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Rielle Hunter’s life reads like a modern potboiler, written with the desire to make a quick buck – a life filled with dishonesty and trickery, reckless immature behavior and shattered unfulfilled dreams.
She has had an eventful past. Her father had her beloved show horse killed to claim insurance money. A former boyfriend used her as his muse, his source of inspiration for the “cocaine-addled, sexually voracious” story-teller of one of his novels. She loved the limelight, wanted to be a star and went to Hollywood, returning a decade letter dejected and despondent, with only a few bit parts to show for her efforts.
She however claims that she is a truth-seeker. “For as long as I can remember, I had a relentless desire for truth,” she had said on her personal website.
In 2006, she met John Edwards in the bar of a New York hotel. There was instant connection between them, Rielle recollects. Barely a few hours later she was spending the night with him in his room.
That was the beginning of a cascade of lies and deception.
It all began with lies to conceal their relationship. Her acquiescing silence, as she watched Edwards sympathetic public posturing of love for his cancer stricken wife, Elizabeth, and their renewed exchange of wedding vows, adding more strength to his image of a family man.
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The lying continued, pregnant with his child she agreed to shield him and prevent his presidential ambitions from crashing to the ground, by allowing his faithful right-hand man claim paternity. Then she calmly listened to Edwards, denying that he could be the father, saying that it was impossible for him to be the father.
She later told Oprah, during her show, that it was a mistake on her part to allow Andrew Young, Edwards trusted and loyal right-hand man to claim paternity. I did it, she said, because I felt his wife would oppose it.
No one knows whether Edwards is telling the truth that he had no idea that the $1 million, he received from his wealthy well-wishers was being used to hide Hunter and keep her away from the media. However, prosecutors say, that not only did he know it, but that he organized the cover-up.
Prosecutors have rested their case, without having asked 48-year old Hunter to testify. Both the defendants and the prosecutors believe that that she erratic and unpredictable and harmful to their respective cases.
Hunter was named Lisa Jo Druck at birth. Her father was a well-known lawyer. She led a privileged life in Florida. She has said that both her parents cheated in their marriage.
She was fond of horses and was especially fond of her show horse, ‘Henry the Hawk”’ which her father had purchased for $150,000. He later had it electrocuted to claim insurance money.
She took her current name in 1994 when she was in Hollywood.
In her early 20’s she met writer Jay McInerney, best known for his novel “Bright Lights, Big City,” in New York. She dated him for many months and he modeled the sexually aggressive narrator of his 1988 novel “Story of My Life” on her.
Edwards despite opposition from his aides, arranged for her to make behind-the-scenes documentaries from the campaign trail. This it is alleged was to allow her to travel with him.
Suspicious aides, reported to his wife and Hunter lost her job. But they kept on meeting surreptitiously and she became pregnant with his child in 2007. Today, Hunter lives in Charlotte with her daughter, now 4. She has spoken little about her relationship with Edwards since his wife’s death.
“Being a person who’s committed to truth and living a life where you’re not hiding, it’s almost like a cosmic joke to fall in love with someone who’s living a big lie,” she said.
