While John Edwards‘ political and moral transgressions are now a matter of confessional public record, here’s some facts you may not know about his mistress Rielle Hunter, the mother of their daughter, Frances Quinn.
Rielle’s not her real name: it’s an invention of the woman born Lisa Jo Druck. Other AKAs previously were Lisa Hunter, Lisa Jo Hunter, and Rielle Jaya James Druck before settling on her most famous incarnation.
Druck’s also been married – having wed NY attorney Alexander "Kip" Hunter III in 1991. He backed a play for her in 1995 that she wrote entitled Savage In Limbo.
They divorced a decade later when Rielle entered the "movie business", appearing onscreen with Goldie Hawn as a dancing bikini babe extra (as Lisa Hunter) in Overboard and as "the woman with a microphone" stuck in Denzel Washington’s face in Ricochet . SEE RICOCHET HERE SEE OVERBOARD HERE
A member of high society, her own father, James Druck, was part of a horse murder racket. He concocted a scheme to get insurance money to kill his then 17 year old daughter’s prize filly Henry the Hawk by electrocution. Druck died before federal prosecutions were able to indict him. Reportedly, Rielle never forgave him. (it’s on Wikipedia – look it up!)
Edwards hooked up with 80s literary hot shot writer Jay McInerny (Bright Lights, Big City) who used her as the basis of his character Alison Poole, a "cocaine-addled" and "sexually voracious" character in his novel The Story of My Life. The same character also appeared in Bret Easton Ellis‘ seminal depiction of Wall Street madness American Psycho.
Rielle also appeared as a game show contestant on the quiz show Limbo. She won $500 on the crossword puzzle gamer.
She also has a bizarre connection to Jon Benet Ramsey – her former father-in-law, Alexander Munro Hunter, was the Boulder, Colorado district attorney who led the unsuccessful search for the child’s killer.
Despite testifying before the Federal Grand Jury investigating Edward’s misuse of Presidential campaign funds to pay for the cover-up and conspiracy of silence fostered by former loyalist Andrew Young, Hunter has yet to speak openly about their affair that the ENQUIRER first exposed in an exhaustive series of historic investigative reports.
