Jared Fogle's divorce from wife finalized
INDIANAPOLIS -- Former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle and his wife finalized their divorce days before the disgraced pitchman was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison for trading in child pornography and paying for sex with underage girls, court records show.
A Boone County judge granted Fogle and Kathleen McLaughlin a divorce on Nov. 16, three days before a federal judge in Indianapolis sentenced Fogle, according to court documents.
McLaughlin, who was Fogle's second wife, filed for divorce on Aug. 19, hours after he agreed to plead guilty to one count each of traveling to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor and distribution and receipt of child pornography.
About 30 pages of court documents related to the divorce proceedings that ended the former couple's five-year marriage are publicly available. They include a September filing by McLaughlin's attorney contesting a request by Fogle, 38, to spend time with his two children.
That filing cites Fogle's 14 minor victims in his criminal case and states that he "is an admitted pedophile and consumer of child pornography." It also says McLaughlin had traveled out-of-state on a planned trip and decided to remain there with the children to avoid what it called the "self-inflicted media circus" that Fogle created with his criminal actions.
McLaughlin's filing also said Fogle had played little role in the daily lives of their now 4-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter "even prior to becoming the focus of a criminal investigation" because of travel.
The court records don't include any details of the financial terms of the divorce.
Fogle attorney Ron Elberger said Wednesday that the suburban Indianapolis man would have no comment on his divorce.
Federal court documents detailing the charges against Fogle say he had sex at New York City hotels with two girls under age 18 and paid them. He also admitted victimizing 12 minors that the former director of a charitable group Fogle founded had secretly filmed. Fogle agreed to pay each of his 14 victims $100,000 in restitution.
In October, the secret-recorded tapes that led to the arrest of Fogle were aired on the daytime talk show "Dr. Phil."
Fogle was secretly recorded by a woman who had befriended him and then became an FBI informant. The woman, Rochelle Herman-Walrond, is a former radio host who interviewed him and became suspicious when she overhead him say he found middle school girls attractive.
"I was stunned," she recalled. "I was shocked."
In one of the tapes that aired on Dr. Phil's show on Thursday, Fogle can be heard saying, "...early middle school is probably one of the best."
Herman-Walrond told Dr. Phil that Fogle told her that he preferred middle school aged children.
"I like all ages. That's the thing I mean. It depends...who is ready for what. You know, who's going to give you the glance," he said in one of the recordings.