Asheville News

National Enquirer informant in John Edwards case, who has been living in Asheville, tells story in HuffPo essay

Jason Sandford March 5, 2011

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

John Edwards’ legal problems are heating up. Meantime, more information about his past continues to surface. The Raleigh News & Observer’s Under the Dome column reports:

As John Edwards’ legal saga builds to an apparent climax at a Raleigh courthouse, the woman who tipped the National Enquirer to his affair has spilled the details in a story for the Huffington Post.

Pigeon O’Brien, who has been living in Asheville, describes how she’d been a friend of the woman then named Lisa Druck since the 1980s. After Druck changed her name to Rielle Hunter, and got involved with a man named John from North Carolina, O’Brien found herself keeping an increasingly uncomfortable secret.

From O’Brien’s story on the Huffington Post:

Late in the summer of 2007, the New York Post ran a blind item, clearly describing the affair. A year and a half as a secret mistress is a long time. The train was wrecking. The primaries were heating up. And Rielle was pregnant.

The trickle of calls swelled. My phone rang a lot. It became a daily issue, hiding what I knew. I was a lobster in a pot at full boil, without really knowing when the water had become so hot. Panic attended my movements. I was hounded, wheedled and confronted. I was a wreck.

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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4 Comments

Ash March 6, 2011

Fact Checking, thanks for your question. I had no idea she was living here, but I'm definitely on the case.

Reply
Fact Checking March 5, 2011

Thanks for the link to Clt Observer. Did you have any idea she lived here? Would have made a nice scoop for you. Maybe there will be Pigeon sightings . . .Get your loyal spies working on what she's doing here.

Reply
Ash March 5, 2011

In his story on this topic, Charlotte Observer reporter Jim Morrill offers up the same fact. He interviewed her for the story, so presumably he confirmed that information with her.

Click here to read it.

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Fact Checking March 5, 2011

Huffington Post identifies her this way:
Pigeon O'Brien is a former magazine editor and current publicist and radio promoter. She calls the Hill Country of Texas home.
St Louis Post-Dispatch says this:
O'Brien was a probationary employee at the Post for slightly more than a nanosecond — from June 15, 1998 to Nov. 12, 1998. She now lives in Texas.

Source of N&O's info that she lives in Asheville?

Reply