Kevin Finnie, a man who claimed to be the secret son of late Thin Lizzy singer Phil Lynott, has died aged 43.
Mr Finnie died after being admitted to hospital in Liverpool, with breathing difficulties, before passing away last week, (February 21). He died without getting the DNA evidence he claimed would prove his claims regarding Lynott.
Paying tribute to the deceased, Sean Meaney, who was a close friend of Finnie's, said: “Kevin was a lost soul. I spoke to him many times and he was desperately seeking proof and validation that he was Phil’s son. He was lost as a person because he was never able to find out the identity of his father".
Born in 1981, Kevin, who was a father of three, went public with these claims in 2019, where he alleged that his late mother, Michelle Delaney said that she was paid off by Lynott to keep her son's birth quiet, after allegedly falling pregnant to the rockstar when she met him in London.
According to a birth certificate, Kevin Finnie was born Jessie Noordin, in Liverpool in November 1981. No name was given for his father.
Two year's after Lynott died in 1986, Kevin claimed that his foster family sat him down, and showed him a video of a live Thin Lizzy show, before telling him that their frontman was his biological father.
Following the death of Phil's mother Philomena in 2019, the family went public with these claims, which were heavily disputed by Kevin's half sister, Anita Scott.
“If my mother was paid off by Phil Lynott, why did she spend her whole life living in caravans by the side of the road in poverty?”, Anita said previously.
Anita further revealed that their mother, who was also known as Mary Ellen Delaney, returned to live in Ireland in 1990 until her death in Christmas 2004. In that entire time, Anita claimed that their mother never mentioned Phil Lynott once.
Kevin Finnie insisted that he was Lynott's son, adding that he also received abuse from trolls online.
“People are calling me all sorts of names and saying I have an agenda to get something out of this. My phone hasn’t stopped ringing", he once said. “All I want from this is closure. I’ve had a tough enough time of it — I just want to finally know who my birth father is".
Anita also branded Kevin as an attention seeker, adding that she knew nothing about him until he featured in a Jeremy Kyle show, after seeking a DNA test from her sister Josie in 2017.
“If he knew he was Phil Lynott’s son, why didn’t he mention that to Jeremy Kyle two years ago?”, she said.
Speaking of Thin Lizzy, their former guitarist, John Sykes, who also played with Whitesnake, died in January, aged 65. More on this here.
