Ex-Playboy Model's Tearful Custody Battle

July 1, 2004 -- There's no questioning the love between former Playboy model Bridget Marks and her twin daughters, Amber and Scarlet.

Up until this summer, the girls had never been away from her for more than a week. The only home they had known was the one they shared with their mother.

But on June 1, the 4-year-old girls left Marks. Their father, millionaire John Aylsworth, had won a custody battle for them. The children are the result of Marks' affair several years earlier with the 54-year-old casino executive.

Manhattan Family Court Judge Arlene Goldberg had ordered Marks, 38, to hand over full custody of her daughters to Aylsworth, ruling that it would be "in the best interest of the children."

It was a controversial decision. Marks lives in New York, and the case of Aylsworth v. Marks was big news. Not everyone agreed with the decision.

In fact, perhaps the only thing everyone can agree on is that there is nothing simple about this story — and that there is nothing ordinary about the woman in the center of it all.

Double Threat

Marks graduated from Smith College when she was just 19. Two years later, she earned a master's degree in international relations from New York University.

At the same time, she dabbled in acting, appearing in small films like Deadly Outbreak. She got into Playboy when a friend told her the men's magazine was doing a spread on debutantes in New York.

"It was really fun," she told Primetime's Cynthia McFadden. "At that point in my life I thought it was freedom of expression."

She lived a high life in New York. In 1998, she met Aylsworth, who seemed to have it all: money, good looks, and a beautiful home on the California coast.

But he had also been married for more then two decades. Marks said he didn't tell her he was married until later in their relationship. "He doesn't wear a wedding ring," she said.

A few months into her affair with him, Marks discovered she was pregnant. She denies it was an attempt to trap him.