Jon Gosselin’s apartment was ransacked by someone who slashed furniture, stole his TV and left a note pinned to his dresser with a butcher knife while he visited his children for Christmas, his lawyer said Sunday.

The reality show star was “devastated” by the destruction he found when he returned Saturday from Pennsylvania, attorney Mark Jay Heller said in a statement.

Gosselin’s clothes, bed and other furniture were cut up, and a family-heirloom vase was shattered, Heller said. His TV, other electronics and his dishes were taken by a “very troubled and sick perpetrator,” Heller said.

He wouldn’t disclose who signed the note or what it said, adding that police were examining it. Police declined to comment.

The burglary marks the latest real-life drama for the 32-year-old Gosselin, who was half of the couple who rose to fame as the prolific parents on TV show “Jon & Kate Plus 8″ before splitting up this year.

Viewers watched their 10-year marriage disintegrate amid allegations that both had been unfaithful, which they denied. The breakup itself became an entertainment event, announced in an episode watched by more than 10 million people.

They initially planned to go on with the show, but it foundered on scandals, bickering and legal disputes. The last episode aired Nov. 23.

The couple officially divorced Dec. 18, with 34-year-old Kate Gosselin keeping the family home in eastern Pennsylvania and continuing as the primary caretaker of their 9-year-old twins and 5-year-old sextuplets.

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Jon Gosselin (AP)

Reality dad Jon Gosselin says he has put $230,000 back into a joint account he shares with estranged wife Kate as the couple continues their bitter divorce battle.

Gosselin criticized his wife for not appearing at a court hearing Monday in the Philadelphia suburb of Norristown. He says she still has not explained how she spent $33,000 in joint funds.

Messages left for Kate Gosselin’s attorney were not immediately returned.

Jon Gosselin said the judge scheduled the couple’s next court date for late November.

The TLC reality show “Jon and Kate Plus Eight” has chronicled the couple’s lives while raising their eight children. But the Gosselins filed for divorce in June after weeks of reports of marital discord and infidelities, which both spouses denied.

Update:
Kate Gosselin says in divorce papers that she and her husband Jon have lived “separate and apart” for at least two years. The divorce filing was obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press.

The ‘Jon & Kate Plus 8′ show is off the air until August, TLC has announced. But media pundits are saying that it may be gone for good, despite Jon’s declaration that it would go on in the wake of divorce plans from his wife Kate.

Robert J. Thompson, founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, told Us Weekly that original fans of “this cute little show about parents changing diapers and feeding their kids” may be getting too much reality.

“I don’t know if the show can make that new transition. It’s like if The Cosby Show, mid-season, suddenly became Married With Children.”

The ratings have dropped since the show’s May premiere, but were expected to rise some after Monday’s dramatic episode.

Thompson’s advice on reviving the show? “Stop this Jon storyline and make it about a single mom raising eight kids. Try to go back to the spirit of the show – something you could watch with anybody in the house.”

Bottom line: “I would not want to bet what’s left of my retirement fund on the ongoing success of this show.”

The Gosselins in happier times.

Update: Jon & Kate Plus 8 on Hiatus Until August

Jon & Kate Plus 8 will go on hiatus until August following the Gosselins’ separation announcement on Monday’s episode, TLC said in a statement.

“TLC continues to support the Gosselin family and will work closely with them to determine the best way to continue to tell their story as they navigate through this difficult time,” the statement read.

The network said Monday’s upcoming episode will be a retrospective clip show on Jon and Kate’s 10-year marriage. The next new episode will air Aug. 3.

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I have just watched the first – and last – episode of “Jon & Kate Plus 8″ that I ever intend to see.

Actually, I can’t believe that this isn’t the last episode of TLC’s reality show chronicling Pennsylvania’s eight-kid Gosselin family, because this is the episode in which Jon and Kate announced that they’re separating. You probably know this. It’s been on the news, in the tabloids and on TV, everywhere. I have done my best to avoid reading about it, listening to punditry about it, or watching any shows about it, because I never watched the show back when they were presumably happy – they were cute, but I never cared enough to follow it – so why would I want to start now?

I watched this episode because I work on a team of writers who cover TV, and this episode was news, so since no one else had volunteered to write about it, I did.

I wish I hadn’t.

Before you start writing and calling me a hypocrite – yes, I watch and write about a lot of reality shows, mostly the ones about chefs and singing competitions and Botoxed housewives whose “reality” often involves staged encounters with arguments with other Botoxed women, some of whom were cast so they’d get into arguments with them. It’s not art, but it’s not really reality. I don’t even watch “The Hills,” because there’s nothing fun about watching dull people I know have inane conversations about nothing, so what’s the draw, exactly?

But I don’t get the fascination with Jon and Kate, especially the demise of their marriage. Anyone who has ever physically witnessed the uncomfortableness and muted pain of a crumbling marriage from the next couch, across the table at dinner or from an adjacent room where you aren’t supposed to hear the argument – and I have – knows there’s nothing entertaining about that heartbreak. It’s horrible for everyone involved, with the couple trying to pretend that everything is OK because there’s company, and the kids trying to pretend they don’t notice the silent or not-so-silent brittleness and porcelain-fragile peace so palpable they can almost feel it itchy on their skin.

If you care about the family living in that awful, awful state of pain, it’s torture, but you endure it and live it with them, if doing so will help one or all of them start to get through it. It’s what friends do, if the family wants and needs them to. And I know that over the run of “Jon & Kate Plus 8,” their loyal viewers have become to feel like they’re friends with the Gosselins and their eight adorable kids. Isn’t the point of these TLC shows about families with large broods supposed to celebrate those trial and joys that have been multiplied, to remind us all how love, ultimately, is the common denominator?

There are some people who watched the show, who feel like their hearts are breaking right along with these very real people that they came to love when the show was about a young, good-looking couple weathering the very unusual trials and joys of raising multiples.

But the episode I just watched wasn’t about happiness, or the normal bumps and emotional bruises of a hectic life. It was about two parents trying to tolerate each other for their children as they argued, through handymen, about where to put their kids’ new playhouses, while Jon and Kate revealed over the hour in one-on-on interviews (drawn out to what I think was an ickily exploitative extent) that they were, indeed separating.

You want a reality show? It’s not has-been celebrities living in the jungle to raise charity money and extend their 15 minutes, chefs trying to out-chef each other or some woman sobbing when one of the 25 men she’s dating at the same time rejects her. It’s this.

“We just want some peace,” Kate explained, dabbing a tissue at her chin, and that realness that made the Gosselins so attractive to their fans almost suffocated me. They need peace. And I immediately hoped that that declaration, and the separation announcement and the sad flashbacks of happier day when Jon and Kate tried to find something nice to say, meant that this was over. That this poor family could go and heal, if not out of the range of the tabloids, at least away from the camera crew that appear to live in their house.

But apparently, the show will go on, with Jon and Kate trading off days in the big huge house where their kids live, taping their adventures with their brood separately, and presumably mentioning less and less that the show is now, technically “Jon Plus Eight, With Kate Plus Eight On Alternating Episodes.”

Unless some miracle happens, it is never again going to be about a family with a lot of kids. It’s going to be about a divorce, which is not what the Gosselins signed up for, or what America signed up for. I like watching chefs create masterpieces out of a vending machine because it’s cool, or watching NeNe on “Real Housewives of Atlanta” and her weave, because I know tacky women with weaves, and weaves are funny. I don’t know why I’d want to watch real people I don’t know get divorced, because I’ve seen that happen with too many people I do know. And I hate it.

Nobody made Jon and Kate be on this show. No one forced them to invite America into their house and their lives, and they’ve benefitted from the fame and money and stuff that comes from being on TV. And I’m sure that there are contracts and obligations to fulfill. But how is the continued scrutiny of these kids beneficial to anybody? Even business-wise, how does this serve the image of the touchy-feely TLC channel to showcase barely-polite misery every week?

I don’t know Jon and Kate, or their kids, and like I said, I never watched their show before this, nor will I again. But I hope that somebody – anybody – has the sense to end the show and let them all heal away from TV. Because their reality isn’t going to be pretty, and it’s not going to magically resolve just because the episode is over.

Kate Gosselin, co-star of TLC’s “Jon & Kate Plus 8,” says it’s difficult reading stories about herself.

Recent media reports have focused a harsh spotlight on Kate and her husband, Jon, who star with their eight children on the popular reality show. In recent days, the Gosselins’ wholesome on-screen home life has been called into question by reports of extramarital affairs. Both Jon and Kate have denied those accusations.

“This is certainly not what I envisioned I was signing up for,” Kate Gosselin said Wednesday during an appearance at the Frauenthal Center, The Muskegon Chronicle reported.

“When I see magazines in stores it’s really difficult. It amazes me there is an industry that follows you around and writes stories about you.

“It destroys peoples’ lives. I need you to know, don’t believe what you read unless you hear it from that person.”

On its Web site, Us Weekly recently described an over-friendly relationship between Gosselin and her married bodyguard, Steve Neild, that “caught the attention of her husband – and has become the talk of many locals” in their Pennsylvania community.

People magazine’s Web site quoted Gosselin as saying the couple have been struggling for months.

“This week I’m on the cover of four magazines. One is true, three are not,” Kate told her audience.

The Gosselins are on the cover of People, Us Weekly, Star and National Enquirer. She described People’s reporting as the most accurate.

She has previously denied having an affair with Neild. Jon Gosselin has denied cheating with a 23-year-old schoolteacher, and he has apologized for putting his family in an “awkward situation.”

Kate Gosselin said the stop in Muskegon, located about 35 miles northwest of Grand Rapids, was the last on her travel schedule for a while. She said she plans to spend more time at home.

“The last couple weeks have been interesting,” she said. “I had to address that.”

TLC’s most popular series, which has been on the air for four seasons, attracts an average audience of more than 2.8 million viewers.

The new, 40-week season premieres May 25 with an hourlong edition.