Horrified husband finds himself in rodeo queen’s saga

It’s a little after 5 p.m. on Thursday and William Pierpont has pulled his truck over to the side of the road near Twin Lakes, Idaho, so that he can talk.

Ten minutes before, Tegan Rushworth — his wife of just more than a week — threatened to kill him, he said.

Rushworth is known in Clark County as the former Fort Vancouver Rodeo queen-turned-methamphetamine user who later had a relationship with a Vancouver police officer, Erik McGarrity.

McGarrity, 43, resigned amid a criminal and internal affairs investigation, and another officer, Detective Brian Billingsley, was fired as a result of that same investigation. Two other officers are still under investigation by Vancouver Police for their roles in the affair.

But to Pierpont, Tegan Rushworth was just a 25-year-old student from Boston. Rushworth responded to a Craigslist ad that he’d put up seeking companionship, and out of all of the responses he got, Pierpont said, he was most drawn to her.

They met in March, and Rushworth spun a tale of lies that the 44-year-old disabled former commercial builder said he wanted to believe. She was beautiful, and she said she needed Pierpont’s love.

After a whirlwind romance, they married April 19.

She said nothing about her felony convictions, her past as an undercover police informant or her time in prison, from which she was released on Jan. 13. She said nothing about the fact that she is still married to a man in Clark County. Or that much of what she was doing — crossing state lines, bigamy, violating a no-contact order with one of her two children — was also putting her back in trouble with the law.

“Who wouldn’t fall in love with a beautiful college girl from Boston?” Pierpont asked.

Rushworth claimed she was living with her sister in the Spokane area, and was on the lam after she and McGarrity — who she falsely said was her ex-husband and the father of her two children — witnessed a murder in Vancouver by the Gypsy Jokers biker gang. She told him she had studied mortuary science at Boston University.

The pair spent 24 hours a day, seven days a week together from the time they met, Pierpont said, drinking in bars in Idaho, walking in the woods and falling in love. Pierpont said he’d been alone for a year, and couldn’t believe his luck in finding her.

“I didn’t think I’d meet someone as beautiful and smart that would love me,” he said through tears.

Marriage; trouble

Soon, she was showing him a pregnancy test that she said meant she was pregnant. The pair married in Kootenai County, Idaho, according to a marriage certificate Pierpont faxed to The Columbian last week.

Six days later, the happy fantasy that Rushworth had built up for Pierpont was shattered.

He said he found a text on her phone, from an “Erik” that read: “You’re beautiful. I love you. I can’t wait to see you.”

Rushworth then disappeared for a night, saying she was staying at her mother’s house with her kids. When he went to the house, in Spokane Valley, no one was home. Pierpont said he’d had enough, and began to pack her belongings into garbage bags.

“I started finding all this paperwork, for ID theft, fraudulence,” Pierpont said. “I went to a friend’s house and we Googled her and my whole world collapsed. I knew everything she told me was a lie.”

He found Columbian news stories about Rushworth. He called the Clark County auditor, where he learned of her 2009 marriage to a man named Edwin Balderas. The Columbian found no divorce filings in Washington court records.

“Why wouldn’t I believe my wife, why wouldn’t I believe the woman having my baby?” Pierpont said.

Many of the details Pierpont gave can’t be verified, but he did fax the couple’s marriage certificate, along with pictures of the two of them together. He also knew the names of several of her family members.

In Washington State Patrol interviews last year, almost everyone who knows Rushworth called her a “pathological liar.”

Rushworth did not return a message from the newspaper left on her phone, from a number Pierpont provided.

The last week, Pierpont said, has been hell.

He managed to return the ring. He’s hiring a lawyer to get his marriage annulled.

‘A choice to lie’

He said Rushworth threatened to kill him Thursday after he told her he’d contacted The Columbian.

“I want people to know she’s up here, I don’t care,” he said. “The bottom line is, who in the hell does this to somebody? It’s choices. She made a choice to lie to me from day one. We took vows. I mean, who does that?”

Rushworth was released Jan. 13 from Mission Creek Correctional Center in Belfair after serving a 17-month prison sentence for car theft. She was ordered to one year of post-prison supervision, said Belinda Stewart, communications and outreach director for the state Department of Corrections.

Stewart said that Rushworth’s corrections supervisor was aware of her crossing state lines into Idaho, and ordered that she report daily to the supervisor for 60 days. Rushworth has not “been reporting like she should,” Stewart said.

Corrections is also aware that Rushworth violated a no-contact order with one of her children, she said.

“She has violated the terms of her supervision, and we are dealing with that,” Stewart said.

As for Pierpont, he said he wanted to talk because he doesn’t want Rushworth to do this to anyone else.

“I’m in love with this lady,” he said. “I can’t stop loving her. I was in love with a fake, a lie, a dream.”

But now he doesn’t want her back.

“Absolutely not. I don’t want some drug person, liar, felon girl in my life,” Pierpont said. “I’m too old for this, I’m a better person now.”

Andrea Damewood: 360-735-4542, http://twitter.com/col_cityhall and at andrea.damewood@columbian.com.