The 25-year-old woman at the center of a paternity lawsuit filed against Jerry Jones has claimed that she is not seeking money from the Cowboys owner.
But three weeks after the case became public, ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr. is reporting that Jones’s lawyer claims Alexandra Davis has already received nearly $3 million over the years. That money was used to pay for her full college tuition, a sport utility vehicle, a “Sweet 16” birthday party, and trips abroad.
But it’s just a drop in the bucket compared to the $20 million that a dissatisfied Davis reportedly asked Jones for, with the promise of remaining silent about her alleged identity as the billionaire’s daughter.
Don Jack is the Little Rock, Arkansas lawyer representing Jones.
“On numerous occasions I have made payments on behalf of Mr. Jones to Cindy and Alex Davis,” Jack said in a statement to ESPN.
The first payment came in 1995, when Jack struck an agreement on Jones’s behalf with Cynthia Spencer Davis to pay her $375,000 and provide monthly child support payments out of two trusts “which ultimately totaled over $2 million,” he said.
Jones has not acknowledged Davis as his biological daughter; a condition of the payouts (two more lump sum payments are due when Davis turns 26 and 28) has been that Davis not try to establish legal paternity.
Now Davis has requested for the court to revoke the agreement. Her lawyer has insisted that she is not seeking money, but is instead asking that Davis be allowed to name Jones on her birth certificate as her true father.
Jack tells a different story, though, recalling a dinner with Davis and her mother at a Dallas area restaurant several years ago.
“In that meeting, Alex read to me a personal letter she had drafted to Jerry Jones in which she expressed her dissatisfaction with what she had received and sought $20 million,” Jack said. “She stated that if that amount was paid, she would not bother Mr. Jones again and would keep their relationship confidential.”
Neither Jack nor a Jones spokesperson could provide proof of that letter, Van Natta reports.
This week, though, Jones asked for a judge to dismiss the lawsuit, claiming that Davis is a part of “multiple monetary extortion attempts” against the Cowboys owner.
Jack told ESPN that Davis and her mother have repeatedly asked for additional money and other expenses over the years, exceeding the trust payouts by nearly $1 million dollars.
Those expenses included $33,000 for a “Sweet 16” birthday party that was featured on Big Rich Texas (Davis and her mother appeared on the reality series), a Range Rover, Davis’s four years at SMU, a $24,000 trip abroad for Davis after graduation, and a $25,000 Christmas trip for Davis and her mother to Paris.
“This clearly demonstrates that money has always been the ultimate goal here,” Jones spokesperson Jim Wilkinson said. “And sadly this is just one part of a more broad calculated and concerted effort that has been going on for some time by multiple people with various different agendas.”
One of those people may be Shy Anderson, the now-ex-husband of Charlotte Jones, Jerry’s daughter and chief brand officer of the Cowboys.
As the former couple goes through a “contentious divorce battle,” Anderson has been instructed to preserve documents “to determine whether a conspiracy exists among yourself and others” in several different areas of Jones family and Cowboys team interests, including communications Anderson may have had with Davis and her mother.
According to Wilkinson, Davis’s lawyer invoked the name of two high-salaried Cowboys players at a meeting between the two sides in early March.
“If you want this just to go away,” lawyer Andrew Bergman said, as per Wilkinson, “it’s going to cost you Zeke or Dak money.”
Bergman denies that claim, countering that Jones lawyer Levi McCathern was adamant that the Cowboys owner would never allow Davis to be portrayed as part of the Jones family.
“They said, ‘What does she want?’” Bergman said. “And I said she wants to establish parentage, and Jerry can do it cooperatively or not. Levi said Jerry’s not going to do that because of Mama Gene. Levi said Jerry said Alex will never be part of our family in a picture when we raise money for the Salvation Army.”
Jones’s side maintains those words were never spoken.
A Thursday hearing to determine if the original file would remain sealed was canceled after Jones’s lawyers withdrew the request.
The next steps in the rollercoaster case are unknown at this time.
