John Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, have legally separated, it emerged yesterday — as a slew of cringe-inducing claims about the couple and the former presidential candidate’s wacky baby-mama mistress were revealed.
“I’ve had it. I can’t do this. I want my life back,” Elizabeth told her sister, Nancy Anania.
“I hear peace in her voice that I haven’t heard in a long time,” Anania told People magazine.
John Edwards last night called the separation an “extraordinarily sad moment.”
News of the separation, which under North Carolina law will allow Elizabeth to divorce John a year from now, came as:
* Former Edwards aide Andrew Young told ABC News that within 12 hours of Elizabeth being diagnosed with incurable cancer in 2007, the couple was “openly talking about how her cancer prognosis was going to help them in the polls.” Elizabeth yesterday called that claim “unconscionable, hurtful, and patently false.”
* Young said the couple “openly talked about” using the death of their 16-year-old son Wade in a 1996 car accident as a motivator for his running.
* Young’s new book, “The Politician,” revealed that Listerine heiress Bunny Mellon funneled more than $6 million to Edwards that was mainly used to cover expenses of his mistress, campaign videographer Rielle Hunter. That arrangement has drawn attention from a federal grand jury.
* Edwards had a “fixation” with his “naturally thick and lustrous” hair, on which he lavished $400 cuts and HairTec Thick & Strong Shampoo, which he bought by the case, Young wrote.
* The author also said he had seen a videotape showing Edwards having sex with Hunter while she was pregnant with their baby girl, Frances Quinn. Hunter believed the baby was “some kind of golden child, the reincarnated spirit of a Buddhist monk who was going to help save the world,” the book said.
* John Edwards often called Elizabeth “overly demanding, obsessive, even ‘crazy,’ ” and described her waking him up by screaming directly into his face after learning he had cheated, according to Young’s book.
Young, who is married, originally claimed at Edwards’ behest that he, not the candidate, had fathered Hunter’s baby. That lie came undone after Edwards confessed to the affair in 2008. Last week, Edwards admitted being Frances Quinn’s dad.
Edwards, after spending this past Christmas with his wife and their three kids, moved out of their Chapel Hill, NC, home into an annex on the property known as “The Barn.”
“Elizabeth is moving on with her life and wants to put this difficult chapter behind her,” said a friend, Andrea Purse.