some cheese. he was buying milk, banana, cheese from you. yeah. monica spaconi, a transsexual, had recently had an operation to become female. she said the man who walked into her store bought groceries from her more than two dozen times in the winter of 2007-2008. sometimes he paused to make small talk. what name did he use? mark stern. then she says she didn t see him for a while. in the springtime, disappear. summertime, too. monica says that when mark stern returned at the end of november 2008, he told her he had been bicycling around europe. it was then, monica says, she and that outdoorsy american began skiing together practically every day. and he began telling her stories about his life. he told me to be married and to be divorced. and to have a strange wife,
i knew he was stressed out about the lawsuits, but i really believed in my heart it was something we could fight against. a few weeks later, it was michelle who was devastated and needed support when she suffered a miscarriage and had to be hospitalized. and he promised, he swore that he would be there before i went under anesthesia. and he insisted that he had to go into his office to take care of some things, and he didn t show up. and i was shocked. whatever mark weinberger was doing in the office those days was also a mystery to employees like suzette dennington, weinberger s top medical assistant at the sinus clinic. he started to be one of the first people in the office and last people to leave every day. what was he doing in his office? i don t know. the door was closed. it was very quiet. we would have to knock on the door and let him know that there was another patient ready to be seen. he definitely withdrew.
was already a very successful ear nose and throat doctor. we were bonding about medicine because i had just gotten through doing a stint in neuroscience at the university of chicago. we were just making jokes about the medical milieu. he was very funny. so you hit it off right off the bat? we went out to dinner. it was thursday. i spent all weekend with him and by monday i was enamored and smitten. within months michelle had moved out of her parents home and into mark s townhouse in chicago. the whirlwind was on, athens, miami, caribbean sunsets and french champagne. michelle, you look beautiful. for a southwest chicago girl whose father was a pipe fitter, this was head-turning stuff. just want to say this is the best vacation ever. i love you, baby. her new love was a philosophy quoting poetry writing renaissance man.
he professed his love in a poem. he just swept me off my feet. you had an unbelievable life. it really was, yeah. like it was just so romantic when i first met him, it was awesome. and then things just got, like, exponentially more outrageous as time went on. outrageously good. yeah. for instance, instead of simply popping the question to michelle, mark flew her to rome. he had a driver bring her to meet him. mark dropped to one knee and presented her with an enormous ring while a group of minstrels he hadired senaded them. i was crying and erybody the piazza was clapping. it was a beautiful moment. their wedding in 2001 was actually a three-act extravaganza. first a small wedding in chicago s botanic garden held solely for the purpose of
diamonds until after he had left. diamonds, light, untraceable. just the kind of tip that s found in a book michelle discovered among mark s things after he left. michelle came to see that her husband had been planning his vanishing act for months. he had apparently packed two huge suitcases full of water filtration systems, gps equipment, language tapes. all types of bizarre things, and he shipped one of the bags to kahn and another bag to athens. a meticulous plan, perfectly executed, though even in hindsight michelle now remembered how nervous he had been on the day they flew to greece. he was yelling at everybody and he s, like, i have to make this flight. i m like, we re not going to miss the flight. we re not late. he was just completely uncontrollable in the airport. oddly enough, even knowing