She was Daddy’s little girl – and also his trophy wife.
The rarified world of hedge-fund millionaires was stunned yesterday by the bizarre saga of 67-year-old Bruce McMahan and his long-lost love child, Linda – who were reunited after two decades, allegedly carried on a steamy off-and-on affair for seven years and then got “married” in a hush-hush ceremony in Westminster Abbey.
The strange tale of money, incest and betrayal began innocently enough in 1987 when Linda Hodge, the pretty, blond, adopted daughter of a California couple, decided at age 18 to search for her birth mother.
A firm that specializes in such matters tracked down Myra Westphall, who contacted Linda’s biological dad, McMahan, according to a story published yesterday in New Times, a newspaper in Broward County, Fla., as well as legal papers and video depositions posted on its Web site.
Westphall put father and daughter together and McMahan paid for DNA tests to determine paternity, court documents said.
When they showed he was the father, he was overjoyed. So happy that he wrote a memo to his colleagues crowing, “I found my long-lost daughter,” an employee said.
In 1990, he invited Linda – who fortuitously had changed her name to McMahan – to Greenwich, Conn., where he ran a hedge fund then worth $3 billion.
For years they had a father-daughter relationship. She was studying for a Ph.D. in psychology and he helped pay her tuition and set up a trust fund for her.
In 1998 – when she was 29 and single and he was 63 and married to his fourth wife – things suddenly changed.
She was living, at the time, in her dad’s mansion, and one night he invited her into his bedroom, according to the legal documents, which were generated by five lawsuits stemming from their alleged affair, “marriage” and subsequent break-up.
After telling his daughter they’d been married in a previous life, McMahan observed her legs were “a very sexy version” of his own, one deposition said.
“He asked me what it would be like to kiss me,” she claimed.
It didn’t take him long to find out. The two had a hot and heavy make-out session on her bed, the newspaper said.
So began a sordid affair that reached its peak in June 2004, when the two went to London for their storybook “wedding.” They made the trip even though in 1999, during one of the breaks in her affair with McMahan, Linda married someone else, a man named Sargent Schutt. McMahon toasted the happy couple at their wedding.
In 2002, McMahan began his own affair – with a Ukrainian woman named Elena who would eventually become wife No. 5, the legal papers say.
But two years later, McMahan, who had separated from Elena, became a couple again with Linda.
It’s not clear whether the “marriage” ceremony at the famed abbey in London was meant to be official, or just symbolic. Records in London are murky on whether the person who officiated the ceremony had a legal right to do so.
But they exchanged rings and considered themselves married, legal papers said and the New Times reported.
Christmas that year was complicated for McMahan.
Fearing scandal, he couldn’t spend the holiday exclusively with the brand new “bride” he’d “married” just six months earlier. So he spent it with relatives, including Linda, who no one knew was his secret “wife.”
Even from their first kiss, McMahan had been aware of the dark depths of his forbidden feelings.
He e-mailed Linda in 1998, writing, “Such passions lead men straight to Hell,” the newspaper said.
In another e-mail, just after their “marriage,” he wrote, “Miss you . . . think nasty things about you all the time.”
Linda responded a couple of hours later: “Mmm, yeah, nasty is so good. You must have read my mind. What else can we say . . . That’s the beauty,” the newspaper reported.
But just a year after the “wedding”, the “honeymoon” came to an abrupt end when Linda announced she’d no longer sleep with her sugar daddy, according to legal papers.
She testified in one of the suits that he was furious, telling her, “I am going to pre-emptively destroy you. If you want to know how I am going to do it, meet me for lunch.”
It’s not clear if the luncheon ever took place.
But two months later, McMahan filed a lawsuit against Linda – who he had named a top executive in his financial empire – claiming that she not only had stolen his firm’s trade secrets, but also its computers.
She countersued, saying he still owed her salary checks.
Schutt also sued, charging McMahan had wrecked his marriage.
Then McMahan sued Schutt, Schutt’s father and Linda, claiming they tried to extort $10 million to keep a lid on the scandal.
All the various lawsuits were settled and sealed two weeks ago.
McMahan filed for divorce from Elena in July 2005, and that case is still pending.
Linda is now dating a psychologist named Shani Robins and they’re expecting their first child in January, the newspaper said.
In a statement, a representative for McMahan said, “This was a family dispute and, as is the case with many family disputes, charges were made in the heat of the moment with little thought given to the pain they might unfairly or unjustly inflict.
“All of the parties involved and their counsel sincerely hope there will be no further media coverage of this family matter and have agreed to make no additional comment about the resolution of their differences.”
In court papers, McMahan has insisted he never had a sexual relationship with Linda and questioned whether she was really his daughter.
This despite the results of the DNA tests, which showed a 99.7 percent probability that he was her father, documents said.
The papers also say his DNA and hers were on a vibrator that Schutt found in her suitcase.
McMahan’s hedge fund is now worth $2 billion – and he’s one of the wealthiest men in the country.
During their affair and “marriage,” McMahan was more than generous with Linda.
The newspaper said she admitted her job as vice-president of marketing for her dad’s company was basically being a companion to him.
“My fancy title with Argent [the name of the hedge fund] is not an accurate representation of my employment,” she has testified.
“My salary was only $12,000 a year, whereas most of my resources were in the form of personal gifts from my father.”
Legal documents say that from 2004, when they were “wed,” to 2005, when she ended their alleged affair, McMahan gave her gifts worth about $650,000.
They included $230,000 worth of cars and $25,000 in pocket money.
Prior to the split, the couple had spent much of their time together at his $6 million retreat on Fisher Island off Miami.
And they took lots of trips north – on one of them she racked up a $74,000 bill at Barneys, legal papers show.
As the relationship deteriorated, she says she had a tough time adjusting.
In an affidavit, she wrote, “This was a difficult, if not unbearable, time of my life, as I continued to be abused and subservient to McMahan’s sexual demands while at the same time I had lost any semblance of my marriage with Sargent.”
McMahan had been born into a wealthy family that owned a prosperous furniture-store chain.
He always dreamed big.
Once, he even wanted to start his own country, colleagues said.
After graduating from the University of Southern California in 1960, he planned to sink a mothballed World War II ship off the California coast.
Then he’d pile on concrete, clay, landfill and garbage – to create an island outside American territory.
There, he and his partners were going to corner the world market on abalone fishing – and not have to pay a penny in taxes.
The plan never got off the ground – and it’s not mentioned in his official biographies.
After bumming around Europe for six years, he washed up on Wall Street, at PaineWebber. He later moved to Bear Stearns where he became a partner.
He branched out on his own in 1980, when he started his own trading firm and fund.
He had six children with his five wives. Plus, of course, Linda, the love child.
One of his legitimate daughters, Alison McMahan, told New Times she never trusted Linda.
“All I can tell you,” she said, “is that nothing Linda will tell you can be believed. She’s an unreal person who does not even know herself.”