THE PARENTS WHO RUINED 'AFFLUENZA TEEN' ETHAN COUCH
As Ethan Couch prepares to leave jail over the Easter weekend his mother Tonya is preparing for a possible long stretch behind bars herself.
Tonya, 50, is due back in court on May 21, for her much-delayed trial on charges of hindering the apprehension of a fugitive and money laundering. She faces a maximum 10 years in state prison.
Tonya Couch, 57, in her booking photo
The charges relate to the 1,300-mile drive to Puerto Vallarta with Ethan and the family dog, Virgil, and the $30,000 she took from the joint account she had with then-husband Fred Couch — Ethan's father — to finance the 2015 trip.
Tonya's life has been a downhill spiral ever since she was arrested in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and thrown in jail.
After being released on bail she got a job working in a biker bar, the Honky Tonk Women in Azle, Texas, but that lasted only a few weeks after the judge found out and changed the conditions of her bail so that she should not be around alcohol.
She then went to live in a one-bathroom house in the remote Dido section of Fort Worth — an area that the website Texas Escapes described as 'a ghost town' — but a fight with her roommate ended that arrangement and in November she moved in with Steven McWilliams, her son from her first marriage, and his wife Misty in Fort Worth.
Now though, even if she manages to avoid prison Tonya faces another move. The three-bedroom home on a corner lot with a pool is close to being sold. The McWilliamses accepted an offer within a week of it being put up for sale this month for $161,777.
It's all a far cry from the lavish life that Tonya had lived through her two marriages to Fred. When they divorced in 2006 she and Ethan stayed in the family home, a 4,000-square foot ranch house in Burleson with a pool, playground, huge wet bar and 6,000 square-foot workshop.
Ethan Couch's father Fred Couch
She sent Ethan to the private Anderson School, and he was driving himself there when he was just 13. When the principal complained, Fred offered to buy the school, D Magazine reported in an article that called Fred and Tonya 'The Worst Parents Ever.'
Dick Miller, the psychologist who used the term 'affluenza' in court, described the family as 'profoundly dysfunctional.' Instead of being taught the golden rule, he said, Ethan was taught: 'We have the gold, we make the rules.'
Miller described Fred, now 52, as 'either an a**hole — aggressive, loud, pushy — or frightened.'
Fred described his marriage to Tonya as 'a mistake from the start,' telling a court-appointed social worker she had a pill addiction and often threatened suicide to get her own way.
Tonya said he was verbally and physically abusive and during one fight he had threatened to burn the house down.
Nevertheless, the couple agreed to remarry once the realities of divorce set in, though their second marriage crumbled after Ethan's arrest.
Despite his faults, Fred Couch has prospered. His company, Cleburne Sheet Metal, continues to thrive and is reported to have annual sales of some $15 million.
And while his ex-wife has been reduced to moving in with her family, Fred is still living large in the 7,300 square-foot home he built on a three-acre lot in 1997.
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