Prize Pulitzer

The divorce trial was lurid, and when it was over in November 1982, the greatest name in American journalism--Pulitzer--had been publicly defamed in a welter of allegations that ran from incest and homosexuality to adultery, black magic, drug smuggling, drug abuse and threats of murder.

At issue was the inherited fortune of 52-year-old Herbert "Pete" Pulitzer of Palm Beach and the custody of five-year-old twin boys from his marriage to Roxanne, a 31-year-old former cheerleader from a small town in New York State.

Judgment came a month after the trial at the Palm Beach County Courthouse. Roxanne had asked for custody of the twins, alimony and child support in excess of $12,000 a month but the December 1982 judgment awarded primary custody to the father and gave Roxanne $2000 a month alimony for two years, plus the Porsche she had received from Herbert in 1978 and a jewelry collection valued around $60,000.

In dismissing her claims, which he described as exorbitant, the judge said that Roxanne was a young and attractive woman who should build a new life. He said her demands reminded him of the country-music lyric "She got the gold mine, I got the shaft."

In October 1984, Roxanne's request for extended alimony was rejected by the Florida Supreme Court, and her last hopes vanished when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case. Several months earlier, she had decided to pose for playboy and to tell her side of the story. At her final interview with our reporter, Reg Potterton, she was still fighting for more frequent visitation with the twins, Mac and Zac; the Florida court had limited her to approximately four days a month.

Although Roxanne remains free-spirited in both her pictorial (she loved the idea of lampooning the more scandalous headlines of the trial) and her interview, readers will have to ponder for themselves the two lingering questions about the Pulitzer trial: Who really got the shaft and why?

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[Q] The trial ended two years ago. Why did you wait so long to tell your side of the story?

[A] Apart from legal considerations--gag orders and so forth--I knew I was too close to the case to be objective about it in public. I was very angry and confused--I couldn't understand why people had lied on the stand, as so many of them had, why old friends had testified against me and why matters that should have been private between Herbert and me had been twisted and used against me. Now I can understand why people behaved the way they did--they had marriages to protect, children and careers to think about. And I was no bed of roses. You at playboy published an article that was funny [The Pulitzers of Palm Beach, June 1983], but even you pointed out that the public saw me as "a combination of nympho dyke, cocaine slut and black-magic voodoo queen."

[Q] We also said that those allegations turned out to be unproved, like most of the others in the trial--headlines without stories.

[A] Which is exactly what they were. Complete bullshit from start to finish. Herbert wanted the divorce, and he wanted to win. For him, it was a war, and you know what they say about warfare: Truth is always the first casualty.

[Q] Could you give an example?

[A] Herbert and I had dinner after the trial--a long time after--and I tried to get him to answer the one question about my alleged lesbianism that had most clearly hurt my case. A former employee of his testified that he saw me in a negligee on a bed in our house in the middle of the day with my closest friend, Jackie Kimberly. He said Jackie was naked, lying down. I was dying to get an answer about this from Herbert, and at dinner I couldn't let go of the question. Did the man make that statement because I'd once reported him for questionable activities in the Bahamas? Had someone gotten to him? Why did he say that? I mean, God, it just about finished me off in court. And Herbert just looked me right in the eye and said, "This is where you're hurting yourself, Rox. The trial's over, the trial was a war, and you lost." And I said that wasn't fair--the accusation was an outright lie and he knew it--and he said, "War isn't fair. When I go to war I go to win, and I do whatever I have to do to make sure I win."

[Q] We're surprised to hear that you had dinner with him after everything you threw at each other in court.

[A] Why not? We were sleeping together before and after we went to trial. We were going to bed up until last summer. We probably still would be if I hadn't filed an appeal for an extension of alimony and more frequent visitation. As soon as I did that, he yanked the kids and got hostile. A cynic might think he'd resumed our sexual relationship to keep me from filing, but I'll reserve judgment.

[Q] Did the lawyers know you were seeing each other?

[A] They probably guessed. They were always ringing him up and warning him to keep away from me, but we'd leap into bed anyway. It was like old times. We had this running joke between us. He'd ask me, "What do you say to a little fuck?" and I'd say, "Hi, little fuck," and off we'd troop to the bedroom.

[Q] What about the cocaine abuse--was that bullshit, too?

[A] Not entirely, but it was never on the scale that was suggested. At the peak of our use--he and the peak lasted about two weeks--he and I did it maybe three times a week, maybe four. I don't believe that made me an addict, though the lawyers suggested I couldn't get enough of the damned stuff.

[Q] Damned?

[A] Cursed, I should say. It's a truly terrible drug. At the time, you think it's wonderful; it gives you such confidence, such strength. But it's just a delusion. Cocaine was the catalyst for us; it made us do and say things we'd never have contemplated otherwise. Very scary. I think, My God, look at all the destruction it caused; look at what it did to us. But it was almost impossible to avoid cocaine in Palm Beach; it was everywhere--in clubs, restaurants, people's homes. People used it openly; there was no secret about it. You'd see them chopping up their lines and spooning it out of bottles. You felt ostracized if you didn't join in.

[A] Palm Beach panicked when the case started. (text continued on page 144)Prize Pulitzer(continued from page 84) One of my friends was so terrified that they'd search her house that she took all her drugs and gear--grinders, bottles, papers and what have you--and buried them on King Hussein's Palm Beach property.

[Q] Does the king know?

[A] I doubt it. I think my friend hid the stuff there because she figured nobody would dare look.

[Q] You say you didn't use it that much, but didn't you go to group therapy in Palm Beach and confess that you were an addict?

[A] Correction: Herbert took me to group therapy and told everyone in a two-hour speech that I was an alcoholic and a cocaine addict. I went because he'd threatened to go ahead with a divorce unless I joined the group. Later I realized that a public admission of that sort could be useful in evidence, but whether or not he did it for that reason, I can't say. I know he called me at home afterward, crying and asking me to forgive him for saying what he'd said at the meeting. I went back to the group the next week, poked my head around the door and said, "Fuck you and thank you very much." End of group therapy. At his insistence--insistence! He stuck a gun in my face--I also checked into a substance-abuse clinic, but they had to let me go, because I had no symptoms of dependency and they said they needed the bed for a more deserving patient. I didn't find out until the trial, when the clinic records were produced in evidence, that one of the counselors had written across the top of the form, We Feel She is a Pawn in a Palm Beach Divorce.

[Q] The psychiatrist at your trial said that the relationship between your husband and you was that of master and servant. Was that a fair appraisal?

[A] I was 23 when I started dating Herbert. He was 44. You could say he swept me off my feet in all directions at once. My parents were divorced when I was three, so I'd never known my father. Herbert became my father, teacher, lover and best friend. He was a bit of everything, and I worshiped him. I didn't have a mind of my own--I just wanted to please him, to be the perfect wife, the perfect hostess. I was ready to do anything he asked or wanted. I had this belief--I still do to some extent, though I know it can do me great harm--that people don't have the right to say no or to make judgments about something unless they've tried it, so if he said, "Come on, let's do this," I'd think, Sure, why not? I never said no, whatever it involved. Whatever. He couldn't believe he'd met a girl who was openly telling him her fantasies and was willing to try things he'd wanted to try for a lifetime. You can't have a more perfect sexual relationship than one in which both people are in consent, as we were, sharing their innermost fantasies. If it made him happy, it made me even happier.

[Q] Pulitzer testified in a deposition that you and he sometimes shared the same bed with another woman.

[A] Herbert said that, he testified to it, but I denied it and I don't intend to discuss it here.

[Q] Perhaps you should, if only to remove any doubts about the suggestion.

[A] Forget it. I know what I am, I know what I'm not, and that's all that matters.

[Q] You had been married before you met Herbert, hadn't you?

[A] Yes, when I was 19. It lasted less than four years and we spent almost the entire time separated. I'm not proud about it, but I'm not going to make excuses, either. I was brought up to think I was supposed to be married, have children and lead a settled family life. Looks like I was wrong both times. But in my marriage to Herbert, the fact is that we both screwed up, we were both in the wrong; and if there'd been any justice in that Florida judgment, it would have reflected that point and the custody would have been on a 50-50 basis. I haven't given up the legal battle.

[Q] What do you want from the courts? They've rejected your request for an appeal on the alimony issue, and the U.S. Supreme Court won't even hear the case. What's left?

[A] I'm asking the Florida court to give me more visitation. I want to see more of the boys; it's that simple. I want to be able to look them in the eye and tell them that I went as far as I could go, that I did my utmost. Equal visitation, open visitation--that's what I'd like. If I had custody, there'd be none of that four-days-a-month bullshit. Herbert could see them any time he wanted. He's their father, he always will be, and I don't want them to forget it. The trouble is, whenever I do something he doesn't like, such as go to the courts, he makes certain that I get my exact four days and not an hour longer. But if everything's going well and he's not feeling threatened, he'll let me see them every week. It's the old pawn routine.

[Q] Your husband paid the legal costs for both sides in the trial, but it was the judge who determined the fee that should be paid to your lawyer, Joe Farish. Didn't he get a lot less than he expected?

[A] On December 28, the day the judgment came in, I got a call from the Farish office, and as soon as I heard the secretary's voice a chill went through my body. I knew it would be bad news. Anyway, I drove to Joe's office in West Palm and found him with his feet up on his desk, talking on the phone and he was saying, "Can you believe it, I got only $102,500, and for a case like that." And I was sitting there, heart pounding, waiting for him to get off the phone and tell me what happened. I could see the agreement lying in front of him.

[A] Then he hung up and I burst out, "What happened to Mac and Zac?" I had been flipping through the pages of the judgment but couldn't understand the technical terms. Joe was reading another copy, so I said, "Who's the prime custodial parent?" and he said, "He is," at which point I guess I went into shock.

[A] I just couldn't talk, couldn't believe it, but there it was. Farish picked up the phone again and I left--drove that car back across the bridge to Palm Beach in a blind panic, through the lights and the stop signs. I must have been doing 80. All I wanted to do was get home and lock myself in my room. The reporters were already there when I got back. I went inside, called my mom, who said she'd be down on the next plane, then went to bed.

[Q] You said earlier that you wanted to be the perfect wife, the perfect hostess. Why was that so important?

[A] I wanted to be accepted socially in Palm Beach. Herbert's oldest and closest friend was James Kimberly, who was heir to the Kimberly-Clark paper fortune--the Kleenex people. Jim was nearly 70 when I met him and his wife, Jackie, who was about a year older than me. She had a great social flair--beautiful table settings, perfect floral arrangements. Eight pieces of silver and God knows how many glasses at each plate. And I'd be wondering which fork to use and what to do with each glass. She and I hit it off from the beginning, naturally, both of us being young girls married to much older men. We used to talk for hours; she taught me a lot, especially about the Palm Beach social scene. Herbert used to say, "Watch Jackie, see how she does it." And Herbert would tell me to read Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, the number-one fiction and nonfiction best sellers. If I did that, he said, I'd be able to talk to anyone about anything, to get through dinner without making a fool of myself. I wasn't supposed to mention sex, politics or religion. Not talk about sex or politics? I was part of the Kent State generation! I was at Kent State to pick up a friend the day those four students were killed. Nobody was going to tell me what to say. At the back of his mind, I think, Herbert respected me for being the way I was. I think he sometimes wished he could be that way himself, that he could say, (continued on page 192)Prize Pulitzer(continued from page 144) just once, "Fuck you, asshole!" but he was Mr. Charm. An excellent actor. He'd just smile at someone, make him believe he was the most important and wonderful human on earth, and afterward he'd ask me, "What was that guy's name?"

[Q] Tell us about the early days, when you met each other.

[A] I was going to Palm Beach Junior College and sharing a trailer with my brother. I'd seen Herbert at a few parties, we'd got on well, liked each other, and that was as far as it went. I had a boyfriend and Herbert was living with a girl. I refused to date him while we were both attached. Contrary to my public image, if you can call it that, I was never a great believer in two men at once----

[Q] Six or seven at a time, maybe?

[A] Right! A football team! Girls, animals, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, OK, but never just two. But when I met Herbert, we had other people in out lives.

[A] I'd planned to tell my boyfricnd.

[Q] What about Herbert and his girlfriend?

[A] They'd just come back from a safari in Kenya. She'd fallen in love with the place and wanted to live there, so his plan was to send her back to Africa and give her some money to find a house for them both and he'd follow later.

[Q] Did you drive her to the airport?

[A] No! Herbert did. The night before she left, he gave her a farewell party at a restaurant he owned in Palm Beach. I was sitting at the bar, having a quiet drink and wondering why my boyfriend, who was with Herbert at a table, kept giving me filthy looks. Then he suddenly came over to the bar, grabbed me and said, "Come on, we're getting out of here." Ugly scene, very embarrassing. We drove to his place and he was shouting, "You've been fucking Pete Pulitzer; he says you're planning to go out together. He told me the whole story." OK, our plan to go out together was true, but we most certainly had not slept together. I was furious with Herbert, but that was typical of him, manipulating people like chess pawns.

[Q] Why didn't your boyfriend punch him in the nose?

[A] Are you kidding? He was Herbert's insurance man! You think he was about to throw up all that business--those big hotels and what not? Herbert was his Fort Knox. To cut a long and sordid story short, we agreed to go out with each other once we were free. When I was staying with my mom in New York, Herbert called and asked me to have dinner with him at the Howard Johnson's he owned in Miami. You can guess what happened. I ended up staying the night; we slept together for the first time. I flew up to my mom's the next day. Herbert went fishing in the Bahamas. He called me every day, then sent his plane to pick me up, and I flew down and joined him in the islands. For the next six and a half years, except for one night when he went to Europe for a conference, we didn't spend a single night apart.

[Q] And the wedding was six months later?

[A] Herbert asked me to meet him at the Fort Lauderdale airport with a limo and two bottles of champagne, because he said he had some important things to discuss. He took a list out of his briefcase and started ticking off items: next week, hunting; move the boat to St. Augustine; fly to Europe; go to the ranch; take the boat to Daytona; fly to New York to meet your mother and stepfather; get married January 12. He said, "That's the plan; do you have any objections?" And, of course, I didn't--I couldn't have been happier.

[Q] Out of the trailer and into the mansion. Sounds like Cinderella.

[A] More like The Story of O! Or maybe a combination of Emmanuelle and Debbie Does Dallas. They were some of his favorite movies--mine, too, I must admit. We had them all in our collection. We belonged to an X-rated-movie club in West Palm. We had an enormous collection of pornography--thousands of dollars' worth of dirty books, magazines, movies, paraphernalia.

[Q] Paraphernalia?

[A] Sure, you know, those silly gimmicks they sell in those stores. Vibrators, inflatable dolls, all kinds of weird gizmos--ridiculous things. We bought them as jokes. At Christmas, we used to exchange six-foot stockings stuffed with porn, gourmet foods, lotions, wine. Oh, God, those Christmas mornings! We'd do the tree, lay out the kids' presents, open the champagne and give each other the stockings, rolling around on the floor at five in the morning and laughing hysterically.

[Q] Have you kept the porn collection?

[A] That's a sore point. Farish still has all of it. I keep ringing him to find out what he's done with it, but he won't return my calls.

[Q] The New York Post later published a headline saying you slept with a trumpet. Did you?

[A] Trumpet? It was the whole fucking orchestra! OK, let's be serious. No, I've never fucked a trumpet--in fact, I've never been musical. How would you fuck a trumpet? Very carefully, I imagine. Every time I remember that headline in the Post, I think about suing.

[Q] Why?

[A] To begin with, it wasn't a trumpet; it was an aluminum cylindrical cone that was presented to Herbert when we attended a séance. Among spiritualists, it symbolizes the trumpet sounded by the archangel Michael.

[Q] But did you sleep with the trumpet? The world wants to know.

[A] If you mean, did I use it in a sexual manner, my answer is, "Go fuck yourself." The trumpet was kept in a closet in my bedroom--the same closet that held all our porn and my entire wardrobe and also served as a repository for all our accumulated junk, his and mine. So, in a sense, you could say, yes, I slept with the trumpet, because the closet was in the bedroom. At the trial, the lawyers tried to get the thing a lot closer to my bed than it actually was. That's the trumpet story. But I'm still thinking about suing the Post.

[Q] How would you characterize the reporters who covered your trial--in one word?

[A] Scum.

[Q] Care to enlarge on that?

[A] Big pile of scum. They feed on tragedy, they wallow in it--and they can be such whining hypocrites. There were times at the trial when I'd see a reporter who'd written something truly disgusting and vicious and I'd want to wring his neck; then a couple of days later, he'd call up to apologize and ask for just one little interview to put things right. Just doing their job! I wish I hadn't given them so much help! But my great regret is that in presenting my case, I got down in the gutter instead of keeping my mouth shut.

[Q] Isn't it a bit late for regrets?

[A] Definitely. My regrets, though, are about things that were told to me in confidence by Herbert and that I should not have repeated. But when I started getting scared about the possibility that I might lose Mac and Zac, I didn't think about it; I just got into the gutter with his lawyers and let it all rip. And I'm talking about important matters, deep, dark secrets, things from Herbert's childhood and his later life, things that should have remained between us no matter what. Those other issues--the cocaine, the marital misconduct--were trivial by comparison.

[Q] You're referring to the allegations about incest?

[A] I won't discuss that. Let's just say that, like so many of the accusations in that trial, incest is one of those things that belong in the family.

[Q] We won't touch that one. What was the most important issue to you in the trial?

[A] Mac and Zac. The custody. I couldn't get it into my head that I might lose them, not even when I sat in the courtroom listening to the evidence. I knew I was not a lesbian; I knew I was not an alcoholic or a drug addict. I knew I was not an unfit mother. And I took it for granted that those were plain, straightforward facts and that when the trial was over, I'd be the custodial parent. Wrong!

[Q] You don't sound much like the woman described in the trial, who supposedly lived out all those strange sexual fantasies.

[A] My fantasies involve a little of everything, but I'll tell you this: No fantasy--or experience, for that matter--includes one-night stands, or fuck-and-flees, as my girlfriends call them. I've never had a one-night stand. Not that they don't sound fascinating--stimulating, in fact. My problem is that I never get that physical, animal craving, that sudden lust that two strangers need when they meet and have the chance to carry it off. I get the mental input first, which is probably why I end up going out with some strange-looking people.

[Q] What made you decide to pose for Playboy?

[A] I wanted it to be a surprise for Herbert--he's been a subscriber for years. That's one reason.

[Q] Don't you think a lot of people will criticize you for posing?

[A] I guess Herbert could say, "Look, she's everything I said at the trial--those terrible things were all true. Now she's got her clothes off in a magazine; she's a sex maniac." I guess he could take that approach, but it wouldn't be very honest if he did. I know what he thinks of my body.

[A] Herbert likes me naked. I mean, you're talking about a man who liked taking me to bed at one o'clock every afternoon, rain or shine. "Hi, little fuck." I realize that some people will say, "Well, there you are; she's the shameless hussy they said," but I can't do anything about that, and I really don't give a damn what they might say.

[A] I'll probably tell the boys before the magazine comes out, so they don't hear about it first at school, but they won't be surprised to see me with no clothes on. It certainly won't be the first time. I understand that some people lock themselves in lavatories and try to behave as though their bodies have no natural functions, but it was never that way in our house. All four of us got into the tub sometimes or showered together, and when the boys were younger, they used to touch my belly button and ask questions like "How did we come out of that?" And I'd explain that they didn't and I'd tell them how they were born. That's probably why someone--a person who spends all day with an ear glued to Gospel programs--claimed that I behaved in a perverted fashion with the boys by running around in the nude and letting them fondle my body. That was an absurd and pathetic distortion of the facts, but I guess some people--maybe most--regard the body and its functions as unclean and disgusting. I don't. I don't believe in that unhealthy bullshit. I think our society is confused and stupid about this--we're all caught up in the same cycle of repression, guilt and shame. Well, fuck that. When we're all dead and gone, future generations will look back at us and our twisted mumbo-jumbo beliefs and say, "Oh, yes, they were the people who tortured anyone who was different."

[Q] You mentioned the allegations that you're a lesbian. Are you?

[A] I hate even having to answer that, but no, and Herbert knew I wasn't a lesbian. I know I'm not. I simply prefer men. But I see nothing wrong with lesbians and I don't understand why other people do. At the trial, a lot was made of the accusation that I'd had a lesbian relationship with Jackie and that I'd offered to have an affair with Herbert's daughter Liza, from his previous marriage. Incredible! Liza and I were hardly friends, let alone lovers. When I was first with her father, she made it clear that I was an intruder in her relationship with him and that as far as she was concerned, she and I were engaged in a war that I could never win.

[A] As to Jackie, she and I were extremely close friends. We met almost daily during the season, we shopped together, we were in and out of each other's houses, we'd talk for hours. We were practically the only people of our age in Palm Beach, at least among the group our husbands knew. She told me when we met that if I hung around with her, I'd get a reputation--but it didn't bother me. I hardly knew what lesbians were. I suppose I thought of them as big women who looked like men and wore combat boots, if I thought of them at all. But I liked Jackie, she was the best of company, and we had a lot in common.

[A] Her husband was resentful of our friendship, I think, and a bit jealous of the time we spent together. What made it worse was the fact that if she got depressed and locked herself in her room, he'd have to call me over to the house to get her to come out again.

[Q] Would you describe your acceptance in Palm Beach society as immediate?

[A] Hardly. We didn't get invitations to anything together until the day of the wedding, and then they started pouring in. Lunches for this, dinner for that. But it was hard for me to enjoy myself at a lot of those affairs because of the age difference--it was hard for me to be myself. Not that that stopped me from making Herbert choke on his champagne a few times.

[Q] How did you do that?

[A] Oh, we'd be at some dinner and he'd be sitting at table 16 and I'd be at table three. I'd leave to go to the ladies' room, and on my way back, I'd catch his eye when nobody was looking and lift my dress up--flash him with a bit of leg or a boob, anything to make him laugh, especially when I didn't wear any underwear. I don't think he'll ever find anyone who makes him laugh as much as I did.

[Q] In many ways, you lived on the proceeds of a fortune that was built on tabloid journalism, the sort founded by the old man, Joseph Pulitzer, in the last century.

[A] It's ironic, isn't it? I've never read anything about him, but I heard that he died all alone on a huge boat that he'd had soundproofed. His hearing had gone; he had no friends. It must have been a sad and lonely death. Herbert once told me he thought he'd probably die like that, alone.

[Q] But he has plenty of friends, doesn't he?

[A] He likes to surround himself with people who have less than he's got, who are his inferiors, financially and mentally. They have to bow down to his opinion, even if they disagree.

[Q] Why?

[A] So they can fly in his plane, go on the boat, stay at the ranch. He has to be number one, in control of all situations at all times. He won't do anything he's not good at, which was a source of considerable friction between us at times. I love to ski, for instance, but because he was no good at it, he'd say no to skiing.

[Q] Would you say he's a strong man?

[A] He's a great manipulator; he's very good at what he does. He knows himself well, knows what works for him and what doesn't. He's got it down to a science. You have to respect that. He has a strong personality, but that doesn't make him a strong person. Once he sees a weakness in you, you've had it; he just bores in and tears you to shreds. But that's Monday-morning-quarterback talk. Most of the time we had together was the happiest time of my life, and I believe it was for him, too. That's all over now, but I've had to pay a heavy price for fulfilling Herbert Pulitzer's deepest fantasies.

"Not talk about sex or politics? I was part of the Kent State generation!"

"I was furious with Herbert, but that was typical of him, manipulating people like chess pawns."