Staring at Jill Kelley’s $1.3m mansion from the street, it would be hard not to think that this was a person who had made it in life. The vast 1923 brick house is in one of the most fashionable districts of Tampa, Florida, the lawns are perfectly manicured, it has six bedrooms and four bathrooms for [...]

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Lavish parties, ‘outrageous conduct’ and ‘dates’ with an ex-governor

By Daniel Bates
How twin daughters of Lebanese immigrants reached the upper echelons of power and triggered the biggest sex scandal for a generation
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Staring at Jill Kelley’s $1.3m mansion from the street, it would be hard not to think that this was a person who had made it in life. The vast 1923 brick house is in one of the most fashionable districts of Tampa, Florida, the lawns are perfectly manicured, it has six bedrooms and four bathrooms for the hundreds of military guests who used to attend parties there.

Rubbing shoulders: Jill Kelley (second right) and her twin sister Natalie (left) are pictured with David Petraeus, his wife Holly and Kelley's husband Scott (centre) at a party at their Tampa home

A closer look, however, and you notice that the paint is peeling on the outside and wooden chairs at all rather too well worn. The owners have been sued for $4.1m of debts and are, as we found out this week, at the centre of the biggest scandal to rock the military in living memory.

If ever there was a perfect metaphor for the life that Kelley has been living, then her house would be it. A lot of front, in other words, and a hollow, brazen ambition on the inside. Until this week the only view we had to Kelley’s life was that of the outsider, but now we all know what was going on behind closed doors it raise more questions than it answers.

General John Allen, the commander of US troops in Afghanistan, sent her up to 30,000 emails including some which were reportedly of an inappropriate nature. Through her connections, Kelley grew so close to General David Petraeus that she was invited to his daughter Anne’s wedding.

Even the FBI agent who investigated her claims that Petraeus’ mistress Paula Broadwell had sent her threatening emails was so enraptured that he sent her a picture of himself with no shirt on.

So beloved was the ‘social liason’ to the military that all Kelley had to do was give the guard at MacDill Air Force Base a wave of her perfectly manicured hand and she would be let in to fraternise as she pleased.
But no longer – with her access revoked and the scandal in full public view, many are asking the questions they should have asked from the beginning.

What exactly it is about this former mathlete that powerful men cannot resist?

And what is it about her that takes great pleasure in seeing a man in uniform go weak at the knees when she walks into the room?  A look into Kelley’s background reveals that she could not have been more different than how she has ended up. She and twin sister Natalie Khawam waited until their teens at the earliest before embarking on their transition to a more shameless version of the Kardashians.

Kelley’s parents Marcelle and John Khawam moved to Philadelphia from Lebanon in the 1970s, presumably to give a better life to their children, whom they raised as Catholic.

Kelley, now a mother of three, appears to have met her future husband Scott, a cancer surgeon, in Pennsylvania and a decade ago they moved to Tampa, taking in Natalie as a permanent guest in their new home, which they bought in 2004. It was there that Kelley set about turning herself into the to go-to girl for any party that the military put on.

First she had to look the part – out went the t-shirts, jeans and cheap pearls of her high school days. In came designer dresses, high heels, expensive handbags and a new sleek hairstyle instead of her voluminous youthful look.

In also came the guests at her regular parties – Petraeus, General Allen, and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is a close ally of Mitt Romney.

There are even claims her sister, Natalie, dated the former Florida governor, Charlie Crist.It is likely senior FBI officials were also invited to sup cocktails on the lawn and meet the mayor and other local dignitaries.
So good a host was Kelley, 37, that she became ‘honorary consul’ to South Korea, a title with no responsibilities but official enough for her to put on her number plate.

Such delusions of grandeur were apparent when she phoned police in recent days asking for ‘diplomatic protection’ because she was annoyed at journalists knocking on her door.

Meanwhile we now know that Kelley’s world was falling apart.She has been sued by Central Bank for $1.9m for failing to keep up with mortgage payments on a home she bought after starting a property company.
Regions Bank sued her and her husband for $1.8m over the mortgage on another home and filed another claim for $453,000.

Bank of America followed suit for $25,000 of unpaid credit card charges.Then came the sex scandal, which makes her financial problems look like a drop in the ocean. And her sister has had it no easier, even appealing to Petraeus and General Allen to write letters to a judge on her behalf as she fought a doomed battled to win back custody of her four-year-old son

A year ago, the judge had resoundingly denied custody to Natalie, saying he had serious concerns and reservations over her mental stability and her grasp on reality. He also cited her with ‘outrageous conduct’, ‘bad faith litigation tactics’, and ‘illogical thinking’ before awarding full custody to the father – who had been unable to see his child for more than a year.

The New York Post claimed her estranged husband, Grayson Wolfe, won sole custody of the boy after the judge found out Khawam, a lawyer, repeatedly lied under oath and filed false domestic-violence and child-abuse claims against her husband.

She was also accused of defying court orders to allow her estranged husband access to their son and sent emails to his friends and colleagues telling them he was a ‘horrible father and husband’.But Khawam’s troubles don’t just end there. She is also currently being sued in Montgomery County for failing to pay the lawyer’s fees in her divorce – believed to be in the region of $100,000.

The case has been on the court docket for nearly a-year-and-a-half but took a backward step in April when she filed for bankruptcy.

On the bankruptcy filing, Khawam lists $3.2 million in unpaid debt, plus $53,000 she owes the Internal Revenue Service.

Life is a mess for the sisters, but one cannot help but feel that Kelley is the victim of her own misfortune and her own overreaching.

© Daily Mail, London




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