There's a saying that money can't buy happiness. In the case of Marion MacMillan, that couldn't be more true.

By her own testimony, MacMillan had an extremely unhappy childhood. She says she was abused by her alcoholic mother, while her father was often absent tending to the family business, now America's largest private company. Her years since then haven't been much better. According to her story, her mother forced her into a disastrous marriage, which ended in less than a year. She endured two more unsuccessful marriages, and, in 1976 her only son, Frank, was killed in an accident at 16.

Until 1987, the year she moved to Bermuda, she was allowed little involvement in the family company or little control over her inherited assets, worth approximately $700 million. Whatever was given to her, she said, was "carefully disguised'' or "hidden under some nomenclature''. "It was not a family that believed in supporting women in any sense of the business world. I wasn't asked to be involved in any sense.'' The one time MacMillan seemed to find happiness and a renewed sense of purpose both in herself and her island home, it was too late.

When she arrived in Bermuda in April, 1987, MacMillan was a virtual recluse.

Even after Perot's Island became hers for $3.8 million in November that year, she kept to herself, renting a number of properties and refusing to live on her island, telling those around her that when she was there it made her feel physically ill. It was only later that she began to enjoy herself and grew fond of the island, which she hoped would become a centre for counselling and therapy. But by then, she had already signed an agreement to sell the island to Michael DeGroote, the hugely wealthy self-made Canadian.

MacMillan spends much of her time travelling although more and more she has come to think of Bermuda and Perot's Island as home. While here, she tends to business affairs, which are often discussed over lunch or dinner. She has a Bermuda-based company called Aqualia Ltd., and through her New Mexico-based lawyer Bob Engel, whom she hired when she first came to Bermuda and now consults about almost all her affairs, she says she has managed to gain more freedom for her own personal activities.

She is said to be a member of the Unity Foundation of Truth church in Hamilton, and is a believer in the New Age philosophy, whose followers are devoted to making the Earth a happier, healthier and more peaceful place to live based on a respect for the diverse traditional ways of life. One branch of the New Age way of thinking is a belief in the healing powers of crystals, or minerals; and MacMillan is said to have buried crystals around her island home, perhaps in an effort to improve the way she was feeling about Perot's Island. Those who know her say she is open to alternative styles of medicine.

While not overseeing her business and personal affairs, MacMillan is said to enjoy shopping and is described by some as a "compulsive shopper,'' spending thousands of dollars in a single spree.

Those who have met her say is a highly spiritual woman, described as being charming, gracious, elegant and genuinely sincere. One acquaintance says: "She seems to have gone through a major change in the last couple of years.

When she came here, she was very reclusive, but she appears to have found herself. To visualise her running around and having a dinner party and being the hostess is really not her.'' Another says: "She doesn't splash her money all over the place. I have trouble believing that she is a compulsive shopper, but if she is, so what.

I'm sure you and I both know a few women in Bermuda who would do the same thing.

"She is really a very simple woman. She is naive and, basically, she is just looking for happiness. I think all the negatives around her are the people.

She's not very judgmental. She looks for the good in people. At the end of the day she is just an elegant and gracious lady, and taken advantage of is what I believe she has been.'' It is that image of Marion MacMillan the victim, that continues to surface.

MacMillan portrayed herself as a victim during her many hours on the witness stand in the Supreme Court - a victim of money, of people, of husbands, and of her family. But the Supreme Court justice who presided over the case saw it differently. "I formed the impression that the defendant was a firm and capable woman, who was quite able to oversee the management of her extensive financial affairs with the assisitance of her well-chosen professional advisors. In particular, I heard evidence, from her, as to how she asserted control over her own financial affairs, taking over the management of them from the family holding company. I do not think, therefore, that she is in any way to be regarded as helpless or easily put upon.'' A former employee of MacMillan's at Perot's Island said: "The feeling that I got was that no one person employed by her was ever in a position to know what had gone on before or how long you would last. She wasn't difficult to work for, but I would say that she almost made you feel sorry for her. She would come across as being helpless, but I don't think she really was at all. The thing with each person working there was that it was just a matter of time before you would be replaced and everyone knew it. Maybe it's a secrecy thing with her - to keep her affairs private. I was never sure.'' Marion Hamilton MacMillan was born in Minnesota on October 17, 1932, the youngest of three children and only daughter of Marion and John MacMillan Jr., who ran the family company Cargill Inc. from 1936 until his death in 1960. She grew up in Minneapolis with her brothers John Hugh III, who now lives in Florida, and Duncan, who lives in Wayzata, Minnesota, where their private investment advisory company Waycrosse is based, not far from Cargill's executive offices.

MacMillan, known as "Marnie'' to her family, attended some of the best private schools in the US. She was enrolled at Northrop Collegiate in Minneapolis, before boarding at Westover, an all-girls preparatory school in Middlebury, Connecticut. After finishing there, MacMillan was accepted at Vassar, in Poughkeepsie, New York, then one of the top women's colleges in North America.

In August, 1954, two months after graduating, she married Bill Kimberly, though the marriage was annulled a short time later. In fact, she told the Supreme Court: "I informed my mother approximately four weeks before the marriage that I did not want to marry him. My mother said: `It's too late, I've sent out the invitations'.'' In 1958, she married Hubert F. Sontheim, and the following year the couple had a son, Frank, and two years later, a daughter, Gwendolyn. Sontheim headed the legal and financial department of Tradax Geneve, Cargill's Swiss-based trading subsidiary for Europe. The marriage didn't last and in December, 1973, MacMillan married Pierre Pictet, of the Swiss private banking family. They have since divorced.

Though MacMillan herself has provided some insight into her years of tragedy and heartache growing up as an offspring of one America's richest families, she remains a mystery. Perhaps a further understanding of MacMillan and her family comes through the family company.

Cargill Inc. was set up in 1865 to trade grain in the frontier town of Conover, Iowa, by William Wallace Cargill, MacMillan's great grandfather.

TheCargills and the MacMillans were joined by marriage in 1895, when Cargill's daughter married John MacMillan Sr. Cargill Inc., whose chateau-style executive offices are in Minnetonka, Minnesota, is by far America's largest private company, with revenues in 1991 of close to $50 billion.

The two families are described as being "very rich and very reticent''. And company officials are said to be very closed-mouthed about Cargill's affairs and its owners.

Fortune magazine carried a story on Cargill in July last year that said: "The company produces no corporate advertising and discloses only a modicum of financial information - even to its bankers.'' The magazine's Chicago-based staff writer Ronald Henkoff wrote in the piece: "Cargill is hardly a household name, but it touches nearly every household.

Cargill is enormous. ...This giant commodities merchant is America's second largest diversified services company, topped only by AT&T. Cargill's 37 businesses employ 63,000 people in 54 countries on six continents. As a privately held enterprise, Cargill is in a class by itself, nearly triple the size of America's next largest private company.

"It is the world's biggest grain trading company, the No. 1 processor of cocoa in Europe, the largest pet food producer in Argentina, and the first foreign company to set up an animal feed plant in Japan.

"Most of Cargill's revenue still comes from trading. It handles 25 percent of America's grain exports, and it buys, sorts, ships, and sells just about everything else that comes out of the earth, including coffee, sugar, cotton, crude oil, hemp, and rubber.'' The writer added: "Cargill boasts a balance sheet so conservative it can only be called old-fashioned. Cargill workers are so unabashedly enthusiastic that their sentiments border on boosterism.'' The story portrays the company as being particularly conservative, though it also says the way Cargill is run by Whitney MacMillan is progressive and very professional.

Local reporters in Minnesota know little or nothing about family members like MacMillan who have no direct involvement in Cargill. Marion MacMillan, they say, does not sit on the company's board of directors, though she has held directorships on other related companies and organisations. She is described as a "passive stakeholder'' who is removed from the company except for her dividends.

All of those who agreed to talk about the family would only speak on the condition that their names not be given. Each has at some time reported on Cargill.

"People in Minnesota know Cargill and they know the family is worth a ton of money. But the company itself has kept a very low profile,'' says one reporter.

Another adds: "The family is stretched out across the world. I guess it would be in their interest for security reasons to have very low visibility. They are very conservative. There is really nothing that's said about the family here.'' The Cargill acMillan family fortune has been pegged at more than $5 billion, and is one of the top five family fortunes in North America. With her two brothers, MacMillan owns approximately 28 percent of Cargill. The remaining two-thirds are owned by James Cargill and his sister Margaret Cargill, grandchildren of founder William Cargill, and Whitney, Cargill and Pauline MacMillan, great-grandchildren of William Cargill. Each of the three families is worth about $2 billion. In MacMillan's case , it is split three ways and amounts to approximately $700 million each.

Forbes Magazine, in its annual list of "The 400 Richest People in America'', says MacMillan "mostly stays abroad enjoying the fruits of the one-third of Cargill shared by the three siblings.'' MacMillan herself has not lived in Minnesota for many years and is a citizen of Switzerland, not the US. She has land holdings all over the worldincluding Minnesota, New York, London, Switzerland and Colorado where she has a business and where other family members are said to have property. She owns farmland in Uruguay, where she grows wheat, sorghum and oats and has cattle and sheep.

She also owns a ranch in Pojoaque, New Mexico, a hilly, brush-covered village about 10 miles north of Santa Fe, one of the leading US centres for New Age activity. And she is said to be developing a multi-million pound equestrian centre in Andreas Parish in the Isle of Man.

The development, expected to be completed this summer, spans 300 acres of farmland in the island's northern regions of Ballavoddan and Ballaseyr and includes an international standard indoor equestrian centre, a Georgian style mansion, and stables for more than 20 horses. While there was opposition to the development, it was approved by the local planning authority in December, 1991, and work is continuing. Reporters there say MacMillan is behind the development, although few people have actually met her.

MacMillan planned to make the Isle of Man her home and said from the witness stand that in August, 1990, she had every intention of taking up residence there by April, 1992, after Perot's Island was sold. Two years after buying Perot's Island, MacMillan told the Court she was "trying in vain to establish something that didn't seem to work. All the doors kept shutting and I thought well, so be it, maybe I'm not meant to stay in Bermuda.'' She also said from the witness stand: "I couldn't live there at first. The walls were damp and peeling. There was a feeling of tragedy in the house. It was rotten inside and falling apart and very dirty. It was unlivable.'' She even considered buying at least one other house here, Everbreeze, on the South Shore, and is said to have expressed an interest in buying Glencoe Harbour Club in Salt Kettle Bay.

After deciding to put Perot's Island on the market in 1989, she was advised by realtor Jonelle White, who then worked for The Bank of Butterfield Executor and Trustee Company (BETCO), a subsidiary of The Bank of Butterfield, to make some improvements to the look of the main house and other buildings. It was during the renovating and redecorating process that MacMillan says she began to have a change of heart. She told the Court: "I had been through this coming and going of visitors and realtors and was very content actually to enjoy the property for a bit, and have time to enjoy the fruits of what had been accomplished.'' In August, 1990, when she learned Michael DeGroote was interested she told the Court she "was not anxious to sell''. She said in her testimony she had gained a "support group who became very friendly and caring''. The counselling group comes under the professional umbrella of therapist Sarah White and her counselling practice Transitions. In court, MacMillan described the therapy sessions as "perhaps a group of individuals who are also examining their lives and wanting to rectify certain errors, if you will, that have led us into hasty judgements and unfortunate mistakes''.

On her decision not to sell, even after the sales agreement had been signed, MacMillan told the Supreme Court: "I can say only that I was taking full responsibility for an action that I knew would have consequences, yet I firmly believed that what I was doing was the right thing for me. It would be very grave for me (to leave Perot's Island). I'm sure I would face the issue when it came up but I would be very sad to have to consider leaving Bermuda and my friends and a country I have grown to love.'' No caption RG MAGAZINE JULY 1993