‘Liar and a cheater’: Grieving widow desecrates husband’s ashes after discovering infidelity

Jessica Waite has written a book about the devastating discoveries following her husband’s death. Photo / Jessica Waite’s website
WARNING: Mentions suicide, contains content that may disturb
A widow has revealed she desecrated her husband’s ashes in an act of revenge after uncovering his disturbing “secret life”.
Jessica Waite, an author from Calgary, Canada, detailed the devastating experience in her bombshell new book, The Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards.
In the book, Waite reveals how her seemingly perfect marriage was upended following the sudden death of her husband Sean, to whom she’d been married for 17 years.
Sean, who died from a heart attack while on a business trip in Houston, Texas, had been hiding a secret life – a discovery Waite made while using his iPad to look for the phone number of the Houston hospital that was holding his body.
Waite had begun typing “Houston” when the search window auto-filled with the words, “Houston escorts”, she said in her book, which was viewed by the Daily Mail.
Confused, Waite began perusing Sean’s search history – uncovering a stream of past searches including “girls”, “services”, “locations” and “prices”.
Over the next few months, Waite discovered her supposedly loyal husband had seen numerous sex workers, conducted multiple affairs, and curated a collection of disturbing pornographic images on his computer.
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Porn had “cannibalised” their relationship, Waite wrote, adding: “The world Sean built on the surface – his career, our family, our beautiful home – all of that was matched in size and scope by his subterranean activity.”
Waite’s memoir, originally published in July by Simon & Schuster, details how her life was turned upside down when she uncovered the truth about Sean, exploring her grief, mourning, and her journey to overcome the revelations.
The couple, formerly teachers, first met working abroad in Japan; she was 24, he was 28. They married in 1998 and returned to Calgary, Canada to raise their son, Dash.
However, Sean took a job at a company in Denver, Colorado, and would stay at his apartment in the US city for three weeks at a time, Waite wrote.
Waite also discovered a string of overdue credit card bills from Sean’s work trips. When she requested itemised receipts from the luxury hotels in a bid to claim the money back from Sean’s employers, Waite was dealt another blow: breakfast and drinks had been ordered for two.
When Waite confided in a friend of the couple, it was then revealed Sean had been having an affair with someone he’d met through work.
Waite admitted in the book that the discoveries began to drive her to insanity. In one furious moment, she took a portion of Sean’s ashes, mixed them with her dog’s faeces, and threw them in the rubbish.
“I’ve desecrated the remains of my partner in life,” she said in the book, as per Daily Mail. Feeling pangs of guilt and “detached” from reality, Waite decided to eat some of his ashes – describing the remains as “a mineral mud” on the back of her tongue.
Desecration is typically defined as treating something sacred with violent disrespect.
Microbiologist Rolf Halden, an expert in environmental contamination, told Live Science in 2018 that while human ashes aren’t toxic, a potential concern of consuming remains would be the presence of heavy metals, “as can be found particularly in tooth fillings”.
“Cremation essentially mineralises the human body and produces ashes that are rich in carbon and not much of a health concern,” Halden said. “Proper cremation will remove all infectious properties of the remains.”
You’d need to consume a lot of ashes for the heavy metals to pose a significant danger, he added.
However, it was the uncovering of Sean’s “Matrix of Porn” on a hard drive at his Denver apartment that eventually pushed Waite over the edge. The mum-of-one, who began feeling suicidal, said she realised she needed to seek psychological help for the good of her son.
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It’s been nine years since Sean’s secret life was unveiled, and Waite said she still has countless unanswered questions about the motives for his behaviour. However, she said she has made peace with the past.
“He wasn’t only a liar and a cheater and a betrayer. He was a good son who loved and honoured his parents,” she wrote in her book. “He was a loving father to Dash. He was respected by his colleagues.
“I feel better and stronger than before, but I still cry almost every day, and I still feel like a part of me has died … Because the part of me that existed within Sean did.”
The Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards currently has a 3.61 rating out of 5 stars on Goodreads, based on 228 reviews and 963 ratings at the time of writing.
A popular review from September praised the first half, but said the second “lost direction completely and I skimmed to the end”.
Secret sex lives are not uncommon.
In 2021, a married Kiwi man approaching retirement age revealed anonymously to the Herald his secret life as a sugar daddy after falling for a 22-year-old student in need of extra money.
In 2018, an anonymous writer detailed her experience with an extramarital affair after falling in love with a colleague.
Last year, an anonymous Reddit user admitted in a now-deleted post that his terminally ill wife had revealed her dying wish was to engage in sexual activities with an ex-lover.
The man, who said his wife’s prognosis made him feel he had to “say yes”, admitted he felt “hurt” and “betrayed” that the intimacy she shared with her former flame was more “physically compatible and satisfying”.