This was no ordinary love triangle.
A grieving Manhattan widow who won a court order preserving her husband’s sperm named his girlfriend to be the surrogate mother of his child, sources told The Post yesterday.
George Kamau, 37, killed himself Monday in the Norwalk, Conn., home of Etaghua Asefa, 35, who identified herself to cops as the dead man’s girlfriend, the sources said.
In court papers filed in Manhattan, Kamau’s wife, Victoria Chege, named Asefa as the “family friend and appointed surrogate” mother who would receive sperm harvested from her late husband’s corpse.
Although Justice Shirley Warner Kornreich almost immediately signed off on Chege’s sperm-preservation request, the grieving widow may have gone to court too late.
Fertility experts say sperm must be taken from a corpse within 36 hours of death for it to be viable. Kamau was dead for at least 60 hours before Kornreich signed the order.
The Sperm and Embryo Bank of New Jersey declined to carry out the procedure without court approval.
Kamau left a suicide note, but its contents have not been revealed. Police do not suspect anything criminal, the sources said.
Kamau dropped Asefa off at her job last Monday at 9:30 a.m., said the sources.
Asefa grew worried after she didn’t hear from him all morning, so she returned to her home at 1:45 p.m. and found him hanging in her living room.
Chege declined to comment at her Harlem apartment yesterday.
“It’s a personal issue and she’s grieving,” said a man at her apartment.
Chege said in court papers that Kamau wanted a family, and would have approved of the surrogacy.
Her lawyer, Troy Griffith, declined yesterday to discuss the case.
“It’s a very sensitive time for my client,” Griffith said.