A Million Monkeys Are Googling 'María Belén Chapur'
A barrage of conflicting and completely unreliable information is coming out about Mark Sanford's mistress. Let's have a look!
That picture is taken from a Blogger profile belonging to a one Maria Chapur. It looks a lot like the pictures that Business Insider has posted from a Facebook account. Is it the woman Sanford cheated on his wife with? We don't know. But it looks like an Argentinian newscast is making that claim.
Business Insider and others earlier published Facebook photos of a woman named "Maria Chapur" who lives in Buenos Aires. Business Insider has also posted video, apparently taken from a broadcast today on Argentinian television, of what is purported to be María Belén Chapur's undated tryout to be a television reporter. The woman in the Facebook photos is an artist, and frankly looks a little older to us than 43, which is Chapur's reported age. And she doesn't really look like the woman in the video. Again, we have no idea if that is the same woman that Sanford cheated on his wife with. The thing is, neither does Business Insider or anyone else.
But we don't really blame them. Everybody—including us—has spent all day frantically Googling the woman's name for digital traces, and all we've gotten are tantalizing clues. Here's what we know:
According to TMZ, which talked to a Buenos Aires bar owner who says he saw Sanford and Chapur canoodling this week, Chapur has green eyes, dirty blonde hair, and "a banging body." Which again—no offense to the pretty lady in the photos Business Insider and others are pushing!—would seem to militate against our Facebook friend "Maria Chapur," as well as the dark-haired would-be television presenter. Then again, TMZ could be wrong.
According to Blackbook, which provides no sources for its detailed information, she attended "posh St. Catherine's Moorlands School in the preppy Belgrano neighborhood, then graduated from the stodgy Universidad Católica Argentina with a degree in (wait for it) International Relations!" They may have picked that up from the Spanish-language press, which does report that Chapur attended St. Catherines College.
According to Argentinian newspapers, she worked for Bunge Limited. But we now know that's not true—she simply ran a marathon with some folks who worked for Bunge.
The marathons! Variants of Chapur's name turn up in lists of participants in a variety of athletic events: She (and by "she" we mean someone with a name like hers) ran a 2005 race apparently sponsored by Accenture; she appears to have run a Nike 10K in 2006, and maybe even a marathon in Central Park? And she likes golf, too, it looks like.
And Post Chronicle is claiming that she is a "tall, knockout brunette who may even be a body builder and a former actress." Maybe!
Like we say, we have no idea. The woman whose Facebook pics are circulating is an artist, which just doesn't seem to jibe with what we imagine would be the type who would engage in a long conversation eight years ago about God's law and marriage with a right-wing Christian politician. But remember—nobody knows what they are talking about when it comes to pictures of María Belén Chapur. Let's hope they're right!