What Really Happened

by Rielle Hunter

  That’s where he was when I called him. Security was going to get him back to his hotel. He was trying to figure out whether he should have security get me out too. I said, “No, I don’t want them to help me out.”

  The security man got him back to his hotel, and Johnny tipped him a few hundred bucks. Clearly that wasn’t enough money to keep him from talking, or maybe the security guy was a Republican, given his interview on Fox News was the first to air on the mainstream media, creating a feeding frenzy.

  Johnny remembers the National Enquirer claimed to have filed a criminal complaint against the security guard, but the cops claimed it was an incident report and no charges were filed. The Enquirer also claimed it had pictures and/or video of Johnny and I leaving the room together and said it had video of me entering the room to see Johnny. Nope. Impossible, because neither event happened.

  Johnny got back to his hotel, and we talked on the phone for at least an hour. Bob called saying that he had found a way out for me, that I should just get dressed and leave my suitcase, walk down the hall to the stairs, and take the stairs all the way down past the boiler, past another door, and then out to the street, where he would be waiting for me. I was not thrilled with this idea because I had not slept a wink. Bob thought that the longer I waited, the more surrounded the hotel would be. My room phone began ringing. The Enquirer still had no idea which room I was in, or the reporter would have been out in the hallway. But I took my ringing phone to mean that it was just a matter of time before they had someone on every floor.

  So I did what Bob suggested. I got dressed, packed everything in my red suitcase, took my purse, and put Quinn in the Baby Björn on my chest with a towel over her head. I took the route Bob suggested and passed two maids on my floor beginning their morning cleaning routine, but no guests—and no reporters.

  Bob was waiting by his car. There was a guy on the street with his back to us, wearing a backpack. I got into the backseat, lying on my back with Quinn on my chest, a towel over both of us. Bob got in and we took off. A car was soon pursuing us. Bob whizzed through traffic, paparazzi in pursuit. This was the first time I’d ever been chased by paparazzi in my life, but, of course, the first thing that popped into my head was a joke. I looked down at Quinn lying on my chest, and said to her, “Who the heck are you, Princess Di? You leave one life and start the next one the same way you left the last?”

  Johnny called from LAX. “Did you get out?”

  “Yes, we’re being chased right now. Bob is trying to lose them. Let me go, I can’t talk right now. I’m lying in the backseat with Quinn on my chest, both of us covered by a towel. This is dangerous. Call me when you land.”

  Bob, race car driver extraordinaire, lost them in Bel Air. He pulled into someone’s driveway behind the hedges. Bob thought we should split up because they obviously knew his car. Given we were in LA and close to my old neighborhood, I called one of my dear friends who lived close to where we were. She was able to come right away. We put Quinn’s car seat in her backseat and Quinn and I got into the car. She drove me over to another friend’s house right down the street from my old house in Benedict Canyon. Quinn and I hung out there until my friend was able to drive us back to Santa Barbara.

  While I was in her daughter’s bedroom changing Quinn’s diaper, Rob my lawyer called to tell me the Enquirer had just called him and told him it was running a story about catching Johnny with me at the Beverly Hilton. “Yeah,” I moaned slowly.

  Rob asked, “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “Sorry, I’m not even home yet. It just happened. Sorry.”

  Minutes later, Fred and Lisa called. “Oh my God, what can we do? How can we help you? Just tell us and we will help you. What do you need?”

  I asked, “How do you know already?”

  “It’s online.”

  They read it to me over the phone. I was horrified.

  My friend drove Quinn and me back home to Santa Barbara. There were no reporters outside my house—yet. They hadn’t figured out where we were living, but I knew it was just a matter of time.

  Johnny told me he and Andrew had spoken, and that Andrew offered up more lies and cover-ups. “Why don’t you just say that I was there?” he’d asked. I stopped listening. I was not interested in any more Andrew Young lies.

  And I flat out told Johnny that if he had anything more to do with Andrew, he was the biggest idiot in the entire world. But that still didn’t stop him. Regardless of how “off” I believed Andrew was, Johnny still loved Andrew and was still considering going through with Andrew’s brilliant idea of creating a new job for Andrew, starting some sort of poverty foundation. It seemed to me (once again) that Johnny was afraid of hurting anyone who he thought was loyal to him or whom he thought loved him. And to me, (once again) that pattern was ANNOYING.

  I believe Johnny finally settled on some crazy story to tell Elizabeth about how I begged to meet with him. There was no hanky-panky because Bob was there the whole time, but I pressured him to meet me because I needed help. Andrew was not paying child support and I needed money. (He hit all of Elizabeth’s preexisting ridiculous story lines—me the gold-digging whore, Andrew the shitty person.) So good naïve guy that he is, Johnny went along with it because he was afraid that if he didn’t, I might go public with our affair.

  The mainstream media frenzy began. ABC figured out where I lived and began parking outside of my house, running video cameras constantly. I became a prisoner in my house. Johnny was thinking it would be great for me to leave the country. I actually agreed with him. I wanted no part of his lies or the media.

  Fred came up with the idea of St. Croix. I had never been so I was on board. Unlike my North Carolina house, I packed up the California house as if I were leaving for good. I didn’t know whether, in fact, I would be returning. During these few days of packing, my computer crashed. No way was I getting it fixed. My house was surrounded by media that hadn’t yet made themselves known. They were lurking, pretending to be people who parked on the road to look at the view, but I could spot them pretty easily.

  Elizabeth was relentless about Johnny doing an interview to tell the truth, as long as it was the truth she wanted him to say! After the interview, when she learned the whole truth, she did everything in her power to keep him or anyone else from talking. More on that later.

  I believed that Johnny doing an interview about our relationship was perhaps the worst idea of the decade, right behind Andrew’s idea of claiming paternity for Quinn. But the pressure was on, not only from Elizabeth but also the media. Apparently, ABC kept claiming that it had a friend of mine who was talking to the network and willing to go on camera.

  I kept saying to Johnny, “There is no friend of mine talking to ABC and willing to go on camera. I know who my friends are.”

  I figured it was probably Pigeon O’Brien again. I called Jay and asked him if he could find out who this ABC chatting “friend” was. He said he was going to ask his friend, Chris Cuomo.

  Apparently Elizabeth was pushing for this interview relentlessly, and Johnny was out-of-his-mind crazy. Every time I talked to him he was someone different on the phone, ranging from expressing these very raw emotions of, “I love you and Quinn so much,” to acting completely detached from me. Clearly it was not the best time to invite a camera crew into his home.

  I wonder if the media had just worked themselves up into a pack of projected anger because they were just so pissed at themselves for letting the story go in December. Everyone now claims to have never bought the Andrew Young story. If that’s true, why didn’t they blow it up back when Johnny was actually a candidate? Why were they so hell-bent on ruining him now, when it didn’t actually matter? It seemed like a total power move to me.

  George Stephanopoulos apparently told Jennifer Palmieri (Elizabeth’s press person/friend) that if Edwards had actually conceived a child while Elizabe
th had cancer, he was a monster. So Johnny got it in his head that people would accept an affair but not that he was Quinn’s dad. His mind took hold of what Stephanopoulos said and wouldn’t let it go.

  My vote was to say nothing, but if he did, tell the whole truth.

  The day before I was set to leave for St. Croix, Fred reminded me that I needed my passport, which was in the hatbox in my North Carolina home. He said he would take care of it, meaning he was going to have someone go into my house, into my hatbox, get the passport, and FedEx it to me. My passport was right on top in the hatbox. I felt fine about having someone retrieve the passport from the hatbox because I believed that private tape of us had been destroyed. We also needed a certified birth certificate for Quinn. Great. I have to leave the house. I put on a hat and got Quinn in the car. By the time I got on the freeway, I was being tailed by paparazzi.

  They were dangerous—cutting people off and driving like maniacs. I got off the freeway—they followed. They weren’t even trying to hide. I called 9-1-1 and the dispatcher directed me back onto the freeway and to the nearest highway patrol station. The 9-1-1 dispatcher stayed on the phone with me the entire drive. When I got off the freeway, there was an officer waiting for me. She told me to turn right, which I did. The van tailing me followed and made a right turn from a left lane. The cop pulled the van over, and I drove away and directly into the highway patrol station behind the building.

  After the van’s driver was ticketed, a highway patrolman escorted me to the county office to pick up Quinn’s birth certificate. He waited and escorted us home. When I got home, he said, “You live in my jurisdiction. My name is Dana. Here’s my card. I’ll write my cell down. Call if you need anything. You see anyone who shouldn’t be here, whatever, I’m happy to do a drive-by whenever you need.”

  “Thank you so much.” I was very grateful for the protection, especially given I had a small child. Most paparazzi get into this weird adrenaline frenzy when they are in pursuit, which can make them oblivious to safety, to say the least.

  Very early in the morning of August 6th, two days before Johnny was set to do the biggest-mistake interview of his life, Fred arranged for a car to drive Quinn and me to an FBO south of Santa Barbara. I talked to Johnny on the phone most of the way. The driver got on and off the freeway at least once to make sure we were not being followed. That’s the other thing you learn about the stalking media: their day doesn’t usually begin before 8 a.m.

  We got on a plane and took off. Quinn’s first ride in an airplane was on a private little plane for just the two of us. We stopped for fuel in a Southern state—I believe it was Alabama—and the FedEx package containing my passport was waiting for me.

  August 2008, right before wheels up—headed to St. Croix.

  It was dark when we arrived in St. Croix. A man named Ricky greeted us at the FBO. He worked for a lawyer friend of Fred’s. Ricky was a St. Croix native and fabulous. He called Quinn “Little Mama.” I don’t know what I would have done without his assistance during our time in St. Croix. He was floored by the way I looked. He couldn’t believe I was the same woman in the pictures. Yeah, not the greatest photos of me, but on the plus side nobody recognizes me, so it’s kind of genius. Ricky handed me an envelope; in it was the latest National Enquirer story with its smoking gun “spy photo.” When I saw it, my heart sank. I recognized the photo immediately, even though it had obviously been doctored. I knew that someone must have stolen it from me but I had no idea who or how.

  Do you have any idea what it feels like to get to a mental place where you no longer trust anyone? You no longer have the ability to talk to anyone about anything, especially not over the phone. We (Johnny, Fred, and I) also wondered if the Enquirer was listening to our phone calls and had some sort of tapping device on our cell phones. We could not figure out how the Enquirer was getting information that no one outside of us knew. Mimi was suspicious that her house was bugged. Mimi and I had long before stopped talking on the phone about anything that would be considered newsworthy about my personal life.

  Ricky took us to our new hotel, The Buccaneer, and after a long search, we finally found the reservation. Fred had put it under another alias as I had requested, but I was exhausted and it had slipped my mind.

  The next morning I woke up feeling very isolated and sad. Our room was dark, which didn’t help my sadness. It was the bottom floor, out of the sun’s path and surrounded by trees. Ricky thought we should move rooms. He went out and searched for a brighter room.

  He found a room that overlooked the pool and the bay. It was much brighter, and despite the fact that the mattress on the king-sized bed was at least seventy years old (Quinn and I sank into the middle of it), it had a large bath, and at least if I couldn’t go outside for fear of someone recognizing me, I could at least watch other people enjoying themselves poolside.

  Traveling with a small child, with no crib and no help at all, is difficult in ways that, if you’ve never had a kid, you would never think about, like where am I going to put her when I go to the bathroom? The car seat winds up being a savior. But your car seat can’t take her for a five-minute walk and it can’t take her into the other room for a two-minute break. I was the only caregiver. My attention to her, my unwavering vigilance in protecting her safety, is never turned off. And after she finally snuggled down and fell asleep, instead of relaxing and a little down time, I was met with the most publicly and emotionally devastating night of my life.

  TWENTY

  She Is Not My Child

  “The limit of every pain is an even greater pain.”

  —Emile M. Cioran

  There was nothing in life that could have prepared me for Johnny’s interview. And as devastating as it felt, life did go on after that. Through my tears and the blunt-force pain I felt rippling through my entire being, I looked down at my sweet girl, who was safe and sleeping peacefully right next to me.

  The entire interview was excruciating to watch. Obviously this was a man who needed serious mental help. Rob Gordon would call after every commercial break and stay on the phone with me, which really helped with my initial shock. The disbelief, pain, and awfulness of it was so multilayered. Johnny denied his love for me, denied his relationship with me (which was ongoing), and made me and my friend Bob, whom I loved so much, seem like blackmailers on national TV, without any regard as to how it would impact Bob or his family. And worst of all, he continued on his path of lies concerning Elizabeth—how great and strong and wonderful she is, how strong his marriage and his love for Elizabeth are, and how much the Lord and Elizabeth have forgiven him. Irritating and painful, yes, but all of that paled in comparison to hearing him say, “It is not possible that she is my child.”

  Nothing—nothing—prepared me for that.

  I watched the man that I loved more than any other man in the world deny our child, the greatest love of my life, his own flesh and blood and, like most people, wondered how could he do that?

  I believe one, he had a twenty-year habit of fixing things by lying about women. Two, he was temporarily insane.

  Here’s the thing: no one who is not off his rocker would do that, especially if he believed he could get away with it. Clearly he was not going to get away with it and he just wanted to stop the pain.

  And as much as I hurt—and boy, I wish that experience on no one!—I also knew he did not need my judgment or anyone else’s. He needed help. Think about it: sane, healthy people do not deny their children, especially on national TV, simply because they are afraid of their abusive spouse’s reaction. Only a mentally off person would do that.

  When Johnny was indicted, I read an opinion piece by Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post, in which her first line read, “John Edwards is pond scum.” All I could think was, “Pond scum? Did he go on national TV and deny the paternity of your child?” I mean, the judgment is unbelievable. A lot of people be
lieve his cheating on Elizabeth and fathering a child while she had cancer was his worst action. Knowing the truth of their decades-long–no intimacy/abusive relationship and being the mother of the daughter he denied, I would beg to differ. Listening to him deny our child broke my heart and obviously confirmed to me that he was in dire need of help.

  I had spoken to him earlier in the day, before the interview aired, as he was scrambling to write some sort of statement. He thought that ABC had screwed them and that some of the content had been leaked, thus starting a media firestorm (talk about ratings for ABC!). However, he told me that he believed the interview had gone well.

  He honestly thought it had gone well.

  This was not a well man.

  After I watched the interview, I told him, “Wow. That hurt.”

  He said, “Sorry, but it didn’t mean anything.”

  It’s very weird to be so disconnected from your public image, which doesn’t remotely match the reality of your life, the way my public image doesn’t as I am writing this. When it’s so far off, it’s understandable how he could get to a place where he gives the public what they want: that public guy, John Edwards, which is not, nor has it ever been, the Johnny Reid Edwards I know.

  Back then I didn’t understand that the way I do now. I didn’t sleep at all that night. And the barrage of, “Who is Rielle Hunter?” was just beginning. What appeared on screen with that terrifying image from the National Enquirer, coupled with what John Edwards himself said in that interview, could make anyone reasonably assume that I was a gold-digging, blackmailing whore, with whom he did not father a child, and whom he did not love. “A serious mistake in judgment” was all I amounted to.