CrossFit Founder Lauren Jenai Put Her 2million Oregon Home Up As Collateral For Her Accused Murderer Husband s Bond And Has Spent 1million On His Legal Fees It Has Been Revealed
CrossFit founder Lauren Jenai put her $2million Oregon home up as collateral for her accused murderer husband's bond and has spent $1million on his legal fees, it has been revealed.
Jenai, 49, married Franklin Tyrone Tucker, also 49, in June this year after putting up her $2million home as collateral for his bond.
The pair knew each other as teenagers in Philadelphia but lost touch.
She went on to build a fitness empire now estimated to be worth $4billion but sold her half during a messy divorce from her first husband for $20million.
Tucker, who was homeless then in 2017, was charged with murder in connection with a robbery-gone-wrong in .
He was jailed and didn't even have a lawyer until Jenai got in touch with him and offered to help. The pair had a fast virtual romance which resulted in her being banned from video-chatting him because she flashed her breasts so often.
He was released from custody on bond in November last year and promptly moved into Jenai's $2million, five-bedroom Portland home where she lives with her five children. The pair got married at the property in June.
'I can go up to the sidewalk, but if I leave the radius without getting approval they'd take me back to jail.
Not only would I go back to jail, but Lauren would lose the house. She used it as collateral for my $2 million bond,' he told
Lauren Jenai, 49, marrying Franklin Tyrone Tucker, also 49, at her home in Portland, Oregon, this June, seven months after bailing him out of jail
The couple live with Jenai's five kids from her first marriage.
They are aged between 10 and 13
Jenai's family home in Portland, Oregon, which she used as collateral for his bond
Tucker said the neighbors were at first skeptical of him but have since warmed up.
'When I first came home in November, the whole neighborhood was skeptical of me.'
'We caused a little bit of a stir.
One of our neighbors came up to our yard and said, 'I know who you are. I read about you in the paper.' It was just something about how he said it.
'It was the first time a stranger had approached me about any of this,' he said.
In 2017, Tucker was arrested on suspicion of murdering a man in Florida in a treehouse in a robbery gone wrong
Jenai and her first husband, Greg Glassman, parted ways in 2013 in a messy divorce.
They grew CrossFit together but she sold her share of the company at the time for $20million.
In June this year, Glassman sold the company for an undisclosed amount after it emerged he'd made racist and sexist comments.
By then, Jenai and Tucker were on married.
She first contacted him on Facebook after learning he'd been arrested.
'I quickly contacted Ty.
He was shocked. He said, 'I knew one of my friends would come looking for me, but not in a million years did I think it would be you'.'
She then offered to help when she learned he didn't have a lawyer after spending months in jail.
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'It felt like something shady was going on. And sure enough, the more I looked into the case, https://incitasecurity.com/mens-crossfit-joggers-for-workout/ the shadier it got.
'The thing I couldn't get out of my head with Ty was, 'What if this happened to me?
'I thought, 'We grew up in the same neighborhood.
It could happen to me. What if somebody framed me for murder and nobody was there to help.' I couldn't live with myself knowing that I had the potential to help and didn't.'
In 2011, she got a tattoo in his honor.
'It's an eagle with roses, a shield and the words 'Liberty and Justice for All,' she explained. He wants to return the favor.
'I'm going to do the old-school thing and get Lauren's lips tattooed on my hip.
I'd like to get a little bit of Lauren's blood and have it mixed with the ink, because when I said, 'till death do us part,' I meant it.'
They started speaking via video chat but were barred because she kept flashing her breasts to him.
Lauren says it's been 'wonderful' to have his help with the kids.
'It's been wonderful having Ty in the house.
He and I are so similar. It's been really fun collaborating.'
Jenai has spent more than $1million on legal fees for Tucker.
'There is so much at stake. It's so scary because whether you are innocent or not, that doesn't matter to them,' she said.
He is convinced that he would be acquitted at trial, despite prosecutors claiming he actually confessed to the murder.
A trial date has not yet been set.
Jenai previously shared details of their romance with DailyMailTV while Tucker was still in jail
Jenai got in touch with him while he was still in jail.
She eventually put up her house as collateral for his bond. He is pictured being released in November last year
The couple now homeschool Jenai's five kids at her home.
She says they work as a team
The case has now been dubbed the 'tree house murder' because of where it took place.
The victim - Mathew Bonnett, 59, was stabbed to death in a shanty tree-house in the Florida Keys, allegedly by Tucker and two other men.
Bonnett was killed on the evening of November 17, 2017, after he went to check on his neighbor Paula Belmonte who lived in a ramshackle tree house on Florida's Stock Island, immediately east of Key West.
Jenai's first husband, Greg Glassman, who she built her fitness empire with
Police allege that when Bonnet arrived on the scene, Tucker and co-defendant Rory Wilson were in the process of robbing Belmonte at knifepoint as they searched for crack cocaine.
At the time, Tucker was dividing his time between living on a boat and spending time at a squat in a nearby warehouse.
Wilson sliced Belmonte's neck, prosecutors say, and as the pair left they encountered Bonnet.
Wilson claims Tucker attacked him with a knife. Bonnet died in hospital several hours later from five stab wounds.
A knife with Wilson's fingerprints was later recovered, but no weapon linking Tucker to the crime has ever been found.
Prosecutors are relying on Wilson's claim that it was Tucker who administered the fatal stabs.
Wilson, 51, claims that when he asked Tucker why he had killed Bonnet, he simply replied 'Had to.'
'It upset him the way Mr.
Tucker talked about the murder, that he had zero remorse or guilt,' Detective Matthew Pitcher told a judge, according to the Miami Herald.
Tucker said he was so drunk at the time of the murder he hardly remembers anything, although prosecutors say he told another inmate that he had killed Bonnet.
A third man, John Johnson, 41, is also charged in the case.
He is said to have been the getaway driver for Wilson and Tucker. He also says Tucker was involved in the murder.
<div class="art-ins mol-factbox news" data-version="2" id="mol-29d05050-2e63-11eb-b890-0356c82de66e" website founder at home for the holidays with accused murderer beau