Theresa Duncan "Suicide" - Nancy Jo Sales vs. Melinda Hunt

And now for something completely contradictory, more "funny" business in the handling if information re the death of Theresa Duncan. If she wasn't a target of political murder - like Gary Caradori and the many odd deaths and "suicides" that connect to the Omaha child abuse scandal, including Theresa at the time of her highly-publicized demise - why is there so much deliberate distortion in press reports (including the now discredited testimony of Beck and the oily machinations of Ann Coulter's friend Kate Coe in the LA Weekly) on her "suicide?"

AC's first rule of investigative reporting: THE COVER-UP PROVES THE CRIME.

- AC
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NOTE FROM NANCY JO SALES, AUTHOR OF THE RECENT VANITY FAIR STORY ON DUNCAN AND BLAKE:

FROM: NJSALES@aol.com
Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2007 14:07:43 EST
Subject: Your recent post on Blake and Duncan...
To: editor@somareview.com
CC: fishbowlLA@mediabistro.com, alexx1984@sbcglobal.net

...has several errors and omissions. For starters, the writer, Melinda Hunt, is a former girlfriend of Frank Morales. They broke up right before Duncan died. According to cop sources, Melinda Hunt was not present at the scene of Blake and Duncan's death, as she claims.

At Jeremy Blake's memorial service in Washington, in front of several witnesses, Ms. Hunt accosted me and demanded to talk to me about Morales, for whom she seemed to harbor a lot of sore feelings. I told her to go away. I never contacted her about my article in Vanity Fair. A close friend of Theresa Duncan's informed me that Duncan was not crazy about Hunt, and believed (wrongly, I assume) that she was a member of the Church of Scientology; it was Hunt's connection with Morales, one source said, that put a chill in Theresa and Jeremy's relationship with Frank.

As for my marriage to Frank, it's true, we did have a spiritual marriage, in a ceremony in New York, attended by about 100 people, in 2004.

Unfortunately, we were unable to obtain a divorce from Frank's estranged wife in time for our scheduled ceremony. We continued to try and get the divorce, hoping to become married some time after our wedding. In my early drafts of the piece, I wrote that Frank and I had had a "relationship"; but since it had been reported in the press that we were married, my editor and I thought it would be less confusing to simply say that we were married—which in some circles we were (are gay people who have "spiritual ceremonies" married? It's up to you to decide). Our feeling was that we wanted to fully inform the reader of the extent of our connection. As to whether my having had a relationship with Frank altered my reporting of the piece, of course it didn't. He was a source like any other.

As with any source, everything he said was checked against other sources, through my own reporting and through fact-checkers. He was one of many, many sources interviewed for this piece. I am also not the first reporter in history, I believe, to interview a friend, spouse, or family member. Frank did not seek out access to me, as Hunt claims, but quite the contrary. It took a long time to convince him to talk about his friends. He was very close to Blake and Duncan in their final days, and at the scene of Theresa's suicide, so of course he had special insight into their lives and the end of their lives, which is part of what makes the portrait we were able to draw of them more intimate than others.

Finally, Frank did not "arrange interviews" with Blake and Duncan's family for me, as Hunt claims. I never spoke to Duncan's family, who refused to talk to the press. I had many exchanges with Blake's mother before she would agree to answer a few questions. p.s. According to a close friend of Duncan's, Hunt insisted on coming to Duncan's memorial service in December, to which she was not formally invited. As to the why of that, and the why of her post to you, I leave it up to you to speculate.

Nancy Jo Sales
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MELINDA HUNT'S COMMENTS IN FULL:

Melinda Hunt said...

I was with Frank Morales when he went up into the St. Mark's Rectory on July 10. He was not invited up for a drink. He had invited me to go out for dinner. I was concerned about the police and the ambulance that were trying to get into the rectory on the 11th Street entrance where the stairway was removed for repairs. When we went up using the church yard entrance, the NYPD turned us away saying it was a "crime scene." At that time we did not know that Theresa Duncan had committed suicide.

I asked a police officer outside the rectory when the medical examiner would arrive. He said not for a while. At that point I knew that Theresa was dead because we had briefly seen Jeremy from the top of the rectory staircase.

Realizing the Theresa was a Catholic, I suggested to Rev. Morales that he try to perform last rites so that her family could have a Catholic burial. He went back up and gained access to the apartment and to stay with Jeremy.

In my mind, it is totally unethical for him to have relayed false statements to Ms. Sales following the event or even to have spoken about the details of her death to anyone in the press. Additionally, both Ms. Sales and Rev. Morales were never legally married. Morales is still married to writer Lisa Walker. He was reprimanded by Episcopal Bishop Mark Sisk for representing that he had a "spiritual marriage" to Ms. Sales. The whole Vanity Fair article represents serious conflicts of interest.