You won’t be blamed if you don’t know who Thomas James Burris is. It’s not just because not many people know him, but also because he’s neither a regular celebrity nor someone who’s come into the limelight in recent years.
Who is Thomas James Burris? Biography
Burris was a real estate expert who rose to fame after marrying the late American singer Karen Carpenter. This marriage was seen by many as the loss of the beautiful singer who was described as simply magical.
Since he was not a public figure or a celebrity, almost nothing was known about his biography except that Thomas James Burris was already married and divorced before he met Karen Carpenter.
Carpenter, on the other hand, was a singer born on March 2, 1950 in New Haven, Connecticut. It was here that she was raised before her family decided to move to Downey, California when she was 13.
The singer who would grow up to be named one of RollingStone’s Top 100 Singers of All Time studied drums in high school. This allowed her to excel both as a drummer and as a singer. Along with her brother, Richard Carpenter, Karen formed the band The Carpenters in 1969. In less than 15 years of existence, the band which was into soft rock and pop music produced ten highly acclaimed albums, and they also made appearances on some TV shows.
Following sedative and hypnotic drugs that made Richard Carpenter addicted, Karen went on to produce a solo album in 1979, while her brother recovered from his addiction.
Following her musical career which saw her always travel, Karen Carpenter had revealed that she might not get married as long as she continued to sing. Nonetheless, she still dated a number of men, including actor and former professional boxer Tony Danza and actors Thomas Mark Harmon and Steve Martin. Surprisingly, it was a real estate developer by the name of Thomas James Burris whom she met during a dinner at the chic restaurant Ma Maison with whom she would end up with.
The two met in 1980 and within months they were already man and woman. At the time, Tom Burris, as he was known, was 40 years old and had not only suffered from a previous divorce, but also had an 18-year-old child at the time.
In fact, marrying Thomas James Burris would be a terrible mistake for the singer in every possible way. First, while Karen desperately wanted to have children, Burris was no longer able to because he had had a vasectomy. Also, even though he claimed he had never heard of the Carpenters before meeting the singer, many people had come to believe that it was only for her money that Tom married her. Indeed, after they got married, he went into a spree of spending his money, including loans that were placed at nearly $50,000 in one go. Due to the amount he had spent on his money, Karen would have been reduced to his assets alone.
Additionally, some sources described Burris as being very violent towards Karen, which caused her depression and sadness.
In 1981, Karen was ready to leave the marriageand she filed for divorce. She was already battling emotional issues as well as health issues including eating disorder, anorexia. On February 4, 1983, Karen died in Downey, California, leaving many of her fans accusing Burris of not doing enough to save his wife as she suffered from the eating disorder that led to her death. Shortly before her divorce, she changed her will and left everything she owned to her parents and brother.
Where is he now?
Since the death of Karen Carpenter, there has hardly been heard of James Burris. He was last heard from in an interview where he said that while Karen was having issues with her health and her career, he was also having issues with his own job. He also insisted that they both got along great and also cared about each other until they started drifting apart.