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He has dirt--will he spill the beans?
Ex-Chicagoan's arrest in PI scandal has celebs looking over shoulders
By Vincent J. Schodolski
Tribune national correspondent
May 2, 2006
LOS ANGELES -- He started out as
a collection man for the Spiegel catalog in Chicago and ended up as the
private eye to Hollywood's rich and famous.
Now he is in jail, and that is making a lot of the entertainment
world's movers and shakers very nervous. He and more than a dozen
people have been indicted in recent months in connection with an FBI
investigation into illegal wiretaps and extortion, and more indictments
are expected.
Anthony Pellicano is the kind of private eye a
screenwriter would invent if Pellicano had not invented himself, a man
who came a long way from his days as a high school dropout in Cicero,
Ill.
He has represented entertainer Michael Jackson and helped
get automaker John DeLorean acquitted. He worked for Dean Martin, Peggy
Lee, Chris Rock and former Disney President Michael Ovitz.
From
his early days in Chicago, when he called himself Tony Fortune, to the
current legal proceedings involving his work as private eye to the
stars, he has rubbed shoulders with luminaries from business and
politics to an A-list of entertainment moguls.
In 1977,
Pellicano found the missing bones of Michael Todd--the third husband of
Elizabeth Taylor--in the Jewish Waldheim Cemetery in Forest Park, Ill.,
just yards from the looted grave. The thieves were looking for a
diamond ring that reportedly had been buried with Todd. There was no
ring.
Pellicano was suspected in 2002 of arranging for a dead
fish, a rose and a note that read "Stop" to be left on the car of a
reporter who was digging into the private life of actor Steven Seagal.
When FBI agents raided Pellicano's Sunset Strip office after the fish
incident, they found cash wrapped in 15 to 20 bundles of $10,000 each.
They also found hand grenades and the civilian equivalent of C-4
military explosives. There also were guns.
That landed him in
jail, and the FBI probe into his business practices has led so far to
him and 14 other people being indicted on charges of illegal
wiretapping, embezzlement and extortion. The accused include police
officers who allegedly gave Pellicano confidential records, a telephone
worker who allegedly helped with phone tapping, and some prominent
entertainment figures who hired Pellicano.
Among them was movie
director John McTiernan, whose credits include "Die Hard" and
"Predator." Last month, McTiernan pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI
when he told them he had not hired Pellicano to wiretap another
moviemaker. He could be sentenced to up to 5 years in prison.
Pellicano has pleaded not guilty. Repeated calls to Pellicano's lawyer, Steven Gruel, for comment were not returned.
A federal judge has delayed Pellicano's trial until October so defense
attorneys will have time to review evidence still being compiled by
prosecutors. Assistant U.S. Atty. Daniel Saunders said Monday that he
would delay filing crucial documents in the case for fear they will
"end up on the front page."
Indictment is a bombshell
"The scope and ramifications of the Pellicano indictment to the
entertainment industry simply cannot be overstated," said Lucia Coyoca,
an entertainment lawyer. "Pellicano worked for years with some of
Hollywood's biggest entertainment lawyers. The case has opened up for
discussion what has long been suspected in entertainment
litigation--that there are those in the industry who use illicit means
to win their litigation battles."
Pellicano, 62, moved from
Chicago to Los Angeles 23 years ago and slowly established himself as
the go-to guy for celebrities in a jam.
When Michael Jackson
was accused of molesting a 13-year-old boy in the early '90s, it was
Pellicano who took over damage control and sought dirt on the accuser
and his family.
In 1989, when Roseanne Barr wanted to know if a
woman claiming to be the daughter she put up for adoption nearly two
decades before was her child, Pellicano was on the case.
For a
retainer said to be around $25,000, Pellicano promised results. One
tactic was to find skeletons in the closets of people attacking his
clients to neutralize them, his critics say.
He established an
expertise in video and audio surveillance and used those skills to
enhance existing tapes or create high-quality tapes for clients.
One such instance was in the DeLorean drug case. The FBI had videotaped
DeLorean in a room in 1982 where he was accused of trying to import
cocaine and sell it to help finance his sports car company.
In
1984, using the FBI tapes enhanced by Pellicano, DeLorean's lawyers
convinced a judge that the FBI had entrapped their client. He was
acquitted on all charges.
Pellicano even got involved in the
womanizing allegations against Bill Clinton. In 1992, when a recording
was released of conversations between then-Arkansas Gov. Clinton and
cabaret singer Gennifer Flowers, Pellicano did an analysis and
denounced the tape as "selectively edited" and "suspect."
More
recently, The New York Times reported that supermarket billionaire Ron
Burkle had accused Pellicano of trying to shake him down. The Times
obtained an FBI summary of its discussions with Burkle and got
corroboration from the billionaire, a friend to Bill and Hillary
Clinton. According to Burkle, Pellicano approached him in 2002 and
demanded $100,000 to $250,000 in exchange for a promise not to
investigate him.
Burkle said he provided no money but did do favors, such as arranging for Pellicano's son to swim with dolphins at Sea World.
Remember Tony Fortune?
When he worked for the Spiegel catalog, he called himself Tony Fortune.
Along the way he had four wives (he married one woman twice) and nine
children, according to his longtime rival, Chicago private investigator
Ernie Rizzo.
He once won an appointment to the Illinois Law
Enforcement Commission but resigned in 1976 after reports that he took
a $30,000 loan from the son of underworld figure Paul "The Waiter"
Ricca. Pellicano said the son was a childhood friend and his daughter's
godfather.
Not everyone thinks Pellicano was as good at his job as he appeared to be.
"The only thing Tony was ever good at was intimidating people and
tapping telephones," Rizzo said. Pellicano kept a baseball bat by his
desk at work, according to news reports.
"He watched `The Sopranos' one too many times," Rizzo said.
"The Godfather"-like dead fish was placed on the hood of reporter Anita
Busch's car. Busch, who was then working for the Los Angeles Times and
later went to The New York Times, walked out of her home one day in
June 2002 and saw that her windshield had been smashed.
Busch
had been investigating tough-guy actor Seagal and a former partner of
his who was suspected of having ties to the Gambino crime family.
When she got closer to the car, she saw the note and what she thought was a bullet hole in the glass.
Police came to investigate, and bomb squad members found an aluminum
baking dish with the dead fish inside. There also were a rose and the
note telling her to stop reporting.
The following day she was
bombarded with phone messages from an unidentified man. When she
returned the calls, the man who answered said the original plan had
been to blow up her car. The man became a federal informant and his
name was never revealed.
Police and FBI investigators thought
that the whole business was the work of Pellicano on behalf of Seagal.
But The Los Angeles Times recently reported that investigators had
concluded Seagal was not involved. It was unclear whether Pellicano was
working for Seagal, and it has not been proven that Pellicano was
behind the fish incident.
The case that has grown out of
Pellicano's original arrest continues to roil. Reports have linked the
Pellicano investigation to Ovitz, entertainment lawyer Bert Fields and
even Brad Grey, the head of Paramount Pictures.
But at least
one person is honored to be a part of the scandal. Actor Kevin Nealon
recently wrote a New York Times op-ed column declaring that he finally
was famous because his name was in Pellicano's files.
"You're
nobody in Hollywood until you get on a list," he wrote. "I missed out
on the Heidi Fleiss list," he said in reference to the Hollywood call
girl madam. "[And] Mr. Blackwell's `Worst Dressed' list and even the
`Where Are They Now?' list. And the only reason I'm not on that last
one is that Mr. Pellicano, apparently, always knew where I was."
- - -
Pellicano connections
John McTiernan: "Die Hard" director pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about hiring private investigator Anthony Pellicano.
Michael Ovitz: Former Disney president reportedly told the FBI he hired
Pellicano to get information on 15 to 20 people who were saying
negative things about him.
Chris Rock: Comic actor hired
Pellicano after being accused of fathering a Hungarian supermodel's
baby. (Rock was not the father.)
Keith Carradine: Actor sued Pellicano over alleged wiretapping in divorce case.
Bert Fields: Noted lawyer who has represented such stars as Michael
Jackson, Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg acknowledges being under
investigation in the Pellicano case.
Terry Christensen:
Prominent lawyer was indicted for allegedly paying Pellicano to
illegally wiretap billionaire Kirk Kerkorian's ex-wife.
Sylvester Stallone: Actor once hired Pellicano, according to news reports. Years later, Stallone was alleged victim of wiretap.
Robert Pfeifer: Former Hollywood Records president pleaded guilty to hiring Pellicano to tap ex-girlfriend's phone.
Garry Shandling: Actor was victim of illegal snooping, according to federal indictment.
Roseanne Barr: Comic hired Pellicano in '89 to check on woman who claimed that Barr had given her up for adoption.
Michael Jackson: Entertainer employed Pellicano to investigate 13-year-old accuser in sex abuse case in '90s.
Ron Burkle: Supermarket billionaire says Pellicano tried to shake him down.
Mark Fuhrman: Police investigator in O.J. Simpson case hired Pellicano in the '90s to fight racism allegations.
SOURCE: Tribune news services
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vschodolski@tribune.com