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The New York Times quickly deflated these claims, though it appears he did attempt to get into the Guinness Book of World Records by doing stand-up for 30 hours.

Also Today Between a Rick and a hard place As Rick "I'm going to make you so happy" Rockwell rocks Fox's world, Jenny "I'm a little hottie!" McCarthy rocks Kirk Douglas' lap. By Amy Reiter

It also seems unlikely that Rockwell was anything close to a multimillionaire. Fox insisted he was worth at least $2 million on paper -- does two really equal "multi" these days? -- $750,000 of it liquid. But he lives in a modest home and there is little evidence of any work or investment history that would bring him multimillions.

A woman who says she dated Rockwell from August to December of last year told the Los Angeles Times she saw no sign of wealth. "He is a person who never took me out for a nice dinner. He wouldn't go out unless he had a coupon and then only to places like Souplantation."

She said she saw no evidence of violence, either. "He was nice," said the woman, though she saw Rockwell as "exerting a little too much control for me ... He is very tight."

Another ex-girlfriend has also come out of the woodwork to claim that Rockwell bragged he was doing the show to boost his flagging career and could easily have the marriage annulled.

As for Rockwell, 42, the groom returned alone from the Caribbean-cruise honeymoon Sunday night and angrily denied the abuse allegations to KGTV outside his home in Encinitas, a coastal city 25 miles north of San Diego. His new wife, Persian Gulf War veteran and emergency-room nurse Darva Conger, 34, was thought to have been on board with him, but she was nowhere to be found.

Both Rockwell and Fox executives denied rumors that he already knew Conger and that the marriage was a stunt. But Rockwell emerged again Monday evening, laughing and hamming it up with reporters, passing out 10 large pizzas to the gathered horde. He declined comment on his marital situation, saying only that Conger was "doing great" and that "I don't know what's going to happen about that, but I think she's a great person." Conger could not be reached Tuesday; a phone message left at her home was not returned.

So how did a small Web site embarrass Fox by getting details about Rockwell the media giant missed?

"We received a tip from one of our sources in Southern California, suggesting that there was something in Rockwell's past that might be of concern to his new bride and her family," Smoking Gun editor Daniel Green told me in an e-mail interview. After having someone dig through the files of the Los Angeles County courts to find the long-forgotten case, "We immediately began to try to confirm the Rick Rockwell from that case was the same Rick Rockwell of the Fox TV show. Once we were able to confirm that, we posted the documents."

Green, a freelance writer, and his partner, Bill Bastone, a writer for the Village Voice, launched the Smoking Gun as a sort of offshoot of their jobs. "In our life as reporters, we would come across documents we thought were very interesting, files that often provided fascinating details into the inner workings of a news story," Green said. The editors have sent out hundreds of Freedom of Information Act requests for government documents since launching in April 1997. "But editors rarely had enough space to publish these complete documents. We started our site as a way to get those files seen."

That won't be a problem now, thanks to the Fox story, which spread like wildfire on the wire and the Web on Monday. "Breaking a story on the Internet is an amazing thing," Green said. By midday Monday, Green reported he had received calls from about a dozen newspapers, television stations and Web sites. "My mom told me she heard them talking about it on 'The View.'"
salon.com | Feb. 23, 2000

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