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The Untold Story of Mark Hughes' public image, Secret
Vice and Tragic Destiny
Los Angeles Times/February 18, 2001
By Matthew Heller
There's a star on the stage of the Great Western Forum.
Immaculately dressed as always, 6-foot-1, tanned, not
a hair out of place, he is a veteran of such very public
appearances. In seminar after seminar, convention after
convention, he has captivated thousands of people around
the world with his charisma, sincerity and enthusiasm.
But this appearance, on Feb. 19, 2000, is something
special for Mark Reynolds Hughes. It's part of a five-day
celebration of the 20th anniversary of Herbalife International,
the company he started in a former Beverly Hills wig
factory. There is a lot to celebrate. At 44, Hughes
is the ruler of a $956-million business empire that
sells weight-management and personal-care products through
a network of more than 1 million distributors in 50
countries.
So-called multilevel or network marketers are lucky
to stay in business for several years. Hughes has racked
up 20--and become extremely rich in the process. In
the preceding fiscal year, he earned more than $2 million
in salary and bonuses; he controls 60% of Herbalife
stock, worth about $250 million, and has interests in
suppliers of the company's products. In 1998, he collected
a tidy $43 million in a leveraged buyout of one manufacturer.
He owns homes in Beverly Hills, Malibu and Maui, and
is planning to build a veritable San Simeon on a mountaintop
above Benedict Canyon.
From the Forum stage, Hughes looks out on an audience
of acolytes, about 4,000 Herbalife distributors who
have followed his prescription for health and wealth
with almost messianic fervor. To them, he is the manifestation
of how a flair for salesmanship, hard work and a belief
in your product can make just about anyone a millionaire.
Like his followers, he sports one of the ubiquitous
"Lose Weight Now, Ask Me How" badges--the
slogan that also adorns telephone poles and car bumpers
everywhere. "The dream he had has helped so many
people like me," says Paco Perez, a distributor
who was a hotel bellboy when he first met Hughes.
The faithful focus their attention as the Forum Diamondvision
displays a video montage of highlights from Hughes'
past, from the early days of selling a protein powder
out of his car trunk to his current status as chairman
and chief executive of a multinational corporation headquartered
in a Century City high-rise.
There, on screen, is Hughes crying at Herbalife's fourth
anniversary rally--"I can't believe what's happened
with all of this," he sobs--hobnobbing with the
likes of Milton Berle and Merv Griffin, handing out
$1-million bonus checks to distributors, globe-trotting
in the company's private jet, promising to "take
Herbalife around the entire world."
On the Forum stage, moved by the nostalgia, Hughes
again allows a tear or two to roll onto his cheeks.
"I will never forget that moment," recalls
Perez. "It was emotional for him and me."
Three months later, on May 21, Mark Hughes is lying
on the four-poster bed in the master bedroom suite of
his beach retreat, a Mediterranean-style mansion on
71/2 acres with 300 feet of Pacific Ocean shoreline
that he recently bought for a Malibu-record $25 million.
It is late in the morning after another celebration.
The 87th birthday party for Hughes' beloved maternal
grandmother, Hazel, known affectionately as Mimi, had
been a private affair, just a few family members joining
him at home for the evening. Out of the public limelight,
Hughes drank white wine, smoked a cigar and played his
drum set, protected by security gates, round-the-clock
guards and surveillance cameras.
From an adjoining part of the suite, Darcy LaPier Hughes--his
fourth wife and, like her three predecessors, a former
beauty queen--enters the master bedroom. Her husband's
back is facing her. He is wearing only a black T-shirt
and black bikini briefs. Something about him doesn't
look right. Darcy calls the guards, who realize something
is very wrong. They carry him to the floor and lay him
on his back to perform CPR. Unsuccessfully.
The Los Angeles County coroner's office concludes he
died of a toxic combination of alcohol and Doxepin,
an antidepressant he was taking to help him sleep. His
blood-alcohol level was measured at 0.21, more than
2 1/2 times the legal limit for driving.
The death was ruled an accident, an eerie echo of the
ruling on the drug-related death of Hughes' mother 25
years earlier. Hundreds of mourners grieved the loss
of a man struck down in his prime who had helped so
many get so rich.
But the real story is even sadder, the tale of a troubled
man who grew up amid discord and drug abuse and, as
an adult, turned a mythical video version of his past--the
Herbalife story--into his reality. It's also the story
of how Mark Hughes, the super-salesman, may have become
a prisoner of his public image.
Mark Hughes' version of his life story was a remarkable
tale of tragedy, resolve and triumph. He said he grew
up underprivileged on the gritty streets of a Latino
neighborhood in La Mirada, tucked away in the southeast
corner of Los Angeles County. "I was basically
brought up by my grandparents," he said on the
Herbalife 20th anniversary video, referring to his mother's
parents, Lawrence and Hazel Hughes. And according to
the myth, his mother, Jo Ann, who lived off welfare,
had this weight problem.
"My mom was always going out and trying some kind
of funny fad diet as I was growing up," he remembered
in a speech to a 1985 Herbalife rally that was reprinted
as part of an Inc. magazine article on Hughes. "Eventually
she went to the doctor to get some help, and he prescribed
to her Dexamyl, kind of a fad diet then. For those of
you who don't know about it, it's a drug, a narcotic.
It's a form of speed, or amphetamine. You're not able
to eat or sleep." (In fact, Dexamyl combines an
amphetamine stimulant with a barbiturate depressant
to offset the amphetamine's side effects.)
Hughes continued: "After several years of using
it, she ended up having to eat sleeping pills for her
to sleep at night. And after several years of doing
that, her body basically started to deteriorate. And
she started seeing four or five doctors to keep her
habit up."
Hughes, described by Inc. as "a tanned and blow-dried
California swashbuckler resplendent in black tie and
diamonds, brown eyes flashing over a perfect, polished
smile," then reached the climax of his story, mustering
a tear: "I was 19 years old when she died from
an overdose."
As recently as November 1999, Hughes repeated a similar
story to a trade publication, Network Marketing Lifestyles.
He "transformed the tragedy into fuel for a higher
purpose," the magazine said, making it his life's
ambition to "develop an organization that would
put the kind of reliable information and safe, effective
products his mother never had into the hands of millions."
The real story was a lot more complex, and fit less
neatly into an inspirational parable. Jo Ann Hughes
did die of an overdose, and Mark Hughes did spend his
first years in La Mirada. But he lived in a new tract
home in a neighborhood sprinkled with citrus groves
and mostly populated by upwardly mobile white suburbanites.
And his mother died addicted to painkillers, not diet
drugs.
Hughes was raised by Jo Ann and Stuard Hartman, one
of two men who claim to be his biological father. Hartman
now lives with his second wife in a modest L-shaped
house in Camarillo. The retired businessman is tall
and handsome, with a weathered face framed by tufts
of white hair. He raised Mark, along with two other
boys, Guy and Kirk. Tears sometimes well in his blue
eyes as he tells his story, but he keeps his composure,
arms crossed over his chest as if to ward off the pain.
He shows off photographs of Mark as a young boy. There
he is, skinny, bangs of dark hair falling over his forehead,
with a protective arm over the shoulders of each of
his younger brothers; in another, he is posed with a
softball and plastic bat as Hartman holds Guy and Kirk.
A third photograph shows Mark smiling as he sits on
a sparkling red bicycle equipped with training wheels.
Behind him stands a petite, well-dressed young woman,
her hands on her hips. This is Jo Ann, Hughes' mother
and Hartman's first wife.
In the early '60s, the family moved to Camarillo, which
was being transformed from an agricultural community
into a suburban outpost of L.A. They acquired a custom-built
ranch-style home, and with Hartman prospering as an
entrepreneur--he had started a business supplying aircraft
parts to the U.S. government--the boys enjoyed more
riches than rags. "They always had the best toys,
the best stuff, the best clothes," says Duane Livingston,
a close friend of young Mark.
Of the three boys, Mark was the quietest, the least
rambunctious, not academically brilliant but with a
certain focus and intensity. He looked the most like
his mother, sharing her dark hair and complexion.
His Camarillo lifestyle also included a housekeeper
and fishing trips to the Channel Islands in Hartman's
Chris-Craft Constellation cruiser. His mother drove
a gold-colored Cadillac and spent a great deal of time
on her wardrobe and appearance. But friends could detect
all was not right. For one thing, there was a tension
between Hartman and Jo Ann over disciplining the children.
"It was always an issue--he was too strict and
she wasn't," says Livingston.
Hartman adamantly denies Jo Ann had a weight problem.
"This whole story is not true," he insists.
But she did have a problem. "She was addicted to
pain pills," Hartman says, singling out the popular
painkillers Darvon and Percodan, which have never been
prescribed for weight loss. "She used them in combination
to prolong the high."
In a court declaration filed later as part of their
divorce, Hartman alleged that Jo Ann's prescription
Percodan habit in the early 1960s cost more than $2,000
a year. Because of her addiction, he said, she neglected
her sons, even using money he gave her for groceries
to buy drugs. "The children began to complain to
me about being hungry," he recalled. And the house
in Camarillo was "so filthy dirty it was on the
verge of being unsanitary."
After Jo Ann suffered a seizure, she moved back to
La Mirada in December 1969 to stay with her parents
and be treated by a local doctor. On the pretext of
taking 13-year-old Mark to visit his mother, Hartman
alleged, Jo Ann's parents moved him from Camarillo into
their own home. A few weeks later, Hartman returned
home from work to find that Jo Ann had taken Guy, 12,
and Kirk, 11, and cleaned out the closets. In February
1970, court documents show she filed for divorce.
The marital breakup could hardly have come at a worse
time for Mark, who, according to a childhood friend,
already was experimenting with alcohol and drugs. The
source, who asked not to be identified, recalls seeing
him at a bus stop one morning before school. "He
had a gallon of cheap red wine. He was guzzling the
wine and eating a handful of [pills]. He was just out
of control, completely out of control."
Experts say it wouldn't be surprising if Mark's mother
had passed on her addictive streak. "Genetics is
the single most important component [of substance abuse],
especially when it begins manifesting early on,"
notes Dr. Joseph S. Haraszti, medical director of Pasadena's
Las Encinas Hospital and an expert on addiction. Moreover,
he adds, the parent's use of alcohol or drugs as a coping
mechanism becomes a model for the child.
In La Mirada, Jo Ann spent days in bed, abdicating
almost all parental control. "We ran wild,"
Kirk Hartman admits. During that same period, Jo Ann
was arrested for passing a bad check. Doctors declared
her too ill to attend court hearings in the divorce
case.
Hartman was awarded custody of Guy and Kirk, the younger
boys, in December 1970; Mark remained with Jo Ann. There
was no way Hartman could exert any influence over Mark,
the two now completely estranged. "He blamed me
for breaking up the family," Hartman says with
a sigh.
Jo Ann was treated for addiction at the same Lynwood
hospital where Mark was born. But on April 27, 1975,
her father found her dead in her apartment. According
to the autopsy report, several empty vials of prescription
drugs were found beside her bed, and her doctor told
the coroner she "was known to overingest her prescription
drugs." Toxicological tests showed potentially
lethal levels of propoxyphene in her system--its brand
name is Darvon. Jo Ann Hartman died a drug addict, or,
as the coroner put it more delicately, of acute drug
intoxication.
Mark, then 19, was not with his mother when she died.
Instead, having accumulated several drug busts, he was
far away in the San Bernardino Mountains, at an institution
that paved the way for his success at Herbalife.
CEDU, as the drug institute is called, was the brainchild
of Mel Wasserman, a Palm Springs furniture store owner
who had sponsored recovering addicts at Synanon, a drug
rehab program, at its facility in Santa Monica. In the
late '60s, as Synanon developed cult-like trappings,
Wasserman founded his own center for troubled teens
in bucolic Running Springs, west of Big Bear. Its goals
included liberating the "spirit of the child"
and creating "a safe and healthy environment for
making new choices." Wasserman eschewed Synanon's
confrontational approach to therapy.
"We were building character by instilling a strong
work ethic," says Michael Rosen, a former CEDU
staff member. "You would see what you were like
through the eyes of other people. You really got strong
feedback on how the world perceived you."
Rosen met Mark Hartman when the boy had been at CEDU
for about six months. "He was the sweetest kid
I ever met, but he had no skills," he recalls.
"He was not sophisticated in any way." His
style of dress was T-shirt and jeans. But Mark was interested
in the fund-raising program that Rosen had started to
supplement CEDU's meager public subsidies. He accompanied
other CEDU students on fund- raising trips to upscale
Southern California communities, dressed in a suit and
armed with his pitch.
"You say, 'I have a story,' " Rosen explains.
"You talk about who you are, who you've become.
You try to inspire others. It would be no different
at CEDU or Herbalife."
On one trip to Beverly Hills, Mark inspired Ronald
Reagan, who had recently completed his second term as
governor of California, to part with $500. On a visit
to a Beverly Hills lawyer's office, he got a rude reception.
"The lawyer grabbed him by the collar, threw him
out the door, and said, 'I don't see anyone without
an appointment,' " says former Herbalife corporate
counsel Perry Turner. Undaunted, Mark found a pay phone
in the lobby of the building and made an appointment.
The lawyer, admiring his chutzpah, duly opened his wallet.
Mark had found his calling as a salesman. "He
could project his energy and feelings tremendously,"
says Rosen. "He was a star at it." Such a
star, in fact, that he stayed on for a while as a staff
member at CEDU after turning 18.
Like the other students, Mark was allowed to keep 5%
of the money he raised. When he left CEDU, he was eager
to apply his new skills and add to his bank balance.
"I asked him, 'What did the program do?' "
recalls friend Duane Livingston. "He said, 'They
help you realize your goals. My big goal is I always
wanted to be rich.' "
In 1976, Mark began selling Slender Now diet products
for Seyforth Laboratories, a multilevel marketer, becoming
one of its top 100 earners. After Seyforth collapsed
in 1979, he sold exercise equipment and weight-control
products for Golden Youth, another direct-sales outfit.
By the time Golden Youth, too, went out of business,
Mark was ready to start his own operation that would
combine the Eastern philosophy of herbal medicine with
the vitamin and mineral technology of the West. With
Slender Now manufacturer Richard Marconi, he developed
a line of products that promised "100% Satisfaction
Guaranteed or Your Money Back." In February 1980,
the 24-year-old entrepreneur--now Mark Reynolds Hughes,
having taken his mother's maiden name--unveiled Herbalife.
The products weren't cheap. A weight-loss program alone
cost about $30 a month, and, purchased at list price,
the full line of vitamin supplements and diet powders
would cost about 10 times as much. But Hughes had a
way around that. Customers who became distributors would
get a minimum 25% discount on everything they bought
in lieu of the money-back guarantee; with that discount,
you could make a profit selling products to others.
You could even get commissions by recruiting other salespeople.
The bigger the organization you built, the bigger the
payoff.
The payoff for Herbalife, which didn't have to worry
about sales-force overhead, was dramatic. In its first
five years, sales soared from $386,000 to $423 million,
an increase of more than 100,000%; the company progressed
from the wig plant to a Culver City industrial complex
to a high-rise near Los Angeles International Airport.
Hughes, a multimillionaire well before his 30th birthday,
progressed quickly to gold rings and a Cartier watch,
to custom-made cuff links and expensive suits, to two
Rolls-Royces. He bought a $7-million mansion in Bel-Air
from singer Kenny Rogers. Having just divorced his first
wife, former Miss Santa Monica Kathryn Whiting, he wed
former Swedish beauty queen Angela Mack in 1984, hiring
Wayne Newton to entertain their 300 wedding guests.
At rally after rally--many of which were broadcast
as infomercials over the USA Cable Network and by TV
stations across the country--Hughes projected a boyish
enthusiasm and charisma, his thick Prince Valiant hairstyle
more appropriate to a rock 'n' roller than a corporate
executive. And he perfected the story he had been telling
since he started Herbalife, the new story of who he
was.
Hughes' appearances were part revival meeting, part
Richard Simmons-style pep talk, part the Apostle Paul
finding his vocation as a missionary. But Hughes could
deliver his rags-to-riches tear-jerker (complete with
the death-by-diet-pills myth of his mother's death)
so that it resonated with just about anyone who wished
to lose weight--or dreamed of becoming fabulously rich
like him. "Against all odds, he made it big,"
says one Herbalife distributor. "It was one of
the things that drew people to him. He turned his life
around. Maybe we could do it too."
In 1985, Hughes attracted a lot of attention, much
of it from government regulators. That March, the California
attorney general and the state Department of Health
Services charged him and Herbalife with making "untrue
or misleading" product claims--primarily involving
the caffeine content of some Herbalife products--and
operating an "endless chain marketing scheme."
Prompted by complaints alleging that Herbalife product
users had suffered illness and death, a U.S. Senate
subcommittee called Hughes before a hearing in May.
He had lost none of his bravado. Referring to a panel
of nutrition experts who had criticized Herbalife in
testimony the previous day, he asked the senators, "If
they're such experts in weight loss, why were they so
fat?"
Herbalife seemed constantly to be in the news. People
magazine ran a profile of Hughes in which his ex-wife
said he was so obsessed with money that he would sit
up in bed working out interest rates and finances. "The
sad thing is, it didn't seem to make him happy,"
Whiting noted.
Around the same time, Stuard Hartman, now remarried,
received a visit from a freelance investigator working
for a television news program that was checking allegations
that Hughes' story about his mother was false. "They
suspected this was all bogus," Hartman says.
He, however, refused to cooperate. "They pretty
much told me they wanted to destroy him. No matter what
our relationship was, I did not want to have to do that
to him." The story never aired.
None of the stories about Hughes dug deeply into his
childhood or his mother's death. And no one at Herbalife
was likely to make any waves. From the early days of
the company, Hughes surrounded himself with a loyal
group of aides. He had known two of them, Rosen and
Christopher Pair, at CEDU; Conrad Lee Klein, a longtime
Hughes associate at Herbalife, started working for him
as outside legal counsel in 1982. Hughes rewarded them
handsomely--in 1999, for example, Pair received $3.4
million in salary, bonuses and other payments, plus
stock options valued by the company at $382,000. Family
members held key posts in Herbalife management, including
Hughes' brother Kirk, three sisters-in-law, a brother-in-law
and a cousin.
So Hughes' story--and his company--stayed intact. The
California charges were settled for $850,000 and nothing
came of the federal inquiries. Sales in the United States
suffered from the adverse publicity, and some distributors
dropped out. But the company still went public in 1986
and, to offset the domestic slump, launched an aggressive
expansion overseas. Between 1988 and 1990, it opened
operations in New Zealand, France, Spain, Germany, Israel
and Mexico.
Personally, Hughes had suffered another upheaval as
his second marriage ended after about a year. According
to several sources, Angela had a substance-abuse problem
that her husband could not tolerate. She would later
die, the sources say, of alcohol-related illness. Although
there was no formal company policy, substance abuse
of any kind was not tolerated at Herbalife. "It
was in effect a health-food company, and you're selling
health," notes Perry Turner. "One of the last
things to be included in a company of that type would
be something that is unhealthy."
Turner once discussed an employee's drug habit with
Hughes and other executives. "I said, 'The one
thing you can't have here is a drug problem when you've
got this kind of business and these kinds of distributors,'
" he recalls. "This was something Mark agreed
with." When someone asked, "If he keeps it
private, what's the deal?" Turner insisted: "Listen,
there's no room for it in this kind of business. That
kind of thing can't be kept private." Hughes rebounded
from his second divorce, marrying Suzan Schroder, a
former Miss Hawaiian Tropics and court reporter, in
September 1987. She was petite and buxom, with high
cheekbones, long blond hair and a certain Barbie-doll
quality. In their appearances together--and there would
be many as they threw themselves into charitable endeavors--she
would be the most glamorous of escorts.
One of their guests at the wedding was Jack Reynolds,
then a plumbing contractor. Mark's maternal grandparents,
who had feuded with Hartman, had arranged for Mark to
meet Reynolds at least twice during his childhood, introducing
him as his real father. At Suzan's urging, they had
gone on vacation to Maui together and apparently warmed
to each other.
Another addition to the family arrived in December
1991 when Suzan gave birth to Alexander Reynolds Hughes.
And the new father made sure they would not be cramped
for space, spending $20 million to acquire Grayhall,
a historic, 22,000-square-foot Beverly Hills mansion
designed to resemble a Tirolean castle. One publication
called it a "storybook home for a storybook couple."
Relations between the couple could get frosty, though,
particularly when Suzan tried to get Mark to open up
about his past. Once, says a source, "Suzan brought
up [Hartman] at Thanksgiving. Mark got pretty angry.
It was like a taboo subject." Echoes Kirk Hartman:
"When we got together, the past wasn't talked about."
Some believe Mark blamed Stuard Hartman for his mother's
death. "He loved this lady," says Rosen. "He
was torn apart." Hughes, who referred to Hartman
as his stepfather, specifically excluded him as a beneficiary
in a 1997 will.
In December 1994, another tragedy--the death of Mark's
brother Guy Hartman at age 37, after years of alcohol
abuse--brought Stuard Hartman to Grayhall for the first
time. During the post-funeral reception, Hartman got
a tour of the property, the proof of Hughes' self-made
success. As guests were leaving, Hughes approached his
brother Kirk and Kirk's wife, Jackie. "I showed
him," he told Jackie Hartman. "I showed that
bastard what I could do."
The Hugheses kept up their public profile. In May 1995,
D.A.R.E. America honored them with its "Future
of America Award," praising their commitment to
"teaching our kids how to say no to drugs."
But the marriage was crumbling. And less than 18 months
later, Mark did something that suggested he was touched
with the same curse as his late brother and mother.
About 11 PM on November 30, 1996, a Hawthorne police
officer pulled Hughes over for driving on the wrong
side of the road. Hughes, the police report said, was
making his way from Los Angeles International Airport
to the Bare Elegance strip club. The officer had him
exit his Jeep Cherokee and put him through several sobriety
tests, which Hughes failed.
Hughes said he had only drunk two glasses of wine.
But a field breath test registered a blood-alcohol level
of 0.22, almost three times the legal limit. Says Dr.
Haraszti: "On the face of it, that is diagnostic
of alcoholism. It is such a high level that an ordinary
person would not be able to stand up, much less drive.
You have to use a lot to develop that level of tolerance."
After being booked and released, Hughes was charged
with driving under the influence. In April 1997, he
pleaded no contest, agreeing to serve three years' probation,
pay a fine of $1,501, have his driving license suspended
and attend an alcohol-education program. (It has been
reported that Hughes also was arrested for drunk driving
in Malibu in July 1997. Court documents show he was
arrested for misdemeanor driving on a suspended license
and cited for various Vehicle Code infractions.)
The DUI conviction went unnoticed, buried in an Inglewood
courthouse free of tabloid scandal-hunters. And the
possibility that Herbalife's bronzed personification
of health might have a serious health problem remained
a secret.
Perry Turner, who worked for Herbalife until he retired
in 1988, insists he never saw Hughes drink. Hughes continued
to function as Herbalife's CEO, the energy and industry
he devoted to his company never flagging. But the consensus
among sources who discussed his drinking--all of whom
asked to remain anonymous--is that he had become a problem
drinker by the early 1990s.
According to Hughes' autopsy report, a Beverly Hills
psychiatrist treated him with Antabuse, a drug that
inhibits the craving for alcohol. "Dr. [Stephen]
Scappa was aware that the decedent had drinking binges,"
the report says. But Dr. Drew Pinsky of Las Encinas
Hospital notes: "Antabuse is fairly worthless unless
[the patient] is involved in a program of recovery.
They use Antabuse as a substitute for recovery."
According to Pinsky, those who binge on alcohol or
drugs "tend to have more psychiatric pathology"
than more continuous drinkers. Experts agree that Hughes,
with his genetics, early substance abuse and a pathology
of unresolved childhood issues and repressed feelings,
fits the profile. "He resorts to alcohol as a way
to numb his feelings," theorizes Haraszti. "He
finds that to be effective and he is not motivated to
change."
For Herbalife, so dependent on Hughes' cultlike appeal,
public disclosure of his problem could have been a bombshell,
equivalent almost to the scandals involving televangelists
Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker. "I would have thought
it would have a profound effect on the business because
the distributors so admired him," suggests Turner.
With Herbalife's glory days long past, shareholders
would not have welcomed the news either. Although sales
nearly doubled between 1994 and 1998, net profits increased
only 5%. After Hughes registered plans in early 1997
to sell one-quarter of his shares, the stock began to
slide from its all-time high of $37. As shares fell
as low as $6, the CEO angered investors by discounting
stock options for corporate insiders by about 50%. One
money manager complained to Business Week that Hughes
had "completely pushed the limits of shareholder
boundaries."
The pressure on Hughes and his aides to maintain his
healthy image was "dramatic," says a source.
One executive who knew of Hughes' problem was not replaced,
the source says, for fear of adding to the circle of
people in the know.
Richard Marconi, whose company, Global Health Sciences,
was one of Herbalife's major suppliers, says he wanted
to avoid a possible scandal. So he approached Pair and
another Herbalife executive with a plan to take Hughes
to a discreet alcohol rehab facility in Switzerland,
with each man spending a week as Hughes' overseer. For
reasons still not clear, they never followed through.
In September 1997, Suzan Hughes filed for divorce after
10 years of marriage. As part of a settlement that gave
her a mansion near Grayhall and alimony, lawyers made
sure she would not say anything out of turn. Any discussion
of her ex-husband's "wealth or any other habits
that you think he has which are inappropriate"
would result in her forfeiting the house and cash, a
court document stated. Suzan declined to be interviewed
for this article, citing the settlement.
At the time of Herbalife's 20th anniversary celebration
one year ago, Hughes was under considerable stress.
He had made an offer to buy out the public's shares,
which had buoyed up the stock, but it had stalled due
to financing problems and shareholder lawsuits. The
stock was stuck at about $14. Beneath his buff exterior,
sculpted by hours of personal training, Hughes' health
was brittle. He was recovering from a recurrence of
pneumonia, and the treatment involved steroids, which
made it difficult for him to sleep.
"He was edgy, more short of temper," says
Rosen. For his sleeping problems, he was taking Doxepin,
which Haraszti describes as an "antediluvian"
medication that he would not prescribe to anyone, let
alone an alcoholic.
But Hughes still seemed to have plenty going for him.
In February 1999, he married Darcy LaPier, another former
Miss Hawaiian Tropics with two children and a history
of wealthy husbands, including actor Jean-Claude Van
Damme. Plans for their Benedict Canyon home--a colossus
to be built on 157 acres that Hughes had acquired from
Merv Griffin--were proceeding. And he and Darcy had
moved into the peach-colored Malibu villa that they
purchased in December 1999.
Herbalife's leader, his hair now coiffed in a leaner,
sleeker do, shone at the Forum celebration. "He
was hilarious, his usual charming, excited, exuberant
self," recalls Denver-based distributor Leslie
Stanford. Nobody could have foreseen the terrible news
of that Sunday morning only three months later. Laments
John Tartol, a close friend and longtime Herbalife distributor:
"It was unbelievable to me."
Darcy Hughes told coroner's officials that her husband
had been drinking the night of May 20 and had fallen
asleep on the living-room sofa. She tried to wake him
about midnight so that they could go to bed. But he
stayed on the sofa. About an hour later, she failed
again to rouse him and went up to bed herself, sleeping
in a room adjacent to the master bedroom. She awoke
at 10:30 on the Sunday morning to find him dead on their
bed.
In the lobby of the Century City building that became
Herbalife's headquarters in 1996, the legend lives on.
The inscription on a framed poster of Hughes at a rally
relates how millions of people "have become better
human beings as a result of his dream, his vision and
his precious gift to the world." It continues:
"Now it's more important than ever to give this
life-changing gift to others, because anyone who is
touched by Herbalife carries a little bit of Mark inside
of them."
Up on the 15th floor, from the window facing north,
you can see the Benedict Canyon property, which is up
for sale. Associate Conrad Klein is now an Herbalife
executive vice president and a trustee of the huge Hughes
estate. He has thinning hair, hooded eyes and a stooped
posture. During a two-hour interview, a genuine affection
for Hughes comes through. "He was a very sweet
and gentle man," Klein says. "He had a very
winsome way about him." With a pang, he adds: "I
loved the guy. He had more joie de vivre than anyone
you would ever meet."
Despite the evidence to the contrary, Klein refuses
to amend the official story Hughes created. Mark, he
says, was not raised in a two-parent household, and
his mother "did have weight problems." Klein
vigorously denies that Hughes had a drinking problem.
"There is no basis for anybody to tell you Mark
was an alcoholic. Mark was a good party animal when
he felt like it. Maybe he had too much to drink at a
party.To say Mark's an alcoholic, it's absurd."
At his grandmother's party, Klein says, Hughes "did
in fact have something to drink. He had a lot to drink,
everybody had a lot to drink."
Christopher Pair, the new CEO, also is keeping Hughes'
story alive. In a message to distributors posted on
the Herbalife Web site, he says, "Mark's mother
died from unsafe dieting practices. This was a tragedy
he never forgot." Distributors call talk of alcoholism
a smear on Herbalife. "The only way our competition
can hurt the company is some kind of slur campaign,"
Tartol says.
Herbalife stock is trading at about $7.50 a share,
meaning Mark Hughes' holdings have lost about half their
value since the company's 20th anniversary one year
ago. The shares are held in trust for 9-year-old Alex
Hughes, the principal beneficiary of his father's estate.
In addition to Klein, the trustees are Pair, who was
convicted of shoplifting $400 worth of merchandise from
a Beverly Hills department store in 1998, and Jack Reynolds,
who may--or may not--be Alexander's paternal grandfather.
In July, Reynolds, the former plumbing contractor, was
appointed chairman of Herbalife International.
In Malibu, the house where Hughes died is for sale
at a price of $31 million, fixtures and furnishings
included. His widow, Darcy--whom a judge in January
awarded $20 million from the estate--no longer lives
there.
Jean-Paul Chiari, a dapper Frenchman who was an estate
manager for Hughes, points out some of the mansion's
more outstanding features--the set of three Baccarat
crystal chandeliers in the lobby and living room, the
handmade Aubusson rugs, the manicure station, the walk-in
fridge, the computerized lighting-control system, the
giant TV screen in the family room that descends from
the ceiling. Only Dustin Hoffman has a similar video
set-up complete with state-of-the-art projector in his
home, Chiari says. "But Dustin Hoffman's isn't
as large as Mr. Hughes' screen."
Most of the framed photographs on display feature Hughes
with his son, whom he saw as often as possible given
the demands of Herbalife. They would vacation together
at Christmas and Easter and for three weeks in the summer,
visiting resorts in the Caribbean and the French Riviera,
where they could sail, surf and jet-ski. In the photos,
they could hardly look happier. "He was a very
family-oriented man," Chiari says of the father.
Just a few miles up the coast in Ventura County, another
father lives in a house not far from where Mark Reynolds
Hughes grew up. Stuard Hartman has volunteered to take
a DNA test to prove he is Hughes' father but Herbalife
declined the offer. He says he has "no ax to grind,"
no financial motive--a claim on the estate, for example--to
make mischief.
With his death, Mark Hughes' estrangement from Hartman
is now permanent. Hartman can only wonder what happened
to the boy he raised to the age of almost 14, wonder
why Mark, despite all his worldly success, would suffer
a torment so similar to that of his mother.
"I've always been very proud of him, regardless
of our relationship, for the successes he achieved,"
Hartman says. "It's obviously a very rare individual
that can do what he did." But success, he adds,
"didn't give him any satisfaction or happiness.
His life was testament to that."
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