Prize-winning author tells all in e-mail about wife leaving for Ted Turner

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This article was published 02/08/2007 (6879 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (AP) – Robert Olen Butler has a Pulitzer Prize for fiction to his credit, but none of his past literary efforts have created as much of a stir as his tell-all e-mail about losing his wife to media mogul Ted Turner.

The Florida State University professor on Thursday accused the New York-based Gawker media gossip website of stealing the highly personal e-mail he sent to a small circle of graduate students and faculty members.

It appeared Tuesday on Gawker and quickly migrated to mainstream media outlets.

“Put down your cup of coffee or you might spill it,” wrote Butler, 62, in the original e-mail. “Elizabeth is leaving me for Ted Turner.”

His former wife, Elizabeth Dewberry, 44, is a published fiction writer. Their divorce, after 12 years of marriage, became final Monday, but Butler said they remain friends and are in daily contact.

Butler said she encouraged him to send the e-mail to their colleagues to thwart potential rumours and that he wished her the best.

Turner spokesman Phillip Evans declined comment.

Turner, 68, has a plantation near Butler’s home outside Tallahassee and the couple met him as neighbours.

In the e-mail, Butler writes that Dewberry has “never been able to step out of the shadow” of his Pulitzer. Butler, a Vietnam veteran, won the prize in’93 for “A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain,” a collection of short stories about Vietnamese refugees.

Dewberry acknowledged that challenge of having a Pulitzer-winning husband in a profile she wrote for Amazon.com., saying it was the source of the title of her fourth novel, “His Lovely Wife.” She insisted the book is not autobiographical.

They often were introduced as “Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler,” and after a slight pause, “and his lovely wife,” she writes for Amazon, adding that she “started feeling irritated by it.”

Other details in Butler’s e-mail include Dewberry’s alleged sexual abuse as a child, her near death from an intestinal blockage while on a trip to Argentina with Turner, and Butler’s observation that “She will not be Ted’s only girlfriend. Ted is permanently and avowedly non-monogamous.”

Butler said in a phone interview Thursday he never intended for the e-mail to go public, but that he was afraid it might happen after finding out that it had circulated among book editors in New York. Butler said he heard that Turner’s editor told him about the e-mail.

He said he suspects Gawker has a mole in a New York publishing house.

“It was a stolen e-mail by somebody in the New York publishing world,” Butler said. “It’s nobody’s fault but the prurience of our pop culture.”

Emily Gould, a Gawker editor, denied anyone stole the e-mail, and that it was probably forwarded many times before reaching the site. Butler’s allegation show he does not understand the hazards of putting personal or sensitive information in an e-mail, which can be easily forwarded, she said.

“I think it’s a cautionary tale for all of us,” Gould said. E-mail “lends itself to impulsive decisions, which is what makes it so dangerous.”