What Really Happened

by Rielle Hunter

  I told Johnny how much money Andrew said that Fred had given them and also told him I believed that Andrew and Cheri ripped off Fred, charging him way more than what was spent. Johnny later told me that Fred believed the same thing. I believe that Fred knew the Youngs were charging him more than they had spent, and that he hoped that after this one-time payoff, the Youngs would just sort of disappear. I don’t believe he ever confronted Andrew about overcharging him. We could all feel that something was really off with Andrew but we had no idea to what extent. We had no idea that he had received over seven hundred thousand dollars from Bunny. One could actually even say zero dollars of Bunny Mellon’s money was ever spent on me, because it turned out that the Youngs had actually sold their house in Raleigh for a large profit, and they did have plenty of their own money to cover all of my expenses until Fred reimbursed them for everything.

  Countless press reports year after year said Bunny’s money paid for my expenses, yet not one report stated that Andrew double-dipped and Fred actually paid for everything. I have stood in the kitchen of my little rental house and screamed in frustration (more than once), “Where is my million dollars? You are going to send Johnny to jail for money that I didn’t even get? That he supposedly solicited for me?”

  Speaking of screaming, one day, around the time that Fred gave the Youngs the $325,000, Cheri got so mad she was screaming at me at the top of her lungs: “You are not who you think you are!” She physically came after me. I shut my door in her face. Shortly thereafter, there was more talk about why they shouldn’t give me their BMW. (Cheri always maintained it was their money that was spent on me.) I said, “Listen you guys, you do whatever you need to, I don’t care. Take ‘your’ car that Fred just paid you for. I don’t care. I am done here. As soon as I find a place to live, I am leaving.”

  And that was it for me. No more Youngs. Though we were still sharing a living space, there was essentially no personal interaction between us after Cheri’s outburst.

  Strangely, as though nothing had ever happened between us, on Mother’s Day they knocked on my door to give me balloons and a card for Quinn. They asked me if I wanted to come to brunch with them.

  I thanked them and declined.

  And then came the endorsement that sealed their hatred of me forever. Johnny had called me and said Hillary was kicking Obama’s butt in West Virginia. Johnny and I had an interesting discussion about why that was.

  I suggested, “Maybe they just like her better, maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with race. Or maybe it does. I don’t know.”

  “I am thinking about endorsing Obama. What do you think?”

  This was May 13th. Obama had been calling Johnny since he dropped out on January 30th. I replied, “I don’t care.”

  He said, “You could talk me out of it if you wanted to.”

  I did an internal scan to see if I had any feelings at all about his endorsing Obama. Nothing came up. No thoughts. No feelings. I replied, “I have no opinion or feeling about this at all. It just doesn’t matter. Do whatever you want.”

  So he said to me, “I don’t know what I’m going to do yet but I will call you before I endorse him, if I do.”

  I said, “Okay.”

  The next day I was in a store on State Street in Santa Barbara, wheeling Quinn in her stroller. She was just about to fall asleep, so I was doing laps in the store to keep her moving as she transitioned into naptime. My cell rang. It was Mimi. “I just heard on NPR that your boy is going to endorse Obama.”

  “Really? Cool. I haven’t heard.” As I was talking to her, Andrew called. I said, “Hold on,” and switched over.

  Without even saying hello, Andrew asked, “Is he endorsing Obama?”

  “I don’t know. Last I heard was he might. Nothing definite.”

  Andrew didn’t believe me. He was all up in arms. “They are saying he is going to. He is flying to Michigan and he’s endorsing him.”

  I replied, “Well, that’s news to me. I haven’t heard.” I wondered how many times I would have to say, “I don’t know, I haven’t heard.” I just didn’t remotely care about any of this. I had checked out of the world of politics and into the world of motherhood.

  We hung up, and then I cruised around State Street a little longer until I, too, was tired. Quinn and I headed back to the big beige house.

  I walked into my section of the house and turned on the TV. There was a big rally on CNN (I think), all waiting for Johnny. It was a long wait. The cameras were on the empty podium. Everyone was waiting. I thought, wow, that was fast. It looks like he is actually going to endorse Obama.

  My phone rang. It was Johnny. “What are you doing?” I asked. “I just turned the TV on and everyone is waiting for you.”

  “I told you I would call you before I endorsed Obama, so I am calling.”

  I laughed. “I didn’t realize it was going to be so soon.”

  “Yeah, neither did I. I’ll fill you in later. Right now I gotta go endorse Obama.”

  “Okay, have fun. I’ll be watching.” I hung up, smiling at how funny my timing always seems to be. Not knowing a thing, I had just walked in and turned on the TV and didn’t miss any of it.

  Andrew and Cheri were on the warpath. They couldn’t believe I didn’t tell them that he was going to endorse Obama. No matter how many times I told them I didn’t know, they continued to call me a liar. They were now beginning to act as if there was some great conspiracy against them. And as I said, they had turned Johnny and me into one person, the ringleader of this big bad conspiracy against them. The paranoia was absolutely unreal.

  Soon after that, thank God, all the Youngs went away. They claimed they were going back to North Carolina for more work on their new house, but I had seen brochures on the counter for the Las Ventanas al Paraiso in San José del Cabo, Mexico, which is where I suspected they were actually headed after they dropped their kids off somewhere.

  Fred and Lisa flew out to see me and meet Quinn for breakfast on May 21st, 2008. Lisa came with yet another box of clothes for Quinn. We had a lovely breakfast at the Four Seasons Resort in Santa Barbara. I took pictures of Lisa holding Quinn. I felt a little uneasy for them because Fred didn’t look well and I had seen that look before on my father’s face. His energy and complexion looked similar to Fred’s about six months before he passed away.

  At some point over lunch Fred said to me, “I want to help you. What do you need?” I said, “I need a place to live.” He asked, “Where do you want to live?” I thought about it for a second and replied, “I would love to stay in Santa Barbara; it is pretty wonderful here. And I also would need some money to live on.” He said, “Done. Start looking for a place to live and let me know when you find one.”

  “Okay, thank you for your help!” So Quinn and I started looking for places to live; we looked at everything under the sun. I had no idea what my budget was, nor could I find anything that would work for us: furnished, private, and clean. Or affordable—Santa Barbara is very expensive.

  Lisa called me one day and said, “Fred wants to give you fifteen thousand dollars a month.”

  I thanked her and promptly told Johnny what Fred had offered, and he was floored by his generosity.

  Now knowing my budget, I continued looking for a new place to live, with and without the Realtor. One day when Quinn and I were out house hunting, without my consent or knowledge, Andrew and Cheri videotaped themselves going through my living space and some of my belongings, including my checkbook. In our settlement agreement, this videotape is officially called the “Santa Barbara Walkthrough Video.” I would actually call it something else and before the civil case I had against them settled, I was willing to bet that a jury would, too.

  Thank God, I finally found (on my own, through some ad online) a fully furnished gated house that would work perfectly for six thousand dollars
a month. So on June 4th, 2008, I packed up all of Quinn’s and my stuff and, with Bob’s help, loaded my car and said goodbye to Andrew. Cheri wasn’t there. As I drove away from the big beige house, I thanked God that I was free from those crazy people. And I admit it: I hoped that I would never see them again. And even though I thought that I knew the Youngs, I still had no idea just how deeply disturbed they really were, or how far they would go for vengeance.

  NINETEEN

  The End of

  My Mistress Stint

  “Celebrity and secrets don’t go together. The bastards will get you in the end.”

  —George Michael

  Life with Quinn in the new rental house was heaven. Although, compared to life in the big beige house, everything felt like heaven. For Quinn it was eat, play, and sleep all the time. I remember Iris the housekeeper saying to me one day, “This is the luckiest kid I have ever seen. She gets all of you all the time.”

  One of the things on my to-do list was to have all my stuff packed up from the rental house in North Carolina. The big, bulky furniture (that Fred now owned and gave to me) was to be put in storage; my clothes, personal belongings, camera, hatbox, and father’s ashes were to be shipped to me.

  Fred told me he would take care of this. Lisa asked if I would email her a detailed list of what was where, which I did. The hatbox was on top of my armoire, my camera in the camera bag in the front hall closet, and my father’s ashes on the mantle. Of course, I had no idea at that time that I was drawing a clear map for Andrew and Cheri to go rifling through my house or through my belongings in North Carolina, helping themselves to whatever they wanted. Or that they would take another “walkthrough” video. In this video, Cheri is going through all the contents of my hatbox, which contained all of my very personal mementos. As she is taping an item, you can hear Andrew say to her, “We’re taking that, you don’t need to tape it.”

  Cheri replies, “I know, but I want to tape it anyway.”

  At one point in June, Fred told me that Andrew told him that he had my father’s ashes with him in Santa Barbara. I replied, “What?” That’s what Andrew had told him. He had my father’s ashes and was going to bring them to me. He was going to call me. I never heard from him. Later in September, Mimi found my father’s ashes in the closet of my rental house in North Carolina when she went to pack up all my belongings. She also found my hatbox there. I did not leave my hatbox, which was filled with many personal mementos (including the videotape I thought I had destroyed), or my father’s ashes in the closet. They had been moved.

  Johnny was going to be in LA for some meetings, so I thought, why don’t we just do what we did before? He stayed at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza, we stayed at the Beverly Hilton, and Bob picked him up and dropped him back at his hotel later. We stayed for three days and two nights, June 19th to 21st. I took a bunch of pictures. One night Johnny ran into a woman he knew in the parking lot of the Hilton. I would later read that she talked to the press about that.

  On June 21st, Johnny ran over to the Hilton to see us before we left in the morning. I took some pictures of him and Quinn—he had on a sweaty running T-shirt. One of the many photos I took that day was doctored and appeared in the National Enquirer as a “spy photo,” claiming it was taken a month later. It was taken on June 21st and it was stolen from me. I don’t know whether the National Enquirer stole it or if it bought the photo from someone who stole it. It was stolen either from my camera before I deleted the image, or from my computer. I would guess from my computer, or someone took a picture of it as it was on my computer, hence the doctoring of the photo. The bottom line is that I took the picture, I own it, and someone stole the image.

  The Beverly Hilton, June 2008. I took five photos that morning; the picture taken ten minutes before this one was stolen from me and appeared in the National Enquirer as a “spy photo.”

  At the end of June, I flew my younger sister Melissa and her two daughters out for a visit. She is the only sister with whom I have a relationship. For her birthday, I took everyone to the Four Seasons for lunch, and for her birthday present I gave her my Cartier watch. It was a man’s Panther watch that I had bought right after my father died in 1990. I gifted it to my sister because it was something of mine she always loved.

  It was an emotional and sweet birthday lunch. Melissa took a picture of Quinn and me that ended up (without my knowledge or consent) on the cover of the National Enquirer. My sister claims that she did not sell it to the Enquirer, even though she owns the photograph. She claims she must have accidentally emailed it to my other sister, the one who has gone on TV bashing me more than once, who must have given it to the publication.

  Melissa would also be one of the people (given that she was staying with me) who had access to my computer and my camera. I hate to think that there is even a possibility that my own sister would do such things, but when these things happen to you and your property, you can’t help but become a little paranoid. I don’t believe it was her, but my mind did go everywhere, including to my loved ones.

  To this day, I have no idea how the Enquirer got those photos. I do know that I did not have anything to do with it. And one of them, the “spy photo,” is stolen property—my stolen property.

  Why don’t I just sue the Enquirer?

  Believe me, I have had many serious conversations with lawyers about this very topic and, who knows, maybe I will one day sue them. Right now my plate is full with other lawsuits. Rob Gordon, one of my early lawyers, joked to me one day long ago that when all this is done, I could open my own law firm. No kidding: criminal law, family law, First Amendment—what an education I have received.

  Funnily enough, on my sister’s birthday, while we were dining at the Four Seasons Resort, I got an email from my old pal Jonathan Darman, which read:

  Hello my old friend, I don’t think this email address works for you anymore. But I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately. And knowing you, you probably know that I’ve been thinking about you so I figured I’d send a message out there and it would find its way to you somehow. Hope the past few months have been good for you. I’d love to hear where you are and what you’re doing. It has been a thousand years, I mean that seriously, for me, since last we spoke and I’m sure it feels that it has been for you as well. I would love to be back in touch. At the very least, know that I’m thinking of you and sending you much, much love. Warmest, J

  I didn’t respond but wished I could have. I missed Darman.

  In mid-July, Johnny scheduled a meeting in order to be in LA for one night only—July 21st, 2008. Bob and I arrived at the Beverly Hilton in the afternoon, and Bob went inside to check in. It was packed. Apparently there had been some media conference held there that day but was ending. I was a bit freaked because it was so crowded, but Bob assured me that the desk had told him that it was over and all these people were clearing out, which turned out to be the case. I went to the room without passing one person, which was easy to do from the parking garage by taking the stairs and avoiding the lobby. That was the route Johnny would take later that evening as well.

  I do not believe that the Enquirer had been tipped off and was waiting for us. I had been there since three or four in the afternoon. I believe that, as usual, someone spotted Johnny as he was coming in and alerted the Enquirer, which was there waiting for him when he left later that night—or, I should say, early in the morning. The Enquirer claimed it was tipped off and had photos of us together. I know the publication didn’t have photos of us together unless there was one taken with surveillance cameras inside the room because we never left the room. And I don’t buy that the Enquirer was tipped off early on because, if that had been the case, wouldn’t a photographer have been waiting when we arrived?

  I remember people saying, “What? They don’t even have a cell phone camera? Where are the photos?” Of course, the Enquirer’s big smoking gun was the
“spy photo” that was stolen from me—a shot taken a month earlier. Not to mention the security guy told Johnny that he heard the reporter screaming into his phone, “Where’s my photographer?!”

  The Beverly Hilton, the night the National Enquirer confronted Johnny on his way out, July 21st, 2008. Quinn’s T-shirt says ME for President.

  In any case, we had a great visit. Johnny was so sweet and happy to see me. He really wanted to stay the whole night, which I thought was a bad idea and think had something to do with the fact that I had never slept a night without Quinn and I didn’t want to. Later, we had fallen asleep for a while, and when I woke up, I wanted my girl back. I told him he should probably go. Bob brought Quinn back to our room. And Bob left us so we could say goodbye. He planned on meeting Johnny at the car. Johnny kissed Quinn goodbye, kissed me goodbye, and left. I had no way of knowing that when he left that it would be the last time I saw the man that was filled with optimism, the man I had fallen in love with.

  About thirty minutes after the door had closed, I realized that Bob had not brought Quinn’s favorite little binky back with her. I called Bob and said, “Do you have Quinn’s binky?”

  He said, “I’ll bring it to you when I get back.”

  “When you get back? Aren’t you already back?”

  “No, I’m still waiting for John.”

  “What? He left here, like, thirty minutes ago.” I hung up and called his cell.

  He answered, “I guess you figured out what happened.”

  “No, I have no idea. Where are you?”

  “I am with security.” He told me what had happened. The English National Enquirer reporter was sitting on a bench by the bathrooms waiting for him and asked him if he was at the hotel visiting Rielle Hunter and if he was the father of her baby. Johnny walked right by him up the stairs and was met by a guy doing weird things with a video camera—not behaving like a normal videographer, but making erratic motions with a small camera, which made Johnny turn around and go back down the stairs and into the bathroom. The reporter attempted to come into the bathroom as he screamed questions, but Johnny held the door closed until a man said, “This is hotel security.” At that point, Johnny opened the door, and the security guy escorted Johnny out of the bathroom (the reporter was no longer standing there), through the gym, and up to the top floor of the hotel.