The couple, who had been together since they were both 14, found themselves becoming teen parents not once, but twice over. Liz, the wife of the protagonist, Luther, pins a clipping of a San Francisco Chronicle article about Bay Area philanthropy to the refrigerator, with a picture of her sister and two daughters on the porch of their hilltop Victorian. After Morrisons arrest, St.Lukes announced that it no longer employed her, but within a year she had been granted privileges by another local hospital. Truthfully it wasnt going that well and I was having a lot of trouble making ends meet, she said of that period. She described the one who almost killed me. Ms. Scott is friendly with Ms. French Gates, people in philanthropic circles in Seattle say, and the two billionaires have worked together on programs like the Equality Cant Wait Challenge, a $40 million gender-equality initiative. Mackenzie told me, I wish I had taken more time to precisely describe the nuances of their livesit was a simplification of a complex story., A letter of endorsement from Penn, signed by Beth Winkelstein, the deputy provost, said that Mackenzie understands what it is like to be an at-risk youth, and she is determined to re-make the systems that block rather than facilitate success., The sixteen-year tenure of Penns president, Amy Gutmann, had been defined by her efforts to position Penn as a school that addressed inequality rather than perpetuating ita pivot that many lite universities have attempted. Her friend Stephen Damianos, who had just been chosen for the scholarship, had told her she would be an ideal candidate. They were talking about work and school and whatever else and having a great time just like they were old friends, Mackenzie wrote. It can also be read as a summary of her philosophy. Both her parents had recently died, and she was going through a severe depression, but, she told me, Penn dragged me to every single news outlet that asked for an interview and sent a Penn communications person with me to make sure I said the right things. She petitioned a circuit court in St. Louis to remove her from the registry, arguing that the boards finding was based on insufficient evidence and would compromise her employment. Their gift was incredibly consequential, said Zach Silk, campaign manager of Washington United for Marriage, completely changing the scale of what had been a pretty scrappy but somewhat underfunded effort. Walter Licht, the faculty director of the program, described Mackenzie as the sort of student who asks a question that makes everyone stop and brings the quality of conversation to a different pitch. The Civic Scholars were encouraged to analyze how their identities intersected with systems of oppression and privilege. Morrison continued, She was falling apart under the academic stresses at school and was exhausted, and I believe looking for an out.. Mackenzie Fierceton didnt She was trying so hard to please, to get acceptance. At Penn, Mackenzie began to realize, Oh, I actually have no idea who I am., When Mackenzie had applied to Penn, the universitys automatic coding system had categorized her application as first generation, because she had not filled in personal data about her biological parents. But one young Black lady with dead parents using a multibillion-dollar Ivy League institution feels entirely different than the institution using her., Mackenzie understood that her abuse allegations would be investigated all over again, and she found two lawyers who agreed to help her pro bono. Anea Moore, then a sophomore, had helped found the group the previous year. Three decades after worrying about making rent, and even in the wake of her recent gifts, Ms. Scott, 52, has a net worth that hovers around $50 billion, according to Forbes magazine. That morning, Brandt and an investigator with the Department of Social Services (D.S.S.) Waitressing in New York had proved more grueling than waiting tables in Princeton during college, leaving her too tired to write. The universitys pleading portrayed Mackenzie as a discredited person who cannily concocted a tale of abuse: as a child, she had regular temper tantrums, beyond the normal range for an adolescent. Then she had claimed to fall ill at school and presented a fictitious account of abuse by her mother. According to the pleading, her claims of abuse kept her family muzzled, leaving her in control of her narrative., Four days after the response was filed, the Chronicle published its article, giving ample weight to each side and quoting from the universitys pleading. We would never have believed any of it if we werent living it, she wrote, adding that Mackenzie had directed her masterpiece perfectly. One of Morrisons sisters also wrote White an e-mail, saying that Mackenzie deliberately tried to frame Carrie and planted evidence around the house, including her own blood.. Ruderman acknowledged that Mackenzie didnt use those exact words, but she said that Mackenzie did describe herself as an F.G.L.I. In addition to Ms. Tuttles work at boutiques, public records indicate that before the subprime meltdown, Mr. Tuttle was licensed in Florida as a mortgage broker, a real estate broker and assistant appraiser and registered half a dozen shell companies with names like FAMCO Group and REALCO Group. After graduation, Ms. Scott went back to Hotchkiss and taught a summer creative writing program. By the early 1990s, her parents had left behind their two houses in California and transplanted themselves to Florida, settling in an apartment building in Palm Beach where at the time units rented for around $800 a month, or roughly $1,500 today. They are the people that support you, look out for you, & love you unconditionally. She went on, By those standards, the standards of real family, not one person Im related to by blood meets those requirements or even comes close., Still, she was sometimes hopeful that the kind face her mother presented could actually be real. ), Mackenzie did not know that anyone at Penn was communicating with her biological family. Writing something long, she said in the 2013 television appearance, reflecting on Ms. Morrisons greatest lessons to her, is all about the timed release of information.. Soon, representatives from Lost Horse were calling nonprofits around the country about multimillion-dollar donations from an anonymous giver. She imagined that starting over would be the easiest thing b/c I wasnt leaving behind a regular family like so many others, she wrote in her journal, two weeks after arriving at Penn. Luther asks Liz if her life with no black-tie fund-raisers. (A hotline caseworker had notified the police.) The media company Puck has reported the names of a handful of Lost Horse associates, including that of her adviser Hillary Chen, who previously worked at both the White House Office of Science and Technology and for Ms. French Gatess group, Pivotal Ventures. Husband of Private. Before Morrisons case could go before a grand jury, the St. Louis County assistant prosecuting attorney dropped all the charges. Her approach to press inquiries, she wrote, involved respecting the autonomy and role of journalists by doing nothing to try to influence or control what they report., We are all human, she wrote in the post. to express grave concerns that Mackenzie would not be protected there. When White learned that Mackenzie had been telling professors that she felt the university was threatening her, she added a new requirement. He is the son of the late boxer, Tommy Morrison. When Mackenzie initially contemplated applying for the Rhodes Scholarship, she asked Moore and Damianos, the recent Rhodes Scholars, if they thought it would be a problem that she was involved in a wrongful-death lawsuit that a family had filed against Penn. Over the past year, Ms. Scott has announced grants totaling $6.6 billion. Some were groups that her mother might have gone to a luncheon for in Palm Beach, or her grandmother in El Paso. I wanted so deeply for people to understand what it means to not have a family, and I had this fear of people being, like, What happened to youthat doesnt count.. Anyone can read what you share. My mom, Mackenzie responded. Then, she drove them to Seattle while Mr. Bezos worked on the business plan in the passenger seat. She had a feeding tube inserted, and was given a diagnosis of post-concussion syndrome. Molly Mudd, a nurse assigned to her case, told me, There was the physical component happening with her head injury, but there was also the emotional component of someone who has been fearful for a long time and has tried to push it down, and all of a sudden it catches up to her. Critics complained that she had retreated into less transparency rather than share more information, as nonprofit governance experts had called for. There were only seventy-one students in Mackenzies grade, and soon everyone seemed to have an opinion about her life. During their investigation of Fierceton, Penn's general counsel spoke to "Michael Hayes, the prosecutor in St. Louis who had charged Dr. Morrison with child Professional career. Bill Gates is among its alumni, and Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Scott are among the parents. . The court agreed to hold a trial reviewing the evidence against her. She felt relieved to be back in Philadelphia, where Norton and a handful of friends and professors constitute what she calls her chosen family. I dont want to be gone from them too long, because then, like, they might move on, she told me. According to her classmates, she was unconscious and intermittently seizing for roughly an hour, because it took emergency medical personnel that long to extract her from the building, as they struggled to fit a stretcher into the elevator or the stairway. Carrie Morrison Mackenzies biological mother had graduated from college and was a successful doctor. Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker. You start to think that maybe you had it wrong and that maybe it actually did happen the way that they say it did, she wrote. Mackenzie Morrison was born Mackenzie Terrell but took her mothers name after her father, Billy Terrell, who worked in soap operas, left. The university had thirty business days to answer Mackenzies suit, but it produced a hundred-and-thirty-page response in nine business days, during the Christmas holiday. He could not afford it, she wrote, pretending he had a job that made money and also pretending he could spend it., Ms. Morrison, who died in 2019, called Ms. Scott an extraordinary writer, almost full-blown, and indeed the novella is strikingly assured, as well as a little bloody, macabre and almost Gothic in places. Now a Nobel laureate, Ms. Morrison connected her own powerful agent, Amanda Urban, with her mentee and even gave her a coveted blurb for the cover of the book. This definition resembles the one used in the federal Higher Education Act, which says that first-generation status depends on the education level of a parent whom a student regularly resided with and received support from. (A spokesperson for the university said that Penn First Pluss definition is designed to be inclusive and is not the institutions official definition. A friend from Hotchkiss, Margot Bass, described her as original in everything from how she dressed eschewing the Laura Ashley prints many women wore on campus to how she saw the world. She was a foster child, but not for long enough. But something unusual happened. She has become arguably the most consequential philanthropist in the world right now one who is very much operating on her own terms. MacKenzie continued writing and developed an early but lasting propensity for deep research. She did recall that, once she was inside, there was a kind of commotion, and eventually, like, a bunch of administrators kind of rushed into the room, and somebody said, Call 911.. In college, a loan from a friend helped keep her from dropping out. She was., Mackenzie was admitted to the University of Pennsylvania with a full scholarship, facilitated by QuestBridge. And this next question may be tough. I had bruising around my face, Mackenzie replied. degree. FGLI kids can go to private school and/or college preparatory school just as Mackenzie did. That power deserves civic scrutiny and attention.. It felt like such a calculated move to exert power over me, she said. MacKenzie Bezos has authored two novels, so far. She has been in therapy since she went into foster care, and she attributes her capacity to heal, at least to some degree, to her sense of fellowship with other children and women who have not been believed. Universities began looking for other ways to encourage diversity. In August, 2020, Logan filed a lawsuit, asserting that her husbands death was owing to system-wide logistical and structural failures created by the negligence and recklessness of the university. There is currency to a story about a person who comes from nothing and thrives in a prestigious setting. She broke me. She concluded, I was never broken. Within a half hour, police officers arrived at the hospital. Korzen was magnetic a master storyteller who could make a roomful of people laugh. In November, 2020, the Rhodes Trust named Mackenzie one of thirty-two scholar-elects from the United States. Her approach to public life and charitable giving has echoed her approach to storytelling. The pediatrician felt awful for not pushing the issue, Brandt wrote. Annie Korzen and Her degree will not be granted until she submits a letter of apology, a requirement imposed by an appeals panel. Mr. Sloan was a rigorous writing instructor who asked for weekly compositions from his pupils. Some of those approaches were from staff at the influential nonprofit consultancy Bridgespan, others from representatives at Lost Horse. At the time that Mackenzie filed her case, the Chronicle of Higher Education was finishing an article about her lost Rhodes Scholarship. According to the Palm Beach Daily News, the radio host Rush Limbaugh, the Fox News personality Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter were all in attendance, as was Roger Ailess widow, Liz. the one who is my mother. According to a detailed reconstruction of the conversation, composed by Mackenzie and the staff member soon afterward, Winkelstein asked why, in Mackenzies application for the school of social work, she had categorized herself as first-generation. Morrison has a record of 20 She achieved her goal of studying creative writing under Ms. Morrison, who had recently won the Pulitzer Prize. Nobody fits into a certain mold or stereotype, just like I do not, she wrote. With the help of a scholarship, Ms. Scott still managed to go to Princeton, albeit with a new, heavier burden. He was asked to run a fund-raising campaign at Seattles prestigious Lakeside School, where he taught and which seeks donations from the moderately paid faculty and staff members to a school with assets of $325 million and multiple billionaires in its tightknit community. This writer that I admired so much also turned out to be such a gifted and devoted teacher, Ms. Scott said. Her mother, Carrie Morrison, gave a very different story of what happened that day. As you revise, I am at your service if, and only if, you want me to be, Ms. Morrison had written in a three-page typed letter of suggestions for her manuscript, a copy of which is in her archive at Princeton. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Her room, on the third floor, was mostly bare, though she had hung seventeen photographs, mostly of college friends. Brandt wrote, The only thing she can think is Mackenzie did this to herself. When Brandt asked why Mackenzie would accuse her of such a thing, Morrison replied, I guess she has more problems than I thought. Brandt placed Morrison under arrest. This girl is traumatized. She interviewed Drivers classmates about what had happened to him, and she and another student, Kate Schneider, took photographs of the buildings entryways. Thats what I tasted, yeah, Mackenzie responded. After three weeks at the hospital, Mackenzie was discharged into a foster home. On TLC's Unexpected , Caelan Morrison had to deal with being a teen dad while also navigating his declining relationship with the mother of his children, McKayla Adkins. She was ashamed to tell people that shed been in foster care; she felt so alone that she thought about dropping out. I dont envy Trish because her life is fancy. They asked how Mackenzie had been injured. There is so much there to see., Ms. Bass said she knew the Tuttles were going through a difficult time, calling Ms. Scott beloved and the prospect of leaving a place where she had been thriving traumatic., One thing I regret is the Hotchkiss community did not rally to support her, Ms. Bass said. It is unclear exactly how big Ms. Scotts own staff is, but it is believed to be a small fraction of the Gates team. Last June, Ms. Scott announced another round of giving, $2.7 billion this time. She put herself out there but not at the public events that, by her own admission, made her uncomfortable, yet using the skill shed been honing since she was eating Oreos and reading botany books: her writing. READ ALSO: Chris Kaba Family: Parents, Wife, Children, Siblings Rachel Webb, one of Mackenzies teachers from elementary school, said that Morrison left a message on her voice mail. Her mom knocked on the door and told her, Im takingyour keys and Im calling you in sick to school. When Mackenzie heard her mother leave the house, she got a spare key and drove to school, though she had no memory of doing so. After the caseworkers visit, Mackenzie was on high alert, trying not to set anyone or anything off, she wrote in her diary. Such a shame this angry teenage girl just destroyed her mothers career, another wrote. Shortly before Ms. Scotts 17th birthday, her familys fortunes took a sudden turn. It was bad, she said. If there were causes she supported but did not want the world to know about, she could simply choose not to include them in the Medium post. It felt like an equation of where I would feel the least uncomfortable and the least excluded, she said. She I helped organize a storytelling event for a friends church at a board and care institute, where [I met] Mackenzie Morrison, the daughter of the church lady who But Im thankful that Mackenzie came forward.. In 2011, Mr. Bezos and Ms. Scott donated $15 million to Princeton for a center to study the brain. Who Is Mackenzie Fierceton? He had died. Birthplace: Ness, Isle of Lewis, United Kingdom. In her final year, she took on extra coursework, completing a special seminar in fiction-writing arranged by the head of the English department that ensured she met the schools four-year English requirement. The story was quickly picked up by other news outlets. She said that she was usually glad not to have to line edit for a living anymore. They take us where we need to go.. A spokesperson for his office said that new evidence had been uncovered. While Mackenzie was in the hospital, Morrison was released on bond, and she began calling people close to Mackenzie to tell her side of the story. He lies about his work and showers his wife with expensive home appliances to compensate. The $12 billion in grants she has announced add up to more than the total lifetime giving of the late Eli Broad and his widow, Edythe, renowned for their generosity in Los Angeles, not to mention far richer couples, like Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. The judge ordered that Morrisons name be struck from the state registry. In an e-mail, an attorney for the D.S.S. notified Mackenzies lawyer of the decision, writing, I am very saddened by the result in this case as I have always believed Mackenzie 100% on everything and I always will. A stockbroker tried to phone Mr. Tuttles company in November 1987 and was told that the family was in Europe for the month, according to the S.E.C. The one that I feared most. She didnt elaborate on the thought, because, she added, Im literally getting nauseous thinking about it., [Support The New Yorkers award-winning journalism. The thought that this information may have been withheld from you felt utterly horrifying, Mackenzie wrote. This article is also based on previously unpublished letters between Ms. Scott and Ms. Morrison, kept in the Nobel laureates archive at the Princeton University library. It was a pretty emotional conversation, because of her fear that, if she did get the scholarship, there would be press, and her bio family could find her and tear her down, Cannon said. Im telling my story because I think its a microcosm of how institutions of power can manipulate truth, she told me. It has no donation schedules, no reporting requirements and no enforcement mechanisms. ), Three of the people who had written Mackenzie recommendations for the Rhodes composed new letters affirming that she had never misrepresented her life to them. She was infinitely more talented than anyone else in my class, and that was evident then, said Jeff Sloan, who taught her in sixth grade. Before that could happen, the couple announced their wedding in a backhanded way. Mackenzie went to Whitfield, a private prep school in St. Louis, where the schools wellness director, Ginny Fendell, called her the queen of compartmentalization. She got As, served in student government, played varsity soccer, managed the field-hockey team, and volunteered for the Special Olympics. Interviewed in her mothers presence, Mackenzie repeated the story about falling into a table. Since Mr. Bezos and Ms. Scott joined the board, tax records show, the foundation has given away more than $300 million. Schneider told me, We wanted to document everything, because we were, like, This is a pattern. A student publication at Oxford declared, A privileged student faked being poor to get into Oxford Uni. A morning radio show, syndicated to some hundred stations in the U.S., named Mackenzie its donkey of the day., Norton felt that Penn was defaming its own student, and in a grievance she accused White and Winkelstein of violating university procedures with arbitrary and capricious conduct. I dont ever want to cause her any pain or anything, which is why Ill probably end up burning this, Mackenzie wrote in the journal. I personally believe the education level (or/and financial status) of the biological parents would be irrelevant, the associate director responded. (She also spent long stretches sleeping at friends houses.) I remember there was some blood with my lip, yeah, Mackenzie said. Im a Black woman, Im middle-aged, Im a single parent of a special-needs child, and I cant do anything that would jeopardize the lawsuit, she said. During conversations with her mother in the kitchen, she made sure to keep the kitchen island in between us, while also bracing for impact. She thought about running away, but she didnt have anywhere to go. In April, 2021, an investigative subcommittee for the Rhodes Trust issued a report recommending that Mackenzies scholarship be rescinded. investigators were reviewing e-mails between Mackenzie and Penn faculty, presumably to see if she had portrayed her life accurately; they also interviewed Morrison and the St. Louis prosecutor who dropped her criminal casewithout telling Mackenzie. In keeping with the absolute secrecy surrounding Lost Horses operations, there is no nameplate in the lobby and the slim rectangular window on the Lost Horse floor is papered over. Because Mackenzie had always been kind of trotted out by our school as this shining example of a successful alumna.. had considered placing her with one of Morrisons sisters, but the Whitfield principal had called the D.S.S. Her foster parents had had a baby, and Mackenzie felt increasingly peripheral to their lives. Logan hadnt known that her husband and emergency responders had allegedly waited for almost an hour together before he was taken away in an ambulancetwelve minutes later, he was declared dead. Nevertheless, Raffaele encouraged her not to take any risks. According to Mackenzie, Logan, who had been pregnant when her husband died, asked her to meet. Her sudden spate of giving has now reached 1,257 groups, from little-known charities to mainstream organizations like Habitat for Humanity, which last month received $436 million, her largest known gift. A man who appeared to be a security guard at an address linked to another shell company in an affluent corner of Seattle said, Theyre not available at the moment.. Its about trying to construct a common life together. Occasionally, Mackenzie has a painful longing for the mother she remembers as a young child, but it is not her that I am grieving, she said. On paper, Lost Horses headquarters are a law firm office in a downtown Seattle skyscraper and a tax firm in Los Angeles that handles family offices for high-net-worth individuals. In the tweet, she added in a parenthetical: (Note my Medium account is under my new last name changed back to middle name I grew up with, after my grandfather Scott. She wrote that Mackenzie, in her application, had failed to acknowledge her upper middle-class upbringing and provides a description of a life of abuse that the judicial process concluded could not be substantiated. Winkelstein attached orders showing that a circuit court had reversed the D.S.S.s finding of abuse, and that Morrisons arrest had been expunged. The week after the meeting, Winkelstein sent a letter to the Rhodes Trust expressing concern that Mackenzie (whose birth name and place of birth she got wrong) may have misrepresented her childhood. In January 2019, Ms. Scott and Mr. Bezos jointly announced on his Twitter account that they were divorcing. We read, you know, enumerable books on the difficult child, the spirited child, the willful child, she said. Those concerns were temporarily overshadowed when, less than five months later, on Dec. 15, 2020, Ms. Scott announced another, even bigger round of giving, $4.2 billion to 384 organizations, including hundreds of Easterseals, United Way, Y.W.C.A. The writing program was competitive. Dorothy L. Espelage, a psychologist specializing in bullying prevention, recalled in an interview how she was sitting in a parking lot at the University of Illinois, where she worked at the time, when her phone rang. In talking about her childhood, Mackenzie was fragile, sometimes narrowly avoiding tears, but when she reflected on how her life intersected with her political ideals she became focussed and self-possessed. She is brilliant and can charm anyone, Mackenzie wrote. In the winter of her sophomore year of high school, Mackenzie Morrison sat in her bedroom closet and began a new diary. MacKenzie Bezos and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced that they had finalized the terms of their divorce on Twitter on April 4. She showed up at my classroom door with a bloodied and battered face and then fainted, the teacher wrote. Morrisons trial was held during the spring of Mackenzies junior year. You describe an experience, Winkelstein said. I know that good part is still there somewhere, she wrote. Penn seemed to embrace Mackenzies story as evidence of its commitment to promoting social and economic mobility. Mackenzie grew up in St. Louis, Missouri with her mother, Carrie Morrison, left, who allegedly abused her, as her boyfriend, Henry Lovelace Jr., right, sexually abused her Mackenzie attended the $30,000-a-year Whitfield private school in St. Louis (Penn denies that there are accessibility problems with the Caster Building which contributed to Mackenzies medical emergency or to Drivers death.). I dont remember, but I was told I drove, Mackenzie said. Thats what scares me about this case. An ambulance was called, and Mackenzie was taken to Mercy Hospital, in St.Louis, and admitted into the pediatric intensive-care unit. Eventually, the theory became impossible to avoid. Her preferences are shaping the face of American civil society because of the size of the funding shes providing, said Rob Reich, co-director of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society at Stanford University. Her mother is radiologist Dr. Carrie Morrison, and her hobbies at school included horseback riding, skydiving and white water rafting. Death: December 31, 2008 (80) Immediate Family: Son of John Morrison and Catriona Morrison. Another hallmark of Ms. Scotts personality on display in her writing life was her dedication to intense research. Norton said, Mackenzie always tried to say, Im fine, Im fineafter she and her roommates gave up their apartment off campus, she lived with a roommates family in Ohio and then stayed at a classmates home in Philadelphiabut eventually it became clear she was just couch-surfing at friends houses, and you cant couch-surf in a pandemic. In late May, Norton invited Mackenzie, who had just graduated with a B.A. (Her doctors said that her head injuries in high school may have put her at greater risk for the disorder.) Very pleasant and serious, the instructor, Carole Glickfeld, recalled in an interview. To be fair, I was using Penn, tooit gave me economic and social capital, Moore said. Norton and her partner, Deborah Harrold, live in a large house in northwest Philadelphia.