Metro

‘Dead’ amnesiac dad wants to be declared alive

A California man claims he is the telephone-company worker from the East Village who went missing 24 years ago, saying he suffered amnesia and only recently remembered his identity.

Winston Bright, a married dad of three, was declared dead by a court 14 years ago — but a 65-year-old man who goes by the name Kwame Seku says he has a blood test to prove he is actually Bright.

Seku is asking a Manhattan Surrogate’s Court to toss Bright’s death decree so he can collect a $616.73-a-month pension from New York Telephone Company, where Bright worked.

The money has been going to Bright’s wife, Leslie, 61, of East 10th St., who asked the court to say her husband had died after a fruitless, decade-long search.

Bright, then 42, mysteriously disappeared after leaving work in October 1990.

Seku wants to come to court with Bright’s mother, Mary, 80, of Harlem and a paternity test that the pair took in March to prove his case.

In court papers, Seku says that while his wife thought he was long gone, he “was, in fact, alive and inexplicably found himself in Calif. with no recollection of who he was or how he got there.”

Seku told The Post in a telephone interview Wednesday that he found himself wandering the streets of San Diego sometime in 1990 and 1991 without any identification and only a few dollars in his pocket. He eventually legally adopted the name Kwame Seku.

He said his memory then started returning little by little and that with the help of the Internet, he tracked down his old identity.

“Bits and pieces,” Seku said of his self-discovery process. “You think of places you remember, I had dreams of this and dreams of that and I’d go and investigate it.”

About three years ago, he flew to New York for a “happy reunion” with his parents, siblings, three adult children and grandchildren — but he said his former wife was not excited to see him.

“I guess she was bitter because of me not being there – because according to her, and I talked to my daughter, they had a pretty good life when I was there but when I left it became hard times,” Seku said.

Two of his sons have done stints in jail.

When Seku contacted Verizon, which took over New York Telephone, for his benefits, company officials at first sent him payments for eight months through April 2012 but then stopped after discovering his court case and realizing that Leslie Bright was collecting equal funds at the same time.

A Verizon rep said Wednesday, “We have a court order declaring Winston Bright deceased, and as such, the Verizon pension plan is paying survivor benefits to his widow. If and when we receive a subsequent court order reversing that determination, we will reconsider the question of entitlement to pension benefits.”

Also, in regards to … the $1,850 [already] paid to Kwame, we are not actively trying to recoup that payment but have not waived our rights with respect to that payment.”

Seku said his relationship with his family soured after he tried to get his pension back.

“Once this Verizon thing hit the fan, that’s when it all went downhill,” he said.

In September 2012, now-retired Surrogate’s Judge Kristin Booth Glenn tossed Seku’s petition asking the court to overturn his death decree.

But she said he could restart the case if he had proof to substantiate the claim that he was the long-missing Winston Bright. That’s when he said he got the blood test.

Seku says his memory is still fuzzy, and he has zero recollection of what happened Oct. 12, 1990, when Bright suddenly vanished after calling his wife during his lunch break and promising to be home at the usual hour.

“As far as I know – I talked to my aunt, she said, ‘It seems like you had a pretty good life, you worked, you had a good thing,’” he recalled.

A San Diego judge gave him a new name in 1992, and Kwame Seku rebuilt his life in California, getting a GED, teaching certificate and working in the public schools until his recent retirement, he told The Post.

“I’m no longer Winston Bright,” Seku said. “Winston Bright, according to the state of New York, is dead.”

Seku picked the African name Kwame out of a magazine.

He said he receives Social Security benefits under both his names, from his two jobs.

Reached at their home on East 10th Street, Seku’s son Aaron declined to comment and said his mother, who is disabled, was not feeling well.

Additional reporting by Erin Calabrese