WAS Bernard Kerik a stalker? As the illicit romance between former top cop Kerik and publishing titan Judith Regan went down the drain in late 2002, the jilted Kerik snapped, according to people who knew them both.
He not only followed his ex-lover around town – he seemed to be following her children, two business associates of Regan’s told me yesterday.
One associate, who has not seen or spoken to Regan in a year and a half, said, “She had me in her office one day, raving about how he was stalking her.” That was in late 2002, long before Kerik came this close to leading Homeland Security.
“He’s insane!” Regan told the associate.
When Regan ate in a restaurant with another man, Kerik called her cellphone, or had the management page her, said the source. Once he got her on the phone, “He’d describe the man she was having dinner with. He seemed to be watching her through the window,” the associate said. He kept a key to her apartment, said another pal, and showed up unexpectedly. On a business trip to Los Angeles, she said, he had her followed.
But what frightened Regan most was a call in which Kerik he claimed to be following her son as he drove back to college in Massachusetts.
“He said, ‘I’m following Patrick. I’m at this exit at the turnpike. I want you to know this is where he is,’ ” the associate recalled.
While the married Kerik has all but acknowledged that he carried on affairs with not one, but two women in his Battery Park love nest – an apartment that had been originally donated to 9/11 rescue workers – he denied stalking.
“These allegations are wrong, absolutely wrong. They’re outrageous,” said Sunny Mindel, spokeswoman for Giuliani Partners, where Kerik is employed. “It begs the question, ‘Why is this coming out now?’ ”
But sources who told me of the stalking say the revelations are not new. People in Regan’s business and social circles talked of Regan’s fear of Kerik more than a year ago.
Regan first took up with Kerik in 2001, as she was to publish his memoir. Months later, she discovered he had another mistress. But the romance ended for good after Regan found out that Kerik’s wife – with whom he wasn’t in love, he told her – was pregnant.
One current friend of Regan’s told me it was impossible to determine whether Kerik was really a threat to her and her family, or if he was just trying to “intimidate, scare and totally overwhelm the woman.”
“Whatever the reason, he wanted her back.”
Like many who knew the pair, the former business associate was stunned when Kerik was nominated to be Homeland Security chief.
“I feel like we dodged a bullet,” he said.
I’ve heard of multitasking, but this is nuts. Kerik had a wife. Two little kids. Two mistresses. A love nest to maintain. A pretty damn important job. And, evidently, a temper.
What else was he up to?