For years, the legend around Jesse Jane was larger than life: one of the world’s highest-paid adult performers, a woman who helped define the big-budget era of 2000s porn. But when the estate papers finally surfaced in Oklahoma, the myth collapsed into a far quieter reality.
Jane—born Cynthia Ann Taylor—died in January 2024 at 43, the result of a fentanyl and cocaine overdose in the bedroom of her boyfriend’s home outside Oklahoma City. And despite a career that headlined two of the most expensive adult films ever made, her estate listed no property, no investments, and only $42,609 in the bank.
Cleveland County’s probate judge ordered the cash split evenly between her son and her estranged, significantly older husband. The court fight that briefly flared between them fizzled before it began. As one probate attorney put it: “You can’t trust the internet.” In other words, those glossy estimates—like the website that pegged her net worth at $500,000—never had much weight behind them.
There may still be drips of income ahead. XR Brands, the California company behind her licensed sex-toy line, could generate royalties for the heirs. Her husband had already sold her car for roughly $25,000 and handed over half to her son.
Jane’s rise was real enough. She was the face of Pirates (2005) and its 2008 sequel, productions that helped push adult entertainment into a strange, short-lived blockbuster moment. She made mainstream cameos—Starsky & Hutch, Entourage—and told GQ in 2018 that she entered the industry “when porn stars mattered… you walked into a room, you turned heads.”
Police found her and boyfriend Brett Hasenmueller, 33, dead on January 24 during a welfare check. Both overdosed.
What followed was a brief and tangled probate saga. Her son was first appointed to manage the estate. Then came Richard H. Wilcox Jr., a retired Texas oil-industry executive who said he was Jane’s husband—though he had already filed for divorce. They married in Santorini in 2019: she was 39, he was 77. They later certified the marriage in Texas with an informal declaration.
The two men were set for a courtroom showdown in September 2024, but settled quietly. Wilcox became administrator.
Public records don’t shed much light on Jane’s finances in her final years. She sold her Oklahoma home in 2021 for $435,000 but was burdened with multiple state and federal tax liens, including one for more than $200,000 filed in 2018.
In the end, the woman branded as one of porn’s highest-paid stars left behind something closer to a cautionary footnote: fame without fortune, and a legacy split by the courts into two equal halves.
Celebrity Hollywood Hot Chicks News Porn Stars
Last modified: November 26, 2025
