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2006-04-19-the-guardian-uk-pg-e12
2006-04-19-the-guardian-uk-pg-e14
Anlbony Pellicano bas worked as a pnvate eye for
some of Hollywood's brlgblest stars. Now be's up
in court for bugging phones ... and Tinseltown
1• 5 k. • ·1 b 1· D GI I. I • 1· t 1qaa I • ID,I ID I 5 -00 1 :S. . . Ian _I_ a1l1S 11er 1nves-11al e.s,
12 The Guardian 119. 1. 0-4.06
*
Like many a young Hollywood
hopeful, Anthony Pellicano
was lured to Hollywood by
the bright lights of the
movies. Unlike most young
Hollywood hopefuls, however,
he did not want to
act. Anthony Pellicano, aka
Anthony Pellican, aka Tony Fortune, wanted to
be a gumshoe - a private eye. Anthony Pellicano
looked at the movies and saw Bogie sparring
with Bacall, and Jack Nicholson's Jake Gittes
shaking-down conspiracy in Chinatown - and
that was who Anthony Pellicano wanted to be.
Now, like most of his Hollywood idols, Pellicano
has taken a fall. And what a fall it has been.
As boss of the Pellicano Investigative Agency at
9200 Sunset Boulevard, Pellicano had managed
to get to the very top. His is a story with a cast
list like no other, a heady blend of the rich, the
powerful and the merely famous. It includes
presidents, Hollywood royalty such as Elizabeth
Taylor and Warren Beatty, and high-wattage stars
of the likes of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.
Then there are the directors, studio bosses, and
divorce lawyers to the stars, with walk-on parts
from OJ Simpson, Michael Jackson and Heidi
Fleiss. It is the sort of list, in short, that most
players would scramble to get their name on.
Take the comedian Kevin Nealon. He is not
a household name, but, through a myriad of
connections, Nealon got on to the list. "I am
elated to have made this group," Nealon wrote
recently. "It makes me feel important." Nealon's
was one of many names included in a 68-page
indictment served by Los Angeles prosecutors
on Pellicano in February this year, the day before
he ended a 30-month prison term for possessing
explosives. The indictment, a list of accusations,
runs to 147 counts but boils down to the allegation
that Pellicano illegally wiretapped - bugged
- the phones of the rich, the famous and the
rest, and passed on the information he acquired
to interested parties.
Pellicano, says the indictment, was helped
in his endeavours by individuals inside two
police departments and a local telephone
company, some of whom are among the seven
co-defendants listed on the indictment. They
are charged, with Pellicano as the group's leader,
with bugging, bribery, identity theft and fraud,
as part of a criminal conspiracy. The motive, ►
The Guardian 19.04.0613
◄ it argues, was financial gain and to secure
"a tactical advantage in litigation by learning
their opponents' plans, strategies, perceived
strengths and weaknesses, settlement positions
and other confidential information".
So far so procedural. But the few recognisable
names in the indictment provided clues that this
case might be the one to drag Hollywood's bidden
side - the unpleasant business of divorces, the
lengths gone to in order to keep the famous out
of the media - into the spotlight.
Sylvester Stallone was the name at the top of
the marquee. Below him came lesser Hollywood
luminaries such as Keith Carradine and Larry
Sanders' alter ego, Garry Shandling. Then came
Hollywood lawyers and Hollywood wives. None
of these people are accused of any criminal
activity or even any impropriety. Some of them
are presumed victims of wiretapping; others are
said to have innocently hired attorneys who in
turn retained the services of Pellicano, unaware
of the methods he is accused of using to gain the
information he then passed on.
The indictment, as with the Heidi Fleiss case
before it, has caused a lot of people in Hollywood
to choke on their Pellegrino. Many of the
names listed as victims of the wiretaps provide
a link to prominent attorneys, among them the
legendary Los Angeles lawyer Bertram Fields,
the man who can most legitimately claim the
title "attorney to the stars".
Fields started in Hollywood representing
Edward G Robinson and Dragnet's Jack Webb.
He has gone on to represent Tom Cruise, Dustin
Hoffman, John Travolta and Michael Jackson.
Fields hired private investigator Pellicano to
work with him on numerous occasions. With
Pellicano at bis side, Fields, on behalf of Jackson,
negotiated the $23m (£13m) settlement in
1993 with the family of Jordan Chandler, the boy
who accused Jackson of child molestation.
Although Fields has been questioned in connection
with the Pellicano investigation, his
attorney - in Hollywood, even the attorneys
have attorneys - insists that he did not suspect
that Pellicano was using illegal means to acquire
the information that proved so valuable to some
of Fields's clients.
But he was certainly impressed by the results.
In 1993, the time of the Jackson deal, he told
an interviewer: "He [Pellicano] turns up really
spectacular kinds of evidence."
And while he was getting the results, Pellicano
lived the life. He favoured double-breasted
silk suits, patent leather shoes, mirror shades
and the cold stare so beloved of movie heavies.
Pellicano - whose nicknames included the
Celebrities' Thug, the Ultimate Problem Solver,
and the Big Sleazy - was loud and public. He
dined at legendary Hollywood eateries such as
Le Dome. He had different business cards for
different circumstances, describing his speciality
variously as "private investigation", "electronic
surveillance" or "negotiations".
For journalists he had a special gift, a paperweight
inscribed with the words "Sometimes ...
you just have to play hardball." He reputedly
kept a baseball bat - referred to as his "Louisville
slugger" - in the boot of his car. "If you
can't sit down with a person and reason with
them," he once told GQmagazine, "there is only
one thing left and that's fear." Central casting
could not have made a better job ofit.
But it hadn't always been like that. Born in
1944, of Sicilian descent, in a working-class
suburb on the west side of Chicago, Anthony
14 The Guardian 19.04.06
Private eye to the stars ... Pellicano with
Farrah Fawcett after a court case in 1998
Pellican dropped out of school and joined the
army signal corps. After the army, and now calling
himself Tony Pellicano, he got a job with a
mail-order company tracing clients who had
defaulted on their bills. In 1969, having changed
his name again, to Tony Fortune, he set up his
own investigative agency. Five years later, he
filed for bankruptcy, a filing that was notable for
the revelation that he had borrowed $30,000
from Paul de Lucia, son of a mobster and godfather
to Pellicano's daughter.
Three years later, he got his big break, and his
passport to Hollywood. The bones of Elizabeth
Taylor's late husband Mike Todd, who died in
1958, had reportedly been stolen from his grave
in lliinois, apparently by thieves intent on prising
the silver wedding ring from his finger. A search
was conducted but nothing found. And then
Pellicano appeared at the cemetery, which
had been searched by police the previous day,
with a television crew in tow. Within minutes,
Pellicano had located the missing remains. But
many, including the Illinois police, have cast
doubt on the discovery.
Elizabeth Taylor introduced Pellicano to the
powerful Hollywood attorney Howard Weitzman.
In 1983, Pellicano moved to Los Angeles and
Weitzman hired him to help in the defence of
the car mogul John DeLorean, who was fighting
cocaine charges. Thanks partly to Pellicano, the
defence was able to introd11ce enough doubts
During Bill Clinton's
first presidential
ca,npaign, Pellicano
was hired to discredit
Gennifer Flowers
about the tapes of DeLorean allegedly b11ying
cocaine that the car-maker was acquitted.
Pellicano became celebrated, the go-to guy.
He set up several companies from his office on
Sunset Boulevard, specialising in surveillance
and what Pellicano called "forensic audio". He
even hired a team of glamorous female techies
with names such as Tarita Virtue to run the surveillance,
the Angels to his Charlie. The good
years were just beginning for Tony Pellicano.
The list of people with problems who have
turned to Pellicano, or whose attorneys have
turned to him on their clients' behalf, is mesmerising:
Don Simpson, Kevin Costner, Steven
Spielberg, Jerry Springer, Farrah Fawcett, Mike
Myers, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Kirk Kerkorian and
Roseanne Barr. Again, there is no suggestion
that any of the celebrities who hired Pellicano
were aware that the person they were hiring was
involved in any criminal activity.
But it was not just movie people. Pellicano
also claimed to be the audio expert who pinpointed
the gaps in the Nixon Watergate tapes
and identified the extra shots in the recording
of the shooting of JFK.
Pellicano did work directly with one president:
during Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign
Pellicano was hired, reportedly by Hillary
Clinton, to discredit Gennifer Flowers, the woman ..c
V> who alleged that she had maintained a 12-year ~
affair with the candidate. Six years later, with ~
Q) Clinton into his second term, the White House, l=
,0
according to the New York Post, hired Pellicano, ~
considered a respected forensic audio specialist, ~
to look into Monica Lewinsky's background. ~-
Another report places Pellicano, who was ~
hired by OJ Simpson before the murder of Nicole ~
<lJ
Simpson, outside her house on the night that she g
was killed. Pellicano has denied the allegation. n..
""O But it was Pellicano's Hollywood connection ~
that finally got him into trouble. A reporter for ~
C. the Los Angeles Times who was investigating ~
alleged links between the actor Steven Seagal ~°'
and the Mafia had an unpleasant surprise one -&.
*
morning in June 2002. Leaving for work, Anita
Busch found that her car had been vandalised.
Closer inspection revealed that this was more
than vandalism. The windscreen was cracked
by what appeared to be a bullet hole. A tinfoil
tray was taped to the windscreen just below a
note with the word "Stop" written in red. Underneath
the tray, the reporter found a dead fish.
FBI investigations led detectives to an informant
who taped a small-time criminal, who in
turn named Pellicano as the private investigator
who had hired him to scare the reporter. The FBI
has recently cleared Seagal of any involvement
in the Busch scheme; the actor has always denied
any links to the Mafia. When the FBI raided
Pellicano's office on Sunset Boulevard, they
found a cache of explosives and $200,000 in
cash. Pellicano was charged with illegal possession
of explosives and sentenced at trial to
30 months in prison.
A subsequent search then provided the basis
for the present charges. The FBI found transcripts,
tapes and computer records of bugged
conversations. Investigators say that if all the
conversations were on paper, there would be
2m pages of transcripts. Pellicano, who made no
secret of his admiration for the Godfather films,
had perhaps seen another Francis Ford Coppola
ftlm, The Conversation, about an obsessive
surveillance expert who spends hours listening
to other people's conversations.
The resulting investigation of Pellicano on
charges that he illegally recorded the conversations
of people involved in litigation in order
to give an illegal advantage to one side in a case
has set Hollywood a-flutter. One prominent
Hollywood divorce lawyer, Terry Christensen,
is charged in the indictment. Other lawyers whose
clients, or their adversaries in court, feature on
recordings made by Pellicano are furiously denying
that they knew he was engaged in illegal
activity and insist they took the information he
provided them on good faith.
One such is Dennis Wasser, a Hollywood
attorney who has brokered the divorce settlements
of Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg and Jennifer
Lopez. Wasser's work on behalf of Cruise in
his divorce from Nicole Kidman has prompted
the current investigation's reported interest in
talking to the two actors - interest that is said
to be heightened by the discovery of conversations
between the two recorded by Pellicano.
"I have known and worked with Anthony
Pellicano for nearly 20 years," wrote Bert Fields
in a letter to court supporting a failed request
by Pellicano for bail. "I have never once known
Mr Pellicano to commit an act of violence. He
has been thoroughly professional in all my
contacts with him."
Meanwhile, many of those featured on the
recordings, as well as people who have had
brushes with Pellicano in the past, are filing lawsuits
against him, including the former LA Times
reporter Anita Busch.
An indication of the potential reach of the
investigation came this month when charges
were levelled against the Hollywood director John
McTiernan. Prosecutors allege that McTiernan
lied to them about his knowledge of Pellicano's
illegal methods in an interview with FBI agents
on February 13. While McTiernan may not be a
household name, he is a significant-sized fish in
the Hollywood fishbowl: he directed two of the
Die Hard movies, as well as the Arnold Schwarzenegger
vehicle, Last Action Hero, and the more
highbrow remake of the Thomas Crown Affair.
*
When the FBI raided
Pellicano·s offices.
they found tapes and
transcripts of bugged
conversations
McTiernan, who had hired Pellicano on several
occasions, retained the detective's services in
2000 when he was directing the remake of
Rollerball. Seemingly, the director was involved
in a dispute with a producer on the ftlm, Charles
Roven. While McTieman subsequently told FBI
agents investigating Pellicano that he had no
knowledge of the private eye's methods, detectives
knew differently: they had discovered a
tape recording of McTiernan and Pellicano
discussing the results of Pellicano's bugging
of Roven's phone calls. On Monday this week,
McTiernan pleaded guilty to the charges. He
now faces a maximum jail term of five years
when he returns for sentencing.
But the q11estion now dominating Hollywood,
and particularly its all-powerful and handsomely
remunerated legal elite, is whether Pellicano
will turn. The recordings are rumoured to
include not only the targets, but also Pellicano's
own conversations with the lawyers hiring him.
Should any of these indicate that Pellicano's
clients were aware of the illegal methods the
private eye might use to gather information, the
case would acquire a sensational twist. Should
Pellicano decide to save himself and cooperate
with investigators, the implications for Hollywood
could be cataclysmic.
Pellicano's former clients include (clockwise
from top left) Jerry Springer, Roseanne Barr,
OJ Simpson and Kevin Costner
"I don't rat on a client," Pellicano told an
interviewer after his arrest on the explosives
charges. And two years ago, Fields told Vanity
Fair, "I would bet my life and my child's life that
Anthony would never betray someone he was
workirlg for."
Others are not so sure.
"He'll roll over," says Ernie Rizzo, a Chicago
private eye and contemporary of Pellicano's.
"He's in his 6os. He can't afford 10 years in jail."
Pellicano has cut a less than glamorous figure
in the run-up to his trial, which could start later
this month. He appears shackled in court,
dressed not in silk suits but prison fatigues; he
is gaunt, stooped and aged. And he is broke.
He is certainly down - but he is not quite out.
He has a new girlfriend, his fifth marriage having
ended with his divorce from 42-year-old Ann
DeLucio, whom he married in Las Vegas a week
before going to prison. And some of the old
defiance and braggadocio are still there. During
a recent hearing in court in Los Angeles, he
bullishly told the judge that he intended to
represent himself at trial.
An acq11aintance from his Chicago days, journalist
Jacqueline Mitchard, suggests that he may
not be as dejected as he appears. "There wo11ld
be nothing that would make him happier than
knowing that at last he had achieved this power
to speak or not and hold people's destiny," she
says. "Tony always wanted to be more of a
mobster than he was. But he was living in a
world that didn't exist any more. Even in
Chicago, when he was growing up, that life felt
like it was on the way out. So he went to Hollywood
to be the next best thing."
Pellicano has reportedly signed a lucrative
contract to write his life story. (A TV series based
on his exploits almost went into production in
the 1990s.) Others are said to be writing books
about him. "There are lots of ways in American
culture to achieve fame," observes Mitchard.
"This is one of them and Tony made it" •
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