Adventures of Larry Flynt

Book Cover: What Wild Ecstasy

While awaiting the Supreme Court decision, Flynt's wife Althea, diagnosed with AIDS and addicted to drugs, drowned in the bathtub at their California home at the age of 33. Flynt had her body flown to Kentucky and buried at the Flynt family graveyard in Lakeville. Theirs had been a unique relationship. According to author John Heidenry, he occasionally beat her. In an interview in Hustler, Althea once said, "I don't see anything wrong with a man striking a woman. In fact, many women are turned on by it." While she was married to Flynt, Leasure also had several relationships with women.

Heidenry, in his book What Wild Ecstasy, claims that Althea's death was actually a murder ordered by Mafia loan sharks from south Florida. According to Heidenry, Flynt was "deeply in hock" to the mob, and they felt that Althea "knew too much" and had to be eliminated.

Flynt, the father of five children, married his fifth wife, Liz Berrios, in 1998. Berrios had been his nurse.

In recent years, one of Flynt's daughters, Tonya Flynt-Vega, accused him of sexually molesting her, and in 1998 she published a book about her childhood experiences and her later spiritual awakening. According to Slate, a former brother-in-law gave Penthouse an interview in which he accused Flynt of molesting another daughter. Charges were never filed against him.