Mark Sanford - Disappearance and Extramarital Affair

Disappearance and Extramarital Affair

From June 18 until June 24, 2009, the whereabouts of Sanford were unknown to the public, as well as to his wife and the State Law Enforcement Division, which provides security for him, garnering nationwide news coverage. Lieutenant Governor André Bauer announced that he could not "take lightly that his staff has not had communication with him for more than four days, and that no one, including his own family, knows his whereabouts."

Before his disappearance, Sanford told his staff that he would be hiking on the Appalachian Trail and while he was gone he did not answer 15 cell phone calls from his chief of staff Scott English; he also failed to call his family on Father's Day.

Several hours after reporter Gina Smith intercepted Sanford arriving at Atlanta's airport after flying back from Argentina, and upon learning that incriminating evidence was being swiftly mobilized against him by the media, Sanford held a news conference, during which he admitted that he had been unfaithful to his wife.

In emotional interviews with the Associated Press over two days, Sanford said he would die "knowing that I had met my soul mate." Sanford also said that he "crossed the lines" with a handful of other women during 20 years of marriage, but not as far as he did with his mistress. "There were a handful of instances wherein I crossed the lines I shouldn't have crossed as a married man, but never crossed the ultimate line," he said.

On June 25, La Nación, a Buenos Aires newspaper, identified the Argentine woman as María Belén Chapur, a 43-year-old divorced mother of two with a university degree in international relations who lives in the city of Buenos Aires and works as a commodity broker . The State earlier had published details of e-mails between Sanford and a woman only identified as "Maria." Sanford met Chapur at a dance in Uruguay in 2001 and admitted there was a more intimate relationship with her starting in 2008.

Sanford's wife had become aware of her husband's infidelities around five months before the scandal broke, and the two had sought marriage counseling. She said that she had requested a trial separation about two weeks before his disappearance.

Sanford told reporters that months before his affair became public he had sought counsel at a controversial religious organization called The Family, of which he became a member when he was a Representative in Washington, D.C. from 1995 to 2001.