by Ian Halperin
Not long after Tina’s horrifying revelations appeared—an account that would, by the singer’s own admission, prove remarkably accurate—Whitney headed back to rehab.
In September 2006, she made an unexpected appearance at a Beverly Hilton Hotel event honoring the singer Johnny Mathis. As she arrived with Clive Davis and Dionne Warwick, guests were surprised to see her looking healthier than she had in years. Davis had told MTV a few days earlier that he and Whitney were working on a “comeback album.”
The next day, Nancy Seltzer issued a statement revealing that Whitney had split from Bobby and had served him with legal separation papers as a step toward divorce. Soon afterward, Whitney filed for and received sole custody of Bobbi, though Bobby would be granted visitation rights. Because of their prenup, he was entitled to no financial settlement.
Cissy recalls that after the split, Bobbi was sent for a time to stay with Pat and Gary.
“By now, Krissi was thirteen, old enough to understand that all this mess was going on,” she wrote. “I was always worried about her—not because Nippy wasn’t a good and loving mother, but because I knew it had to be hard on Krissi to be in a home situation that could sometimes be unstable. And I know she always looked out for Krissi the best she could. Always.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
If Bobbi Kristina had really given up all drugs except Xanax after her mother’s death, as Zach told the Daily Mail, it means that just about everybody I met in Atlanta and Miami who claims to have known her is lying. That’s not outside the realm of possibility, because I know from experience that people are often desperate to cloak themselves in the aura of celebrity by exaggerating their associations with the famous or infamous.
And just as some of the media was starting to buy Zach’s claims, another one of the snakes associated with the couple crawled out from under his rock and shared a story that completely contradicted Zach’s account.
A man named Steve Stepho, who claimed to have lived with the couple for a time, told the London Sun that he sold both Bobbi and Nick narcotics, though he insisted that he wasn’t their “main dealer.”
“Bobbi and Nick would spend a lot on drugs every day, it just depended on how much money they had,” he told the paper. “It wasn’t unusual for them to spend $1,000 a day on drugs. There were times when it got really bad—they would be completely passed out for hours, just lying there on the bed. There were times when she would be so knocked out she would burn herself with a cigarette and not even notice. She was always covered in cigarette burns.”
He repeated a story I had heard a number of times before from people who claimed to have known Bobbi’s fiancé.
“Nick has a really short fuse and would often lose his temper with her. He is not a good person,” Stepho said. “She’d do whatever he told her. He was very manipulative and would even use the drugs to control her. They would argue a lot and there were times when he would be violent with her and push her around.”
As with many of the characters who have emerged in this drama, Stepho has a lengthy police record, including two heroin busts. I obtained a police report from an arrest on October 23, 2013, when Stepho and another man were pulled over by Roswell police in his Pontiac Bonneville because of an outstanding FBI warrant for a parole violation in Dallas. They found 5.8 grams of heroin and charged him with trafficking. Only two weeks before Bobbi was found unconscious, he was pulled over again by Roswell police, driving a black Toyota. The arresting officer observed that he “appeared to be under the influence of a drug.” A search of his pockets discovered no contraband, but as he stood outside the vehicle, a Baggie fell from his shorts, and he was arrested for possession of heroin.
Although Stepho was undoubtedly a lowlife, I wasn’t sure I trusted his account about dealing drugs to Bobbi, especially since, like Zach, he chose to sell the story to a British tabloid.
Still, the sheer volume of friends and hangers-on of Bobbi and Nick who have told me variations of the same story appears to reveal a pattern.
A clubgoer who calls herself “Lady” told me she met Bobbi Kristina at a party at a club in West Hollywood a couple years ago.
“She looked like she was a party girl, the center of attention, doing lines of coke all night, drinking like a fish. I saw her in the bathroom doing serious lines of blow. She was out of it, looked like she had a serious problem.”
When we stopped for lunch at a Mexican restaurant called Moe’s Southwest Grill, we got into a conversation with the server, who said that Nick and Bobbi frequented the restaurant on occasion. “They always seemed to be in a rush,” she said. “And they always seemed to be high. They were weird; they certainly stood out. They weren’t disruptive, but they always made a scene, even if it was unconsciously.”
In Miami, I met a former New York City hairstylist named David Hill, who frequented the diner where Nick and Bobbi breakfasted when they were in town.
“I used to go to the same midtown diner as her for breakfast,” he told me. “She was in town shooting her reality show. Whenever I saw her I’d go up to her. She was very receptive, very humble. Always had a big beaming smile. But she did appear to be on something. She was too bubbly, she looked high; her eyes were usually red. When I saw her with her boyfriend, the two of them seemed high. Clearly, she had secrets.”
At Atlanta’s Halo lounge, a supposed acquaintance of Bobbi told me, “Bobbi Kristina is a tragedy. We all tried to help her but she only listens to one person, Nick Gordon. I met her buddies Nick and Max a few times. They’re one word—trouble. I just wish someone could have done something to get her away from that scene.”
A young woman named Bree told me she knows Gordon from the Atlanta club scene and that he used to flirt with her “whenever Bobbi Kristina was not around. He’s quite feisty. He loves to be the center of attention. I can’t believe she was with him for so long. I really feel sorry for her. She deserved better.”
Before long, it’s like a broken record. For all I know, none of these people even knew the couple. One of the few people I met who encountered the couple is Aziza Letherwood, the sales manager of the Sunglass Hut in Atlanta’s North Point Mall. This is where I’m told the couple purchased sunglasses shortly before they dropped by Kay Jewelers to drop off Bobbi’s engagement ring for repair.
“She came in here,” Aziza confirmed. “I’m a big Whitney Houston fan so I recognized her right away. Then I recognized Nick. She was saying her diamond was missing on her ring. They bought two pairs of Ray-Bans. She seemed kind of jittery. I’m a real big fan of her mother. I’m thirty-six, from her generation. Whitney was Beyoncé to me. I just wanted to hug her and tell her ‘Your mother wouldn’t have wanted this for you.’ Both of them appeared to have issues. They didn’t seem normal.”
So far, it’s clearly obvious that the relationship was volatile, and both Nick and Bobbi were abusing substances of some kind or another. But the same can be said about just about every couple I saw on the dance floors at the hip Atlanta clubs where I was searching for clues each night after Sheila and I finished our investigation.
I could have discovered most of this information at my desk in Miami. I resolved to stop wasting time trying to gain insight into Bobbi and Nick and the nature of their relationship. None of that, I realized, was going to answer the question of what went down on January 31.
Instead, I am anxious to delve deeper into the possibility of attempted suicide. It is the conclusion of just about everybody I met in Atlanta, including those who knew her and those who didn’t.
When I first spoke to the former homicide detective turned private investigator in February, the subject of suicide did in fact come up. But for him the facts didn’t add up. He had immediately homed in on reports that the bathwater in which Bobbi was found was ice-cold.
“Nobody takes a cold bath in winter,” he insisted.
I raised the possibility that it started out hot but that she was in the bathtub for so long that it eventually turned cold. He told me t
hat was one of the things the police would undoubtedly be investigating. But they weren’t sharing, and I didn’t have time to wait for the eventual results of their investigation. And so I did what I assumed my favorite TV detective, Columbo, would have done. I ran a bath.
I filled the bathtub with water that I considered hot but not too hot, bringing it to a temperature that most people would likely find comfortable. And then I waited. An hour later, I checked it. It was still lukewarm. Forty-five minutes after that, I checked again. It was mildly tepid. Thirty minutes later it was definitely on the cool side. After yet another half hour, I tested it again. For the first time since I ran the water, I would probably describe the temperature as cold, though not ice-cold. Still, for the sake of argument and since one person’s definition of ice-cold might not be the same as mine, I think it’s safe to conclude that a hot-water bath takes a minimum of two and a half hours to turn cold. But Bobbi survived—barely—so we know that she probably couldn’t have been facedown in the water for more than a few minutes.
Columbo probably could have made something of this knowledge—more likely the team from CSI Miami—but I was still stumped. Nonetheless, it gave me something to go on. The fact that she was lying in a cold-water bath, however, wasn’t the only thing reported about Bobbi’s condition when she was found in the bathtub that morning.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Seeking a fresh start after the divorce, Whitney moved Bobbi and her dog, Doogie, to Laguna Hills, California in 2006, where she filed for divorce from Bobby in Orange County superior court. The Nellie Gail Ranch where she and her daughter resided for more than a year was rented for her by an addiction specialist named Warren Boyd, who has worked with a number of drug-addicted celebrities, including Courtney Love and Robert Downey Jr.
“It was very quiet. We were a very respectful community,” recalled her Laguna Hills neighbor Susan Shoultz. “She was very polite to everybody.” Another neighbor, Nancy Martindale, says she often saw Whitney and Bobbi together on walks.
It was during this period when Bobbi first gained a wild-child reputation.
A friend would later tell Hollywood Life, “Bobbi Kristina was really nice. People liked her, but she was known as a problem child.” Calling her a “party animal,” the friend claims she “didn’t have much supervision” and was “living life on the edge.”
Working with Boyd during her time in Orange County appeared to be paying off, at least for the time being. But if Whitney was back on her feet, the same couldn’t be said for Bobby, who attempted in court to overturn the terms of their prenup and receive spousal support. It appeared that without Whitney’s money he had fallen on hard financial times as evidenced by his court filing, which claimed he had been footing the bills associated with one of her rehab stays.
“Whitney took Bobbi Kris without my prior knowledge or consent, and moved to Orange County, California, where Whitney received treatment for her drug addiction,” the court filing reads. “Although I was having severe financial problems, I did all I could to see my daughter. I came to California to be near Bobbi Kris. I also paid approximately $10,000 for Whitney and Bobbi Kris to live in a nice hotel while Whitney was going through rehab. At the same time, I basically lived out of my car.”
Whitney’s counterfiling was blunt, blaming her ex’s problems on his lifestyle.
“Bobby is fully capable of working and earning substantial sums of money if he would control his personal behavior. It is his personal conduct that keeps him from earning substantial amounts of money,” she stated.
In the end, the judge rejected his claims on a technicality.
Meanwhile, Whitney announced she was ready to tour again in advance of a brand-new studio album to be overseen by her old mentor, Clive Davis. It appeared that shedding Bobby and his baggage was just what she needed to get her life back on track and jump-start her career.
But the comeback hit a snag almost immediately when she launched her new tour at a jazz festival in Tobago. Receiving a whopping $3 million for the appearance, she hit the stage to a tumultuous ovation. But right from the start, things did not go as planned. First, she repeatedly shouted, “I love you, Trinidad” only to have the crowd respond in a full-throated roar, “This is Tobago.” Ignoring them, she delivered only seven songs and she wasn’t finished with the first before it was evident her voice was shot. The next day’s review, headlined, “Houston, there’s a problem,” complained, “By her third song, ‘Saving All My Love,’ the once soprano’s newfound tenor tone was in full rasp.” Ebony Jet, once her biggest cheerleader, noted that her “flat, hoarse and listless voice was a big disappointment.”
In 2007, Whitney sold the Alpharetta, Georgia, house on the outskirts of Atlanta where she had lived with Bobby for just under $1.2 million. Not long afterward, she purchased the town house and moved back to Atlanta with Bobbi, where she could lay down tracks for a new album at Patchwerk Studios.
Yet those who expected Bobby’s departure to bring stability to Whitney’s domestic life hadn’t counted on the effect that being in the middle of their dysfunctional relationship had to have had on their daughter all those years. In February 2008, reports circulated that Bobbi had been committed to the Peachford Psychiatric Hospital for observation. According to Ann Davis—who is related to Bobby’s mother, Carole Brown—Bobbi tried to stab Whitney during a heated argument two weeks before her fifteenth birthday and then slashed her wrists in a suicide attempt.
“Bobbi Kristina had been running around drinking and partying, doing what she wants to do,” Davis claimed. “She and her mother had been arguing a lot.”
It was a few months later that she asked Whitney if her eighteen-year-old high school friend Nick Gordon—who had been kicked out of the house by his own mother—could stay with them occasionally while he landed on his feet.
Meanwhile, Whitney had been actively involved in working on the album that she believed would signal to the world that she was back after what she termed a “hiatus.”
Among her collaborators on the album was the R&B songwriter/producer Akon, who had recorded a duet with Whitney. Afterward, he told Billboard, “The voice is there; I don’t think anyone could ever take that from her. As long as we apply that voice to hit records, she’ll be right back where she left off.” It would be another two years before the album would see the light of day, but his words were reassuring to the many observers who prayed the old Whitney would reemerge now that she was free of Bobby’s influence.
The first chance people had to judge for themselves came at Clive Davis’s annual pre-Grammy bash in February 2009, where Davis had hinted she would show up and perform. Sure enough, Whitney took the stage and proceeded to belt out some of her old repertoire as the crowd listened in hushed tones to see whether she still had it. The verdict was mixed. On the one hand, she hadn’t embarrassed herself or exhibited any of the diva behavior people had come to expect over the last decade. On the other, her once-stunning gift from God had eluded her. The LA Times was guarded in its praise, noting that “she hit her cues and delivered the songs with confidence,” but alas, it wasn’t the Whitney of old, because, “The voice that once seemed able to topple mountains had grown more subdued, and the high notes just weren’t there.”
Still, it was a promising start. With the album finally finished, Whitney agreed to give her first interview in years, and when Oprah Winfrey announced that she had scored the exclusive, America held its breath in anticipation. Would she provide the answers to the questions people had been asking for years?
After she sat down with Oprah in a two-part interview to be aired in mid-September, she taped a performance at Central Park to be broadcast on Good Morning America the next day. It did not go well. Her voice was shot during the four-song concert, but it didn’t stop fans from singing along and cheering her on.
“It brought tears to my eyes,” said one fan. “She’s been through so much in her life. She’s been working very hard, and it’s a lot to do. And she�
��s been doing it well.”
Another fan wasn’t so understanding. “I expected it to be longer. She couldn’t sing. She was really damaged,” Jao Andrade told the Daily News. “I’m a little disappointed. I think she was brave to come out with no voice.”
But most fans forgave the raspy voice and were just thrilled that she was back. “Everyone falls down and everyone stumbles. It’s how we pick it up and keep going,” thirty-two-year-old Ky Davis told the paper.
The highlight of the performance was when sixteen-year-old Bobbi Kristina—looking in good spirits—joined her mother on a duet of “My Love Is Your Love,” in which she had made her debut as a five-year-old, saying, “Sing, Mommy.” This time, she tried to sing along, although both mother and daughter appeared to be having trouble remembering the lyrics.
Two weeks later, the first part of the Oprah interview aired, and the world was floored by what they heard.
From the start, Oprah makes it clear that she is among the vast majority who assumed that Bobby Brown was responsible for Whitney’s downfall. She asked, “What is the princess doing with this guy?”
To Oprah’s surprise, however, she came to her ex’s defense. “They don’t have any idea about that sweet, gentle tenderness about him that nobody knew,” she said. “He was a very quiet person.”
Eventually, Oprah turned to the subject that everybody had been waiting for.
“Tell me, how bad did it get, the drugs?” she asked.
Whitney then proceeded to reveal that before the making of The Bodyguard her drug use was “light,” but after the film took off and Bobbi was born, it got heavier, and by 1996, the drugs were “an everyday thing . . . I wasn’t happy by that point in time. I was losing myself.”