You exposed me to cocaine, prostitutes and disease
CATRIONA’S HARROWING NOTE TO JIM CARREY
IN a newly discovered note that she wrote two years before taking her own life, Catriona White blamed her ex-boyfriend, actor Jim Carrey, for exposing her to a debauched life of sex and drugs and scorned him for ‘giving her’ herpes.
The note was written by Catriona on April 8, 2013 on her iPad. It is not known if she ever sent it to Carrey before she took her own life on September 28, 2015, aged 30.
At the time, she and Carrey had broken up after she had told him about testing positive for herpes. He maintains that he never had the disease and that she must have contracted it before they met.
The note was discovered by lawyers working on behalf of her family in a wrongful death lawsuit against Carrey, 55. The family say that he gave her the pills with which she subsequently killed herself after obtaining them in a false name. They also allege that he gave her the STDs.
On Friday, just as White’s 2013 note was obtained by DailyMail.com, Carrey dropped the bombshell that he had already paid Catriona an undisclosed sum of money in 2013 to settle her STD claims and claimed that her mother’s and ex-husband’s current attempt to get more from him amounted to extortion.
‘I was promised Jekyll and instead I got Hyde’
He did not reveal how much money he had paid Catriona but issued a counter-suit against the family and said he was now demanding that he be given back three times as much as he had paid her.
The star dismissed the family’s accusation that he caused her death and said Catriona decided to take her own life because she felt guilty about extorting him two years earlier and was upset about a message that her mother had sent her two weeks before her death.
Carrey said it had been a ‘mistake’ to settle the claims with White and her former lawyer Filippo Marchino in 2013 and vowed: ‘I will not give in a second time.’
White’s 2013 note describes the couple’s tumultuous relationship and gives a damning description of how she felt the actor had treated her. In it, she told how she ‘was promised Jekyll but got Hyde’.
‘You did good things for me but being with you broke me down as a person, Jim. I was promised Jekyll and instead I got Hyde.
Carrey, who carried White’s casket at her 2015 funeral before the suit was filed, claims that her STD accusations are false and that she was trying to get back at him for breaking up with her at the time.
In his counter-lawsuit, issued on Friday, his lawyers described a ‘cottage industry’, which the actor said fed on extorting celebrities and ‘people in Hollywood who have achieved notoriety’.
He said Mark Burton, White’s exhusband, who filed the wrongful death suit on her behalf and her mother Bridget Sweetman’s behalf, was a subscriber to that ‘industry’.
Carrey described White as a ‘beautiful but immature and emotionally damaged woman’ at the start of their relationship and alleged that her former attorney took advantage of her ‘warm and exciting’ romance with the star to profit.
The counter-suit alleges that before her death White threatened to ‘go to the press’ with her claim that he had given her herpes unless he gave her ‘millions of dollars’.
Carrey settled her claim and paid her an undisclosed amount to stop her from making the issue public but insists that he was not the one who gave her the disease.
In 2015, the pair got back together, despite their earlier legal feud.
Carrey’s lawsuit claims he thought they would be together permanently, adding: ‘Then, on the verge of a lasting relationship and love affair, came the unthinkable loss that was Cat’s suicide.’
In a statement to DailyMail.com on Friday afternoon, Carrey said: ‘Today, I filed a cross-complaint against Fillipo Marchino, The X Law Group, Mark Burton and Brigid Sweetman.
‘Unfortunately, I made the mistake three years ago of giving in and settling false claims made against me by Mr Marchino, on behalf of Cat, as mounting a public defence is a very costly and painful process.
‘At the time, I felt Cat was being exploited by Marchino. I will not give in a second time to these same fraudulent charges initiated by Cat’s husband in name – but not in substance – Mark Burton, and her estranged mother.’
His lawsuit claims that in 2012 he ‘fell’ for White and wanted to get married. Carrey said they began drawing up a prenup but that he called the wedding off when it became apparent to him that for her the marriage ‘was more about convenience and finding a way to stay in the US without fear of deportation than about her love for him’.
On October 20, 2012, Carrey claims he told White he would not marry her but that he wanted to continue dating and would help her
gain legal status in the country by hiring an immigration attorney for her.
The next day, she drafted a suicide note – one of three written before she died – which described him as a ‘wonderful human being’.
Carrey claims that his decision not to marry her turned her ‘bitter and angry’ and that she ‘lashed out’ when he told her to ‘ease off’.
She then, weeks later, married ‘acquaintance’ Mark Burton as a means of staying in the country, he said, and claims that the union only took place after she had begged other men to marry her so that she could gain immigration status.
His lawsuit claims: ‘Prior to their marriage, Cat and Mr Burton had worked together but knew little about each other – they had never dated, had never lived together and they never intended to live as husband and wife.’
When she returned to LA after her Las Vegas wedding, she continued her ‘pursuit’ of Carrey, he says.
In his lawsuit, Carrey says the ‘bumps’ she discovered on her vagina in January 2013 – which she told him she was concerned were evidence of an STD – were in fact caused by a bikini wax.
The pair broke up in January, then reconciled in February, with Carrey agreeing to help her with an $800-aweek allowance and a furnished apartment in Santa Monica, California.
The pair split up again in March. Carrey claims the fall-out was due to her mounting pressure to get married and his desire for her to ‘focus on herself’. Her family say he dumped her after she revealed that she had tested positive for herpes. He claims that she then began threatening to go to the press to tell them he had given her the STD unless he paid her ‘millions of dollars’. The counter-suit claims: ‘Her attorney, husband and therapist all goaded her into demanding money from him.’
Though he insists she had contracted it before they met, Carrey agreed to pay her a sum and the pair stopped speaking until November 2014. In May 2015, they got back together.
Carrey claims she admitted to extorting him and said she felt guilty for it but that she had been pressured by Marchino and her ex-husband.
He said she otherwise seemed ‘happy’ until her 30th birthday on September 14, when he claims that she received a hurtful Facebook message from (her mother) Sweetman, from whom he said White was estranged.
The message, his lawsuit claims, told her that she was ‘worthless’ and would ‘never amount to anything’.
It adds: ‘Devastated, Cat closed down her Facebook account to cut off the last and only avenue of communication with her biological mother.
‘Feeling publicly shamed, humiliated, abused and betrayed, Cat let it be known to her friends (as she had to Jim) that she hated Ms Sweetman.
‘She had no further contact with her mother, from whom she had been estranged for many years.’
It was this message – and her apparent guilt over ‘extorting’ him two years earlier – which he believes prompted her suicide.
The issue is still playing out in court in California.
White wrote several suicide notes before she took her own life.
Her final suicide note, addressed to the actor, read: ‘I thought when I saw you it would be okay again and it’s not. I love you, please forgive me, I’m just not for this world.
‘Peace and love to all your hearts.’
‘I made the mistake of settling false claims’