By Caroline Graham and Sharon Churcher


Feeling the strain? Ashton Kutcher looked tired and emotional as he left the Warner Bros set in Los Angeles yesterday

Ashton Kutcher yesterday showed the strain of suffering speculation surrounding the state of his marriage to Demi Moore.

The 33-year-old actor looked tired and emotional as he left the Two And A Half Men set in Los Angeles in his smart black Lexus.

Wearing a grey hat, Kutcher put his hand to his mouth as he spotted photographers, and appeared to be struggling to contain his emotions.

Struggling: With his hand nervously as his mouth, Kutcher appeared to be struggling to control his emotions as he drove home in his black Lexus

Kutcher's appearance came as reports emerged that he had been rating girls as 'hot tub worthy or not' during a night out in Las Vegas on the weekend of his sixth wedding anniversary.

Sipping an ice-cold vodka and grinning from ear to ear, Kutcher appears not to have a care in the world as he parties the night away with a group of nubile twentysomethings he cherry-picked from the floor of a crowded nightclub.

Within hours of the hot-tub encounter, Sara Leal, a curvaceous 23-year-old blonde from Texas, would allege that the evening ended in a torrid sexual liaison, prompting speculation that one of the entertainment industry’s most improbable May to December romances is over.

The irony of Kutcher’s current predicament will not be lost on many – after all Charlie Sheen, the man he replaced on Two And A Half Men, is notorious for cavorting with good-time girls and was sacked from the show following a particularly spectacular drink and drugs bender.

Some will say ‘cougar’ Demi was asking for trouble in romancing a much younger toyboy who is likely to forsake his partner, sooner or – as seems to be the case here – later, for a younger woman in her physical peak.

Yet two days ago Demi appeared to be standing by her man as she was photographed entering Los Angeles’s Kabbalah Centre with Kutcher. Both were wearing their wedding rings.

Perhaps the bigger mystery, however, is how Sara Leal came to be at the centre of one of the tawdriest scandals in recent Hollywood history.

She has taken down her Facebook page and hired a top lawyer, while letting it be known that she will not ‘spill the beans’ for less than $250,000 (£160,000). Or, it is said, she may accept a comparable amount from Kutcher and ‘fade away’.

The Mail on Sunday has spoken to dozens of friends, ‘party buddies’ and relatives, both in the glamorous haunts of Los Angeles, Las Vegas and San Diego, where Sara is a regular at celebrity-packed parties, and in her home town of McAllen, Texas, a shabby frontier settlement on the Mexican border which she fled nearly two years ago.

What has emerged is a disturbing portrait of a young woman who was determined to escape her poor roots only to find herself embroiled in Tinseltown’s unofficial ‘meat market’.

Out on the town: Sara Leal out partying with friend Katie Boggus

One of her closest friends, party promoter Gavin Naumoff, 23, said last night: ‘Sara’s a great girl. My job is to round up hot girls and bus them into clubs in San Diego or Vegas. The girls get free booze, food, whatever, and they attract rich and famous guys to the clubs. It’s a two-way street. The girls get to meet rich men and the guys get what they want.’

Which is? ‘Sex, obviously.’

Pointing proudly to photographs he took recently of a topless Leal, he bragged: ‘She was off her head, we all were. She’s a wild girl and loves to party. She is someone who knows what she wants and is determined to get it.’

But to understand how Leal allegedly found herself in the hot tub of Kutcher’s 12th-floor suite in San Diego’s Hard Rock Hotel last weekend, one has to go back to her humble Texan beginnings.

Age gap: Ashton and Demi pictured before the allegations of his infidelity surfaced

An ugly, featureless railroad town, McAllen is surrounded by searingly hot, pancake-flat oil fields and cotton, citrus and cattle farms.

Leal was born to a Hispanic father, Arturo, and a blonde saleswoman, Darcy. Her parents divorced when she was eight years old.

Last night at his home in a crime-ridden McAllen suburb, her father told us: ‘I have no comment on what’s going on except that she’s a wonderful girl, an innocent girl, and I don’t like the way people are talking about her.’

Her grandmother, Monna Rober, 78, added: ‘She was raised to have very good values.’

Leal spent her early years in a modest bungalow in a lower-middle-class area. A simple wooden swing still dangles from a tree in the parched front garden. After the divorce, she and her mother moved to a cheap rented flat on a sprawling estate.

While Leal has been attacked online – with some calling her a ‘whore’ – Mrs Rober said she is optimistic that ‘things will turn out for the best’. She said: ‘She’s always been a pretty girl. People aren’t being fair to Sara.’

One of her closest childhood friends, who asked not to be named, said: ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if it is true. She was always a party girl who wanted to get out of McAllen.

'From the time we were in high school, I think she hoped to find a richer older guy to take care of her. She wasn’t great at anything in particular that would have enabled her to make it on her own. But she was good at looking good. She dyed her brunette hair blonde and wore risque clothes.’

In a photograph taken in McAllen, Sara playfully lolls in a hot tub with a male friend. She is wearing a pink bikini and sipping a margarita. In another photo, she parties in front of a table cluttered with bottles. Leal originally attended a private Catholic academy, Our Lady of Sorrows, but soon transferred to a series of state-run schools.

The friend says Leal ultimately attended an ‘options school’ offering accelerated learning for teens with drug problems, unwed mothers and students ‘who want to get done with school quickly’.

‘Sara finished school half a year early and started hanging out with older men,’ said her friend.

Leal’s first serious boyfriend was Serafin Gomez, now 25, a rugged science student from an affluent family.

Hotspot: The Fluxx nightclub in San Diego, where Ashton Kutcher reportedly met Sara Leal

‘He was Mr Gorgeous and Sara seemed to be living really well. She drove a Cadillac,’ recalled her friend.

‘They split up after three years and she headed west.’

She arrived in San Diego two years ago, where she promptly fell in with a hard-partying crowd.

One friend, Rafael Sandoval, said: ‘I don’t know what Sara does for a living. When you are young and pretty, you can party all night for free.’

The ‘hottest’ club in San Diego at the moment is Fluxx, in the fashionable downtown Gaslamp section of town. There is a circular dancefloor with a DJ on a raised dais surrounded by dancers in bikinis. On Friday, September 23, Kutcher arrived with a group of male friends.

As usual, the club was filled with scantily clad young women. In recent weeks, it has played host to actor Jamie Foxx and rapper Snoop Dogg.

The club’s promoter, Aaron Klose, said: ‘I saw Ashton dancing with several girls, including Sara. Fluxx has the reputation for only allowing the prettiest ones in. Ashton was clearly up for a good night.’

Close friend Naumoff said he was given an account of the night by Jacques Du Toit, a South African yacht worker.

Girls just want to have fun: Sara in a hot tub with a friend

Naumoff explained: ‘Sara was at the club with some girlfriends. My buddy Jacques is the boyfriend of one of the girls partying with Sara that night, Alexis. The story is Ashton was picking out girls who were “hot tub worthy or not’’. He would send his friends to hand-pick the prettiest girls from the dancefloor.’

Kutcher was booked into the £2,500-a-night ‘top of the rock’ Diamond Suite at the Hard Rock Hotel. According to the hotel’s website, the luxury 1,200 sq ft accommodation has an outdoor Jacuzzi that ‘is always a hit’.

Naumoff said: ‘Jacques told me Alexis called him to say she and some other girls were going to a party in Ashton’s suite. Jacques was concerned, so he went over to the hotel to make sure she was behaving. Alexis told him Ashton’s room number and when he got there, a bodyguard was at the door who said it was a private party.

Jacques explained he was the boyfriend of one of the girls and was let in.

‘He found Ashton in a hot tub on the balcony with Alexis, Sara, a girl called Katie and another girl called Marta. They were all naked. Ashton invited Jacques to join them in the tub.

Apparently, Ashton said, ‘‘Yo, where’s the vodka at?” and Jacques was like, ‘‘It’s over there but I’m not going to get it.” So Ashton gets out to get the vodka and that’s when Jacques saw he was butt naked.’

The alleged sexual encounter took place that night after everyone except Sara and her friend Marta had left.

‘Sara is telling everyone 100 per cent that she and Ashton had sex,’ claimed Naumoff.
‘Jacques and Alexis are two of my best friends and Sara is a good friend. If she says she slept with him then I think she’s telling the truth.’

Katie Boggus, a friend of Leal’s from Texas, who allegedly took part in the hot tub high jinks, refused to be drawn on the subject when approached at her San Diego home late Friday.

The pretty blonde said: ‘Sara is a great person. It’s really sad people are saying mean things about her.’

When asked directly if Leal slept with Kutcher that night, she said: ‘I can’t talk about that.’ Asked about being in the hot tub with a naked Kutcher, she smiled and said: ‘I’m sorry, I can’t say anything about that.’

According to another girlfriend of Leal, she is ‘keeping low’.

The woman, who asked not to be identified, said: ‘The last thing she said was she would rather Ashton paid her the money and she would never talk. She’s a bit freaked out how big this story has become.’

Leal’s lawyer Keith Davidson failed to return repeated calls this week, his secretary saying simply: ‘He’s out of the office.’ Kutcher’s high-profile lawyer Marty Singer stayed uncharacteristically quiet when asked to comment about Leal’s claims.

As for Demi Moore, the stress of the allegations has caused weight to fall off her already slim frame. According to friends of the actress, she has been devastated by the allegations of her husband’s infidelity, even though they are not the first.

Last year, another ‘party girl’,Brittney Jones, claimed she had sex with Kutcher at the marital home in Los Angeles. Despite threats of legal action over Jones’s ‘lies’, none ever materialised.

A producer who knows her said: ‘Demi is devoted to Ashton. She is so proud and supportive of him. The silence from her side is deafening.

‘Demi does everything she can to stay young and sexy, but when it comes down to it she is a 48-year-old woman. There is a whole generation of young girls who don’t care if a man is married. They just want to have a good time and hit pay dirt. Only time will tell if Sara Leal really did hit the jackpot.’



source:dailymail