Mike Tyson’s four-year-wife, a physician, filed for divorce in Montgomery County Circuit Court on Thursday, saying in court papers that the former heavyweight champion cheated on her.
In the divorce case, Monica Turner, a doctor in her second year of pediatric residency at Georgetown University Medical Center, said Tyson “committed adultery during the marriage, and such adultery has neither been forgiven nor condoned by the Plaintiff.”
According to his counsel, the boxer filed his own divorce case in Las Vegas on Thursday. “The basis is that the parties are currently incompatible,” Tyson’s lawyer, James Jimmerson, explained. “We don’t have a fault-based statute where people are slinging mud.”
Turner’s attorney, Sanford Ain, refused to comment on the alleged philandering. “We have every expectation and hope that the parties will reach an amicable resolution of their differences and that there will be a settlement,” he added. “I’m sure both parties are very concerned about the welfare of their children and are doing everything they can to protect them from this.”
Turner, 35, lives in a gated $2 million house in Bethesda with the couple’s two children, Rayna, 5, and Amir, 4, overlooking Congressional Country Club. In April 1997, she married Tyson, 35, in a small Muslim ceremony.
“I saw two people who had great love and respect for each other,” said Muhammad Siddeeq, the Indianapolis imam who officiated at the event, yesterday. “I hope they can find a way to work through this.”
Siddeeq met the couple while monitoring Tyson’s conversion to Islam in an Indiana jail from 1992 to 1995, while the boxer was serving a rape sentence for raping an 18-year-old beauty pageant competitor in 1991.
Turner had first grabbed Tyson’s attention in 1990, at a party hosted by comedian Eddie Murphy. She was from Washington’s Petworth neighborhood and the half sister of Michael Steele, the Maryland Republican Party’s current chairman. She had a daughter with a convicted drug dealer 28 years her senior in the 1980s; the kid now lives with Turner.
She and Tyson kept in touch after they met. She flew to Indianapolis practically every two weeks after his arrest to visit him in jail.
During their marriage, the pair maintained a very secluded existence in Bethesda and worked hard to portray Tyson as a dedicated parent, even as his legal problems grew. He was seen kissing his then-infant son Amir for the Father’s Day edition of Esquire magazine in 1999, while serving a one-year term for attacking two motorists in the Montgomery County Detention Center.
“With our kids, he’s very involved,” Turner said that year to The Washington Media. “He is really protective of them. He is always concerned that everything is in order, that they are safe and happy.”
However, rumors about the couple’s divorce have been circulating in the boxing communities of Washington and Las Vegas in recent months. Jimmerson stated yesterday that Tyson has been living at his $3 million Las Vegas residence for more than a year, which is located in a ranch community that is home to various celebrities, including musician Wayne Newton.
Jimmerson refused to comment on the mysterious woman, or women, named in Turner’s divorce case. “I regret that there would be this type of mud-throwing,” he remarked.
According to Lt. Jeff Carlson of the Las Vegas Metropolitan officers Department, a lady informed officers in September that Tyson raped her at his ranch. According to Carlson, the police ended a four-month investigation into the claim this week and sent the findings to the district attorney’s office yesterday. According to him, police are proposing “that the district attorney pursue” the situation. “We believe there will be probable cause to substantiate the sexual assault charge.”
Ain refused to comment on the probe.
He stated that the couple had discussed divorce settlements but that no agreement had been reached. Turner said he expects to keep legal custody of the children. He refused to speculate on Tyson’s financial worth. In addition to the Las Vegas mansion, the boxer has substantial business interests and real estate holdings, and he frequently draws multimillion-dollar rewards for his prize fights.
Monica Turner and Mike Tyson in 1998. He has been in Las Vegas, and she has been in Bethesda.Mike Tyson and Monica Turner in 1998. After four years of marriage, both filed for divorce on Thursday.
