Mary Campbell grew up in a tight Italian-American family in
Brooklyn. A busty brunette with full lips, she
'd come to
San Francisco with a long-time boyfriend, but the relationship died soon after they arrived, and she found herself alone and lonely in her
new city.
She was working the deli counter of a neighborhood market near The Haight in 1988 when Carol Bremner walked up and smiled at her.
"Would you like to be part of a women's art project?"
Campbell said yes.
At this point, The Family had expanded to include Bremner, Wilson, and another woman named Susan Weber, according to extensive research by the SF Weekly, and Wright had sired children with all three of them.
When Campbell, then 23, knocked on the door of the apartment, she found the three women playing on the floor with their biracial children. Campbell loved kids and was delighted by this scene. She wasnt put off by the unusual nature of the household, and would later say she admired the women's progressive outlook as much as she did their mothering skills. When she met Wright a few hours later, she found him attractive and artistic.
Bremner also liked to wear provocative clothing such as miniskirts and tight sweaters that got her attention from men. Here was a man who'd fathered kids with three women, and yet they were all living together in apparent domestic bliss. She was intrigued.
On her second visit to The Family's home, Wright looked deep into Campbell's brown eyes and told her that he wanted her to be with him forever and to have his babies. She was a romantic as well as a flirt, and this was something she'd longed to hear. She was so taken with Wright that when they had sex and he refused to use birth control, she acquiesced. Ten weeks later, she was pregnant. She quit her job and moved in with The Family, becoming Wright's fourth common-law wife.
Once inside, however, her romantic notions rapidly vanished.
