US News

Soap fan beque$t to actors

An Illinois man left his $1 million estate to two television hunks he never met.

Ray Fulk, 71, died last summer on his 160-acre property near Lincoln, Ill. He had no family or children and no friends to include in his will.

But he had Kevin Brophy and Peter Barton, two longtime TV actors who held a special place in his heart.

“He just said they were friends of his,” Fulk’s attorney, Donald Behle, told ABC News.

Barton, 56, played Dr. Scott Grainger in “The Young and the Restless,” and Brophy, 59, was the lead in “Lucan,” a 1977 drama about a boy raised by wolves.

The attorney helped prepare Fulk’s final wishes in 1998 and had no idea he wasn’t actually acquainted with the performers.

Fast-forward more than a decade, and Behle was sending the actors letters informing them of the big sum of cash they were due. Brophy and Barton assumed it was a joke — until Barton flew to central Illinois to see the tumble-down home where Fulk died.

Fulk was likely drawn to “Lucan” because he loved dogs and Brophy’s character was a defender of the weak with wolflike senses.

Behle has asked the actors about hosting a fund-raiser for animal shelters in honor of Fulk in Illinois, The State Journal-Register of Springfield, Ill., reported.