logo
Tragic spiral that caused 'reclusive' heiress to $2.7 billion fortune to retreat into the shadows: How Athina Onassis was haunted by childhood grief and humiliating heartbreak - as she slowly steps back into public life

Tragic spiral that caused 'reclusive' heiress to $2.7 billion fortune to retreat into the shadows: How Athina Onassis was haunted by childhood grief and humiliating heartbreak - as she slowly steps back into public life

Daily Mail​3 days ago
She was born into enormous wealth and privilege yet billionaire heiress Athina Onassis - the only surviving member of the 'cursed' Greek shipping dynasty - has spent her life shunning the limelight.
Known for her reclusive tendencies, the French-Greek equestrian, 40, has spent much of her adult life holed up in her heavily fortified mansion in the Campine, an area of outstanding natural beauty on the border between Belgium and the Netherlands.
Unlike other socialites, who often can't resist the multitude of invitations they no doubt receive to lavish soirées and glittering public occasions, Athina has instead poured all her energies into her professional stables near Valkenswaard in Holland.
Because despite her vast inheritance, the granddaughter of Aristotle Onassis – the Greek shipping tycoon who married Jackie Kennedy while in a long-term romance with opera singer Maria Callas - has been a victim of the so-called 'Onassis Curse', suffering tragedy after tragedy.
Athina's mother Christina died of a heart attack brought on by years of eating disorders at the age of 37, when her only child was just three years old.
Fifteen years earlier, Christina's brother Alexander was killed in a plane crash, and their mother, Athina 'Tina' Onassis, died of a drug overdose the following year in 1974. Months later, Aristotle, who never recovered from his heir's death, passed away from bronchial pneumonia.
Athina was also embroiled in romantic woes; her ex-husband was reportedly found in bed with a one-night stand in the $2million home that the heiress bought in Wellington, Florida in 2016. Since then she has only been seen a handful of times.
Her most recent outing came last week as she made her second public appearance in recent times, suggesting she might be turning over a new leaf.
The aristocrat - daughter of French businessman Thierry Roussel and socialite Christina - attended the exclusive Bal d'Été, directed by Sofia Coppola, in Paris on the first Sunday in July.
Her attendance at the exclusive ball comes just four months after Athina stepped into the limelight for the first time in three years at a charity art event hosted by the Amis du Centre Pompidou in France.
For the inaugural Bal d'Étém, which welcomes 300 A-Listers, at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Athina put on a stunning display in a flowing red dress with a plunging neckline.
Before entering the black-tie event, Athina posed for photographs with her guest, who sported an equally glamorous look.
The equestrian joined celebrities including Kiera Knightley, Kirsten Dunst, and Anna Wintour at the gala, which strives to lean on its rich and famous guests to raise money for the hosting museum.
In March, Athina was snapped at an art event hosted by the Amis du Centre Pompidou in Paris, where she switched out her golden tresses for chocolate brown strands, which she wore in an elegant blow-dry.
The socialite donned a black lace dress, along with a glitzy sequin blazer and wore a silver jewelled crucifix around her neck. She posed for a picture with Ines de Cominges, the only daughter of Count and Countess Rafael de Cominges of Madrid, and artist Arnaud Cabri-Wiltzer.
Before her appearances this year, Athina, a keen showjumper, was seen in June 2022, when she competed at the Longines Paris Eiffel Jumping show at Champ de Mars.
The heiress - who on her 18th birthday was given access to her late mother's $2.7billion fortune - has stayed firmly out of the spotlight throughout her adult years, choosing to keep her personal life under wraps.
She has only been seen a handful of times following the breakdown of her ten-year marriage to 'Doda' Álvaro de Miranda Neto in 2016.
DailyMail.com learned that 'Doda' Miranda, who was formerly part of Brazil's Olympic showjumping team, was discovered in bed with another woman by his wife's security team.
A well-connected member of the international show jumping circuit told the Mail that Athina's security team busted him 'having sex with another woman'.
'He begged them not to say anything, but one of them went straight to Athina. She immediately packed her bags and went off to Europe,' the source said. 'It was apparently a one-night stand, there was nothing serious going on between them.'
Doda spoke to Brazilian magazine Epoca at the time and said: 'I am really in the midst of a storm. But I will not give up on my love. It won't be easy but I will fight until the end.'
However following their divorce, he has since gone on to marry another woman, journalist Denize Severo, and has welcomed two children.
Athina, then 20, and her ex, aged 32 at the time, were married in front of 1,300 guests in December 2005 in a specially constructed Roman Catholic church at a resort in Sao Paulo.
However, her father was also not among the loved ones invited to the nuptials. Instead, Miranda's father Ricardo led Athina down the aisle.
Thierry fathered a son with Swedish model Gaby Landhage while Christina was pregnant, and the couple split shortly after Athina was born. After Christina's death, Athina went to live with Roussel and Gaby.
But now, Athina is believed to have no contact with her father and has even dropped his last name.
Alexis Mantheakis - the family's former spokesman and then Athina's biographer - told the Irish Times in 2005: 'Athina is the third generation Onassis woman to marry young, and to an older man.
'But, like all fathers, Thierry wants the best for his daughter. He would, for example, have liked her to go to university.
'It's her life, of course, but Thierry isn't very happy at her being so young and living so far away - and, understandably, that has put strain on the relationship.'
For Athina and her ex-husband, tragedy befell the pair well before their marriage broke down.
In 2011, the Mail on Sunday learned that Doda's ex-lover Cibele Dorsa - with whom he had a daughter - hurled herself to her death in the early hours of March 26, from her luxurious seventh-floor flat.
The beautiful but troubled 36-year-old actress and Playboy model left behind suicide notes in which she spoke about the arrangement under which the heiress and Miranda were bringing up her daughter Vivienne and Fernando, her son from a previous relationship.
The boy was born to Cibele during her first marriage, to Brazilian businessman Fernando Oliva Snr.
She agreed to hand over the children to Athina and Doda, but missed the youngsters so unbearably that, she said in one of her last notes, it felt as if 'my heart has been cut out'.
'Cibele decided to do this. It was her decision to allow the children to live with Athina and Doda,' Mr Oliva told The Mail on Sunday. 'Her life was very complicated. She was a working actress, emotional and unstable. With Athina and Doda they have a very simple and healthy lifestyle.'
Mr Mantheakis, a former aide to Athina's father, also said: 'It seems the Onassis curse has struck again. I am sure everyone thought they were taking the best decisions but, according to her last messages, Cibele was despondent that she had given up the children.
'This poor woman saw herself as Athina's rival but she had little to fight her with except her looks. She felt she was no match for this billionaire heiress who was younger and had enormous riches, fame and power.
'The Onassis money caused nothing but problems. I am sure the children will grow up in a good environment but the question is whether anything can make up for the loss of the mother who loved them very much.'
It had been a tough time to endure for Cibele, who was due to marry Brazilian TV presenter, Gilberto Scarpa, that month.
But weeks earlier, he had fallen to his death from the window of her flat in an apparent suicide. Cibele later wrote on Facebook: 'To live without my two children and without the love of my life has wounded my whole self.'
A Brazilian magazine reported that it had received a statement from Doda, saying: 'I don't have to defend myself against criticism by Cibele.
'I have many emails from her, praising me as a father who never failed to give her moral and financial support.'
Meanwhile, Miranda told a Brazilian magazine in 2011 that he and Athina intended to start a family within a few years.
'Athina is still very young,' he said, adding that having a baby would interrupt her budding showjumping career.
'I also have a very busy life,' he said. 'When a baby comes I want to reduce the number of competitions to be more present.'
Athina reportedly became pregnant in 2013 but suffered a miscarriage. Prior to their divorce, Miranda said that Athina spent much of her time looking after Vivienne, his daughter with model Cibele.
But Athina's marriage breakdown is not the first heartbreak she has endured - after tragically losing her mother at the age of three.
In her early childhood, Christina bonded with her daughter and gave Athina her own flock of sheep, complete with a shepherd, when she learned the nursery rhyme Baa Baa Black Sheep. She also gave her a private zoo.
It was previously reported that Christina had died of a heart attack brought on by years of eating disorders.
Athina was reportedly the richest teenage girl in the world when she inherited her mother's $2.7billion fortune when she turned 18.
However, her fortune has been badly managed over the years, experts say, and she sold Aristotle's private Greek island, Skorpios, to Russian billionaire Ekaterina Rybolovleva in 2013 for an estimated $100million.
Despite being one of the wealthiest families in the world, the Onassis dynasty has famously been plagued by tragedy.
A decade and a half earlier, Christina had lost her entire family in little more than two years. Her 24-year-old brother Alexander was killed in a plane crash in January, 1973, and their mother, also called Athina, died of a drug overdose the following year.
Aristotle, who never recovered from his son's death, then passed away from bronchial pneumonia in March 1975.
Christina had four marriages, none of them lasting over three years. Athina (whose father was Christina's final husband, French pharmaceutical heir Thierry Roussel) was her only child.
Athina is now the only living Onassis grandchild of Aristotle.
Aristotle is the man often credited to accruing the family's wealth by massing one of the world's largest privately-owned shopping fleet; after, despite having an opulent upbringing, losing their wealth in the aftermath of World War I.
But by the early 20s, he made his way to Argentina and found work as a telephone operator with the British United River Plate Telephone Company - while also studying commerce and port-duty administration.
Eventually, he made his fortune with his first shipping company, going onwards and upwards.
But his love life - and reputation - was far from smooth-sailing. Aristotle was 40 when he first married teenage Athina Mary 'Tina' Livanos, 23 years his junior - and the pair had Alexander and Christina.
But the couple's union had deteriorated over the years, plagued by Aristotle's cheating - he famously had a very well known affair with opera singer Maria Callas.
However, it appeared that Aristotle's reputation began to fester far worse beyond infidelity.
In a 2021 biography about Maria's life, drawing on her previously unpublished letters, it was claimed that she was regularly drugged by her violent lover - the Greek shipping tycoon.
'Callas the singer may have had the upper hand in the music world but Maria the woman was a victim of circumstance,' according to biographer Lyndsy Spence, author of Cast A Diva: The Hidden Life Of Maria Callas.
The correspondence with her husband and agent, Giovanni Battista Meneghini, showed that 'she was really so subvervient and obedient to him, and I started to realise that is who she was as a woman', Spence told the Daily Mail at the time.
'She was such a submissive person and that really contrasts with Callas the diva. And when you're that way inclined, of course you attract abusers.'
And that includes Meneghini, Aristotle and even her own parents, added her biographer.
Nobody abused her quite like brutish Aristotle, however,; she claimed. He 'tortured' her emotionally and physically during their relationship before cruelly and infamously dumping her for Jackie Kennedy whom he married in 1968.
From the diaries of a close friend of Maria, Spence has discovered that Aristotle would ply the singer with the powerful hypnotic sedative methaqualone, also known as Mandrax, to which she became addicted along with Nembutal, a barbiturate used as a pre-anaesthetic.
She took it willingly, but with Maria effectively sedated, Aristotle — whose 'depraved' sexual requests shocked even the notorious Paris brothel keeper Madame Claude — was able to sexually abuse the singer in demeaning ways, says her biographer, she wouldn't have permitted if she had been fully conscious.
Spence also claimed that Maria was at the time already suffering from 'mental health issues' as she coped with the twin pressures of her career and ageing.
These were compounded by her discovery that Aristotle was making heavy use of Madame Claude's 'girls' and even had the bedroom at his Paris home decorated like a brothel.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

'Rave guy' whose eyepopping picture found him internet fame recreates meme that made him famous at Tomorrowland - and reveals what he's up to now
'Rave guy' whose eyepopping picture found him internet fame recreates meme that made him famous at Tomorrowland - and reveals what he's up to now

Daily Mail​

time14 hours ago

  • Daily Mail​

'Rave guy' whose eyepopping picture found him internet fame recreates meme that made him famous at Tomorrowland - and reveals what he's up to now

For some, the party don't stop. Shaun Jackson - the 'rave guy' who went viral for his eyepopping moves - is one such person. The wide-eyed northerner may have been cutting shapes at a Preston night club over a decade ago but the immortalised dancer was spotted at Tomorrowland, enjoying himself just as much. In a bright yellow T-shirt and a bustling crowd, Mr Jackson was dancing along to Charlotte de Witte, a techno DJ at the Belgian music festival. Specialising in electronic dance music, Mr Jackson would have felt right at home. Then some 40 years old, Mr Jackson was first captured in promotional footage for the Rumes bar in 2014 cutting shapes on the dance floor. The clip soon amassed hundreds of thousands of views - also catapulting the obscure night club where he raved the night away into international fame. While the party-goer has continued his love for a good time over the years, spotted at several dance events, he has also been spending time his grandchildren. The most recent clip of him dancing, Mr Jackson's moves were met with mixed response. One person wrote 'this is kind of sad' and another said 'beyond borrring now'. But others welcomed his fun-loving spirit, with a user writing 'proper old school raver, keep up with those disco biscuit dancing skills' and one person adding 'f***ing legend he is alive and enjoying! Respect!'. In one of his most recent Instagram posts - dated August 2023 - Mr Jackson poses shirtless with his tongue stuck out during a trip to Ibiza. Since then, Mr Jackson has uploaded elsewhere - on his TikTok - with one of the latest videos being a bizarre clip captioned 'on my wedding day', from May 2024. In it, the Chorley local, wears what appears to be a teal-coloured dress as he gestures over at a woman dressed in a white gown, who initially has her back turned to the camera. The video has elicited comments such as 'you are too funny! love it!' and 'still going strong'. There are number of videos also posted by Mr Jackson from 2023 where he makes expressive faces at the camera and, in his job as a plasterer, shows off some of construction work. Though, in a sweet clip captioned 'day in the park with the grandkids', he waves his arms about before a grandson spins him round and round in the park play area, with the northerner growing increasingly red. In his 2019 interview with Flexxed, Mr Jackson previously revealed he'd gone out with 'three-quarters of a bottle of Vodka already down by neck and then three or four drags of real good MD (MDMA)'. He also made headlines in 2022, when spotted at the Glastonbury Music festival and even had an action figure made in his honor that same year. The former boxer also once told BuzzFeed he was delighted with his fame and while on a weekend shopping trip 'everyone started clapping and cheering'. Mr Jackson previously said his only regrets were there had been no one filming when things got wilder as the night went on.

EXCLUSIVE Spoiled Molly-Mae and sister Zoe Rae moaning about their luxury holidays is outrageous. But I believe all may not be as it seems... and they're taking us for fools: FLORA GILL
EXCLUSIVE Spoiled Molly-Mae and sister Zoe Rae moaning about their luxury holidays is outrageous. But I believe all may not be as it seems... and they're taking us for fools: FLORA GILL

Daily Mail​

timea day ago

  • Daily Mail​

EXCLUSIVE Spoiled Molly-Mae and sister Zoe Rae moaning about their luxury holidays is outrageous. But I believe all may not be as it seems... and they're taking us for fools: FLORA GILL

Pity the poor Hague sisters: Molly-Mae – influencer, entrepreneur and former Love Island runner-up – and her fitness influencer elder sibling Zoe Rae. Both have recently been subjected to 'disastrous' holidays, which they have bemoaned to their combined 2.1 million YouTube followers.

Le Mans Ultimate review - the real endurance driving simulator
Le Mans Ultimate review - the real endurance driving simulator

Metro

timea day ago

  • Metro

Le Mans Ultimate review - the real endurance driving simulator

This new officially licensed World Endurance Championship game is a technical marvel but it's definitely not an arcade racer. Of all the world's most prestigious motor racing series – namely, those run by motorsports governing body the FIA – the World Endurance Championship is probably the most hardcore. The clue is in the word 'endurance' – WEC races are long and brutal, with various classes of cars, each shared by several drivers, and then there's the jewel in the series' crown: the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans. The long-form nature of endurance racing has meant that in the past, few have attempted to translate the format into video games. But now we have an officially licensed WEC game, in the form of Le Mans Ultimate. It's been developed by Netherlands-based Studio 397, best known for the racing sim rFactor 2, whose parent company, Motorsport Games, is run by Stephen Hood – who helmed Codemasters' Formula One games between 2009 and 2014. There's plenty of motorsports pedigree at work here, but beyond the official licences, Le Mans Ultimate and F1 25 come from very different ends of the motorsport gaming spectrum. Whereas the latter attempts to appeal to all F1 fans, regardless of driving talent, Le Mans Ultimate is a racing simulator, squarely targeted at hardcore petrolheads. For starters, Le Mans Ultimate is PC-only (although Studio 397 and Motorsport Games are thought to be working on console versions). Although it does support conventional gamepads, as well as home rigs with steering wheels and pedals, it forces you to use a mouse to scroll through its menus – gamepad control only kicks in when you've told the game to exit from the pits. Format-wise, Le Mans Ultimate's single-player element is about as simple as you can get: a series of race weekends consisting of three sessions – practice, qualifying and the race – for which you must choose your circuit and your car. At this point, it's important to bear in mind that the game has been in early access for the best part of a year, during which period the developer has been adding a constant drip-feed of cars and tracks. So while it has a relatively small amount of tracks, many of the world's best are included. There's Le Mans, of course, but also Spa, Imola, Fuji, Interlagos, Bahrain, Qatar, and Austin. Silverstone is in the works and at some stage in the future a simulation of the whole European Le Mans Series will be added to the game as an alternative and very welcome single-player option. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. The choice of cars is pretty strong too, with LMH Hypercars from eight different manufacturers, including Aston Martin, Porsche, Chevrolet, Lamborghini, Ferrari, BMW, and Alpine – so that's nine GT3-class manufacturers represented. Or you can opt to drive a 2024 spec Oreca 07 LMP2-class car. There are various different livery options aping the real-life teams and Le Mans Ultimate also has an editor allowing you to design their own liveries. Jump into a race weekend and you're given by default an hour for practice, 20 minutes for qualifying, and an hour for the race, although you can tweak those times if you want. They do to an extent reflect the real races, however, without forcing you to spend more than an hour contesting the actual racing. It's on the track where Le Mans Ultimate really shines. The courses have been laser-scanned and possess the ring of absolute authenticity. The cars' sound and, most importantly, feel are utterly convincing, to the extent that we could hear a squeak emitted by the brakes of the Aston Martin Hypercar we initially chose. A lot of technology has gone into modelling Le Mans Ultimate's cars, so, for example, you have to work hard to warm up your car's tyres before full grip kicks in, and grip drops off markedly once those tyres age. Even the GT3 cars – supposedly based on road cars, albeit impossibly exotic ones – are thrilling beasts to drive, and being able to race the LMH Hypercars is a real treat. The default cockpit view is great, too, with clever representations of wing-mirrors and the like (Le Mans Ultimate supports VR setups too, should you have a headset) and warnings when you have cars either side of you, which tends to happen a lot in endurance racing. Le Mans Ultimate does make some concessions to those whose driving talents are not the greatest: you can add racing lines to the circuits along a number of assists, including traction control. But beyond that it's pretty uncompromising. Transgress slightly during a race and you will be black-flagged (annoyingly, the terse radio communications with the pits only really give you your lap-times, so we were black-flagged a few times without knowing why). Race starts are initially tricky, since they involve assembling behind the safety car, which requires precision while you attempt to generate some tyre-warmth. But while the single-player game is superb (assuming you're a motor racing fanatic) it very much feels like a preparation for going online, which is where Le Mans Ultimate's real focus lies. There, you can jump into races, matched with drivers of similar ability. Or – and this is an innovation for a racing game, but given the multi-driver format of endurance racing also a necessity – you can take part in asynchronous co-operative races, where you race one stint, then hand over your car to someone else. More Trending Studio 397 and Motorsport Games are working up to enabling full simulations of the 24 Hours of Le Mans using that format, but it is as yet unclear when that will arrive in the game, whose current focus is squarely fixed on esports territory. Certain aspects of Le Mans Ultimate have a work-in-progress feel – the rather amorphous single-player game and terse in-car communications among them – but all the aspects that matter most in a simulation, especially the car feel and authenticity of the circuits, are very impressive. Le Mans Ultimate is not a mainstream racing game like F1 25, but instead a rigorous simulator of one of the world's most popular motor racing experiences. If you're a big enough fan of racing games that you have a home rig with steering wheel, pedals, and a big screen this is very much built for you. But if you're a casual racing fan with a lesser set-up, the chances are that you'll find it a tad intimidating. However, even for a simulator, it is a technical marvel. In Short: A thrillingly uncompromising racing simulator, that is easily the best endurance racer of the modern era, even if it's got a way to go before it's feature complete. Pros: Extremely authentic tracks, incredible car-feel, and a real stamp of authenticity. Decent selection of cars and tracks and innovative asynchronous co-op mode. Cons: Amorphous single-player element. Feels like a work-in-progress in some areas, especially menu navigation and the terse radio communications. Score: 7/10 Formats: PCPrice: £28.99Publisher: Motorsport GamesDeveloper: Studio 397Release Date: 22nd July 2025 Age Rating: N/A Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: Fallout 1 remade via Doom mod in this incredible looking fan game MORE: Switch 2 owners discover Nintendo can remove games from your console at any time MORE: The 15 Nintendo Switch games that should get a Switch 2 upgrade

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store