Not long after his daughter Meghan married Prince Harry, Thomas Markle became the focus of a cover story in The National Enquirer, one of America’s best-known supermarket tabloids.
Published in October 2018, the report offered a revealing glimpse into the controversies surrounding Markle and suggested that his absence from the royal wedding that summer may ultimately have spared the family further embarrassment.
The story drew on a secretly recorded conversation in which the retired television lighting director discussed his Hollywood career, including the three Emmy Awards he had won.
Two passages attracted particular attention. In one, Markle spoke candidly about drug use during his years in the entertainment industry, saying: ‘In the industry I worked in back in the 70s and 80s there was cocaine around a lot. And I’m sure that I had an occasional sniff of cocaine.’
In another, he offered an evasive response when asked whether he had paid for sex during trips to South-East Asia.
‘Have I ever paid for a sex worker? Uh, there was a Playboy Club in the top floor of a hotel in the Philippines [but] I never paid for sex. I would go upstairs and enjoy myself in the Playboy Club, but… not for sex. I didn’t get sex out of it,’ Markle said.
However, he acknowledged to The Mail on Sunday at the weekend that he had paid for sex in the Philippines.
The recording was secretly made by Markle’s son, Thomas Markle Jr.
The Duchess of Sussex has been estranged from her father, Thomas Markle Sr, 82, since 2018. Pictured: The couple together on the day of Meghan’s marriage to film producer Trevor Engelson in 2011
Roslyn Loveless, the first wife of Meghan Markle’s estranged father Thomas, pictured outside her home in Albuquerque, New Mexico
Meghan Markle’s half-brother Thomas Markle Jnr pictured hand-in-hand with a woman outside the apartment building where he lived with his father in the Philippines on May 10, 2025
In a separate interview around the same period, Thomas Jr discussed his father’s relationships. He said that, after divorcing his mother, Roslyn Loveless, in 1975 and before marrying Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, in 1979, Markle Sr had a long-term relationship with a Filipino woman named Marty.
‘There’s a certain type of woman he likes. He likes Asian women a lot,’ Thomas Jr said, adding: ‘He likes to go on vacation to Thailand, Vietnam. He likes their culture a lot.’
Eight years later, Meghan’s father, now 82, is again at the centre of a sex-related controversy—once more involving the Philippines.
The latest allegations have again been made public by Thomas Jr, one of two children from whom Markle Sr appears to be deeply estranged.
The latest episode began at 10.04pm on Thursday, when reports emerged that police in the Philippines were investigating allegations involving a large collection of child sexual abuse images said to have been found at Markle Sr’s home in Cebu, a tourist island roughly 350 miles south-east of Manila.
Thomas Jr told The Sun that he discovered ‘hundreds if not thousands’ of images inside four cardboard boxes shipped from Rosarito, Mexico. Father and son had lived there before moving to the Philippines in January 2025, saying they wanted a ‘fresh start’. ‘When I found this material, I was horrified and I had no option but to report my dad,’ he said.
‘I have supported, cared for him and helped him for years – but that stops now. I won’t speak to my father ever again unless I’m called to give evidence against him.’
Thomas Jr, 60, said he found the alleged material in July while looking for a mobile phone to give to the father of his fiancée, Rose, a 28-year-old Filipino woman.
Mr Markle faces child sex allegations which he denies and told The Mail on Sunday he was ‘not buying’ the idea that his first wife, who died two years ago, wrote the letter to the Met Police in early 2019
He said he recharged an old LG phone that had belonged to his father, after which a video showing what he described as ‘naked young girls’ appeared on the screen.
He also claimed to have found images on a Lenovo ThinkPad laptop that The Sun described as showing apparent victims no older than 10 or 11.
The material allegedly included explicit DVDs and photographs, some reportedly hidden inside two coffee-table books owned by Markle Sr. Their titles were Lewis Carroll Photographs Of Children: Four Nude Studies and Hollywood Lolitas: The Nymphet Syndrome In The Movies.
Thomas Jr said he initially contacted the FBI, hoping the agency would investigate his father.
Markle Sr had returned to the United States in May after suffering major health problems, including a stroke and a blood clot that led to the amputation of his left leg below the knee.
After three months without an FBI investigation, Thomas Jr reported the matter to police in the Philippines instead.
On Friday morning, he delivered the four boxes to police headquarters in Cebu City in a Toyota HiAce, accompanied by a Sun reporter.
Thomas Jr had previously defended his father during public disputes involving Meghan. He used the newspaper to apologise to his half-sister, saying: ‘I’m so, so sorry… I now know I have been protecting the wrong person for the past nine years.’
The Duchess of Sussex responded on Friday, saying she was ‘deeply distressed at the news that has come to light in the last 24 hours’.
Thomas Sr recovering in a hospital bed after surgery in the Philippines last December
Meghan said the Metropolitan Police had told her in 2018 about a letter containing ‘troubling and disturbing allegations against my father’.
She said she had been assured the claims were being investigated and subsequently decided that her children should not have contact with their grandfather ‘to protect them’.
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The letter was apparently sent in early 2019, shortly after The National Enquirer published its account of Markle Sr’s visits to an ‘X-rated jiggle joint’ in the Philippines. It was attributed to Roslyn Loveless, Markle Sr’s former wife, who died in 2024.
Sources who said they had seen the letter’s contents claimed that Loveless alleged Markle had travelled to the Philippines and Thailand to abuse children.
The Metropolitan Police is now reviewing how the matter was handled and could refer itself to the police watchdog.
One unusual detail is that the letter appears to have been directed not to specialist child-abuse investigators but to the force’s Fixated Threat Assessment Centre, sometimes described as its ‘stalker and obsessive unit’. The department handles threats against royals, celebrities and other public figures.
It is not known whether officers considered Loveless a potential threat to Meghan or were focused on the allegations against Markle Sr. However, a source said the Met would probably have lacked jurisdiction to investigate further because Markle, the alleged conduct and the purported victims were all outside the United Kingdom.
A further complication is that the Philippines raised its age of consent to 16 only in 2022. Before then, the legal age was 12.
It remains unclear how seriously Meghan regarded the 2019 letter at the time. In February that year, shortly after it was received, she authorised five friends to speak to People magazine about her estrangement from her father. The resulting article suggested she hoped to repair the relationship.
In a 2022 Netflix documentary, Meghan said she had been ‘a daddy’s girl my whole life’. She appears to have severed contact with Markle Sr definitively only in late 2025, when he was seriously ill in a Philippine hospital.
A representative was then sent to deliver a letter by hand, in a scene witnessed by the Mail’s Caroline Graham.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at The Community Recording Studio in Nottingham earlier this month, their first official engagement since returning to the UK
The latest allegations do not, of course, imply any responsibility on Meghan’s part. Indeed, the Duchess may be the only member of her troubled American family whose public standing has improved as a result of the developments.
Thomas Jr’s motives, meanwhile, are being questioned.
The twice-divorced former window fitter has two adult sons, including one who works as a marijuana farmer in Oregon, where the activity is legal. His past includes an arrest after a girlfriend accused him of holding a gun to her head during a drunken argument. Charges filed in 2017 were later dismissed after the couple reconciled. He has also appeared in court over drink-driving.
In 2022, he appeared on Australia’s version of Celebrity Big Brother, claiming that he and Meghan had once been close but that ‘money changed her’ after she became famous.
In recent years, Thomas Jr has reportedly been largely supported financially by his father. The pair moved to the Philippines together in January 2025, where Thomas Jr remains.
Markle Sr returned to the United States in May to recover from the medical crisis that resulted in the loss of his leg.
He left behind his latest partner, Rio Canedo, a local nurse he met while she was treating him in hospital.
Canedo is 46, around 35 years younger than Markle Sr.
Markle Sr initially stayed in Pennsylvania but later moved to a nursing home in Lakeland, Florida. He is being supported there by Samantha Markle, Meghan’s outspoken half-sister and Loveless’s eldest child.
Samantha, a former actress and model who has given several critical interviews about Meghan, continues to defend her father.
Speaking to Our News Outlet at the weekend, she called her brother’s accusations ‘disgusting’ and said they had ‘no merit in them whatsoever’.
She described Thomas Jr as a ‘liar’ who had invented the allegations to profit from media attention.
Samantha also claimed that Thomas Jr’s original FBI complaint in July followed a dispute over money. She said Markle Sr changed the passwords to a bank account his son had been able to access after returning to the United States in May.
‘My brother first came out with these lies days after the cash from my Dad was cut off. He has used Dad as a cash cow for years, and once the money stopped he made up the most outrageous lies he could to make money from the media,’ Samantha said.
She further labelled her brother a ‘delusional alcoholic’ and claimed that Markle Sr had not used the devices said to contain the alleged material since they arrived in the Philippines, where they had been stored.
‘Dad had no access to those computers for two years. Who knows who could have had access to them? Anyone could have set Dad up. There is no merit in these disgusting allegations whatsoever and my brother is disgusting for making them up.’
Samantha also said that one photograph at the centre of the investigation, reportedly showing her father on a bed with a young-looking Asian woman, ‘may be one of his girlfriends’.
She added: ‘Dad dated a wonderful Japanese woman called Carolyn who I loved. She was in her 30s but she looked like a teenager. Asian women have great skin and are small and petite. They look much younger than they are.’
‘Dad had another girlfriend called Gail. She was Asian and gorgeous but looked very young.’
Markle Sr, who is reportedly in poor health, has denied the allegations and said he is prepared to do ‘whatever it takes’ to clear his name. He maintains that the computers and phones in question had not been in his possession for more than two years and therefore said: ‘If there is anything bad on there it was put there by someone else.’
In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, he acknowledged that he had travelled to the Philippines at least twice while single and ‘slept with prostitutes’. He also said, perhaps unwisely: ‘I like Asian women but that is not a crime.’
The investigation remains ongoing.
