The Ugly Truth About Sleazeball Bill O'Reilly!

Battered wife & distraught daughter dish as fired fiend gets $25M in hush money.

- Andrea Simpson and Jim Nelson

BILL O’REILLY bullied his way through more than two decades of television — hiding the shameful secrets that he was a serial philanderer, wife beater, pervert and liar.

That’s the bombshell revelation of a no-holds-barred special investigation that pieced together the untold story of the demise of the kinky cable cretin, who was booted out of FOX News with $25 million in hush money.

In a startling development to the scandal that has rocked television, The National ENQUIRER has learned media mogul Rupert Murdoch delivered the remarkable pay off, despite knowing that O’Reilly, 67, was once accused of choking and dragging his own wife down a flight of stairs — in front of his children!

In damning court documents obtained by The ENQUIRER, the pompous pundit confessed he was often prone to going “ballistic” and would “act like an idiot” inside his Long Island, N.Y., house of horrors.

O’Reilly also admitted “hitting a tree or yelling and moaning” because he couldn’t “keep his emotions under control.”

The horndog and his wife separated in 2010 and the divorce was finalized the next year.

The chilling glimpse into the sordid personal life of the man once considered the king of cable news is a shocking contrast to the face of family values he portrayed on the ultra conservative “The O’Reilly Factor.”

The ENQUIRER has also uncovered: