The Real Housewives of New Jersey alum Dina Manzo’s daughter, Lexi Ioannou, got real about her relationship with former stepfather Tommy Manzo.
“He had this, this, like, weird obsession with me,” Lexi, 29, claimed when she appeared on the Monday, May 26, episode of Gia Giudice’s “Casual Chaos” podcast. “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 claimed that Tommy “held on to my things for, you know, 10 years” after he and Dina split.
“He never had children of his own and I was the closest thing he had to it. So, he really loved me,” Lexi continued. “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.”
She added, “I was told to pay him that kind of affection out of respect. Therefore, I felt like our relationship was very uncomfortable for me.”
Dina, 53, married Tommy in 2007 when Lexi was 6 years old. They separated in 2012 and divorced four years later. Dina married now-husband David Cantin in 2017. (Tommy is the brother of fellow former RHONJ star Caroline Manzo’s husband, Albert Manzo.)
Tommy is currently incarcerated. In October 2024, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of New Jersey announced that Tommy was sentenced to 84 months in prison for “hiring, then assisting, a soldier in the Lucchese Crime Family to assault” Cantin in 2015.
Lexi first spoke about her relationship with Tommy in a Substack article titled “Don’t Poke the Bear,” in which she recalled the unraveling of her mom’s relationship. She claimed that in 2012 she was “violently” shaken awake by Tommy, who told Lexi that she had 30 minutes to “get the f***” out of her house.”
“In that chaotic moment, I lost not only my home but also irreplaceable heirlooms collected over generations along with my childhood keepsakes,” she wrote at the time. “I mourn not only for myself, but for my future children, as these tangible connections to my family history have been stolen from us.”
During Monday’s podcast episode, Lexi claimed that after Tommy went to prison, she reached out to Caroline’s daughter, Lauren Manzo, to try and get her stuff back — but she never did.
“I had an understanding that he kept everything of mine all those years. So, I wanted it back,” she continued. “It was really difficult for me to extend myself and to ask for help, but I was that desperate. I just wanted those things back.”
Lexi told Gia that what went down after Dina and Tommy’s divorce is still “a shock” to her family.
“I went to the trial last year and I sat there for a week, and I listened to everybody testify,” Lexi said. “My mom and I are so different like that. She couldn’t even stomach being there for, like, 30 minutes. I went every day, all day, for seven days. I needed to know everything. The word that came up a lot was obsessive. There was some kind of obsessive disorder going on there with the fact that he lost his ‘family’ — my mom and I — and he just lost control.”
She added, “Some of the things he has done have been the most painful things I’ve ever had to face in my life. See my mom go through, see Dave go through. It’s been completely unfair.”
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