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They were married the modern way in 1985, with a prenuptial agreement, and moved into the big house on Wyndon Avenue in Rosemont. Within a year, Shah would be named vice chairman of CoreStates Financial, with compensation of more than $1 million. It was a life of chauffeur-driven limos, poolside cocktails, shopping binges in Manhattan, winter getaways to their beach house in Boca Raton, Fla., and three-star excursions in Paris. Lithe and athletic Ellen, who loved to dance, twirled from one grand charity ball to another, and Bipin was absolutely dazzled.
"Ellen was a very fun-loving, vivacious, delightful personality. Bipin adored her, and she adored him. They would joke together, laugh, tease. It was a very nice relationship," says Lynne Dillett, who went on occasional weekend getaways with the Shahs and her husband Greg, a banking colleague of Bipin's.
Sarah was born in 1989, with her father's round face and her mother's light features. "We immersed ourselves in the child," Shah says. Two years later, Genevieve--Vivi--arrived, with her mother's long face and her father's dark features. The girls' finger paintings decorated the kitchen. Each had her own bedroom. Out back, they shared a jungle gym.
He had enough money socked away, Bipin says, to last till the end of their days. It was all so perfect.
Faye Yager has an assignment for women who want to run. Write a story explaining why. Ellen seemed to have relished the opportunity, filling five typewritten pages. In the mini-series of her life, Valley of the Dolls meets A Good Man Is Hard to Find. The first words are these:
The signs were there even at the beginning of the relationship ... We fell in love over a short period of time. He said his first wife didn't "understand" him, and that was one reason why his anger got out of control. He told me that he had other girlfriends while still married, but this was due to his unhappy marriage. [Bipin denies this.] He was charming and different. I believed him. Then he punched me in the nose.
Things never really changed, by her account. And yet she married him, stayed with him, forgave him.
I had had obscenities screamed at me on a continual basis, and had been sexually and physically abused by him. When confronted and challenged, he said he was sorry... I was unsure of myself and ashamed of the abuse, and afraid of him... Without knowing it, I had turned into the classic victim. I was afraid and sorry for my abuser.
Bipin and Ellen separated in 1992 and divorced in 1993, with shared custody of the girls, but they bickered constantly over money and visitation. And then, on Dec. 16, 1993, Ellen called the police and reported that Bipin had assaulted her when she went to his house to pick up the girls. In a petition for protection from abuse, filed in Montgomery County court, she wrote,