Thomas Markle had only just managed to sit upright in his hospital bed for the first time since undergoing a leg amputation when someone knocked on the door.
Two women entered the room. One was carrying a white envelope addressed to Mr Markle.
It was December last year, and this was when he learned that his estranged daughter, Meghan, had written to him.
Neither of us could have known that the envelope would become central to a new and deeply disturbing chapter in the long-running saga of the fractured Markle family.
The Sun has now reported that Meghan’s letter included the sensational allegation that she ‘knew her father had abused young girls’. The newspaper also said she wrote that he would never meet his grandchildren, Archie, seven, and Lilibet, five.
I had no idea that the seemingly ordinary white envelope contained such a serious allegation.
Out of respect for Meghan’s privacy, I did not ask Mr Markle what the letter contained.
But I remember clearly the extraordinary circumstances surrounding its delivery. The scene was so surreal that it has remained with me ever since.
The moment in December last year when Thomas Markle learned that his estranged daughter, Meghan, had sent him a letter
The Sun has reported that Meghan’s letter contained the sensational allegation that she ‘knew her father had abused young girls’
I travelled to the Philippines last December at Mr Markle’s request. We became friends in 2018, and he asked me to visit after doctors found a large blood clot that required his left leg to be amputated below the knee.
When I reached Cebu — where Mr Markle and his son, Tom Jr, had relocated in January 2025 in search of a ‘fresh start’ — he was in intensive care.
It was in Cebu that Tom Jr allegedly found a collection of child sex images on his father’s computer, phone and hard drives. Mr Markle has vehemently denied the claims.
But the letter came later.
Several days after I arrived, Mr Markle was moved to a private room at the University of Cebu Medical Centre.
For an 81-year-old man who had already experienced two heart attacks and a stroke, his recovery was remarkable.
I recall a physiotherapist entering the room and saying: ‘OK, Mr Tom, it’s time for you to get moving.’
The physiotherapist helped him move from lying down to a seated position on the edge of the bed. We were smiling at this modest but important achievement when there was another knock at the door.
Two women entered and introduced themselves as a lawyer and the president of the hospital.
No one had warned us that they were coming.
Mr Markle was sitting on the bed with the stump of his leg exposed, still wrapped in a bloodied bandage. Instinctively I reached for a sheet to cover it and preserve his dignity.
The lawyer was carrying a clutch of legal documents. The women explained that they had come to deliver a letter from his daughter Meghan and that Mr Markle would have to sign paperwork authorising them to film the encounter so that footage could be sent to Meghan’s office as proof that the sealed letter had been handed to him.
I immediately offered to leave the room but Mr Markle asked me to stay.
Thomas Markle and Filipino nurse Rio Canedo, 46, at the rehab centre in Cebu, Philippines
‘If you are going to video this, then I would like Caroline to video it too,’ he told the lawyer.
The whole thing felt utterly surreal.
Here was an elderly man, seriously ill and heavily medicated with powerful painkillers, being asked to sign legal documents before receiving a letter from his own daughter.
Mr Markle duly signed the papers.
The hospital’s president performatively handed him the envelope bowing slightly as she said: ‘Mr Markle, I have been asked to hand you this personally by your daughter Meghan. It is sealed. I need to make sure you know it is sealed.’
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There was a nod towards the iPhone camera being held by the lawyer.
Once they knew the encounter had been successfully captured on tape the two women left as quickly as they had arrived, leaving Mr Markle and I alone with the glaringly white envelope lying on his hospital bed.
He began to tremble.
He told me he was not ready to read Meghan’s letter and asked me to move it out of his sight. I put it on a plastic table next to his uneaten lunch.
For the next four hours he fretted about opening it. He told me he was ‘scared’ it would ‘contain bad news’.
Eventually he decided he could put it off no longer.
‘I better get this over with,’ he said.
He asked me to hand him the envelope. Once again, I offered to leave the room while he read it.
He read the letter in silence, saying nothing. He shook his head several times. Then he folded the letter up, slipped it back into its envelope and asked me to put it in the wardrobe.
And that was that. He told me nothing about its contents. I asked no questions.
Tom Jr, Meghan’s brother, claimed to have found the child-abuse material packed up in boxes at his father’s Philippines home
The letter went into his bag in the wardrobe containing the dirty clothes he’d arrived at the hospital in and we never discussed it again. Until now.
Following The Sun’s revelations about the letter on Sunday, I telephoned Mr Markle, who is now living in a rehabilitation centre in Florida after returning to the US in May to continue his medical treatment.
He told me he has ‘a vague memory’ of receiving the letter but cannot recall what it said.
Mr Markle has since been diagnosed with dementia, a condition he has authorised Our News Outlet to report.
He also gave permission for us to share the video of the extraordinary hospital encounter.
‘I remember getting the letter but I don’t remember anything else about it,’ he said. ‘I’m happy for people to see the video. I have nothing to hide.’
I asked him about The Sun’s report that Meghan said in the letter that she knew of allegations he was a child sex abuser: ‘I’m not a paedophile. I’ve never done anything bad to a child. Never.
‘If Meghan says that’s what she wrote, then she’s probably right. I was very sick. I have memory issues. I know there was a letter, but I don’t remember what it said.’
He has no idea where the letter is now.
Mr Markle left the Philippines in May, leaving most of his possessions behind. He intended to return later this year once he had learned to walk using a prosthetic limb.
He has strenuously denied his son’s allegations about the child sex abuse images, describing the claims as ‘terrible lies’.
He maintains the computers said to contain the material were out of his control for nearly two years following their move to Cebu.
‘The stuff was boxed up in Mexico and put on a container ship. I kept asking Tom for my computers, but he said they were in storage.’
Meanwhile, Tom Jr, a man I also have known for years, insists his father is in ‘denial’ and claims he acted because the material he found was so horrific he had to report it.
Authorities in the Philippines have launched an enquiry and the FBI in the US is likely to follow suit this week.
Mr Markle has said he will fully co-operate with authorities to clear his name and has even offered to take a lie detector test.
For now the letter that arrived under such weird circumstances in that Filipino hospital room remains missing its contents, beyond what has been reported by The Sun, unconfirmed by Mr Markle himself or, as of now, the Duchess of Sussex.
Mr Markle claims he remembers nothing of the letter’s contents but I will never forget the dramatic, and frankly weird, way it was delivered.
