Archive for category: Infidelity Information

(CBS) For Kristen Stephens, voices of her father, Dr. David Stephens, bring back a lifetime of memories and voices from the past.

But Kristen could never have imagined how it all would end.

“How can this happen to an everyday apple-pie family,” she says. “There are the kind of things you read about in the headlines or see on TV. These types of things don’t happen to you. And I just can’t fathom how one person can have such a huge impact on an entire family.”

She’s talking about Stephanie Stephens, her stepmother, whom Kristen says tore her family apart and murdered her father.

“I hate her. I wish her nothing but ill will,” says Kristen. “I think she is an evil person.”

“I’m a good person. I care a lot about other people, and those people that are closest to me know it,” says Stephanie. “It’s just, unfortunately, the bad decisions that I’ve made have been public folly.”

But in the sleepy town of Hattiesburg, Miss., what happened to this prominent surgeon was the stuff that scandals are made of. Correspondent Harold Dow reports.

Both Stephanie and David were married when they first met. She’d landed a nursing job at the heart clinic Dr. Stephens had founded. For him, Hattiesburg was home for more than a decade. He had been married to wife Karen for 34 years, and they had two children: Kristen and Allen.

Before long, Stephanie, a married mother of two daughters, says she began to fall for the man behind the surgeon’s mask: “We both felt like we were in love and talked about it. And neither one of us were willing to leave our partners.”

The couple began an affair and their secret trysts continued for years – until their affair was discovered in 1995, when Stephanie decided to call Dr. Stephens’ house.

“My mother had answered the phone,” recalls Kristen, who says that her mother suspected her husband was cheating, but didn’t know until then, with whom. Now, she was devastated. “She got a gun, then she ran out into the driveway with it in her mouth and called his name, wanting him to turn around and look at her — to see how desperate she was that she could not tolerate him leaving her. And she tripped and the gun went off.”

Karen Stephens was rushed to the hospital with a gunshot wound to the head. For three months, she lived in a coma, until one night, she died. It was ruled a suicide.

“I knew that it was very important that if I wanted to keep my father, I needed to let him know that I forgave him for that,” says Kristen. “And I couldn’t be angry with him, because I knew from his voice, from the words that he used to talk to me about it, that he felt enormously guilty.”

Stephanie says she felt guilty, too: “I did contribute to her death by having an affair with a married man, and the consequences that go along with that … It was several months before I could look at myself in the mirror! It was painful.”

But she and David seemed determined to move on. Months later, right in front of the Stephens’ home, where Karen had shot herself, the couple were married. “I thought it was too soon,” says Kristen. “I accepted the marriage, but it didn’t mean I had to like Stephanie.” Stephanie says she was a loving wife, and stuck by her new husband, even when he fell seriously ill in the summer of 2000.

“He was diagnosed with Hepatitis C and was in liver failure … And was on the liver transplant waiting list. And he also had diabetes,” says Stephanie. “The thought of having a long-term illness to a surgeon is unthinkable. He talked about not wanting to go through having a liver transplant.”

“She didn’t care how he died, as long as he was dead,” says Kristen, who claims that Stephanie never loved her father – only his money.

On May 1, 2001, Kristen discovered that her father had died in his sleep. “I was extremely shocked that he had died,” says Kristen, who left her home in North Carolina and rushed to Hattiesburg, suspecting foul play. “When I entered the bedroom, I knew immediately, she’d done something to him.”

She says Stephanie was acting strangely: “On the bed were all of my father’s financial documents. Who would be reading that sort of stuff, not even 24 hours after their husband died?”

”There’s not a day that goes by when I don’t think of him,” says Stephanie.

But Kristen believes Stephanie is responsible for her father’s death: “I shoved her up against the wall, and I stared her right in the face and I said, ‘You killed my mother…and you killed my father…and I hope you rot in hell, you bitch!’” David Stephens was chief of surgery at Hattiesburg’s Forrest General Hospital. He was on the board there, and at the university in town.

Stephanie admits she is guilty of adultery, but not of murder: “Just because people don’t like me, doesn’t make me a killer.”

In fact, Stephanie says her life has been like a Greek tragedy. Soon after she married David Stephens in 1996, she was crippled in a car crash. After Stephens’ death, the dream house they built together was robbed.

And now, with Kristen Stephens contesting her father’s will, Stephanie says it’s hard to make ends meet. She has no car, and no phone. But it’s been the loss of her friends that’s hurt the most.

“The truth keeps me going. That, and my daughters,” says Stephanie, whose daughters live nearby with her first husband. Krystal, 16, is Stephanie’s only real link to the outside world. “They’re the reason that life goes on. It’s hard to stay focused on a reason to live.”

Stephanie says that before David died, he was feeling the same way. Even with almost a million dollars in a retirement fund, she says they worried about their future: “It was tough. We had gone from, you know, making a full surgeon’s salary to disability.”

By the spring of 2001, David was weak and disoriented – and rarely slept through the night. On the night of May 1, Stephanie says he tossed and turned for hours, and fell asleep around dawn.

“I woke up and when I sat up in bed, I saw him. He was purple in the face and I got up and ran around the side and pulled the covers back, and he was blue and not breathing,” recalls Stephanie. “It was obvious he was dead and had been dead. He was cool. I just laid there and cried. Put my head on his chest and cried.”

Coroner Butch Benedict was on the scene: “When we first got there, it appears to be that he died in his sleep.”

David was lying on his back, arms crossed on his chest, his insulin pump strapped to his side. Benedict says he thought he had an open and shut case, until Stephanie opened her mouth and seemed in a hurry to remove the insulin vials from the pump.

This made Benedict suspicious. When he ran blood tests on the body, he said “there were chemicals in his body that shouldn’t be there.” He contacted Hattiesburg Det. Rusty Keyes, who started digging deeper into the case.

“The fact is that he died, whether accidentally or by his own hand, that’s a question I’ll never know the answer to,” says Stephanie, who claims that he was ill and depressed at the time of his death.

“He was not depressed. Stephanie wanted people to think my father was very sick because it was convenient for everyone to think he was very sick, because they wouldn’t question when he died,” says Kristen, who plans to help Keyes unmask a murderer.

“Stephanie wanted to live the life of a socialite. She had the fancy house. She had the nice cars, the best clothes,” says Keyes. “She wanted it easy. She wanted it through Dr. Stephens’ hard work … This man was murdered, and I was going to prove how.”

“The time that I spent with David was so good that it’s hard to deny that that was the best years of my life,” says Stephanie Stephens, who insists she has no idea how her husband died next to her in bed. “You never prepare yourself for when you wake up and your husband’s dead.”

But Kristen, David’s daughter, doesn’t buy her story: “She knew when she married my father he was sick. I don’t think that he died quick enough for her, is what the problem was.”

Kristen says Stephanie was counting on people assuming David Stephens died of natural causes and never thought coroner Butch Benedict would do a blood test on the body.

“There was a chemical in his blood that was usually given by an anesthesiologist,” says Benedict, who discovered Etomidate, an anesthetic, in his system. “So where did that drug come from because it should not be in his system?”

“First, we had to find out how he could have gotten this etomidate in his system. That’s all we had,” says Hattiesburg Det. Rusty Keyes. “She [Stephanie] didn’t have any idea how this drug got into his system. and she didn’t even know what the drug was.”

But Stephanie allowed police to search the house, and Keyes says he discovered some interesting things. “I found that he was a diabetic, and that he was on an insulin pump,” says Keyes. “It was obvious that we had to exhume Dr. Stephens, to prove exactly how he died.” More tests produced more questions. There was another drug in Stephens’ body, called Atricurium, used to relax muscles during surgery while patients are on life support.

But without life support, Keyes says it will “totally paralyze your heart, your lungs, and you will die.” In fact, he says these drugs act so quickly that David couldn’t have possibly injected himself and cleaned up afterwards.

“That told me lots that somebody cleaned up, so then I knew then that I had a homicide,” says Keyes, who also discovered a piece of paper – one that said that every year on May 1, David Stephens’ Metlife pension fund mailed him an option to cash out for almost a million dollars. David had always signed the form, checking the box that declined to cash out.

But in 2001, Keyes noticed that David Stephens’ signature was on the form, and the cash out box was signed. The form was dated April 30, the day before he died. On that date, Metlife hadn’t even mailed the form out yet.

“Somebody wanted his money,” says Keyes. “Somebody wanted to continue living the lifestyle they were accustomed to.”

HERE I STAND
By Geronimo L. Sy

IS man really polygamous by nature? Our everyday experience seems to say yes, without a shadow of doubt that man is incapable of undying love and unending fidelity. The broken families, the annulments and separations, the changing of boyfriends and girlfriends are all the signs and evidence around us that establish the case to be so.

Let us take the case of a married man and analyze him in a spectrum of fidelity, rather, one of infidelity. He may be a good provider to his family and is there for the members for the important occasions. He helps out with chores, works hard and shops with the wife. His weakness is when he goes out with the boys, they could end up in a massage parlor which offers more than the usual spa. There is no commitment of any kind and is simply a transactional relationship. Most women might turn a blind eye on this and shrug it off as man’s need. The next level will be that he and his regular barkada purposely go out for a one-night fun. There is still no commitment and the relationship may or may not be transactional. The difference now is the intent of the husband. That he goes out and gives in to peer pressure or he purposely seeks out temptations of the flesh. Many women may understand this and attribute it to the need for diversion as long as he comes home.

The next step (not that it connotes a regression or a progression) is when a husband fools around with a casual girl. It is not a one-time thing but could go on for a brief period of time. The thrill is in the escapades is his mindset. This is exacerbated if the girl happens to be a coworker or his secretary. Now, most, if not all, women will no longer be sympathetic to this situation since it is definitely not a temporary thing. There is a certain measure of frequency or regularity that involves the realm of feelings. And women can be most jealous in this arena. Pure lust they may understand, but when it involves emotions or a dose thereof, it’s a totally different ballgame.

The last range is when the husband maintains a girlfriend or a mistress. This can be done by supporting her financially to the extent of providing another house complete with driver and maid. Binahay—it’s called in the vernacular. By this time, the matrimonial relationship is clearly on the rocks and nerves are frayed. There is no doubt that the husband is cheating on his wife. He may choose to leave his legitimate family and totally abandon them for his new love. This is the final end of the range of infidelity, of disloyal behavior.

It is not to be understood that when a husband goes wayward even for an instance, he is not already a cheater. The social reality is that such morality is not condemned. (Though having multiple partners nowadays is not an ostracizing factor either.) It means that in the spectrum of fidelity, there are numerous factors that come into consideration like the number and age of children, the status of the family, the personal dynamics of the spouses and the support groups that explain why the husband strayed.

Of course and to be fair to mankind, the above acts of infidelity are equally applicable to women—from trysts with past lovers or drivers to relationships with officemates and bosses. Welcome to the real world where men and women are equal in this respect.

The package of responses of the innocent spouse is directly related and proportional to which part of the range the husband falls under. It may be one of being indifferent or choosing to ignore the issue, to the point of fighting with flower vases, filing cases against each other and up to shooting the other. Indeed it is a sad reality that for two people who fell in love deeply and swore to be together no matter what end up hating each other more than anyone else in the world and for life at that.

Come to think of it and especially in the spirit of Christmas, there cannot be a spectrum of fidelity. Fidelity requires one constant continuous act of loving and being present and does not brook any excuse for polygamous nature regardless of its social acceptability. Any deviation from the purest form of love does not do justice to our commitment. Either spouse should not agree to anything less. There is, however, in fact a range of infidelity that man or woman can be both guilty of. Man is inherently weak and prone to err although we can choose to forgive a repentant heart. Thus, amid the furtive glances and full-blown scandals, it is a challenge for us in these modern and interesting times to stay true to our word and to our bond, to stay in love and to always keep the faith. Merry Christmas!

High-tech products or simple clues can provide answers

By Pat Burson
Newsday

Wilfred McNeil/The Clarion-Ledger

You’re reading the newspaper, and your husband or wife could be cheating on you at this very moment.

Not possible, you think?

Of the 19,000 U.S. adults responding anonymously to a national survey about their sexual behavior between 1991 and 2004, 13 percent of women and 22 percent of men reported having a sexual partner other than their spouse while they were married, says Tom W. Smith, director of the General Social Survey at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. Although the figures remained relatively stable for men throughout that time, Smith says the numbers for women fluctuated between 11 percent and 14 percent, indicating a “small but clear upward trend.”

So, how can you be so sure they are — or aren’t?

Relationship and infidelity experts, private investigators, technology specialists and divorce attorneys say if you know the subtle and not-so-subtle signs to look for, they’ll point you to the answer.

You can put your five senses to work. Or you can shell out hundreds — or thousands — of dollars to hire a private detective. You can also invest in the newest high-tech products on the market — computer spyware, electronic tracking devices, in-home evidence-gathering kits among them — in an effort to catch cheating mates.

David Vitalli, a private investigator and chief executive of Tru-Test Forensic and Applied Sciences Corp. in Newburgh, N.Y., says that recently his company began marketing a patented home evidence-collection kit that will help spouses detect with 100 percent accuracy whether their mates have been intimate with someone else.

The kit contains an ultraviolet light that will detect stains on your mate’s clothing that are normally impossible to see or feel. Protein and enzyme formulas included in the kit also will identify the presence of bodily fluids. And if you require further proof, you can mail specimens you’ve collected in an enclosed envelope to a laboratory for testing to determine whether they match your DNA, your mate’s — or someone else’s. The kit costs $79.95 (1-877-362-9900 or www.trutestinc.com). Sending specimens for laboratory DNA testing will cost at least $500.

Suspicious spouses also are now using global positioning systems, or GPS, to track their mates’ whereabouts.

Larry Wasylin, vice president of sales and marketing for Magnolia Broadband of Bedminster, N.J., has seen it firsthand in recent months during business trips to Asia. In one instance, he says, he was dining at a restaurant when a colleague pulled out and stared at his cell phone.

“I said, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘I’m looking to see where my wife is.’ She was picking up the kids from an after-school program. He said, ‘She’ll be home in about 30 minutes.’ They’re marketing it right now under a brand iKids,” he adds. ‘The idea is it allows parents to ensure the safety of their children. … It’s not confined to children. People like to know where their spouses are.”

Cell phones that capture video can do the same thing, he says, allowing a private eye to tape your mate and then stream data to you.

Special to The Clarion-Ledger

To Ruth Houston, the New York author of Is He Cheating on You? — 829 Telltale Signs (Lifestyle Publications, $29.95), gizmos and gadgets won’t tell the whole story. For example, she says, GPS will tell you where they are but not what they’re doing or with whom. Spyware on your computer will tell you the content of the e-mails going back and forth, but there is information you still will not be able to detect, such as the seriousness of the relationship or the identity of the other person.

“You don’t need a lot of gadgets,” says Houston, who has been researching infidelity for more than a decade since discovering her ex cheated on her. “If you know what to look for, you can find countless signs of infidelity using only your eyes, your ears and your personal knowledge of your mate. The key is knowing what to look for.”

That involves being tuned into your mate’s work habits, daily schedule, and likes and dislikes, Houston says. “Then you can zero in on what’s happening. You will see changes across the board. There will be things you pick up in their conversation, personal hygiene, how they relate to you, personal behaviors, changes in all those areas,” which she lists on www.infidelityadvice.com.

Some focus on obvious signs (lipstick on the collar, coming home late) and overlook the subtle clues, Houston says. For instance, your spouse takes a sudden interest in things, like volunteering to take over paying the monthly bills — a job you’ve been doing — to give you, he or she says, a much-needed break.

“You say, ‘That’s nice,’ but maybe he doesn’t want you to see the bills and what he’s been spending his money on,” Houston says.

Don’t confront your spouse with only your suspicions, some say. Go with proof. Ultimately, Karinch says, you have to ask yourself which outcome you want. To catch your spouse in a lie? To salvage your marriage? To get a big divorce settlement? To hear he or she is deeply sorry?

Some men cheat on their partners. So do some women. Now researchers say it is more than a wandering eye that might cause a woman to stray.
Maybe Diane Lane couldn’t help being Unfaithful it could have been her biology talking.

Feelings of lust actually may be rooted in women’s biology, according to a small study of 38 college women to be published online Wednesday in the scholarly journal Hormones and Behavior.

Studies from the University of California-Los Angeles and the University of New Mexico-Albuquerque suggest an evolutionary tendency toward infidelity during ovulation, which is the most fertile part of the menstrual cycle. The studies suggest the propensity is more likely if women don’t view their partners as sexy.

“Something biologically wakes up around high fertility and says, ‘Is your romantic partner the best sexual partner for you, given that you’re likely to conceive?’ ” says Martie Haselton, assistant professor of communication and psychology at UCLA’s Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture.

Along those evolutionary lines, men more than women desire a variety of sexual partners because genes carrying that trait were passed along in men, Haselton says.

Women tend to be choosier, she says.

Previous research has found that women at midcycle report greater sexual attraction to men other than their partners. That is a result of the ancestral belief that good looks often equal good genes for offspring, so although the partner may be a good long-term mate and represent sought-after qualities in a father, a more physically attractive man may spark desire in ovulating women, she says.

“Those with stable but relatively unattractive guys are particularly attracted to other men at midcycle,” says Steven Gangestad, a psychology professor at New Mexico who helped analyze the data. “If a sexy guy is the primary partner, they don’t show the effect. This is about the men.”

Women don’t intend to feel attracted to others, Haselton says. “It’s a natural thing for women to kind of look around, and every once in a while to feel attracted to someone other than their partner. It does not mean the relationship is in peril.”

Study subjects completed questionnaires every day for 35 days in which they assessed their feelings and experiences as well as reporting how their partners behaved toward them. Most, but not all, reported having a partner.

Gangestad says men who aren’t necessarily tuned in to their partners’ cycles somehow are still aware that their ovulating women might stray. During such times, unattractive men were more attentive and possessive, but attractive guys didn’t shift their behavior, the women reported.

A second study involving 43 coeds who report their feelings during high and low points of fertility supports the findings.

Because both studies are small samples of students in relationships of varying seriousness, Gangestad says, the findings can be generalized only to the college population. Further study would be needed to say whether the findings apply to married couples or those in longer-term relationships.

“Haselton is not saying, ‘Go fool around on your guys in the middle of the month,’ ” says Daniel Fessler, director of the UCLA center. “She’s saying, ‘Women have changes in what they’re attracted to in ways that are predictable.’ “

Written by Burt Prelutsky
Friday, November 18, 2005

Not being religious, I don’t feel comfortable discussing other people’s sins. Even where the Ten Commandments are concerned, I’m probably only batting about .650. However, one of the thou-shalt-nots I seem to take more seriously than a lot of other people, including those in the church-going crowd, is number seven on the hit parade, the one dealing with adultery.

Having been divorced twice, I recognize that all marriages are not made in heaven. Some, in fact, seem to have been cobbled together in Dr. Frankenstein’s basement. Speaking from experience, there are perfectly good reasons for certain unions to be dissolved. But, for the life of me, I cannot come up with a single decent excuse for adultery. Frankly, I regard adulterers as lying, contemptible, sleazebags. I can’t begin to imagine how they live with themselves, let alone their mates. Even the terminology is distasteful, unless, unlike most of us, you don’t mind being a cheater.

I recall hearing that Chicago’s mayor, the late Richard Daley, who was one of the last of the big city bosses, when once asked why, with all the women available to him, he remained faithful to his wife, replied, “If I can’t keep my word to my wife, why should anybody else trust me?”

Now the story may be apocryphal, and, for all I know, Mayor Daley may have been a worse hound than Bill Clinton, but the point is still a good one. If before man and God, you pledge your troth, and, first chance you get, you hop into the sack with someone you’re not married to, you’re nothing but a four-flusher.

What truly confounds me are cheating couples who eventually wind up married to each other, and are then astonished that their partner is now cheating with somebody new. Anybody who believes they are so special, so beautiful, so fascinating, so charismatic, that they can trust their adulterous spouse to remain faithful is not only terminally narcissistic, but more gullible than the hayseed who pays good money for the deed to Brooklyn Bridge.

After giving it some thought, I am convinced that there are motives for adultery that have little or nothing to do with sex. I believe the first of these is based on resentment. Either the husband or the wife feels neglected because kids, work, hobbies, or booze, seem to have supplanted them in importance. The adultery not only provides them with a temporary ego-boost, but it gives them the feeling that they’re extracting a measure of well-deserved revenge. That is why after the initial excitement of the illicit affair wears off, the adulterer begins to resent the fact that his or her mate doesn’t even suspect anything. Their attitude often changes from one of “Oh, aren’t I the clever one to be pulling the wool over the fool’s eyes!” to “The damn fool doesn’t notice because he/she doesn’t think I’m sexy enough to attract anybody.” Ultimately, it’s vanity, rather than a guilty conscience, that leads them to confess all.

Another reason that people risk destroying their marriages, hurting their children, and damaging their reputations, is because their lives are so darn boring, and I’m not even referring to their sex lives. The truth is that most people live lives, not necessarily of quiet desperation, but filled with tedious activities spent with boring, mind-numbing, dullards. What makes it even worse is that every time they turn on television or pick up a magazine, they’re confronted by gorgeous celebrities, male and female, living the way they’d like to–a mad whirl of parties and premieres, vacations in exotic locales, private jets, limousines, servants, and, yes, tacky affairs. Well, chum, with your income, your humdrum job, and your ordinary looks, you can forget about everything on the list except that last item. But even you can meet George or Helen the second and fourth Tuesdays of every month at the Bide-a-While Motel.

And aren’t you, for about an hour or so, every bit as sexy and glamorous as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie? Sure, if you say so.

But when you drive home afterwards, saddled down with a load of guilt and self-contempt, can you honestly say the lay was worth the lie?

About the Writer: Burt Prelutsky is a humorist, movie reviewer, writer for television series and movies, and author of the new book, “Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From San Francisco.” His website is at http://burtprelutsky.com. Burt receives e-mail at BurtPrelutsky@aol.com.