The tragic unraveling of Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer took a disturbing turn this week when a message from her personal email account landed in a reporter's in-box: Her husband, California's Treasurer Bill Lockyer, the message claimed, bought and gave her drugs years before she wound up in rehab.
In an apparent call for help, the message also said she could no longer stand the torture and harassment of an ex-lover she says beat her in a motel room two months ago.
"I simply can't bear this any longer,'' the email said. "Goodbye to everyone.''
Fearing for her safety, the newspaper immediately called police and forwarded the email to Nadia Lockyer's chief of staff and to her 70-year-old husband's office. Police found her safe at the family home Wednesday afternoon in the Hayward hills.
When a reporter arrived a short time later, Lockyer, 40, said through a door slightly ajar that she had not sent the email.
She said that her former boyfriend Steven Chikhani -- a 35-year-old San Jose man she met in rehab and later visited in jail -- had been hacking into her account. Hayward Police say they are "evaluating whether her email was fraudulently accessed.'' A spokesman for Bill Lockyer called the accusations about him obtaining drugs for his wife "completely, totally, utterly false.''
Chikhani's lawyer Adrienne Dell, said Thursday there's no truth to the claim that Chikhani hacked into Nadia Lockyer's email, and that this isn't the first time Lockyer has made such a claim. She wouldn't elaborate.
Chikhani and Nadia Lockyer's steamy and tumultuous affair -- fueled by drugs, alcohol and rumored sex tapes -- blew up in February when she called police from a Newark motel claiming he beat her up -- an accusation the Attorney General's office is still investigating. Ever since, both sides have engaged in a public war, sharing intimate text messages, recordings and photographs with the media.
The email that arrived from Nadia Lockyer's Rocketmail account Wednesday linked her husband for the first time to her addiction: "Bill bought and gave me drugs years before meeting Steve, then called me crazy when I sought help, thus, I had to take matters into my own hands and was set up by Steve.''
A titan among California's Democrats, Bill Lockyer has never been linked to drugs over a political career that spanned four decades, including 25 years in the Legislature and two terms as attorney general, the state's top cop.
Asked whether Bill Lockyer has at any time in his life possessed, used or otherwise had any illicit contact with a controlled substance, his spokesman Tom Dresslar replied, "Like a lot of people of his generation, he experimented in his younger days. Those younger days have long since passed and the experiment has long been over. He has never abused drugs."
While Chikhani's criminal record includes a 2010 conviction for possessing methamphetamine, Nadia Lockyer had never before been specific about using drugs in the past. When she took a leave of absence Feb. 14 from her supervisor's job to enter rehab, she issued a statement about "receiving treatment for chemical dependency and chronic pain from a past debilitating car accident. Alcohol and addiction are diseases from which many of us suffer and unfortunately I have not been spared.''
The stunning new email, which arrived Wednesday afternoon, was part of an email string that spanned two weeks between Lockyer and a Mercury News reporter, who had been offering the scandal-plagued supervisor a chance to sit down and tell her story. Lockyer acknowledged crafting parts of Wednesday's email but said "everything in regards to my husband was all added.''
When asked what she meant, she explained: "I drafted part of it, but it sounds like he's hacked into prior emails,'' she said referring to Chikhani. "He's acting like he's me.''
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