Melinda Gates’ new boyfriend Jon Du Pre confessed to abusing his first wife in his memoir

Melinda French Gates’ new love interest is rumored to be a divorced father of three adult children who admitted in a memoir to verbally assaulting his first wife, a former Miss Utah.

This week, sources told TMZ that the billionaire philanthropist and ex-wife of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, 58, was dating Jon Du Pre, a former TV news anchor and author, who has been locked in a court battle nine-year-old with his wife on child support, according to public records.

In a recent social media post, the couple’s oldest son, Kasey Du Pre, thanked his mother, Gina Larsen Du Pre, a virtual services account manager at Cisco in Utah, for working hard to raise him. , as well as his younger siblings Jessie and Jonny.

“Gina is basically the Steph Curry of life, which makes things seem so much easier than they are,” Kasey wrote on LinkedIn, comparing her mother to the NBA legend. “While raising three children as a single mother, Gina put all three of her children through college because of her relentless work ethic.”

Jon Du Pre’s own relationship with Gina was turbulent and he verbally abused her even though she was seven months pregnant with their third child in 1995, according to his memoir “The Prodigal Father: A True Story of Tragedy, Survival and Reconciliation in an American”. Family.” According to the book, Du Pre’s rage stemmed from years of abandonment and neglect by his own father, a lawyer and former FBI agent who once spied on suspected Communist Party members in Hollywood during the so-called Red Scare from the 1950s.

“Once she was disarmed and I was charged with explosive rage, she didn’t stand a chance,” Du Pre wrote of the abuse of his first wife. “I got up and ran across the living room to my pregnant wife, and she cowered as I puffed out hot, angry air and unleashed the worst verbal attack she had ever endured. .”

“Welcome to the real world, princess, where not everyone is happy,” he said. “For once, it’s not about you, you spoiled, spoiled bitch. This one is about me. I’m gonna find out why my dad screwed up my life and piss you off for trying to make me feel guilty.

Jon Du Pre grew up in South Carolina in a family that “was plagued with so many problems that we barely made it to school in the morning”. Her father, initially a successful lawyer who took on civil rights cases, cheated on her mother and spent most of his life drinking and debt-ridden. Du Pre writes that he and his two brothers were often so hungry they were forced to eat leftovers left by fellow students on their school cafeteria trays and learned how to break into vending machines at a local YMCA to take out snacks.

He met his first wife when they were both studying journalism at Brigham Young University in Utah in the mid-1980s. The blonde, blue-eyed student journalist won the Miss Utah beauty pageant in 1985 and competed in the Miss America Pageant the following year. Although she didn’t win the crown, “she did win an award for her performance in the talent show, which brought in several thousand dollars in scholarships, and I licked my lips when I saw her. saw in that bathing suit,” Du Pre wrote.

The couple, both Mormons, married at the Salt Lake City Mormon Temple shortly after Gina earned a bachelor’s degree in communications in 1986.

“She got married ‘down,’ thinking she could save me,” writes Du Pre, who worked as a TV reporter in Green Bay, Boston, Phoenix and Salt Lake City during their marriage. “Early in her marriage, she discovered that something was wrong with her new husband, an anger just under the skin that erupted like a burst boil whenever I was corrected or criticized, or even felt inferior by an act of generosity on her part. In our… years together, she had had to be careful. She had learned which of my buttons never to press.

He also notes that “Gina got used to being crushed in arguments, being embarrassed in front of our friends, taking the blame for one little thing that went wrong – the baby’s stinky diaper, the burnt toast, the check without provision. .. I knew the demons from my past were threatening to destroy this new life that meant so much to me.

The memoir – which the presenter promoted on “Oprah” – focuses on Du Pre’s journey to reconcile with his destitute father. He blames post-traumatic stress from his childhood for his outbursts on his wife, and comes to this conclusion after a chance encounter with a psychiatrist on an airplane.

“Thanks to this impulsive yet powerfully accurate explanation of my condition from someone with proven expertise, I no longer had to think of myself as a chaotic mess,” he wrote. “Due to common and well-understood causes, I had developed a recognized mental disorder.”

After reconciling with his homeless father, Du Pre ends his book on a happy note. He tells readers that he and his family live in Ventura County, California, where he worked for the Fox News Network.

“When he’s not covering earthquakes, riots, plane crashes, or presidential elections, Jon spends his time volunteering as a scout leader, Little League coach, cheerleader, at school dance recitals and awards ceremonies, and playing with her kids in the backyard,” according to the “About the Author” section.

But the family did not live happily ever after. In 2005, five years after the book’s release, Gina filed for child support and divorce in a Maricopa County court in Arizona, court records reveal.

Dozens of filings offer insight into a protracted and ugly battle over support for the three children, including custody negotiations and a hearing on an unpaid orthodontist bill. In 2007, court documents show an “urgent/expedited request for a telephone hearing regarding access to spring break.”

It’s unclear when Melinda French Gates, whose divorce from Bill was finalized in August 2021, started dating Du Pre, who now runs her own strategic communications firm in Utah, but they were spotted together in April at a Brooklyn Nets game.

Despite their divorce, French Gates and her former husband continue to co-chair their Bill Gates and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is worth nearly $50 billion, according to public records.

Calls seeking comment from French Gates, Gina Larsen Du Pre, Kasey Du Pre and Jon Du Pre were not returned this week.