- NASCAR
NASCAR driver claims ex-girlfriend was trained killer
A NASCAR driver known as 'The Outlaw' testified on Tuesday that his ex-girlfriend is a trained assassin who would disappear for hours on secret missions and return in a blood-spattered gown.
Kurt Busch also claimed his former partner, Patricia Driscoll, would show him pictures of bodies with gunshot wounds and said that she believed a female character in 'Zero Dark Thirty', a film about the assassination of Osama bin Laden, was partly based on her.
Busch, appearing in court over Driscoll's request for a no-contact order, said: "Everybody on the outside can tell me I'm crazy, but I lived on the inside and saw it firsthand,"
He went on to claim that her work took her on covert missions across Africa and Central and Southern America. He recalled one evening in Texas when Driscoll left in camouflage gear and returned later wearing a trench coat over an evening gown covered in blood.
Michael Doncheff, who was a personal assistant to both Busch and Driscoll, said in December that Driscoll told him she was a trained assassin for the US government. She is alleged to have said: "I take down foreign governments. I own Washington."
In an interview on Tuesday night, Driscoll denied the allegations: "These statements made about being a trained assassin, hired killer, are ludicrous and without basis and are an attempt to destroy my credibility.
"I find it interesting that some of the outlandish claims come straight from a fictional movie script I've been working on for eight years."
Busch told the court on Monday that he decided to end the relationship because he needed to focus on racing. Driscoll then said Busch assaulted her in his motorhome at Dover International Speedway a week later - an allegation which the driver and his attorneys have denied. This is the subject of a separate criminal investigation.
Richard Andrew Sniffen, a Christian music minister who performs at NASCAR events and a friend of Busch and Driscoll, said Driscoll told him on the night of the alleged assault only that Busch had pushed her and she hit her head.
According to Sniffen, in the weeks that followed Driscoll went "from a broken heart looking for love and reconciliation to anger and a little bit of revenge."
"I will destroy him," she allegedly told Sniffen.
A court ruling on Driscoll's no-contact order request is expected in the next few weeks.