The Dark Side of Steve Nunn

As reported here on the 12th, Republican politician Steve Nunn was found bleeding in a graveyard during a manhunt for him after the woman who filed a restraining order against him was mysteriously shot and killed.

Now they're saying Nunn has officially been charged with the murder of Amanda Ross, and that his attorney Astrida Lemkins is publicly maintaining his innocence. Be that as it may, police have revealed that Nunn was certainly talking like a guilty man while in custody. Reportedly, he openly spoke of his desire for revenge on Ross, and how he would go to the penitentiary for what he had done.

Nunn's ex-wife Tracey Damron has granted an interview to the Courier-Journal, in which she says something very strange came over him in the Spring of 2004. She says that Nunn was a model husband until she went alone to Florida for a weeklong family visit, and then....

When she returned, she said, Nunn was a different person.

"I came back to an absolute stranger. And I don't know what happened to him that week," she said. "He had kind of a beard. Steve didn't ever have a beard. And he was very, very distant. He did not want me around him."

"I asked Steve to seek help. But obviously to Steve — this new being that he is — he thought he was perfectly fine."

Damron said it was clear she and her husband were on “different paths” and they agreed to separate, and later divorce.

While she said she was aware of her ex-husband's problems, she wasn’t aware how severe they were, Damron said: "I knew it was dark, but I had no clue it was utter darkness."

The mind reels, wondering just what happened to Nunn during those seven days that transformed him so radically. A blow to the head? A mini-stroke? Did he drop acid? Too much Splenda and Nutrasweet? Mind control black-ops? Reaction to toxic anti-depressants? Or some sort of spiritual dark night of the soul, a Black Satori of the sort that comes with knowledge of things after which no man, having learned them, can ever be the same?

Or was it, maybe, just a good old fashioned midlife crisis?

Reportedly, Nunn was placing personals ads on dating sites, swingers sites, and "sugardaddy" sites, wherein rich men agree to lavish their dates with money and gifts in exchange for companionship, just barely skirting around prostitution laws by a wafer-thin margin.

And it gets weirder. According to this report:

A day before former state Rep. Steve Nunn was found by state police in a Hart County cemetery with his wrists slit, he stopped by Borders Monument Co. to make a request: He wanted to add some details to his gravestone.

Abe Shelton, owner of the Glasgow business that specializes in monuments and memorials, said Nunn came in Thursday to discuss designs and wrote down what he wanted to say on the stone. His request freaked out Shelton.

Shelton refused to say what Nunn asked him to put on the stone. He declined to say whether Nunn requested a Sept. 11 death date.

But based on Nunn's demeanor — and what Nunn wanted put on the stone — Shelton said he could tell Nunn was distraught and needed help.

"That's what freaked me out," he said. "I was absolutely floored."