A 25-year-old woman is suing Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, alleging the billionaire paid his mother hundreds of thousands of dollars in 1996 to hide he was her biological father.
At the age of 1, the girl was bound to secrecy by a confidentiality agreement signed by her mother, according to what was told at trial.
Jones denied in the settlement papers that he was the child’s biological father. But he paid the woman $375,000 ‘in return for confidentiality’ and had a friend and Arkansas attorney named Donald Jack set up two trusts for the daughter linked to her and her mother, keeping the secret. Jones’ authorship, according to a copy obtained by ESPN.
A Texas judge ordered the case sealed this week after a motion filed by Jones’ attorney.
Alexandra Davis, who lives in Washington, DC, filed a lawsuit against Jones, now 79, in Dallas County Court last Thursday. She claims that Jones courted her mother, Cynthia Davis Spencer, in 1995 while she was working at the American Airlines counter in Little Rock, Arkansas. Spencer was separated from her husband at the time, according to court documents.
Alexandra Davis “lived her life without a father and in secret and in fear if she were to tell anyone who her father was, she and her mother would lose their financial support, or worse,” the suit alleges.
Jones and his wife, Gene, have three children: Stephen, Jerry Jr. and Charlotte Jones Anderson.
Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman for Jones, declined to comment. Dallas-based Davis attorney Andrew Bergman also declined to comment.
Davis asked a court to be recognized as Jones’ daughter and to be released from the confidentiality agreement her mother agreed to when she was a baby.
The lawsuit alleges that Jones “abandoned and shunned” Davis and forced her to live in secrecy after she was born in Little Rock on December 16, 1996.
