Wife number two, Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Adams Garcia, was the hands-down winner in the latest chapter of legal haggling over the estate of the late Grateful Dead guitarist. Adams was duking it out with wife number three, Deborah Koons Garcia, the executor of the guitarist's estate who had cut Adams' support payments off following Garcia's death in 1995.
Koons was contending neither the marriage to Adams nor the one paragraph separation agreement he signed with her were valid. The judge vehemently disagreed and not only ordered the monthly $20,000-plus payments to Adams Garcia reinstated, he saddled Koons with court costs.
Tracking Garcia's wives, semi-wives and daughters requires a program. Garcia married wife number one, Sarah Katz, in 1963 when he was just 20, a relationship that produced daughter Heather Garcia Katz, now 31.
Adams, well-chronicled as "Mountain Girl" in Tom Wolfe's freewheeling sixties testament, "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," was initially era icon Ken Kesey's consort -- they had a daughter, Sunshine, together -- and later hooked up with Garcia to produce daughters Annabelle (in 1970) and Theresa (in 1974).
Garcia married Adams in his dressing room backstage at a 1981 New Year's Eve concert in Oakland, and not even his bandmates were present. According to Grateful Dead roadie Steve Parish, who saw Garcia shortly after the ceremony, Garcia told him, "I love Mountain Girl and I've got to square up my taxes."
According to Koons' lawyer, Adams and Garcia only lived together for three years starting in 1986. Adams, however, told the court they lived together from 1986 until 1990.
Enter Manasha Matheson Garcia, who contends she lived with Garcia for six years from 1987 on. Their daughter, Keelin, was born in December 1987. On Dec. 30, 1992, Matheson, who had her name legally changed to Garcia, says Jerry kissed her, told her he loved her, left the house and never came back. She says he sometimes phoned Keelin but never visited her again.
Garcia divorced Adams in order to marry Koons, a film and video producer, on Valentine's Day, 1993, 18-months prior to his death. They were married in a traditional ceremony in a church with a reception held at a yacht club. The bride wore white, Garcia wore a suit -- albeit, with no tie (not even one from the popular Grateful Dead collection).
Garcia left one-third of his estate to Koons, and of the remaining two-thirds, he left one-fifth to each of his four daughters with the remaining fifth going to his brother, Clifford Garcia, and Sunshine Kesey. Koons, as executor, in addition to attempting to block Adams, drastically reduced the funds allotted Matheson, who complained to the press that when she asked the court for her traditional $5,000 Christmas bonus issued annually when Garcia was alive, was told by Koons' representative that "Santa Clause had died."
During the trial, Koons, who has never been popular with Garcia's family or fans -- she was further vilified through her secretive trek to India to scatter Garcia's ashes on the polluted Ganges -- tried to portray Adams as the "bitch." Her lawyer did manage to solicit testimony from Dead bandma
