march 2–15, 2020 | new york 43him a fork at dinner. “It would turn into total belittling, like, ‘You
are completely selfish, and you’ve got a God complex, and this
whole campaign thing has completely gone to your head, and if
anyone really knew you like I know you, there’s no way that you
would be able to do this,’ ” she said. (Heslep’s lawyers released the
following statement in response to Hill’s public remarks regarding
the abuse: “Ms. Hill has made no allegations of abuse in her Petition
for Dissolution. Mr. Heslep denies any allegations of abuse or
wrongdoing outright.” Heslep, not Hill, filed for the divorce, and
California is a no-fault state that does not require either partner to
prove wrongdoing.)
The breaking point was a few weeks before the election. Hill was
having suicidal thoughts. “I tried to talk to him about that, and he
basically turned it around to be my fault and said to me, ‘Well, if you
really feel that way about us and about everything, then you should
go do it,’ ” she said. “He kept trying to hand me a gun and told me,
‘Well, if you go up in that corner, then no one will hear you.’”
The suggestion was even crueler because of a past incident: The
friend whose suicide Hill talked about on the campaign trail had
shot herself on Hill and Heslep’s property, where she’d been living
in a yurt with her husband. Los Angeles County detective Marcelo
Quintero says the 25-year-old woman was found near a car, next to
a .22 rifle, with bullets in her pocket and a gunshot wound to her
head, after she and her husband had gotten into a fight and she
made an ominous phone call to her parents. County records show
her body was not found for several hours after her death. “Some-
times in these areas, it’s feasible that you’re not going to hear a shot,”
Quintero says.
The night of Hill’s confrontation with Heslep, she called a cam-
paign staffer and asked him to pick her up at 6 a.m., before Heslep
was awake. She loaded her belongings into his car, and Hill later
drove to her mother’s house. Stevenson says Heslep called her that
night. As she recalls, “He said, ‘I don’t give a fuck about her political
career, I will destroy her. She needs help.’ ” (Hill’s stepdad overheard
the threat, and a campaign staffer who was present also confirms it.)
Heslep sent flowers and cards, and a couple of weeks before the
election, Hill went back to him. It was easier to pretend things were
okay. “I knew at that point I was going to leave. It was just a matter
of time,” she said.
Winning the election provided Hill with a clear exit: She moved
to D.C. without Heslep or Morgan and got an apartment with fellow
House freshman Lauren Underwood of Illinois. For the most part,
she returned to California only on weekends for short trips packed
with work events. By May, she had decided to end the relationship
with both Heslep and Morgan. Now that she’d been elected, “I knew
I can’t be in this relationship with Morgan,” she said. “And I alsoAfter her resignation speech.