Melinda Gates’ boyfriend Jon Du Pre says he often abused his ex-wife

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Melinda Gates’ rumoured new boyfriend has a dark past.

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Jon Du Pre wrote in his 2000 memoir The Prodigal Father about the abuse he inflicted on his ex-wife, Gina Larsen.

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Du Pre and Larsen met while both studied journalism at Brigham Young University and got married in 1986, the year after she was crowned Miss Utah.

In an excerpt from the book, obtained by the Daily Mail, Du Pre recalled a time he unleashed a verbal assault on his then-wife.

“Once she was disarmed and I was loaded with explosive rage, she didn’t have a chance,” he wrote. “I stood and ran across the living room at my pregnant wife, and she cowered as I swelled with hot, angry air and launched the worst verbal attack she had ever endured.”

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Du Pre’s memoir centres on his abusive relationship with his father, Robert, a civil rights attorney and FBI agent who was accused of spying on suspected communists in Hollywood in the 1950s.

Du Pre penned how his wife was in for a rude awakening being married to him.

“Welcome to the real world, princess, where not everyone is happy,” he recounted the words he spat at her at the time. “For once, this one’s not about you, you spoon-fed, spoiled-rotten b****. This one’s about me.

He added: “I’m going to find out why my father f***ed up my life, and p*** on you for trying to make me feel guilty about it.”

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The former Fox News correspondent said shortly after they wed, Larsen discovered how enraged her husband could get and “learned which of my buttons never to press.”

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Du Pre explained, “Gina grew accustomed to being crushed in arguments, to being embarrassed in front of our friends, to taking the blame for little thing that went wrong — the baby’s stinking diaper, the burnt toast, the bounced check.”

He wrote regretfully, “I knew that demons from my past were threatening to destroy this new life that meant so much to me.”

The former couple have three children.

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Larsen remarried motivational speaker Todd King, a fellow Brigham Young graduate, the Mail reported.

Gates, who split from Bill Gates in 2021, said there were “some reasons” she couldn’t stay in the marriage and its demise was “unbelievably painful.”

She called the day she decided to leave her marriage her “lowest point” but knew she “needed to make a healthier choice” for herself.