Sexton interview for "Primetime Thursday"

Nanette Sexton, famed for using DNA in her divorce case, is to be interviewed on ABC's Primetime Thursday tonight.

The Palm Beach socialite has made history by using DNA evidence in an attempt to win a multi-million-dollar divorce case against her second husband, Richard Briggs Bailey. On this week’s Primetime Thursday, Sexton tells Diane Sawyer that when she suspected her husband - the founder and former chair of the nation’s oldest mutual fund - was being unfaithful, she gathered bed sheets and a stranger’s nightgown she says she found in her bedroom and put them in a safe deposit box.

Later, during her divorce proceedings, she would send them to a lab for DNA testing. She says the test results prove that her husband was cheating and thus owes her thousands of dollars in monthly alimony. But, in an ugly legal battle, Bailey’s family is arguing that Sexton exploited his early stages of Alzheimer’s disease for her own personal gain.

When Bailey married Sexton, he gave her a gift of a million dollars and they agreed that he wouldn’t have to pay alimony if they ever divorced. Years later, and just six months before discovering the nightgown, Sexton convinced Bailey to add a “bad boy??? clause to their agreement. She would get $20,000 per month for life if he was caught in infidelity.

After her suspicions were aroused when she says she found the nightgown, she hired detectives who, she claims, discovered her husband was spending a lot of time with a mystery woman – his ex-wife. Sexton eventually initiated divorce proceedings, armed with an unprecedented type of evidence to prove her husband was untrue to her. The Bailey family is claiming that Sexton convinced her husband to sign the “bad boy??? clause after he had begun to display signs of senility. They don’t believe Sexton is owed a penny.

Sexton says the use of the DNA evidence is not so much about her divorce, but rather “forcing people to be truthful. Forcing congressmen to be truthful, senators to be truthful, presidents to be truthful, cheating husbands to be truthful.???

Also in the programme, Senior Correspondent Chris Wallace reports on a six-month Primetime Thursday investigation into alternative cancer therapies. As many as two out of every three cancer patients explore alternative therapies. The investigation found practitioners – some of them not even medical doctors – offering treatments to very sick people with little or no scientific proof of their effectiveness.

Wallace and Primetime Thursday’s hidden cameras travel to Tijuana, Mexico, where a bustling industry of cancer clinics has been established. The cameras reveal practitioners offering everything from coffee enemas to electromagnetic therapy - and plenty of desperate patients willing to spend thousands of dollars in the hope of a miracle cure.

“When patients turn down treatments of known effectiveness to receive treatments that have very little chance of being of benefit, I see that as a major public heath problem,??? Steven Rosenberg, the chief of surgery at the National Cancer Institute, tells Wallace.

Primetime Thursday airs Thursday January 24 at 10pm ET on ABC