Chloe photos plunged a dagger through my heart
Furious wife of ‘hot felon’ caught with billionaire’s girl tells MoS: It’s divorce
WHEN Topshop heiress Chloe Green was photographed passionately kissing ‘hot convict’ Jeremy Meeks onboard a £118,000-a-week (€103,000) superyacht last weekend, it was an image that intrigued – and titillated.
What could Made In Chelsea star Ms Green, 26, possibly have in common with heavily tattooed former Los Angeles gang member Meeks – and what on earth would her father, disgraced English billionaire Philip Green, make of it all? But for one woman, the image cut like a ‘dagger through the heart’.
Meeks’s wife Melissa, 38, says she had ‘no idea’ her 33-year-old husband was enjoying a liaison with Ms Green while ostensibly on a working trip to Turkey. She said that the picture left her feeling ‘humiliated’ and signalled an instant death knell for their eight-year marriage.
In her first public comments since Meeks was photographed slinking home last week only to be rebuffed by his furious wife on the doorstep of the modest Californian house they shared with their three children, Melissa says: ‘I know it takes two to tango but she knew he was married. To me, that’s unforgivable. My whole world has been torn apart by this. What do I tell our children? My heart is broken.
‘What sort of woman would do something like this to another woman? My marriage wasn’t perfect but I thought it could be saved, until this happened.
‘Of course I’m angry at her. What she did is unforgivable. And I’m angry at him too. What they did destroyed my entire world.
‘Did either of them think about the children and how this will affect them? They’re the innocent victims in this. And so am I.’
And last night she branded the photographs ‘brazen’, adding: ‘It’s all been so public. They weren’t even trying to be discreet. I’ve been publicly humiliated, which makes the pain so much worse.’
In her interview with The Irish Mail on Sunday, Melissa reveals how:
She thought that her husband was away promoting a holiday resort in Turkey when the pictures of him and Chloe were taken;
Her errant husband begged for her forgiveness after returning home to Los Angeles, saying: ‘I didn’t mean for this to happen’;
But she and Meeks, nicknamed ‘the blue-eyed bandit’ after his police mugshot went viral on social media, have now agreed their relationship is over and are set to divorce.
Softly spoken and reserved, brunette Melissa, a nurse, could not be more different to the designer-clad heiress who proudly boasted about her burgeoning relationship with Meeks on social media.
Ms Green, a self-styled fashion ‘expert’ whose father is worth £3.8bn (€3.3bn), posted a picture to her 128,000 followers of herself and the male model with the caption: ‘Just the beginning. We appreciate all the love and all the hate.’
Melissa says she has barely slept since learning of the affair when an Instagram user she did not know sent her the now infamous image of her husband kissing the heiress, with a note saying: ‘Look at this.’
Twisting her hands nervously, Melissa, who has lost half a stone through stress, said: ‘The first I learned of it was when I woke up and checked my phone. Some random person I don’t know sent a direct message with the photograph of my husband kissing that woman.
‘I went into shock. I felt nauseated. It was like a bomb had gone off and my whole world had been blown apart.
‘I’d never heard of Chloe Green. I thought Jeremy was working.’
She says she immediately tried to reach her husband, who four days earlier had left their home in sleepy Manteca, northern California, supposedly on a trip to Turkey to promote a holiday resort.
Her texts and calls went unanswered. She says: ‘I was angry, hurt and very, very upset. I couldn’t get hold of him.’
Meeks would later tell his wife that his phone did not work in Europe despite the fact he was able to post images from his romantic sojourn aboard the 164ft yacht Hazar Yildizi on social media, along with a clip of him waterskiing in the clear Mediterranean waters off Bodrum.
According to reports, Meeks first met Ms Green at the Cannes Film Festival in May, prompting his wife to question how long their liaison has been going on: ‘Who knows when it started?’ she says. ‘I doubt I will ever know the truth.’
Melissa says the first contact she had with her husband was when he landed in Los Angeles last Monday. He texted her from the airport to ask if he could pick up their two sons, his biological child Jeremy Jr, seven, and Robert, 11, Melissa’s son from a
‘My whole world has been torn apart. What do I tell our children?’
previous relationship. She also has a daughter, 16-year-old Ellie, and says both stepchildren consider Meeks a father figure.
‘The worst thing about all of this is the children. They adore their daddy,’ she says.
Incredibly, she agreed to allow him to pick up the children to spend Tuesday’s Fourth of July holiday with him while she was at work as a nurse in a local jail.
‘I didn’t want my pain and anger to hurt the children,’ she says. ‘I am very hurt and angry but those children love their daddy. He’d been away and they missed him.’
The pair finally had a showdown on Wednesday when Meeks brought the children home. Melissa says: ‘We had it out on the doorstep. I told him how devastated and angry I am. He kept apologising – not for the affair but for the way I learned about it. I feel humiliated, not just because my husband was caught with another woman but for the fact they were so brazen about it. He told me, “I didn’t mean it to happen like this.” Those pictures will haunt me for ever.
‘He kept saying, “I’m sorry, you didn’t deserve this.” We talked about divorce. I told him I didn’t think the marriage could be saved. He agreed. The marriage is over.’ The finality of the statement makes her eyes cloud with pain. She says it is all a long way from the start of their relationship in early 2008 when they met in Meeks’s hometown of Stockton, California, through mutual friends.
His piercing blue eyes and razorsharp cheekbones – combined with a body honed by playing basketball – bowled her over.
Melissa’s career as a hard-working nurse was in sharp contrast to Meeks, who found it hard to hold down a steady job, blaming his upbringing as the child of a heroin addict mother and father sentenced to life for murder when Meeks was just a baby. ‘The attraction was instant. He’s a very good-looking man, charming and charismatic. We fell in love fast,’ Melissa says.
Meeks was open about his past as a member of the notorious North Side Crips, one of California’s most brutal street gangs. In 2002 he spent two years in jail for theft and was in and out of prison for years for a series of crimes, including resisting arrest. He was once arrested for beating a 16-year-old boy ‘into a pulp’ and was described by police as ‘one of the most violent criminals in the Stockton area’.
Meeks has a Crips tattoo on his right forearm and a teardrop inked under his left eye, often said to symbolise a gang killing.
Yet Melissa says the man she knew was ‘kind and loving’. She insists he was never violent towards her, drank only in moderation, and was a good father. While he occasionally worked as a labourer, Melissa was happy for him to be a house-husband while she supported the family.
‘We were very happy. Jeremy is a good dad, a kind man. Until recently he was a very good husband. We got married in 2008, within a year of our first meeting. Our son Jeremy was born a year later. We were very much in love.’
Their modest life together could not be more different from the jetset lifestyle enjoyed by Ms Green, a staple of the high-flying British fashion scene and someone who counts supermodel Kate Moss as one of her best friends.
Melissa says her marriage underwent a ‘seismic shift’ once her husband found fame. His police mugshot went viral in 2014 after he was arrested with a gun in his car and convicted on one count of ‘street terrorism’ and unlawful possession of a firearm.
Isn’t she in denial, about the sort of man her husband is? She shakes her head, saying: ‘I took my marriage vows seriously. I vowed to be there in sickness and health, good times and bad. When Jeremy went to jail for two years I stuck by him. I went to visit him, supported our family on my own and sent money to him in jail. It never occurred to me to leave him. I believed him and I believed in him.
‘People make mistakes early in life and can change. I was never worried about the tattoos or his history. The man I knew was kind and gentle. When the mugshot went viral I was proud. I saw it as an amazing opportunity for the family.’
When Meeks was released last year, he was snapped up by an agent and landed a modelling contract. He walked the runway for New York fashion week and was photographed at parties with socialite Paris Hilton and singer Nicki Minaj.
Melissa accompanied him to the UK in April to promote his first cover for Man About Town magazine but he was turned away at Heathrow because of his criminal convictions.
Melissa was devastated to find herself frozen out of her husband’s glamorous new world.
‘Jeremy was being pitched as the “hot felon”, the sexy new star. His image didn’t fit with a man who had a wife and kids,’ she says.
‘Fame changed him. His head was turned. Sex sells. He’s a sexy guy and he didn’t want his wife there.
‘He started hanging out with celebrities. I wanted to be part of his world. We argued about it. He spent increasing amounts of time away from home and when he came home we rowed.’
She admits the marriage has been rocky lately. ‘We went through ups and downs. Did we discuss separating? Yes. But as far as I was concerned we were trying to make our marriage work.’
As for Chloe Green, she says: ‘I don’t see what calling her names would achieve. I’m heartbroken. She knew he was married. That says enough. There’s no excuse.’
She has not spoken to her husband, who is staying with friends, since their doorstep row, adding: ‘I feel I’m going through a nightmare and will wake up and this will all be a bad dream.
‘I loved my husband – I still love him. I never imagined our marriage would end like this in such a humiliating way.’
‘I feel humiliated – they were so brazen. Those images will haunt me’
‘Fame changed him. He’s a sexy guy and he didn’t want his wife there’
Additional reporting: Peter Sheridan