AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.<\/p>\n
Read our AI Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n For nearly 30 years, one man has been building a castle by hand on a North Carolina mountaintop.<\/p>\n Read more Coming soon to downtown Raleigh: a garage that parks your car for you<\/a><\/p>\n Stone by stone, Robert Mihaly<\/a> transformed the top of Red Mountain, raising a four-story castle above a rolling forest of old oaks.<\/p>\n He crowned its marble columns with copper, guided not by blueprints but by imagination and the audacious confidence of a self-taught sculptor accustomed to learning by doing.<\/p>\n Along the way, Castle Mont Rouge became a Triangle landmark, a curiosity that Mihaly worked on in fits and starts but never completed.<\/p>\n But this week, Mihaly could lose his decades-long project after a brief romance gave way to a bitter legal fight. A jury is expected to consider Julie Seel\u2019s request to enforce a lien against the property, which could ultimately force its sale.<\/p>\n Before the lawsuit, there was a connection on Match.com. Mihaly met Seel, a Durham psychologist<\/u><\/a>, in 2023, and they dated for a few months. The romance spiraled into a two-year court battle, with each accusing the other of using the relationship to seize or hold on to the Red Mountain property near the Durham and Person county line.<\/p>\n Mihaly alleges he is the latest target in Seel\u2019s \u201cromance scam enterprise.\u201d Seel targeted him and other romantic partners to obtain homes, an airplane, and now his castle, he alleges in court documents.<\/p>\n Seel says Mihaly sought out her and other affluent women on the online dating site to help save his castle from a pending $160,000 balloon payment. She also alleges Mihaly misrepresented his artistic and construction abilities and defrauded clients, including Duke University and Elizabeth Edwards, the late wife of former U.S. senator and presidential candidate John Edwards. Seel alleges that Mihaly charged those and other clients high commissions for work she says was manufactured in China.<\/p>\n In interviews and court documents, Mihaly and Seel deny the allegations.<\/p>\n Before building Castle Mont Rouge, Mihaly made national headlines in 1996 as Washington National Cathedral\u2019s fifth and final artist-in-residence.<\/p>\n The self-taught sculptor was commissioned to carve an angel from 10 tons of marble for the grave of Wade Edwards,<\/a> the 16-year-old son of John and Elizabeth Edwards. A dispute over his workspace led to Mihaly\u2019s dismissal. He later finished the angel at Meredith College in Raleigh.<\/p>\n After Elizabeth Edwards died in 2010, her family again turned to Mihaly, commissioning an 8-foot marble monument showing her daughter\u2019s hands releasing 27 doves.<\/p>\n By then, Mihaly had already spent over a decade carving another monument atop Red Mountain. For a time, Mihaly lived inside the unfinished castle, occupying a single room as he continued building. At other times, the castle stood empty. Vandals damaged his work and erased some of his progress while he and his then-partner raised their two children in northern Durham.<\/p>\n By summer 2023, Mihaly had returned his attention to the nearly 2,000-square-foot castle. He had received a construction loan on the castle, even hosting his daughter\u2019s Sweet 16 party there.<\/p>\n On June 24, 2023, he connected with Seel on Match.com after separating from his longtime partner. A week later, they met for drinks at an Irish pub in Raleigh. The next day, Mihaly took her to the castle.<\/p>\n Seel quickly envisioned turning it into an event venue. She offered to lend Mihaly money and help manage the project.<\/p>\n \u201cVery doable. I\u2019d give you a loan with a handshake and reasonable interest. \ud83d\ude09 And no payback until you were cash flow positive,\u201d she wrote, according to Mihaly\u2019s court filing.<\/p>\n \u201cJesus. That\u2019s kind of overwhelming. Can\u2019t we just smooch?\u201d he responded.<\/p>\n Within days, Seel began soliciting contractor estimates and ordering materials. They also moved in together as part of a larger plan to combine their families and tackle the castle\u2019s transformation.<\/p>\n By October, they had signed a \u201cbasic castle understanding\u201d agreement in which they both loaned each other money. The agreement called for transferring the castle and surrounding land to a company they would jointly own, with Mihaly holding 51% and Seel 49%.<\/p>\n They also signed a promissory note under which Seel would lend Mihaly and the company $250,000 to transform the castle into an event venue. The property would serve as collateral, with repayment delayed until the business began making money.<\/p>\n But Mihaly never transferred the property or gave Seel an ownership stake. By mid-November, the relationship had collapsed, and he barred her from the castle.<\/b><\/p>\n Seel filed a lawsuit in Durham County court on May 28, 2024.<\/p>\n After their relationship ended, Mihaly began examining Seel\u2019s past. He realized, Mihaly contends in court filings, that he was the latest in a series of men she had dated or worked with before she sought control of their money or property.<\/p>\n In court filings, Mihaly describes what he contends is a pattern of Seel quickly forming a relationship with a man and persuading him to invest in an expensive venture in which she acquires a substantial stake. Then she ends the relationship and makes accusations against him while pursuing the asset, Mihaly said in court documents.<\/p>\n Court filings show that in the last five years, Seel has been involved in litigation seeking assets from four men, including Mihaly, following failed romantic or business partnerships.<\/p>\n Read more Amazon closes another major facility, nearly 500 workers affected<\/a><\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t include the most widely publicized case that followed Seel\u2019s relationship with Bill Bishop, a wealthy Florida real estate developer who had moved to Durham.<\/p>\n In April 2018, Bishop\u2019s 16-year-old son called 911 after finding his father unconscious in a chair, with a dog leash wrapped several times around his neck. Bishop later died.<\/p>\n Seel was involved in a dispute over Bishop\u2019s multimillion-dollar estate<\/a> and pushed for Bishop\u2019s son to be charged with murder,<\/a> court records related to the Bishop\u2019s estate and his son\u2019s investigation<\/a> state.<\/p>\n Prosecutors later dropped the charge after a judge found that the lead detective<\/a> had included false or misleading statements in search-warrant applications.<\/p>\n In his lawsuit, Mihaly, 59, accuses Seel of operating a romance scam enterprise, fraudulently inducing him into a business agreement, systematic impoverishment, money laundering, and hacking into his computer and exposing his trade secrets.<\/p>\n Seel tells the story differently.<\/p>\n The day after their first date, Mihaly led her through the unfinished castle. As they walked the property, the two began envisioning it as an event venue, according to her lawsuit.<\/p>\n Seel says she immediately went to work. She cleaned up the grounds, researched historical artifacts and began ordering materials. By the end of July, a copper tub and exterior stone were on their way. By August, she says, she was working at the castle nearly every day.<\/p>\n But as the work progressed, Seel says she began discovering that the project \u2014 and Mihaly \u2014 were not what she had been led to believe. Despite his representations about his construction abilities, Mihaly was not a licensed and insured general contractor when they met, her lawsuit alleges. Seel also said Mihaly, who graduated from North Carolina Central University Law School in 2018 but never sat for the bar exam, misrepresented his skills to draft binding documents representing their agreements.<\/p>\n Seel says she had to bring in professional contractors to perform work she initially believed Mihaly could handle. She estimates that she has since spent $282,467 on the castle, including the cost of materials, labor and storing supplies.<\/p>\n Seel accuses Mihaly<\/a> of fraud, negligent misrepresentation and unfair and deceptive trade practices. She is asking a judge to impose a lien against the property to reimburse her for labor and materials, along with attorney\u2019s fees, and then order the castle sold to satisfy the debt.<\/p>\n To support her contention that Mihaly targeted her for her wealth, Seel draws on accounts from two women. In her lawsuit, she includes texts from Mihaly\u2019s former wife, whom he divorced in 2004, and the mother of his two children, from whom he separated shortly before meeting Seel.<\/p>\n Mihaly\u2019s former wife, Tina Motley-Person, lived with him at the castle during its early years. In a video posted on YouTube<\/u><\/a>, she accuses Mihaly of defrauding her of more than $100,000 through the castle project. Mihaly denies the allegation. Seel\u2019s lawsuit also includes text messages between Motley-Person and Mihaly\u2019s former partner discussing his relationship with Seel and suggesting that he had found someone who could save the castle.<\/p>\n Seel also contends Mihaly isn\u2019t the self-taught sculptor he portrays to be.<\/p>\n She contends that marble sculptures Mihaly<\/a> presented as hand-carved were instead produced overseas by machine. Mihaly misled customers, including the Edwards family,<\/a> when accepting their commissions, she contends. Mihaly denies the allegation<\/a>, saying it isn\u2019t unusual for artists to use multiple tools to shape their vision.<\/p>\n Cate Edwards, daughter of Elizabeth Edwards, who died in 2010 after a six-year battle with breast cancer,<\/b> said she doesn\u2019t have enough information about the allegations to comment.<\/p>\n Mihaly created beautiful pieces that reflect what her family wanted, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd that is the most important thing for us,\u201d Edwards said.<\/p>\n Mihaly and Seel have taken their battle far beyond the Durham courtroom, filing professional complaints, contacting government agencies and seeking evidence from former clients and romantic partners.<\/p>\n Mihaly pursued criminal charges against Seel, accusing her of filing a false lien and keeping his children\u2019s surfboards. Prosecutors later dismissed the charges. In his filings, Mihaly has also accused her of tax fraud.<\/p>\n Seel spent two days defending her license before the North Carolina Psychology Board, she wrote in court filings. She is also fighting an IRS audit, which she alleges is part of Mihaly\u2019s coordinated campaign to destroy her reputation, she wrote in federal court documents.<\/p>\n Seel alleges that Mihaly conspired with her former attorney, who she says abandoned her, to harass and intimidate her. Seel, who argues she should be given whistleblower protections, also accuses Durham County Superior Court Judge Josephine Davis<\/a> of bias, criticizing the judge\u2019s refusal to remove herself from the case. Davis worked in the district attorney\u2019s office during the investigation into Bill Bishop\u2019s death, in which Seel played a central role, according to court documents and testimony.<\/p>\n Davis also silenced Seel during hearings in which she tried to explain her safety concerns, Seel said in court documents, while the judge has allowed Mihaly, who represents himself, to manipulate court records.<\/p>\n Seel asked federal officials to halt the audit, examine the Durham court filings and investigate Mihaly and others.<\/p>\n \u201cAn integrated federal review and coordinated protective response are essential to restore procedural fairness, safeguard witnesses, and protect the integrity of judicial and administrative processes from continued retaliation under color of law,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n Seel and Mihaly are expected in court Monday, when their attorneys could begin picking a jury to decide who controls the castle\u2019s fate.<\/p>\n