NY mayor hopeful Curtis Sliwa's ex-wife called him 'world-class liar' in lawsuit over affair
Curtis Sliwa, the Guardian Angels founder turned radio show host who garnered popularity through his tough-on-crime rhetoric, won the Republican primary in the New York mayor’s race on Tuesday, June 22, setting up a long-shot challenge in November to the Democratic Party’s eventual nominee.
“I am a populist,” Sliwa said after the race was called. “That’s who we are -- caring Republicans, caring independents, and populists. We will care for the emotionally disturbed, and the homeless, and our animal friends, and our companions in a compassionate way.”
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Yet, “caring" wasn't among the choice of epithets his ex-wife used to describe him. The words Mary Galda, his third ex-wife, used were decidedly neither positive in their connotation nor pleasant. “Curtis Sliwa is an inveterate, world-class liar,” Galda said in a lawsuit she filed against him in 2013.
As per a New York Post report from the time, the million-dollar Manhattan lawsuit accused Sliwa of siphoning nearly half a million dollars out of their marriage and funneling it to Melinda Katz, an American attorney and politician from New York City, currently serving as District Attorney of Queens and who previously served as the Queens Borough President. Katz was also a New York City Councilwoman from 2002 to 2009.
Sliwa and Galda divorced in 2012 after 12 years of marriage following revelations that he had fathered Katz's two sons through in vitro fertilization while still married to her. Galda reportedly detailed 13 instances during their marriage when Sliwa engaged in infidelity from April to August 2010. She also alleged that long before his marriage officially ended, Sliwa conspired to take $400,000 in tax-free marital assets away from her and from Anthony Chester Sliwa, their son.
She alleged that Sliwa and Katz “had a secret, sexual, personal and intimate relationship for many years despite Curtis being married.” She claimed that this began when in 2008, Katz was first impregnated in vitro with sperm donated by Sliwa. The Guardian Angels CEO would allegedly insist to Galda that there was no relationship with Katz, claiming that Katz got pregnant without his permission by using frozen sperm he had donated to Katz years earlier before he and Galda wed.
Galda also said in the suit that after the child was born, Sliwa claimed he was compelled by law to pay child support to Katz out of marital assets. He allegedly spent that money on Katz, making child-support payments of $8,000 a month, plus another $1,500 a month tax-free to pay for a $2 million life insurance policy.
She claimed that when Katz was having a second child using Sliwa’s sperm in 2010, he took money out of his son’s account so that he could pour $70,000 into Katz’s account. Katz had denied these claims and said, “This is a sad, frivolous lawsuit. Unfortunately, it is an attempt by a political campaign and false innuendo as leverage to publicly rehash a long-ago-settled divorce.”
In January 2014, Galda released a bunch of transcripts of voicemails left on her then-husband’s phone by Katz. They were reportedly sexual in nature. In one phone message from 2010, Katz allegedly said: “Last night was not about you going home. Last night was about the fact that you are capable of making love to me twice.”
“You should remember that when you married Mary, you were with me the night before you left for the wedding,” Katz allegedly said in another July 2010 message. In September 2014, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lori Sattler threw the case out.