Jack Idema passed on January 21, 2012. I had known he was dying for quite some time. Remember, he infected me with the same viruses he ultimately died of. His followers all said I was a liar, his blood was perfect, he was in great health, etc. Even he denied it. But none of that matters now. I knew Jack; the people that have been writing about him now do not know him the way I did. In fact, some of them didn't even meet him and talked to him only on the phone a couple of times, if that. And the ones that did know him, may have met him once or twice, and then there's the other group that knew him before 2007. I NEVER see or hear about 2007 on, and Mexico from anyone but me. And I get that. People need their opinions & views to hold onto what their hero was in their own minds. Just as some individuals feel that lashing out at anyone that contradicts their views is justified, no matter how much fiction they believe. Everyone has a private & a public personality. What I am going to do is what he asked me to do in our final conversation. But, I am getting ahead of myself here. Let me start by giving a summary of our life together when it was good. Jack & I started conversing while he was in Kabul in jail 2005. When he was getting ready to leave Pulacharki, he sent Nina the dog to the States for me to take care of. I got her in June 2007 and had her living with me until I took her to Mexico at the end of September 2007. Jack & I stayed in Cancun, Puerto Aventuras, finally Bacalar (4 1/2 hours from Cancun in the jungle with only 1 road in and out of). From 2007 till 2010, I flew to Mexico more than 14x, staying various lengths of time, the longest being March-Sept. 2009 when I took my 3 cats with me to live. Our life in Bacalar was bizarre. He was terrified of snakes & spiders; I loved them. Whenever one would be killed he would shove it in the freezer. There was quite a collection of them and he would take them out if company came to show & tell. He loved swords. When we got married, he gave me a sword as a wedding gift. We would go in the backyard and mock fight. Of course, he was an expert at it, but all I did was mutilate the bushes. So he played alone. I remember how it used to irritate me that he would pick out my daily outfits and how I would go to his side of the closets and say "what's it gonna be today? Black, black or black?". The night he wanted me to watch some insane Russian documentary with Chinese Moldavian sub-titles. He kept translating the sub-titles to me in English and kept pausing the DVD to do it. After nearly 3 hours of this, I was exhausted. I suggested he might want to see if he could change the translation menu on the DVD. He adjusted it on the DVD, and then burst into hysterical laughter with me & and we just couldn't stop laughing so we had to stop the movie altogether! The time we took Nina to the local carnival & put her on a kiddie ride & then we took cheesy photos at one of the booths. The constant translation problems we had with the staff were always a headache. One time he was furious that Nina did not have any chicken left in the frig, so he sent one of the workers out to get fresh chicken, 4 of them so she could have one for dinner and the other 3 he would freeze. 2 hours went by & he was over the top pissed. Finally the guy came back shouting to us from the kitchen. When we went downstairs there were 4 live chickens running around the room! He was livid! Or the time he sent one of the bodyguards to start the pontoon boat for us to go out on the lake. He, Nina & I got on the boat went around the lake & then the boat just died. The engine was clogged & we were screwed because the bodyguard started the boat but took the key. So here we were stuck out on the lake with no cell phones and we stayed out there for 3 hours until we finally flagged down another boat to get us help. That bodyguard was fired! We were super tanned though! We were complete partners in love, business, & in life; I thought. We spent virtually every moment together when I was there. I saw & knew everything as time went on. So many memories. The good were as good as it got, but the bad, were worse than I could ever put into words. Because, in reality as good as those times were, they were a facade. And the bad times were many. I did everything I could for him. I oversaw the ill-fated boat business, took control of Isabeau Dakota, was in charge of the women who took control of the Ultimate Pet Resort Dec.2008 through August 2009. I took his Dad to Mexico to see him, which didn't go well, as well as taking care of his ailing father when he was in 3 different hospitals in Poughkeepsie. The elder Mr. Idema & I were close and I respected him. I hired a nursing care service for him. When his father passed, I took care of the wake, funeral & burial. I went to court in Poughkeepsie to fight for him over his father and a will. I was involved in Star Aviation making up fliers & getting ready for the shows that were going on. I proof-read and helped organize documents for all the lawsuits he was writing to hand off to his lawyers to fight in court. I was his mouth piece in Mexico whenever he got in trouble----which was all the time. After his car accident in Sept. 2009, I bathed him & fed him & helped him get up out of his wheelchair & wheeled him around everywhere. Fought all his enemies while he was in the hospital which was non-stop. I was in charge of the Mexican staff, which included lawn people, bodyguards & maids. Did all his food shopping because he never wanted to leave the compound. Did all the other errands, with my bodyguard, including taking the jeep to Chetumal for service. My main job basically was to fix ALL problems. If there were electricity, phone, Internet, air conditioners broken, or water problems; I had to have them fixed. I put up with the constant stream of men, hookers & trannies that he entertained. The men involved with him in dealing weapons and drugs were horrible but were always around. I was present at all these meetings and was his confidant in all the businesses he was involved in. Even the ones I was strongly against, I just kept my mouth shut & sat there. The entire time I was in Mexico I never saw any of the ruins, beaches, or any of the sights one would see on vacation. My view of Mexico was the long rides to & fro Cancun and from the windows of the compound. Except for the occasions I went out with my bodyguards to do stuff for him. A couple of times my bodyguard & I would stop at the local library or take longer in the stores just so I could have a break. Thank god for my bodyguards & my maids. There were no clocks, radios, or regular TV in the house. The only movies watched were from his collection & his choice. I had the Internet but because of where we were it was sporadic at best. My music was my only salvation. He wouldn't allow it on the stereo, but I had my headset so I was all set. My biggest problem would be to try to keep him focused so he could work and finish the cases and his book that he was working on. We were organizing his notes for the book but he had the attention of a nanosecond & would go off & get involved in some other project. He could never work on anything specific for long stretches of time. Mostly because he was either too high or too drunk to function. He'd get up late & stay up all night. He would go on drug/sex binges that lasted for days. The lawyers would be trying to call him and all the calls would be forwarded to his Skype number. The rages he would go into were scary. He was obsessed with the yard. Planting trees, shrubs, flowers and moving the sprinklers constantly so the color green of the grass would be equal. He had deadlines he could never make. I would see him in the yard screaming & throwing things at the workers because the walls needed to be higher and they weren't pouring the cement properly. Then he would sit there with his Corona/Vodka studying them because he was convinced an attack was coming on us and he had to make sure they were doing the wall properly and not making mistakes. One time he was supposed to be handling the plane fiasco (it had crash landed in Pennsylvania) but instead he thought he needed to change every door knob & lock in the house because somebody was coming to get us. We both slept with guns under our pillows and he would do random drills with me & Nina so we would be "prepared and ready to fight". We had surveillance cameras & alarms everywhere. In the middle of the night one time I got up to go get some juice, set off one of the alarms & he came running at me in the dark with a gun and a sword. Unbelievable but all true. Another time he was supposed to be on the phone with the lawyers & the real estate people regarding selling the Poughkeepsie house. Instead, he decided he wanted to build a special shelf for the alcohol bottles. For 8 days he worked on every detail on that shelf. I kept telling him people were calling & they needed answers. He would just ignore me and ask me how the shelf looked. I can't count the times, I would have to sit with him and go over the lies & stories he told everyone so our stories would jive. People in Mexico were under the assumption that he was flying back & forth to the States for business. The reality was he would never come back to the States until he was certain there was not a sealed indictment against him for being a war criminal. The last time he stepped on U.S. soil was way back in 2004. As always, I kept up the facade for him & the lies kept coming. I was sick to my stomach of all the lies. In the midst of all this craziness, as much as it bothered me, I kept it up and became his enabler. Making life worse for both of us. Jack had so much potential & intelligence but the drugs and alcohol were destroying his mind and making him completely delusional. I kept praying that the Jack I read about & saw photos of pre-2007 would re-emerge and life would become normal. I blamed his twisted personality on Pulacharki and what happened in the beginning of his stay there. I made excuses for him and I was wrong to do that. I convinced myself that this wasn't so bad & he would change & the situation would get better. Like I stated above, everyone has a private & public personality. In public, I would defend his every word and action, but in private behind closed doors, we would have horrible fights. He could be in a great mood, then all of a sudden he snapped. A phone or glass would go flying. He was always mad at someone and he was never to blame. One of his lawyers said to me once "all he remembers is what we didn't do, not everything we did to to help him" how true a statement that was. Almost like, I'm having such a good time nothing bad could ever happen. Those moments and incidents that never quite seemed right and instead of questioning---I just put them on the back burner of my mind. All the things that didn't quite fit-----suddenly did. The seesaw of good & bad times was no longer equal. The bad overruled the good to such an extreme I began to scrutinize even the good times because I started to realize what a Garden of Eden I was in. That was when it hit me how stupid I was and I just wanted to block it out of my mind. All the lies that led up to the final blow were so overwhelming I became numb. I couldn't tell anyone then because I was certain no one would believe me. I had been destroyed---financially, physically, emotionally, verbally, mentally and medically. He intentionally made me a walking bio-hazard and deliberately kept it from me so I wouldn't leave him and our business dealings. I had admired & loved him so much and kept hoping the man I thought I knew would fix this all; instead of me always doing all the fixing. He kept promising me things would change---they did, they got worse. Jack had always been portrayed as a macho warrior. I had admired him way back when and saw him on Imus & thought so highly of the way he spoke & carried himself. When my illusion of him was finally shattered (I will not go into the specifics) I realized how unbelievable it all seemed and I was sure everyone would think me insane by saying anything. I was in so deep and I was scared. All I knew was that I had to get out of the situation. On July 30, 2010, I filed charges against Jack in Chetumal, Mexico. I left Mexico never to return on August 1, 2010. Our breakup was devastating on more levels than I knew existed. Any time a relationship comes to an end it's rough. In our case, it was brutal because there was so much residual madness attached to it, which was made even worse by all the people who had to get involved adding more layers of stress. My infected blood boils every time I think of what Jack and his followers did to my family, friends and me. I have good days where I can function 6 or so hours a day. Then I have my bad days, where I have 3-4 hours a day I can function. My worst days are spent in bed just listening to music because of the glaring, non-stop headaches and pain. Not to mention my eyesight is only half of what it used to be. So am I pissed? Very much so. To pretend otherwise would make me a liar. The one thing I have to point here is that all I ever wanted was for the truth to come out, and justice that is it. I never wanted any money, or I never would have quick-deeded a building for $10 bucks. Unlike the other exes, I never received any lavish vacations, jewelry, dinners, clothing, etc. I never wanted it, none of that stuff mattered to me. All I wanted was for Jack, Nina, the cats & me to be a family and have no drama just peace. I never sold my story and I had offers. I never filed a lawsuit against Idema or his lawyers for what they did to me. I never sued any of the bloggers that posted lewd photos of me and lied about me on the Internet any chance they could. I never put a lien on any of his assets or took any of them to court for being involved in all of the fraudulent activities they did to me by putting my name on documents so that they could use me to hide money. I never revealed the drugs/arms sources that I was aware of. Even when they all harassed & intimidated me. They went after my family and friends and forced me into silence & solitude. They took my life and everything I had. I have only reacted to their actions and they still continue to this day. Jack forged his medical results & fooled everyone into thinking he was not ill. He was a careless, alcoholic, drug addicted bi-sexual who was infecting men & women with AIDS because he was in denial. I now believe that he himself was so delusional that he believed all his lies. Even to the point where his life before Mexico was all fiction, but yet right up to the end, he & his disciples still think it's fact. In February 2011, Jack began having an affair with Elaine Roach. She & her husband, Tony, lived a few houses down from us on the Costera. In April 2011, she left her husband to live with Jack in Casa Arabi. Since I returned to the States the year before, I stayed in contact with the Mexican friends I had made there. They kept me up to date with everything that was going on constantly. I had told Elaine all about the HIV, but Jack told everyone I was a psychotic liar & had his forged results out there for everyone to view. With all of Idema's assets in the States dwindling and him being cut off from the drug/arms funding because he had become a liability to his sources, he was broke. Elaine funded him during this time and she was getting ill herself. In August 2012, Idema was past full blown. He was getting purple lesions and told everyone it was an allergy. Around the beginning of December, Idema was out of control and the drug use was taking a toll on Elaine. She was starting to have a meltdown and couldn't take it. Then the week of January 5, 2012 she went through some files & found out the truth. A heated argument between them ensued and on January 6, 2012, she left Mexico for Canada. Monday, January 9, 2012, Maureen from the Mexican Consulate in Merida, Mexico, called me & told me Jack was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Chetumal and that he was suffering from pneumonia resulting from advanced HIV/AIDS. She wanted to know what to do with his remains. I said cremation but she still had other calls to make. Early January 10, I got a call from one of my friends in Mexico telling me Jack escaped from the hospital and wanted to die at the house. This friend also told me that Jack wanted to talk with me and please call him. I couldn't imagine why he would want to talk with me because of all the drama he & I were going through and I knew we were not on good terms to say the least. The last time we had spoke was in February of 2011, which was mostly him screaming at me, calling me names and blaming me for all the misery in his life. So I wasn't thinking that there was much of a reason for him to want to speak with me unless he had more yelling to do. But I called anyway. The Jack that answered the phone was a person that I never spoke with. No yelling, no cursing, just a very weak voice that was grateful to hear my voice! The conversation started with him saying he was sorry and could I forgive him. He never said what he was sorry for but only wanted me to forgive him. I told him I could never forgive him for what he did to me and what his minions did to me and were still doing to me. He also thanked me for all I had done for him & said he finally realized that I did do everything I could for him and he never appreciated it. He acknowledged that I never betrayed him until he infected me & now he understood everything. That I was the only one who was truly loyal to him and he messed it up. He was scared and started telling me that Elaine left for good and he didn't want to be alone when he died. He asked me to go there and help him. Yeah, no way I said. Then he told me if I went there he would be safe and I could fix everything for him there & here in the States, just like I used to when we were together. He said I was the only one who could do it and that's why he had to talk to me. The conversation was convoluted, bizarre and weird. He wanted to know what he could take to get rid of his pneumonia & what to take for the purple lesions & the sores all over his genitals. I said to him "what is wrong with you, you know what that is all of it, there is nothing you can take now unless it's HIV meds, and I think you're passed that". He said the aspirin wasn't working and neither was any of the injectables (nulbifina & heroin that his helpers were fronting him) that he was using, and the pain was unbelievable & no matter how much he would inject, the pain kept getting worse. When I told him it was time to snap out of denial & grasp what was happening, he started crying and saying "I have superhuman blood this isn't supposed to happen". Again, I told him he needed to get medical attention asap and go back to the hospital. He told me that Elaine promised she would take care of Nina & Tinka & she lied. He said Nina was as important to him as Sarge was & would I make sure she would be okay. He also told me that I would soon be vindicated in Mexico and again asked me to help him & go there. Then we went to another topic-old times. We talked about the good ones only. He remembered some of the good times I forgot. I told him I probably forgot them because when you break up the way we did it's like a defense mechanism to get you through it. He reminded me of my favorite song "What A Wonderful World", I jokingly replied that it was my favorite song but after hearing it there 24/7 it ceased to be. We both laughed at that. Then I told him I was in front of my computer & for him to get on his & look up AIDS final symptoms & he said he couldn't because if anyone saw what he was looking up, they would know. Still in denial even at the end. He made me promise one more time that I'd make sure Nina & Tinka would be safe & to do the other stuff we spoke about. We left it at I'd call him back to check in on Friday January 20. I commented on how nice he was and he replied that we were friends again and it was what he wanted all along. We had spoken for over a 1/2 hour and I felt at peace, but confused. When we hung up, I sat for awhile & thought about everything he said. Our conversation was delusional to say the least. Was he really in trouble or was it yet another ruse to draw me in? Should I take it seriously or let it go? I decided to let it go & just call him that Friday like I promised and he wanted. The whole time I knew Jack the only thing I could ever count on him for----was lying to me. And that he never disappointed me with. When January 20th, came I called. The phone rang & rang and then went to the fax machine. I figured he changed his mind and didn't feel like talking to me. Now I know he was either too ill to answer or maybe he already passed. Since then I have gotten many accounts of what transpired & how he passed. I know the house was looted. I know that the people that were there with him did not care about him or even gave him nothing but pieces of a banana the entire week. They gave him water on Q-tips and he needed heroin to get him through the pain. There was 2 tanks of gas, from the grill, in front of the house that said for sale because he was so broke. He owed so many Mexicans money that everything was taken. I also found out that Nina & Tinka were being held for ransom because the shady Mexicans that were "taking care of him" knew somebody would try to get them and pay to do it. I know the house was full of garbage and bugs. That his bed was filthy & he urinated & defecated on himself & was bleeding from his sores & nobody cared. My friends rescued Nina & Tinka and they are now safe. I reached out to 2 of my biggest enemies but they were too busy posting lies about me on the Internet instead of helping me rescue Nina & Tinka. So much for the Idema Fan Club, they had an opportunity to do the right thing but they couldn't be bothered. A week after he passed, I played "What A Wonderful World" and thought about Jack. It's my favorite song again. I finally forgave him, mostly for me so I could move on with my life. His death finally freed me from the drama I lived with for so long. And as for the 2 promises he asked from me. One is already done; Nina & Tinka are happy and safe. As far as the other promise goes---I'm working on that one, and certain I'll be able to give it to him. Finally, every single time I look in the mirror, I think of him and will always be connected to him. I hope he's at peace now, wherever he is. |
