Train Wrecks: McGreevey v. McGreevey

Everything we didn’t really want to know about the former governor and his wife has come out at their ugly divorce trial

Jim found himself a hunky, wealthy boyfriend (Australian financier Mark O’Donnell), moved into a baronial mansion in Plainfield, and announced his plans to serve in the Episcopal Church. (While McGreevey is taking classes at the General Theological Seminary in New York, a school spokesman says he isn’t currently enrolled in a divinity degree program.) All of which has only served to feed Dina’s stewing, brewing anger further, as she sits in her modest Brady Bunch-style house and wonders about What Might Have Been If My Husband Hadn’t Come Out of the Closet. “Jim seemed to have no sense that this was a catastrophe looming in my life and Jacqueline’s as well as his own,” she writes in her book, wryly titled Silent Partner. “There was no compassion, only self-absorption. I had given so much and worked so hard for Jim, and for goals I believed in as much as he did. Nevertheless, soon I would have no home, no husband, no marriage. And throughout all of this, Jim had never once told me he was sorry.”

Today, both of them are unemployed. Both are broke and deep in six-figure legal debt. And both are still dug in, bracing for a possible third phase of their seemingly never-ending divorce trial, this one dealing with Dina’s fraud charge, alleging that Jim tricked her into marrying him. If it proceeds to trial — and Dina wants a jury if it does — Teddy Pedersen will, in all likelihood, be called to testify, setting up yet another wince-inducing stretch for The Girls of Civil Procedure and all the rest of us burned out by and fed up with Jim and Dina McGreevey.

“There’s a rule: Never pick a fight with someone who’s got nothing to lose,” McGreevey’s attorney, Stephen Haller, says. “Jim’s got nothing to lose. He can’t be knocked down further, he can’t be made fun of more, he can’t be denigrated to a lower degree. He has really suffered whatever there is to suffer as a result of this whole business.”

Some of Dina’s friends feel she’s gotten short shrift in media coverage, in large measure because Jim is so much more seasoned in dealing with the press. They also feel that some of Jim’s timing during the case — such as announcing his intention to study for the priesthood the day after Dina’s memoir was published — has been ruthlessly tactical. “The thing about Jim that nobody gets is that Jim acts like if you say it, it’s true,” says one Dina pal who didn’t want to be identified speaking about her. “So at the same time he’s pursuing this incredible vendetta against her, and is passive-aggressive, he will come out and say, ‘We’re all trying to work this out. We all want what’s best,’ when he’s behaving like a prick. The public sees what he’s saying, but not what he’s doing.”

I ask Haller when he thinks all of this will be over, when Jim and Dina will finally let go of their hatred, move on. He doesn’t hesitate. “I think it will be 12 more years,” he says. “Then, Jacqueline will be 18.”