Late in June, the National Enquirer reported that married former Catch a Predator host and Dateline NBC correspondent Chris Hansen, 52, was caught on tape having an affair with a 30 year-old reporter from Florida who was not his wife. I guessed at the time that the mistress had gone to the Enquirer with the news, as it’s hard to see how a tabloid would bother busting a news anchor cheating unless they had a very solid lead. Plus the “insider” quotes suggested the mistress was upset that Chris hadn’t left his wife for her as promised. “Chris sends Kristyn flowers and tells her he loves her, but he still doesn’t seem all that motivated to leave his wife for her. He’s telling her he loves his wife too, but they’ve grown apart over the years, and she’s not sure what he should do.” It’s the oldest line in the book. If you hear “my wife and I have grown apart” from a married guy you should run.

Well all this was news to Chris’ other mistress, a Vegas area stripper who thought she was the only one and was dismayed to learn that Chris was “cheating” on her by having another extramarital affair. This is my only reaction. This second mistress looks just like the first, and they both look like Chris’ wife.

And now it appears he was also cheating on his mistress, with revelations that Hansen was also for six months secretly dating petite blonde Kathleen Collins, a stripper and aspiring country singer.

Miss Collins was said to have been shocked when she found out – through the press – that her married lover, who lives with his wife Mary, 53, and their sons in Connecticut, had also been sleeping with another woman.

A friend told the Enquirer: ‘I know this sounds crazy, but Kathleen really thought she was the only one.’ She is then alleged to have told her friend: ‘Chris cheated on me just like he cheated on his wife.’

Miss Collins is said to have been told by the high profile television anchor that he had separated from his wife and was set to get a divorce.

‘Kathleen feels like she’s been used and betrayed – Chris definitely broke her heart,’ the source told the Enquirer.

The magazine claims to have seen pictures of the two embracing in Las Vegas and read text messages and emails sent by Hansen to Miss Collins from his official NBC Universal address.

[From The National Enquirer via The Daily Mail]

As I said in our earlier story on this, there’s no comparing a garden variety cheater with scumbags who troll the internet for preteens – at all. Those two scenarios are completely different. This story isn’t amusing for that reason, but the parallels with the stings Hansen set up do explain why the story got as much coverage as it did.

You can’t “cheat” on a mistress. The dude is married, dumbass. I love that he picked two women who were not only stupid enough to fall for his lines, but who got indignant about it and went running to the tabloids. I should go easier on the stripper, though. Unlike the reporter she may not have known that Chris was still living with his wife. If he told her he was separated and about to divorce that’s on him for lying. It looks like he learned how to play this game after disappointing the last mistress by never leaving his wife for her. Those surely weren’t the only two women he cheated with.

The NY Post reported last month that Hansen was passed up for the position of lead anchor at Dateline as a direct result of the earlier scandal. They also claimed that “Hansen sent explicit photos of himself to [the reporter] and is now terrified they could be leaked.” Please don’t let that happen. We don’t need any more peen photos.

Hansen and his wife:

The reporter:

The stripper:

Some photos credit: WENN