Despite being long removed from The Real Housewives of New Jersey, the Manzo family continues to be interesting. OG Dina Cantin (formerly Manzo) used to be married to Tommy Manzo, who became a stepfather to her daughter Lexi Ioannou.
They seemed to be a picture-perfect family on-screen, yet after a few years, the couple separated … but that wasn’t all. Tommy was later arrested and sentenced to seven years in prison. For why, you ask? Well, it was for hiring an alleged hitman against Dina’s new husband David Cantin.
Needless to say, Tommy’s relationship with his former stepdaughter Lexi has changed immensely over the past two decades. But, according to her, he doesn’t see it that way.
Tommy Manzo was “affectionate” towards Lexi even after Dina Manzo relationship ended
Lexi was a recent guest on Gia Giudice’s Casual Chaos podcast. It was during the segment that she revealed that even after the divorce, and possibly even after his arrest, Tommy still felt ties to his former stepdaughter.
“He had this, this, like, weird obsession with me. For years, people would tell me that he kept my room exactly the same because he thought I was going to come back. I can’t even begin to understand why he would think I would ever come back there,” she revealed in the May 26 episode.
The former reality TV star did make it clear, though, that he never crossed the stepfather-daughter line.
“He was never inappropriate, but he definitely was very affectionate. And that was something I was very uncomfortable with because neither of my parents are that way. To receive it from a stepfather is kind of, like, extra strange when you don’t receive it from your actual father.”
