. was born and more than a year before he married Tomi Rae.
She claims a more recent will that left half of his fortune to her and the rest to a charity for underprivileged kids “mysteriously disappeared.”
Now, she’s penniless. “James would be spinning in his grave if he knew the hell I’d gone through over the past eight years,” Rae said.
Rae says she’s bracing herself for the legal wrangling to go on for years. “He thought he had provided for me and Little Man, as he called our son,” Rae said. “But every piece of scum and slime came crawling out of the woodwork the day he died.”
“I know I will prevail eventually, but I’m in a living hell.”
FRED PROUSER/REUTERSJames Brown didn't get the burial and memorial he would have wanted, according to his widow.