Man who led 2 lives is the talk of Tampa
You know, senior citizens SHOULD be active. Some seniors golf, some play bridge, some do volunteer work. Douglas Cone is, by all accounts, an accomplished juggler.
TAMPA, Fla. -- While their wives drove Rolls-Royces and moved among Tampa's elite, Douglas Cone and Donald Carlson always seemed busy with business.
Cone, the 74-year-old millionaire owner of a Tampa highway construction company, was gone most weekdays.
Carlson was also frequently away from home -- an absence his family attributed to a sensitive government job that required him to travel for long stretches.
But those business trips masked a shocking secret: Douglas Cone was Donald Carlson. Cone lived a secret double life for nearly 30 years, raising two affluent families in lavish homes 20 miles apart -- one with his wife of 52 years and the other with a former employee.
By all accounts, Jean Ann Cone never suspected her husband was using an alias to carry on a relationship with Hillary Carlson, 18 years her junior. He fathered three children with his wife and two with Carlson.
The double life unraveled this spring only after Jean Ann Cone died at 75 and Cone married Hillary Carlson two weeks later. Friends said they learned of his new marriage in Sumter County, about an hour north of Tampa, when the local newspaper printed a listing of local marriages.
Interestingly, the lives of the two families bore many similarities but nothing raised suspicions that both households were headed by the same man.
Jean Ann Cone and Hillary Carlson circulated among Tampa's rich and powerful. They both served as trustees at their children's prestigious prep school. Facilities at the school bore their names -- the Jean Ann Cone Library and Carlson Field -- after generous donations by their husbands.
Talk about hiding in plain sight....
