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Esme's Blog: My Chat With Hecker's Soul Mate

By Esme Murphy, WCCO-TV

Having covered the Denny Hecker saga for almost two years, people keep asking me: What does Christi Rowan see in him?

At the beginning it seemed pretty obvious. Rowan has a $400,000 judgment against her because that is how much Hecker spent on her in the year before and just after he filed for bankruptcy. There was an apartment, a $60,000 fur coat, jewelry, trips and just about anything else.

Who wouldn't like that? I didn't even know fur coats could cost 60 G's.

But now Hecker is in jail, ready to go prison. He has less than no money. He has a $200 million-plus judgment against him. That means if he ever makes any money the bankruptcy court will seize it. He is facing up to ten years in prison. As a direct result of Rowan's relationship with Hecker, she now faces at least six months in prison for lying under oath and for bank fraud. She and her two young children are about to be evicted from the home she shared with Hecker.

Yet in an interview with me Christi Rowan described Hecker as her "soul mate." She insisted "our lives have never been better." That last quote is one of the many that did not make it into my story last night. Believe me, it was hard to pick which quotes to use.

No, she wouldn't talk about any legal matters, including the charge that she and Hecker tried to orchestrate a wedding while Hecker was under armed guard at the U.S. Attorney's Office. That would have been a first, I am sure.

And so I have reached a conclusion after talking to her. Some may argue that love is blind, or love is crazy. But Rowan believes she is living, as she put it, a fairy tale. And as she put it, "No fairy tale ever started good."

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