tv Nightline ABC March 7, 2012 11:35pm-12:00am PST
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tonight on "nightline" -- exed out. a bitter divorce between supermodel, christie brinkley, and her husband is getting nasty. and uncomfortably public. tonight, as he tells his side of the story, what's the price of taking your breakup viral? and extreme exterminators. hunting pigs with sniper rifles and vehicles. plus -- spanking rich. they're the moguls behind spanx, under marmour, you never heard f
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a few years ago. the world's newest billionaires. how did they get there so fast? good evening. i'm terry moran. it's not just for the rich and famous anymore. nasty breakups, exposed for all the world to see, online and on facebook and twitter. now, it's easy to read up on the sordid details of the battles being fought by couples you barely know. all that tmi can come as a price. and christie brinkley and peter cook are prime examples of what can happen to a breakup gone viral. here's abc's elizabeth vargas. >> reporter: christie brinkley's world-famous for her stunning beauty. but the brawl between brinkley and her ex-husband, peter cook, is getting pretty ugly. they could have kept it all
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private. but their personal battle is now a public spectacle. it's a war of words between a famously feuding former couple. she's requesting you be put in jail? >> at the front page of the motion. >> reporter: before she was set to star in the musical "chicago," brinkley smacked cook with new legal papers. this time, she claims they violated their divorce court ruling, by sending her aggressive e-mails. she wants him to pay her a $140,000 fine or go to jail. how dud it get to be so public? >> i don't know. i responded to her. and we filed the cross motion on her, to defend myself against her allegations. and i can only imagine that she made it public. and i think the whole thing could have been staged to coincide with her return to her stage on "chicago." >> reporter: you think she's orchestrating this for publicity for herself? >> i can't think of any other reason why she would have filed this. >> reporter: if not publicity or revenge, then maybe simply
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asking cook to hold up his end of the deal. after 2008, after what seemed to be a picture-perfect, ten-year marriage, it all ended. cook, a renowned architect in the high-priced hamptons, admitted to watching porn and having an affair with his employee. brinkley filed for divorce. >> are you optimistic about getting the kids? >> oh, yes. >> reporter: a public and personal trial ensued. do you think in some respects, she's able to find a sympathetic ear in some corners because of the way your marriage ended? because of that messy, nasty divorce, and the revelations about your failures in that marriage? >> i was punished very thoroughly for my indiscretions in my marriage. four years ago. and i don't think it's fair to punish me every year over and over and over again. >> reporter: his resentment reached a breaking point this week. a brinkley source called him a deadbeat dad in a "new york
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daily news" article. a fuming cook shot back in an online blog. you wrote also in that blog, quote, her billy joel uptown girl music video fame faded long ago. and the only thing left for her to garner media attention is to publicize the details of her tawdry, nasty divorce. isn't this like a scorched earth policy to blog something like this? >> i've been accused of being a deadbeat dad. >> reporter: you're accusing her of throwing her kids under the bus to get publicity for her show. >> i sure am. >> reporter: do you regret writing any of this? >> not at all. >> reporter: not at all? to be honest, this sounds nasty. >> that is nasty. but i was pushed for that. i was -- the world was lied to. christie brinkley was victim. i'm being horsed. he's coming after me. poor, innocent me, just trying to get on with life. i didn't do anything to her. i wasn't the aggressor. nor was i the aggressor in the
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early e-mails. that's the same thing. i may become aggressive. >> reporter: cook says he hasn't communicated directly with brinkley in two years. all contact regarding their two, teenage children is through her lawyers. everything from pickup time, to pediatricians bills. from the outside looking in, forgive me. it can seem like two squabbling teenagers. >> it seems very petty. but the problem is, that miss brinkley doesn't think -- she thinks these agreements are crafted to govern me and me alone. that the rules don't apply to her. >> reporter: what do you fight about? >> she filed a claim that i wasn't paying child support, when she took off to do broadway, from march to july, she put the children in my full-time care. i wrote her lawyers. i said, she's gone. i have the children full-time, how about we reverse child support for this time period? >> reporter: you asked not to pay child support during the time you had the two kids. they were with you 100% of the
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time? >> 100% of the time. >> reporter: he said as soon as it became clear that brinkley wasn't cooperate, he paid her the money. and she still went after him. >> i'm not here to attack christie brinkley but to defend myself. to be called a deadbeat dad, is a spiteful thing, besides it's totally untrue. if i was a bad guy. if you had $80 million, would you let a bad guy have your kids for a day? or would you fight him so he never has contact for them? she gave me 40%. am i the villain? that you're going to publicly castrate, as she's doing currently in the press? or am i the good dad? in a few weeks, she's going to surrender the kids to me again. full-time. >> reporter: in a statement to abc news, brinkley's lawyer says she has sole custody of the children. and anything suggesting otherwise was, quote, delusional.
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he added, when she's away for more than two days, per the court, the kids are required to be with their father, something christy fought against. both sides have e-mails from each other, proving their allegations. while the couple settled midway through the divorce case, cook says this round, he will not stop his fight. why would christie brinkley, who is reportedly worth tens of millions of dollars, be billing you and squabbling about expenses that are a couple hundred dollars? >> it's a way to harassment because celebrities can -- money people and celebrities can abuse the legal system. they can go in. for her to spend $100,000 on lawyers to jerk me around, it's no sweat for her. for me, it's a significant cut in my net worth and my future and my kids' futures with me. it's a game for her. >> reporter: sadly, it seems to be their children who are caught in the middle. i'm elizabeth vargas, for "nightline," in new york. >> tmi. coming up, what do you do
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texas. close to 3 million wild hogs that are destroying ranches and rattling nerves. and the solution to this outsized pest problem. it's every bit as big as abc's ryan owens finds out. >> reporter: this is a hog hunt. at night, with military-grade equipment. thermal cameras, night scopes, a vehicle designed for u.s. special forces. our guides are the owners of the texas-based company, tactical hog control. >> we're the orkin men of the rangeland. we don't wear the goofy, white hats. >> reporter: true. but they do wear night-vision goggles and carry high-powered rifles, with silences. jed and clark may call themselves exterminators. but they are high-tech hunters. their prey is nocturnal, with a
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good sense of hearing. so, they use the best the military has to offer. >> if you had an infestation of rats and roaches in your home, you're going to call somebody to wipe them out. so, the landowners are having the same battle. just on a different scale. >> reporter: texas has an estimated 2.6 million farrell hogs. and they reproduce so fast, they put rabbits to shame. jed and clark call them 300-pound rats. >> there's no predators, other than clark and i. >> reporter: hogs cause an estimated $52 million damage to the state's agricultural industry, every, single year. largely by rooting up valuable ranchland. >> there's where a hog was rooting right there. >> reporter: rancher randy has 5,000 acres. small by texas standards. the hogs have nearly ruined his
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land. >> ranches, us as a nation, we feed the world. we've got to have grass to make it happen. >> reporter: what jed and clark offer desperate ranchers is quite a deal. the landowner doesn't pay a dime. tactical hog control makes money by charging thrill-seeking hunters a few hundred dollars each. they flock here from across the united states, to stalk the hogs in the dead of night. first, they use a thermal imaging camera that can sense heat a couple miles in front of us. jed and clark drive within a few hundred yards of the farrell hogs. they get as close as they can. and start firing with the help of those night scopes. >> we've got three really healthy sows. the two bigger ones are probably full of pigs, pregnant. they probably anywhere from 8 to 12 pigs in them. >> reporter: sows can produce
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two litters a year. five to six babies in each litter. their population can double in six months. so, while it may sound cruel, pregnant pigs are an especially good get. evidence of this group's damage is just feet away. >> this is what they do. they take this real pretty grass. >> reporter: now, they're buried right next to what they do. the hogs will stay right where they are. food regulations make it nearly impossible to sell this meat, even though wild boar is considered a delicacy. sometimes they leave up to 30 hogs a night. >> you don't ask your exterminator for a roach recipe. if the client wants the meat, he's welcome to it. >> we call it feeding the hungry. >> reporter: can't you trap these things? isn't there a more humane way of treating these hogs? to that, you say what? >> what are you going to do when you get them in a trap?
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are you going to turn them loose on some hog preserve somewhere. i don't know where one is, do you? you're going to find up killing them anyway. >> it's the only way to get rid of them. >> sad but true. >> reporter: in case this city slicker thinks this is a ranch problem, consider this. these hogs have now been found in 46 states. and they've done plenty of damage near cities. >> we're just one operation in one part of texas in one of the states. we're not going to kill them all. >> and they're still winning the battle. you know? they're still multiplying at a rate that no one can slow them down. so, you have to tip your hat to them. >> reporter: or point your gun at them. [ gunshot ] >> reporter: i'm ryan owens, for "nightline," in texas. >> man versus hog there. thanks to ryan for that. coming up, what's an idea like spanx worth?
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at 41, she's young, she's sought-after, and she's worth about $1 billion. and sara blakely is one of the newly-minted forbes billionaires, whose inventions are quirky and whose fortunes have soared nearly overnight. abc's john donvan has tonight's "sign of the times." >> reporter: product placement. what new products placed some newly very rich people at what number on "forbes" billionaires list for the very first time? well, stuff that makes you feel better and feels better fast. >> americans are on the go. they are looking to improve constantly. and they're looking for products that can help them do that. >> spanx is your answer. >> reporter: think underwear, for example. think spainx, the shape-inducing pantyhose alternative that launched in 2000. and really launched after oprah said she likes them. puts sara blakely at number 1,153.
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sounds low? well, low is a net worth of $1 billion. and she's 41 years old. think underwear again. under armour. the sweat wicking material, developed by a former college football player. first as a t-shirt. but it went on from there. puts under armour developer kevin plank, who is 39, at 1,075, worth $1 billion, for a company started in 2006. that's getting rich awfully quick, isn't it? >> that's because they are creating new product categories. and they continue to dominate those product categories. in many cases, they're taking those companies public. and people are excited about the products. and they're investing in them. >> hello, my friend. >> can't get it together in the morning? >> reporter: this is what put manag pargarva on the list. one two-ounce can at a time. he's only been in business eight years. virt really creating the energy shot field. and it's built him a net worth of $1.3 billion and given him spot number 960 on the "forbes" list.
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go higher up the list, and at 634 there's elon musk who made money in paypal. but right now, his baby is this, the tesla car. it's electric. so are its fans like george clooney. musk, who is 40, is worth $2 billion. ♪ >> reporter: and then, there is this consumer product. anything with this logo on it. and of course, the man behind it left us not long ago. but as his wealth was passed on to his wife, she is now worth $9 billion. and at number 100, is one of only two newcomers on the list to break into the top 100. so, who's really way up there where the net worth gets into the 40s and the 50s and the 60s of billions? some familiar old faces. we could list their products. but what they really make, no matter what, is money. i'm john donvan, for "nightline," in washington. >> that's a lot of money, too. thanks for watching abc news. join us again tomorrow, as we examine extreme anti-government groups.
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