Wedding

The Wedding That Never Happened - What Was on Fund's Mind.

Read the affidavit provided by Morgan Pillsbury Gell.  Melinda also found it strange.  Read the emails she exchanged with him during that period. 

The passage of time always provides new information and new understanding for each of us.  "Oh!  Now I get what was going on there," is an experience common  to all of us.

Melinda reluctantly agreed to host a wedding.  She told the couple frankly it had to be small and quiet.  Below is one of the invitations, which were never mailed.  Twenty were printed.  The only invitations emailed were the draft of the text.  That went to John and Morgan, for their approval.  Morgan says she did not send the email on to anyone.  So how did it get out there?  Now we believe John sent it.  Why would he do that?  It was all about having control of information. 

John asked Morgan to move in with him while John Connelly was writing, Sex, Lies, and the Tape.  The timing is everything here. 

When Morgan arrived back in New York on May 1, 2001, she was staying with her very good friend Arthur Prager.  Arthur had become a sort of grandfather to Morgan.  Morgan received her first call from John in New York on May 1st while she was standing in the doorway of Arthur's apartment on Washington Square.  John was hysterically delighted, drunk figuratively and literally.  He was laughing.  He told Morgan, "We ran him out of money.  He dropped the suit."  What Fund was talking about was the suit Sidney Blumenthal had filed against Matt Drudge over the accusation which appeared on the Drudge Report that Blumenthal had battered his wife.

John had told Morgan just two months before, very worried, that he and Drudge had made up the story as a joke.  Their 'joke' had resulted in a defense fund.  Activists and sympathizers from the Freedom Movement sent hundreds of thousands of dollars in defense of Drudge.  No one but a few insiders knew about Fund's involvement.  Morgan was one of those, a fact Fund now had to deal with. 

After that call Fund briefly became more distant, called less frequently for about a week.  Then he started calling again and taking her out to dinner.  They went to oriental places, a rib place, and up scale places.  They went out a lot.  Talk went to politics, Morgan's job search, and her other activities and friends.

Morgan was focused on looking for a job.  She made calls, put in resumes, and through other connections got the promise of a job with a PR agency, to start in the autumn.  She kept looking anyway. 

Then Morgan was contacted by John Connelly, who was writing an article about the scandal over Morgan's early relationship with John and the abortion.  Nothing had been published, but Connelly had picked up the rumor from Deborah Scott, a friend of Morgan's.  Deborah told him Morgan was the woman in the blind item in Page Six.  The item appears on AG Webpages, Number 19.  Rumors began through the rumblings from WSJ employees who had seen the letter faxed by Melinda to Fund when she confronted him on his lies and he began bouncing her emails and not taking her calls. The two had known each other since 1980.  He had told her kids to call him, 'Uncle John."

Morgan mentioned the contact to John, who intensified his contact with her.  Talk of marriage, which had not been mentioned since the beginning of the relationship, resurfaced.  He began talking to her all the time, expressing his concern for her well being.  Fund told Morgan, "it is us against them." 

Why did Morgan agree to be interviewed?  While staying in Ojai, California, earlier that spring Morgan had learned from Lea Dudley Fund was actually having sex with her while she was having her abortion.  Morgan was angry and Fund refused to talk about it.   She was to, "just get over it."  But she couldn't.  It would take Morgan years to dispose of the baby clothes she had bought for her child. 

Morgan agreed to the interview.  She told John why.  He said, "it wasn't what you thought it was."  Fund had told her he was someplace else.  He promised to provide evidence but the evidence did not appear.  Ever.  Anyone who has had a conversation of this kind with Fund has experienced the same thing. 

Fund then asked Morgan to move in with him so they could, 'work on their relationship.'  His real motive was damage control, possible only if he had a hook on Morgan.  He told her he was cleaning up his life, for her.  He apologized about his relationship with Lea, for the mess in his apartment and everything he had done.  That did not last. 

The next several months are here.

The marriage was another hook.  This one intended to allow him to have her institutionalized, shutting her up forever.  That is why the talk of her being crazy started then. 

That is the back story.  Here is the proof both Morgan and Melinda took his offer seriously. 

Below is the invitation, the booking information for the wedding location, the receipt for the wedding cake, and the program.  The program went to Morgan and John so the program could be finished. Melinda can't find the order for the flowers, but it was from Vons as well. Melinda was sewing the dress, and had purchased the material but not yet started cutting when the wedding was called off just a few days later.