SYLVIA KINARD once vowed to love Bill Thompson for ever.
But while married to Thompson — who’s now the city comptroller and presumptive Democratic mayoral nominee — she didn’t expect him to suddenly say he wanted to date other women, let alone go on to marry one of their wedding guests.
And she certainly didn’t think he’d later set her up in a bizarre “Three’s Company” situation — making her live under the same roof with his first ex-wife for nearly a year — while he divorced Kinard.
Is that any way to treat a lady?
Sylvia Gail Kinard met William Thompson Jr., the son of a judge, at Brown Memorial Baptist Church in 1987, the same year he filed for divorce from his first wife. Bill was deputy Brooklyn borough president.
Bill and Sylvia did not start dating right away. But Bill tracked down Sylvia through another member of her church. Twelve years later, they wed.
Sylvia wore a flowing, white gown and a grin as wide as Brooklyn when she became Bill’s second wife in a lavish church ceremony in 1999. She thought the love would last a lifetime.
But things started crumbling a year after Bill became comptroller in January 2002.
“I wasn’t sure if he was going through a midlife crisis, stress of a new job. I was willing to work on it. You hit a bump in the road, you don’t just bail out,” Sylvia said.
By 2004, “he was starting to stay out. He was on trips longer than he should have. It was an issue of contention.”
“Of course, I asked him if he was having an affair. He never acknowledged that he was; he never acknowledged that he wasn’t.
“We did not have an open marriage. We did not have an arrangement.”
Things finally came to a head, she said, when her husband rocked her world by telling her, “I want to date other women.”
She suggested marital therapy.
Bill replied with a curt letter — from his lawyer, Saul Edelstein — in October 2004, asking Sylvia to come to his law office for a conference about her “marital situation.”
“That’s how I found out,” Sylvia told me bitterly — speaking publicly for the first time, ever, about her disastrous only marriage.
“That’s his way of telling me he wants a divorce. I was shocked. He didn’t even want to have a conversation about it.”
Then, she said, things got even worse.
Bill began moving out of the Bed-Stuy house in late 2004, and Sylvia remained.
As the couple hit divorce court in 2006, Bill moved his first wife, Angela Jeter, into the house in which Sylvia still lived, creating what one friend described as a bizarre “Three’s Company” situation. Angela, who was ill at the time, lived in an apartment upstairs, she said.
Sylvia and Bill’s divorce became final in 2006.
And just when she didn’t think things could get weirder, Sylvia said, she was moving some belongings from the house when Bill changed the locks in 2007.
This set in motion a series of nasty court battles that extended into 2008 — in which the couple fought like wolves over possessions, including an old credenza that, Sylvia insists, Bill gave to her. He said it was his. In the end, he gave it to her.
In fall 2008, Bill, now 56, quietly became the third husband of Elsie Crum-McCabe, 50, a lawyer and president of the Museum for African Art — and Bill’s “very good friend,” whom he had invited to his wedding with Sylvia.
Sylvia has another name for her: “The Hoverer.”
“She was always hovering. She was always around,” Sylvia said.
Two months later, Sylvia nearly died in a horrific car crash. During six months of recovery, Bill never called. Not once.
“I was disappointed,” she said.
Thompson looks at the former couple’s marriage differently, although he confirmed key parts of Sylvia’s story.
He said he asked her for a divorce in 2004. He denied telling her he wanted to see other women before then. He then filed papers in early 2005.
“Sometimes things just don’t work,” he said.
He denies that Sylvia found out about the divorce through his lawyer. But Thompson admits that he installed his first wife upstairs from Sylvia in his four-floor brownstone in 2006.
He insists he changed the locks on Sylvia only after she had moved her stuff out and said goodbye.
Today, Wife No. 1, Angela Jeter, lives downstairs in the home once occupied by Sylvia. She refused to comment yesterday.
After Sylvia’s car wreck, Thompson says, he asked a mutual friend whether he should visit. The answer was no.
Thompson also maintains that he was friends for years with his current spouse, Elsie, and her late husband, Eugene McCabe.
“There was nothing between us until after I filed for divorce,” Thompson said.
As for Sylvia’s contention that Elsie was a guest at their wedding, Thompson replied, “I don’t think so.”
So was Elsie a guest?
On my first visit to Sylvia’s apartment, she sat me down on a couch and paged through her wedding album. I thought it showed she missed Bill.
Wrong.
Suddenly, she found what she was looking for.
On a page signed by wedding guests, there was a name: “Elsie McCabe.”
“This is his present wife — who was at our wedding!” she said, incredulously. “This is her address. That’s her handwriting!
“This is why the divorce was pressed so much,” she concludes. “There was another agenda growing.”
Sylvia has never revealed details about her union with the golden politician. But one day last week, I rang her doorbell.
Sylvia, an attractive lawyer, minister and entrepreneur for the African-American hair-care company Sheya, looks younger than her years — she turns 52 next month. She invited me inside.
It seems fair that the way a man conducts his intimate affairs should be of interest to voters. Rudy Giuliani’s trio of marriages was picked over incessantly during his 2008 presidential bid. Bill Clinton’s personal life became a national crisis.
John McCain’s divorce and subsequent association with a lobbyist drew intense scrutiny from The New York Times. As the election that could install her ex-hubby into Gracie Mansion draws near, Sylvia badly wants to clear up some facts about their seven-year marriage, Bill’s second of three:
“When I married Bill, I loved him and believed in him. I supported his vision. People have said I left him. That’s not true. People have said I didn’t support his political career. That’s not true.
“I didn’t want to end the marriage.”
Does she still support Bill’s vision? Sylvia surprised me by refusing to say whom she plans to vote for for mayor. As for the C word — character — Sylvia said it was up to voters to determine whether his treatment of women is a campaign issue.
“He’s done a lot of good things,” she said, adding quickly, “but there are some issues in his personal life that any that any casual eye would say — he has problems there. That’s one of his weak areas.
“People will have to look at the totality of his life and make a judgment.”
The man who wants to be the city’s communicator in chief, ironically, “needs to work on his communication skills.”
“I’m trying not to hate him. I wouldn’t say hate. I’m disappointed by some of his actions. They were so mean-spirited.”
To Bill, whom she called a “serial divorcer,” commitment is not forever.
“You keep getting married until you get it right,” she said of Thompson.
It’s not a nice way to treat a human being.
Whether voters agree remains to be seen.