`A WITCH'S BREW' ON PALM BEACH
Outside work, the woman socialized with a large
group of party-loving Palm Beach residents who had grown up together
on the island and whose lives revolved around cocaine, alcohol and a
steady supply of money from trust funds and wealthy parents.
"They are a real witch's brew," said a
former member of the crowd. "Some of them try to climb out of
the pot, but they never make it."
The woman, who dated several members of this group,
moved to Orlando in 1984 and began working in the finance department
of Walt Disney World. But she maintained her social ties to Palm
Beach, driving down from Orlando on weekends to party at 264
Restaurant and other group hangouts.
Cocaine was a staple at get-togethers, several
members of the group said. Peter Burley, who is awaiting trial on
charges of dealing cocaine, told police the woman was one of his
steady customers.
The woman herself told Holmes that she used cocaine
at least once every two months and sometimes twice a week in her
early 20s. She said she used alcohol, marijuana, mescaline,
stimulants and depressants in her midteens.
She stopped using cocaine in her mid-20s but began
using it again "on an occasional basis" after turning 27,
according to Holmes. She told Holmes on April 22 that she had not
used cocaine since Dec. 29.
PREGNANCY AND ABORTION
In 1987, the woman became pregnant by her then-boyfriend,
William Hutchins, an environmental instructor at the Pine Jog
Environmental Education Center in West Palm Beach. In a statement
July 17, Hutchins said he convinced her to obtain an abortion,
despite her initial objections.
"She said that she had been through an
abortion before, and she did not want to go through it again,"
he said.
She eventually had an abortion at a clinic in
Orlando, Hutchins said. Soon after that, their relationship ended.
About the same time, the woman left her job as assistant to Disney
World's director of finance, Gene Lemoine.
"She was extremely hard-working and very
intelligent," Lemoine said. "We were setting up a new
department, and she had responsibility for all kinds of financial and
related activities. She was excellent."
In November 1987, the woman took a bookkeeping job
with a law firm in Winter Park. Terry Duke, a paralegal at the firm,
described her as "a neat person."
"She had a great personality," Duke said.
"Everybody liked her."
Also in 1987, the woman moved into a house her
mother bought for $99, 600 in an upscale south Orlando neighborhood.
"She kept very much to herself," neighbor
Ray Inserra said. "The only time we saw her was when she'd go to
the mailbox. She'd give us a nice wave." The woman left the job
at the law firm in September 1988. Duke said she wanted to devote
more time to English classes she was taking at Rollins College, a
liberal arts college.
A school official said the woman enrolled twice at
Rollins, in 1986 and in 1988. She attended courses in the college's
continuing education division but did not graduate. She earned a
total of 66 college credits.
In September 1988, the woman took a job as an
assistant bookkeeper at the First United Methodist Church on Jackson
Street in downtown Orlando, where she worked for a year.
MOTHERHOOD CHANGED HER LIFE
Meanwhile, she continued to socialize with her Palm
Beach friends. In 1988, the woman began dating Johnny Butler, who
worked for a lumber company his family owned in West Palm Beach that
later went out of business.
Butler, who sells sports equipment at The Sports
Authority on Okeechobee Boulevard in West Palm Beach, is the father
of the woman's child.
Her daughter, who was born 10 weeks premature in
April 1989, changed the woman dramatically, according to friends and Holmes.
"After she had the child, apparently she
changed her whole way of life," Holmes said. "She stopped
going to bars drinking. She turned herself around."
The woman also told police she has volunteered to
counsel couples with premature infants.
"It was time to take on my role as a
parent," the woman told detective Rigolo on April 1. "I
wanted to make sure that all my decisions of being a parent were the
right ones."
Butler, by contrast, was unwilling to help raise
his daughter, and that deepened the woman's resentment of men, she
told Rigolo.
"It was a pretty harrowing experience, just to
feel abandoned while you're pregnant," she said.
`I'M ALL MY DAUGHTER HAS'
A short time after her daughter was born, the woman
moved from Orlando into her house in Jupiter. She took a job at The
Palm Beach Post, where she worked
as a clerk in the newspaper's features department for eight weeks in 1990.
She left that job to take care of her daughter full-time.
"I'm all my daughter has," she said
during the April 1 interview with Rigolo.
In August last year, the woman became pregnant
again by Butler. She told police she decided to have an abortion, her
third, because she couldn't count on Butler's support and because her
doctor told her she could be bedridden for most of the pregnancy.
Since accusing Smith of rape, the woman has spent
much of her time at her mother and stepfather's home inside the
affluent and tightly guarded Loxahatchee Club community in Jupiter.
She has received numerous offers for her story,
including one $500, 000 offer from Paramount in October. But she has
turned them all down.
Her attorney, Roth, says the woman is interested in
telling her story only one place-- in a courtroom.
When she does, her performance will be credible and
convincing, Holmes predicted.
"Everybody wants to think she's a flake and
all that stuff," he said. "But I think she's going to make
a hell of a lot better witness than most people think."
*Kennedy Smith case
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