A former driver and aide to former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey yesterday made the bombshell claim that Dina Matos McGreevey must have always known her husband was gay – because he was the other man in bed with them.
In an explosive interview with The Post, the McGreeveys’ self-professed man in the middle, Teddy Pedersen, gave explicit details of three-way sex romps that he claimed to have had with the now-divorcing duo, starting during their courtship and continuing into the marriage.
Pedersen – who said he had already spilled the beans on the ménage a trois arrangement under oath in a deposition for the couple’s divorce battle – hinted that he thinks his presence was required to get Jim’s motor running for Dina.
UPDATE: McGreevey’s Aide: Dina Is in Denial
PHOTOS: Key Players in McGreevey ScandalVOTE: Which sexual scandal is worse, Eliot Spitzer’s or Jim McGreevey’s?
Matos McGreevey’s basic argument in her divorce war with the former gov is that he covered up his homosexuality and tricked her into a loveless marriage. She said today that the stories of sexual trysts were “completely false.”
But McGreevey confirmed the accounts. “This happened, this happened in the past, and now we need to move on with our lives,” he said in an email to the Associated Press.
Pedersen – who is named in Matos McGreevey’s court papers – agreed to talk about the alleged unconventional relationship after Dina sounded off to the media last week about Eliot Spitzer’s sex scandal.
“It’s frustrating to hear her call Gov. Spitzer a hypocrite while she’s out there being as dishonest as anyone could be about her own life,” said Pedersen, 29.
“She’s framed herself as a victim – yet she was a willing participant. She had complete control over what happened in her relationship,” he said. “She was there, she knew what was happening, she made the moves. We all did. It’s disgusting to watch her play the victim card.”
The trio’s trysts started after Pedersen was hired as a campaign driver when McGreevey was mayor of Woodbridge, NJ, the former chauffeur said.
“We called it the Friday Night Special,” Pedersen said. The “intense” escapades, he said, usually began with a “couple of drinks” at a local T.G.I. Friday’s and culminated in “a hard-core consensual sex orgy” between the three of them at McGreevey’s Woodbridge condo.
He said the action also spilled over to out-of-town business trips, during which Pedersen, a handsome, clean-cut Rutgers grad, would share a single hotel suite with Jim and Dina – right under the noses of other McGreevey staffers.
The threesomes began in the late 1990s, while Dina and Jim were dating, continued after their October 2000 marriage, and had ended by the time McGreevey was elected governor in November 2001, Pedersen said. “He liked watching me, and she would watch me while she was [performing sex acts] with Jim,” Pedersen said. “In my opinion, me being a part of their sexual relationship enhanced it for both of them.”
Pedersen, who lives with his girlfriend of several years, said he revealed the sexual shenanigans during the couple’s divorce proceedings only because Dina’s camp subpoenaed him. The former driver said he believes that Dina subpoenaed him as an end-run around her estranged hubby, to see what he would say if he was called on by McGreevey’s side. Pedersen said he believes that Dina never expected him to talk about their trysts.
“I would have kept my mouth shut about this forever, but she subpoenaed me, and now it’s all going to come out at trial,” Pedersen said. He added he expects to be called as one of the first witnesses at the trial.
Details of the lust triangle have been quashed once before, according to a source at now-disbanded Regan Books, which published McGreevey’s 2006 memoir, “The Confession.”
“There was a coy and gentle reference to a third person, but McGreevey took it out because he thought it was unnecessarily harmful,” the insider said.
Pedersen said the threesome started as an “idea” he and McGreevey tossed around during the aide’s long hours behind the wheel for the Woodbridge politician.
“We developed a good relationship – we were colleagues, but we were friends,” Pedersen said, adding that once Dina and Jim’s romance bloomed, she was often in the car with them headed to political events.
“There was a level of comfort that evolved into, eventually, hints of pushing it into this sexual realm,” Pedersen said.
“Jim and I thought we could see if she would go for it – beyond just the hints in conversation.
“So one night, we came in. I went down to the basement bathroom, and when I came up, to my shock, she was basically undressed and on the loveseat with Jim. So I sat on the couch and watched and eventually joined in.
“And that’s how it got going,” he said. “We came up with this nice little formula for making it work.”
Sometimes, the trio took their show on the road, he said. On business trips – including to the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City – they shared one room, leaving others in the entourage baffled, he said.
“It became almost laughable – I would never have my own hotel room,” Pedersen said. “Everyone thought that this was weird, but we’d just brush it off.”
Pedersen’s presence wasn’t always welcomed by Matos McGreevey.
In her 2007 memoir, “Silent Partner,” she recounted her fury when he showed up, bags packed, to drive Jim and Dina to Montreal for the Valentine’s Day weekend in 2000 during which McGreevey proposed to her. Matos McGreevey – who described Pedersen as “a handsome college student . . . one of a crowd of guys in their 20s who always seemed to be around” – said she wasn’t happy when McGreevey told her the young buck was taking them to Canada.
“Was he kidding?” Dina wrote. “I’d really been looking forward to this weekend together. The two of us, not the three of us.
“I dug my heels in,” she continued, recounting that she told McGreevey, “If Teddy is going, I’m not.”
Said Pedersen, who wound up not making the trip, “I think she knew he was gonna propose, and she knew if I went, there was going to be a threesome. She had the decency to say, ‘Let’s make this sort of special’ and just the two of them.”
But the strange relationship continued even after the McGreeveys wed in October 2000, Pedersen said. The Friday Night Special, he claimed, was replaced by a more subdued Saturday-morning routine.
“I’d go to the condo, and usually they’d still be in bed,” Pedersen said. “I’d sometimes go up, sit on the edge of the bed, rub Dina’s legs through the comforter and go from there. Saturdays were a lot more low-key. Things hit their peak before the marriage. Afterward, there was this sort of soft landing, and it eventually tapered off and ended.”
Asked why it stopped, Pedersen said, “In my mind, I figured, ‘Dina’s married. She doesn’t have to play into it anymore.’
“She sealed the deal, she got what she wanted, the nice life, the governor’s mansion, and she would do everything in her power to keep it.”
Neither Dina nor Jim McGreevey returned calls for comment. Lawyers for both said, “No comment.”
In her memoirs, Dina insists she never knew McGreevey was gay.
“Not only would I not knowingly have married a gay man, but I would never have allowed a gay man to father my child,” she said. The former couple has a 6-year-old daughter, Jacqueline.
A former Democratic Party official who knows the couple said he “always suspected something” was going on between Jim McGreevey and Pedersen. But as for the reputed threesome with Dina?
“That’s a complete shock,” the source said. “To be honest, I don’t believe it. She’s not the smartest woman in the world, but I don’t think she’s that stupid.”
Jim McGreevey resigned as governor in 2004 after admitting he was gay and being accused of hiring a boyfriend, Golan Cipel, as his homeland-security adviser. The adviser has said he was sexually harassment.
Jim McGreevey filed for divorce last year. He and Dina are due back in divorce court Thursday.