Daddy's Girl

They took their photos with the Little Cloister Garden as a backdrop. One picture shows them sharing a chaste kiss.

According to several people close to the litigation, a ceremony at Westminster Abbey made sense because Bruce is an Anglophile who counts among his heroes Adm. Lord Nelson, the British naval hero who died in the Battle of Trafalgar. Also, Bruce is said to believe his genes are exemplary and saw in Linda the best match for his own superiority.

Four days after the ceremony, Linda wrote in an e-mail: "You asked me afterwards if I felt different. Near, I don't, but at a distance, I do. I am glad about this and feel the insecurities slipping away."

In other e-mails, they began to sign off as "H" and "W," references to husband and wife. In one e-mail, dated June 29, 2004, Bruce wrote: "Miss you W. Think nasty things about you all the time." Linda answered a couple of hours later: "Mmm yeah, nasty is so good. You must have read my mind. What else can we say, we're H & W — that's the beauty."

"It is an attraction that's like no other," says Joe Soll, a New York psychologist and the only expert in the field he pioneered — genetic attraction.

Soll, who has no attachment to the McMahan litigation, has treated a half-dozen patients who had sexual intercourse with a close blood relative who had been separated early in life. An adoptee himself, Soll mediates group therapy sessions where hundreds of participants have talked openly about their physical desires for relatives they've recently reunited with.

"The dad is supposed to be the adult," Soll says. "He should have been responsible enough to say, well, wait. She got taken by something she had no awareness of."

Bruce seemed to be aware of the severity of their transgression.

"Such passions lead men straight to Hell," he wrote in an e-mail to Linda titled "Midnight Musings" that he sent just after midnight August 15, 1998.

Despite its dramatic location, however, Bruce and Linda's "wedding" in London wasn't legal. Each was married to another person at the time.

Linda's court filings claim that after the ceremony, Bruce wanted Sargent Schutt to play a diminished role in her life. He told Linda he'd start paying her "the big bucks" only if she could convince Schutt to sign a postnuptial agreement, which he did reluctantly.

"May you have all the money in the entire world to yourself," Schutt penned in a handwritten note he attached to the document. "Too bad love is earned, not bought."

Bruce was thrilled.

"Good girl!" he wrote to Linda in an e-mail dated June 29, 2004, which was read into the record at Linda's deposition. "This will change how your life can be lived; thank God. Someday you will understand how truly important that document is to you.

"Lots of Opus needed," he added.

By her own admission in one of several sworn statements she filed during the litigation, Linda's job as vice president of marketing entailed little more than being a companion to her father.

"My fancy title with Argent is not an accurate representation of my employment," she testified. "My salary was only $12,000 per year, whereas most of my resources were in the form of personal gifts from my father."

The chief accounting officer for McMahan Securities and Argent Funds Group, Joseph C. Dwyer, sent Linda tax statements detailing her father's largess. From 2004 to 2005, Bruce spent $649,290.55 on gifts for Linda, including $228,727.23 on cars, $25,209.31 in cash wire transfers, and $37,000 in legal bills.

When she and Bruce went out in public, the people around them determined the pair's behavior. To some, they were father and daughter; to others, they were a married couple.

One friend, Palm Beach interior designer Hilda Flack, knew them in both capacities, according to court filings. Flack designed the interior at McMahan's Argent Center and was planning a business with Linda — the McMahan-Flack Design Center. But Flack, reached at her Palm Beach Gardens design center, denies she knew of an illicit relationship between Bruce and Linda.

"She was there when we were decorating with her father," Flack says. "She was his daughter, obviously. Mr. McMahan was a gentleman and treated everyone accordingly."

In an affidavit, Linda said Flack was in the room at the Argent Center when Bruce smashed several computer hard drives containing evidence of their incestuous relationship and their Westminster Abbey wedding.

Flack dismisses Linda's claims.

"I never heard of such a preposterous thing," Flack says of the wedding.

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Before he flew to London in 2004 to marry his daughter, Bruce had separated from his fifth wife, Elena. Later that year, he filed for divorce.

In January 2005, Elena filed an affidavit in the divorce case reportedly accusing Bruce of having an incestuous relationship with Linda (the affidavit is under seal but referred to in other court papers). Linda alleged in court records that Elena learned of the affair when she hacked into Linda's Yahoo e-mail account and retrieved the Westminster Abbey photos.