Double life: Man maintained two families just 20 miles apart....~Super Princess~

TAMPA - They were two rich families living 20 miles apart, linked by a phantom.

Douglas "Diesel" Cone, the road construction kingpin who paved many of Tampa Bay's highways, was married to Jean Ann Cone, a beloved socialite and philanthropist, for more than 50 years. Their house bordered the Palma Ceia Golf and Country Club in South Tampa. Their money helped build Berkeley Preparatory School, where they sent three children and served as trustees. The school's library was named for Mrs. Cone. She drove a Rolls.

Donald Carlson was also a major Berkeley Prep benefactor, though one who never showed his face. People knew him as the husband of Hillary Carlson, a school trustee. Her husband worked for the State Department, Mrs. Carlson explained, and traveled a lot. The Carlsons sent their two children to Berkeley Prep, and paid for its baseball complex, now known as Carlson Field. The Carlsons lived quietly on a secluded estate in north Hillsborough. Mrs. Carlson drove a Rolls.

For decades, the Cones and the Carlsons lived at opposite ends of the same county. What almost nobody knew was that Douglas Cone and Donald Carlson were the same man.

The name "Donald Carlson" was the central prop of Douglas Cone's bizarre, long-running double life. The alias allowed Cone, who helped forge a road-building dynasty, to keep two families in the same town.

The subterfuge only started to unravel when Jean Ann Cone died in March. Two weeks after his wife's death, Douglas Cone married Hillary Carlson. The swift remarriage stunned many of those close to Jean Ann Cone. It supplied fodder for gossip and conjecture from the Tampa Yacht Club to city cafes. And it has set the stage for financial infighting in the Cone family.

Hillary Carlson's marriage to Cone, who at 74 is 18 years older than she is and is battling cancer, could ultimately put her in a position to inherit significant family holdings.

One of Cone's three children already has brought in a leading Tampa attorney. The attorney, Norman Cannella Sr., says Douglas Cone Jr. has questions about his mother's death, which was ruled an accident resulting from car exhaust inhalation in her garage.

Cannella wants Hillsborough State Attorney Mark Ober to open an inquiry.

"I have spoken to Mark Ober about the death of Mrs. Cone," Cannella acknowledged. "I have not yet had a chance to meet with him. I'm in the process of establishing a time and date."

Asked whether Douglas Cone Jr. was concerned about Hillary Carlson's control of his father's money, Cannella replied: "My client has concerns other than the suspicious death of his mother. These concerns do involve substantial family financial assets."

Cannella declined to elaborate.

Douglas Cone Sr. is a gruff, blunt-spoken man who earned the nickname "Diesel" because people said he smoked like a diesel truck. His brand was unfiltered Kools.

He made his reputation, and his fortune, as a hard-knuckled businessman who flourished in the rough-and-tumble world of road construction. In the past 11 years alone, the company he chairs, Cone & Graham, has won more than $212-million in state contracts, with projects that include the expansion of Interstate 4, the Suncoast Parkway and Gunn Highway.

Cone survived union feuds, strikes, accusations of worker intimidation, and a 1982 lawsuit in which the Florida attorney general alleged bid-rigging. Cone settled it with a $100,000 payout.

His wife, Jean Ann, was the public face of the marriage, a beloved figure in Tampa society who chaired charity fundraisers and kept company with the likes of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. Douglas Cone was rarely seen out with his wife, however.

At Berkeley Prep, the exclusive private school that calls itself "the undisputed crown jewel of education in the Tampa Bay area," the Cone name was king.

The Cones gave $100,000 to buy the Kelly Road land on which the school was built. They gave an additional $250,000 for the school library, which bears Jean Ann Cone's name. The Cone children - Douglas Jr., Rammy and Julianne - all attended the school, graduating in the early 1970s.

Berkeley was one of Jean Ann Cone's great loves. She was a long-serving, enthusiastic member of the board of trustees.

In the 1980s and 1990s, she served on the board with another enthusiastic woman - 19 years her junior - who was sending her own two kids through the school. Her name was Hillary Carlson. She appeared in school directories as the wife of Donald Carlson, a man who never seemed to show his face.

Like the Cones, the Carlsons were generous to Berkeley Prep. They bought the school a baseball field, which now bears the Carlson name, just a flyball's distance from the Jean Ann Cone Library.

Trustees who served with Hillary Carlson remember her as a doting mother. But they wondered why her husband never appeared at the dozens of school events she attended.

"It was kind of a mystery, I guess," said former trustee Jeanne Ramseur. "I never saw him at school functions."

Hillary Carlson had a standard explanation for her husband's absence: He did government work that kept him on the road.

"I knew her 17 years. I never met the man. It was strange," said former trustee Susan Nydegger. "It was one of those things. We felt like we were prying. She said he worked for the State Department and he traveled a lot."

She added: "We just let it go after a while."

Today, as word of the double life circulates, the Carlson name is a touchy subject at Berkeley Prep. While a school history says the baseball field "was completed through a gift from Hillary and Don Carlson," Berkeley development director Gwyn Schabacker wouldn't say anything about it, not even when it was donated.

"I don't have anything I can share with you about the gift of Carlson Field," Schabacker said. "The baseball field is named Carlson Field. I'd really not like to give you any further information about the gift."

If Berkeley headmaster Joseph Merluzzi knows who Don Carlson is, he refuses to say.

"I'm not going to tell you anything about Don Carlson," Merluzzi said, curtly hanging up the phone.

To look for Donald Carlson in public records is to chase a ghost. An extensive search of property databases, marriage and driver's licenses, court files and other official records revealed no one by that name linked to Hillary Carlson.

Hillary Carlson was in the scrupulous habit, it appears, of listing her address as a post office box in Tampa. On a voter's registration form, however, she gave her real address on N Dale Mabry Highway, in Lutz.

It is a fenced, pine-covered, million-dollar estate on 67 secluded acres just below the Pasco County line. The property is accessible only from a side road. The house sits a football field's distance, or more, from the gate that bars the driveway. There is no intercom.

Shown a photograph of Douglas Cone, a neighbor who lives next to the Lutz estate said she did not know him by the name Doug at all.

"Doug?" said Debra Parzy. "Don Carlson is all I know him as."

She said she has lived as neighbors to the Carlsons for 21 years. She said Don Carlson seemed to travel a lot.

"They're just very nice people," Parzy said. "If you need them, they're there."

Neighbors weren't the only ones kept in the dark.

Reached by phone in Jupiter, Hillary Carlson's 81-year-old mother absolutely refused to believe that her daughter had recently married a man named Douglas Cone.

"No way - positively not," said Mary Hirtzel.

Hirtzel said her daughter has been married to a man named Don Carlson for years, and he is a "wonderful son-in-law" who did sensitive government work.

"We don't talk about his job," she said. "We don't even know what it is."

Her son-in-law has been very sick recently, she said. But "I'm so happy they've lived the life they have, and have had the children they wanted," she said. "It's a good marriage. He's taken care of them. They've raised their children properly.'

Her daughter always understood, she said, that her husband's government position would entail special burdens, such as frequent travel on his part, and the need to keep a low profile.

"She knew this when she married him," she said.

It is not known how Hillary Carlson and Douglas Cone met, but during the 1970s she worked for Florida Mining & Materials Corp., one of Cone's many companies.

In 1977, after divorcing a man named Frank Janes, she had her name changed from Darlene Janes to Darlene Carlson. She gave no indication why she chose the name Carlson, or why she wanted an entirely new name rather than returning to her maiden name, Darlene Hirtzel.

While her name continues to appear as Darlene on official records, for years she has been calling herself Hillary.

Neither Hillary Carlson nor Douglas Cone responded to repeated requests for interviews for this story.

Did Jean Ann Cone know of her husband's double life? Many of her friends doubt she would have tolerated it. But they refused to be quoted in the Times. It is too ugly a subject, they said.

Eleven weeks ago, Mrs. Cone died at age 75 at the Golf View Street home she shared with her husband.

When Mrs. Cone failed to show up for an appointment on March 20, her daughter came looking for her, and found her body slumped behind the wheel of her Rolls Royce in the closed garage. The ignition was still in the on position.

The daughter, Julianne McKeel, told police her mother had a habit of driving into the garage and closing the door before turning off the car's engine, as a safety measure. She told them her mother was not suicidal, nor an alcoholic. She called her father to give him the news. He was out of town, though the police report does not specify where.

The medical examiner attributed the death to accidental car exhaust inhalation and reported Mrs. Cone had a blood-alcohol level of 0.18, more than twice the legal driving limit.

"Everything fit that this was in fact an accident," said associate medical examiner Daniel Spitz. His conclusion: Jean Ann Cone lost consciousness behind the wheel while the car was still running. The exhaust could have killed her in less than an hour.

Eight days after his wife's body was found, Douglas Cone took out another marriage license. Five days after that, in a ceremony performed by the clerk of the Sumter County courthouse, an hour's drive north of Tampa, he married Hillary Carlson. The mysterious Don Carlson had vanished into the ether overnight.

With the new marriage, there are signs that Douglas Cone is ready to retire his alias.

Last Friday, he and Hillary returned to his alma mater, the Georgia Institute of Technology. Some 700 Georgia Tech benefactors were honored with a black-tie dinner in an Atlanta ballroom. There was wine, shrimp, a swing band and a speech from the school president. The tables had candles and Calla lily centerpieces.

The brochure accompanying the dinner had listed among the guests "Donald D. & Hillary Carlson" as donors and parents of a student, 23-year-old Fred Carlson.

Mother, father and son sat together. The name tag on the father's tux said, "Douglas Cone."

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