Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Zaren Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: You know it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I'm so glad you asked me that
Speaker 2: ten gallon hats?
Speaker 3: Yes, totalous, right?
Speaker 2: If you poured water in them or like beer or
Speaker 2: champagne or whatever, do you know how much it would hold?
Speaker 2: How much liquid?
Speaker 3: Ten gallons?
Speaker 2: No, one gallon?
Speaker 3: One gallon?
Speaker 2: Yeah. So people are always like, wait a minute, how much?
Speaker 2: Why is it called a ten gallon hat if it
Speaker 2: only holds one gallon of liquid, like, you know, like
Speaker 2: smart alec kids like me. Well, it turns out there's
Speaker 2: a good guard darn reason for that. The term is
Speaker 2: actually galloon, and it refers to a certain kind of braid,
Speaker 2: like a braided band that used to be popular, and
Speaker 2: they were worn by the Mexican baccaros around their hat
Speaker 2: and you could fit ten galloons on that hat. So
Speaker 2: it was a ten galloon hat. The Americans and then
Speaker 2: the English speakers of the region they got it. They're like,
Speaker 2: you got a ten gallon hat there for me, partner,
Speaker 2: you hurt me, Pedro, give me one of them hats? Icked?
Speaker 2: How of that look on you? Now? These braided ribbons,
Speaker 2: they are called the galloon. So the next time you
Speaker 2: hear it, if you really want to be the smart
Speaker 2: out kid, you can crack and be like, actually it's
Speaker 2: a ten galloon hat. So there you go. Ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Huh, you're very ridiculous. Uh do you want to know
Speaker 3: what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 2: Girl? I came here for it?
Speaker 3: Wire Tapping. What this is? Ridiculous Crime A podcast about
Speaker 3: absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always ninety
Speaker 3: nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous. Damn
Speaker 3: right now, you just hit us on Tuesday with a
Speaker 3: big Hollywood story.
Speaker 2: Yeah I did.
Speaker 3: I'm going to hit you back. Oh really? Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: we're going back to tinseltown.
Speaker 2: Bring you baby.
Speaker 3: I want to read a quote to you from today's
Speaker 3: Fellow Sure quote. You have to be honorable, you have
Speaker 3: to keep your word, and you have to be loyal.
Speaker 3: Were there things that I did that other people find
Speaker 3: unreasonable or despicable or whatever adjective you want to use.
Speaker 3: I don't care. I care about that person who entrusted
Speaker 3: me to solve their problem. That's who I care about.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, swifty Lazar, Now who is this?
Speaker 3: So this is a man with a code, and that
Speaker 3: code is that he doesn't give a tinker's damn about
Speaker 3: what is legal and what is illegal.
Speaker 2: Oh so one of our people, one.
Speaker 3: Of our people. He had a client and he would
Speaker 3: do whatever he needed to do in order to meet
Speaker 3: or exceed that client's request.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is not Swifty Lazarre.
Speaker 3: No, this man Anthony Pelicano.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Yes, he was born Anthony Joseph Pelican l Junior in
Speaker 3: nineteen forty four in Cicero, Illinois, al Capone's hometown.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, gangster rich, and it's something that he liked
Speaker 2: to point out, of course.
Speaker 3: So he had these Sicilians Sicilian grand parents. When they
Speaker 3: came over, they americanized the family name to Pelican or
Speaker 3: Pelican in order to get by in their new homeland.
Speaker 3: But Anthony true to his roots. When he became an adult,
Speaker 3: he went back to the original Pelicano.
Speaker 2: He's a compone's not going to trust anybody named Pelican
Speaker 2: Pelicano exactly.
Speaker 3: So he joins the US Army Signal Corps. When they
Speaker 3: asked him what he wanted to do, he said electronics
Speaker 3: because he saw a magazine in the recruiter's office with
Speaker 3: that on it.
Speaker 2: Good answer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he trained to be a cryptographer because like when
Speaker 3: he signed up, he said he was super inte electronics.
Speaker 2: I'm smart.
Speaker 3: He got stationed in France, and that meant no Vietnam, people.
Speaker 2: Who like electronics don't usually get shot in the army, exactly.
Speaker 3: Smart move. So when he got out of.
Speaker 2: The army, he, I mean when you say it in
Speaker 2: the draft, not like people who like electronics, A lot
Speaker 2: of them on the front line. You're like, I like electronics.
Speaker 3: Arrein Yeah, I don't mean that when you enlist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tell them.
Speaker 3: So he gets out of the army, he gets a
Speaker 3: job in collections, and he's tracking down those who haven't
Speaker 3: paid their bills. And then that takes us to nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty nine.
Speaker 2: He becomes not for the mob, he's actually legit collect
Speaker 2: He's still wearing.
Speaker 3: That suit exactly, and so in nineteen sixty nine he
Speaker 3: decides to officially become a private investigator. Have you ever
Speaker 3: met a PI?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a friend of a PI. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I knew someone who transitioned out of that gig. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And she said it was lots of like sitting in
Speaker 3: the car in the car, divorce work, taking pictures of
Speaker 3: people having affairs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. That still is the thing. Like from the
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties on, it's been the same thing. Sit in
Speaker 2: a car, eat fast food, take photos you wish you
Speaker 2: didn't have to take.
Speaker 3: Exactly. So Pelicano he sees all these ads in the
Speaker 3: Yellow Pages for pis and he figures he should like
Speaker 3: start out at an established office. So this is what
Speaker 3: he told La Times.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 3: So I called the biggest ad in there, and I said, listen,
Speaker 3: I'm the best skip tracer there is. I want to
Speaker 3: do all your work. Give me your hardest case. They'd
Speaker 3: been looking for this missing little girl for six weeks
Speaker 3: and I found her in two days. How with intelligence, logic,
Speaker 3: common sense, a tremendous amount of imagination and an acute perception.
Speaker 2: So he really did. Yeah, he didn't just go down
Speaker 2: and like like bribe the right peo people.
Speaker 3: He knows how to do these things. A character.
Speaker 2: He was a good detective. Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: According to Vanity Fair quote, he drove a large linking continental,
Speaker 3: sealed his letters with monogrammed wax, and hung samurai swords
Speaker 3: in his office. At various times. He gave his employees
Speaker 3: and family members necklaces bearing a small golden horn he
Speaker 3: said contained a strand of his hair.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Much of his early work involved missing persons. A nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy eight article claimed that he had found three nine
Speaker 3: hundred and sixty eight of them, which works out to
Speaker 3: about four hundred and forty people a year, more than
Speaker 3: one a day.
Speaker 2: So I think he used to have an office on
Speaker 2: Sunset Boulevard.
Speaker 3: He did.
Speaker 2: We'll get to that, okay. I remember people have pointed
Speaker 2: it out, like they'd be like, you know, that's pelicanas exactly.
Speaker 3: So seventy seven he made a splash by finding the
Speaker 3: stolen remains of Mike Todd, Elizabeth Taylor's third husband. Oh wow,
Speaker 3: so remains stolen? Tell me more?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he must.
Speaker 3: Mike Todd died in a plane crash and he was
Speaker 3: buried in a Chicago cemetery and what was left of
Speaker 3: him was quote basically a handful of dust and what
Speaker 3: was likely part of a nylon seat belt.
Speaker 2: He was buried with a seat belt. This is also
Speaker 2: his returnal remains.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's just a little bit of stuff that's a
Speaker 3: bag and they put it in a rubber bag and
Speaker 3: then tucked it into a coffin and buried it.
Speaker 2: They didn't even get like a little Crown royal bag
Speaker 2: because apparently not.
Speaker 3: I don't know why I rubbed it. So around June
Speaker 3: twenty fifth, nineteen seventy seven, his grave is found all
Speaker 3: dug up, the coffin empty. Cops are on the case,
Speaker 3: but they're like they're coming up empty empty as the coffins.
Speaker 3: Eric Yes, So June twenty eighth, Pelicano, he calls Chicago's
Speaker 3: Channel two news and he says, hey, pal listen, I
Speaker 3: got a tip about where to find what's left of
Speaker 3: all Mike Todd oh, and so Channel two they're all
Speaker 3: about it. They send out a news team and plus
Speaker 3: then they tell the cops, which you know is the
Speaker 3: right thing to do. So everyone gets to the graveyard
Speaker 3: and it is on Pelicano. He stands in front of
Speaker 3: all the gathered folks and he reads out loud the
Speaker 3: instructions that he had received from his tipster. And so
Speaker 3: then he starts walking the number of paces indicated.
Speaker 2: There's numbered paces. He walks like a treasure map.
Speaker 3: Yeah. He gets around seventy five yards away from the
Speaker 3: grave and he stops. I found it, he yells, Oh
Speaker 3: my god. Yeah, the detectives come running over and there's
Speaker 3: Pelicano pointing at a pile of leaves. Now, the cops
Speaker 3: had already searched this pile, tim So he reaches in
Speaker 3: and he pulls out a rubber bag. What how on
Speaker 3: earth did he get the tip about the bag?
Speaker 2: Do you want my real answer?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: So he told the Chicago Sun Times that the tip
Speaker 3: came from someone likely acting on behalf of the thieves. Quote.
Speaker 3: I think they felt they made a tremendous mistake. He said.
Speaker 3: The information was volunteered to me. I'm a public figure
Speaker 3: and I've handled many many missing figures.
Speaker 2: They could feel my heat on the collar. I was
Speaker 2: in hot pursuits. They were like, can't mister Pelicano.
Speaker 3: But that's not all, he says. That wasn't all other
Speaker 3: tipsters and sources they reach out to him. Fill him
Speaker 3: in on the motive.
Speaker 2: Oh multiple, Okay.
Speaker 3: Well, supposedly the thieves were looking for a ten carrot
Speaker 3: diamond ring in the bag of ass. Well, apparently that
Speaker 3: was his wedding ring's wedding ring, and it survived the
Speaker 3: plane craft and they.
Speaker 2: Thought Elizabeth would just put it in there as.
Speaker 3: Like a right well, Liz had it though, of.
Speaker 2: Course she loves the rings and diamonds in particular.
Speaker 3: Exactly, so everyone figured it was probably the Chicago mob
Speaker 3: behind the whole thing. Oh okay, but the big rumor
Speaker 3: was that Pelicano was behind the whole thing for publicity,
Speaker 3: and that that publicity worked though, yeah, exactly. So he
Speaker 3: starts appearing as an expert witness for the government things.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, he'd gone through this thing where he because
Speaker 3: of the finding Mike Todd's remains, and he winds up
Speaker 3: on some like police board. But then sure in Chicago, Yeah,
Speaker 3: but then he embezzles money or he does something and
Speaker 3: he gets kicked off. So then he starts appearing as
Speaker 3: this expert witness.
Speaker 2: It is like at the end of the Richard Daly
Speaker 2: era Chicago Sun.
Speaker 3: So his particular expertise was deciphering tape recordings, okay, oh yeah,
Speaker 3: And in nineteen seventy four he was hired by the
Speaker 3: lawyers for Nixon's secretary. What they wanted him to recover
Speaker 3: that eighteen year gap in the water.
Speaker 2: And to be able to prove that it had been
Speaker 2: done correctly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so he said he couldn't recover them and
Speaker 3: he thought that the erasure was unintentional. Oh yeah, sure, buddy.
Speaker 3: So you know he did all sorts of other stuff.
Speaker 3: Where next, though, Where next? Elizabeth, when in doubt, moved
Speaker 3: to La Of course.
Speaker 2: That's if you shake all like the country loose, that's
Speaker 2: throw all the loose nuts goots exactly.
Speaker 3: He goes to Los Angeles Old Tinseltown nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 3: He boosted his profile by hinting that he had connections
Speaker 3: to the mob.
Speaker 2: A good one. They love that there, anti.
Speaker 3: Law enforcement, he played both sides.
Speaker 2: They also love that there.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So now in Hollywood, Pelicano got this really sweet gig
Speaker 3: with lawyer Howard Weisman. Oh yeah, and Whitesman had a
Speaker 3: client who was accused of selling coke to finance his business. Ah,
Speaker 3: that client, John DeLorean, Yes, there you go. So there's
Speaker 3: a tape in which Delaurian referred to a suitcase of
Speaker 3: cocaine as quote better than gold.
Speaker 2: And so maybe he was really good.
Speaker 3: He was just you know, in the tape, he's meeting
Speaker 3: with these people that he thinks are investors, but they're
Speaker 3: actually cops. And DeLorean then, when the whole thing goes down,
Speaker 3: claims that he was being set up. So Pelicano, his
Speaker 3: job is to provide that yes, to.
Speaker 2: Prove yes, indeed set up okay, Yeah, And.
Speaker 3: So he showed the jury that the tapes had been altered,
Speaker 3: these tapes where he's calling it, you know, better than gold. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And as a result, Delorean's acquitted.
Speaker 2: He got Delarean off.
Speaker 3: Yes. Wow, this was the biggest boost yet for Pelicanos
Speaker 3: for a while.
Speaker 2: So he was in a town with a lot of
Speaker 2: people need to get off of right.
Speaker 3: And he goes up against the Feds and wins. Everyone
Speaker 3: wants his services.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: They would say, they're like, they have a ninety nine
Speaker 2: percent prosecution right now, you beat the Feds, that's yeah.
Speaker 3: So he's in the big time, of course, and he
Speaker 3: made sure to charge his clients accordingly. He charged a
Speaker 3: standard twenty five thousand dollars retainer that was like the baseline. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and on top of that, he had other fees that
Speaker 3: you know, the price of his services could go into
Speaker 3: the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The twenty five thousand is so he would answer
Speaker 2: your call it three.
Speaker 3: As exactly exactly. So around nineteen eighty nine, he gets
Speaker 3: hired by a high profile attorney named Bert Fields. Yes, so,
Speaker 3: Bert Charlie Burt nine hundred dollars an hour at the time.
Speaker 3: That's like twenty two hundred dollars an hour now, insane.
Speaker 3: Ken Aletta wrote for The New Yorker that Fields and
Speaker 3: Fields passed away in twenty twenty two at the age
Speaker 3: of ninety three. He wrote about Fields quote has represented
Speaker 3: almost every studio head and some of Hollywood's biggest stars,
Speaker 3: including Tom Cruise, Michael Jackson, Warren Batty, The Beatles, John Travolta, Madonna,
Speaker 3: Mike Nichols, and Dustin Hoffman. He has also represented Rupert Murdoch,
Speaker 3: the chairman of News Corp. And Steven Spielberg, David Geffen
Speaker 3: Jeffrey Katzenberg, the co founders of DreamWorks SKG. The unwritten
Speaker 3: calling card says, not wholly accurately, Bert Fields has never
Speaker 3: lost a court case.
Speaker 2: And he wears great suits.
Speaker 3: Yes he did, he did rip so. Pelicano's first gig
Speaker 3: with Fields was for a wildly Hollywood character one accused
Speaker 3: of sexual harassment by a former a song as.
Speaker 2: Old as Time. Oh, yes, very Hollywood.
Speaker 3: But this was none other than producer Don Simpson. Oh no, Simpson,
Speaker 3: producer of Top Go flash Dance.
Speaker 2: I told you my friend that was his, Like, I
Speaker 2: know so much about him because he would tell me
Speaker 2: these stories, you know, one time Don Simpson, Like I
Speaker 2: don't it was like his like one time at band camp.
Speaker 2: But it's like one time Don Simpson. I'm like, so we've.
Speaker 3: Talked about it before. He was completely out of control.
Speaker 2: Watch terrible person, just Si always hanging out with piles
Speaker 2: of cocaine and like sex workers who just had to
Speaker 2: be there. Like nobody who wasn't paid wanted to be
Speaker 2: around him.
Speaker 6: But his serious Hollywood power player. Oh totally but completely
Speaker 6: off the making one hundred million dollar movies. Everyone just
Speaker 6: like gave him cart block because he wrote he would
Speaker 6: basically go out there and make a movie and you
Speaker 6: know it was gonna be that year is one of
Speaker 6: the big Temple hits three hundred million, four hundred and
Speaker 6: five or whatever it was. He'd be like, oh wow,
Speaker 6: Days of Thunder, all those movies that boom.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So his assistant alleged that Simpson quote snorted cocaine
Speaker 3: in the office, ordered her to line up dates with prostitutes,
Speaker 3: exposed her to pornographic material, and cussed her out.
Speaker 2: That sounds like they have yes, sounds like a Monday.
Speaker 2: Son's having a good Monday?
Speaker 3: Is that New Yorker piece? It says quote Pelicano uncovered
Speaker 3: information about Simpson's accuser, including the fact that she had
Speaker 3: hired a mail stripper for a party. Instead of addressing
Speaker 3: her charges, Fields questioned her character and credibility, and the
Speaker 3: revelations helped to get the case dismissed.
Speaker 2: I love it gross the character assassination in American criminals
Speaker 2: like courtrooms.
Speaker 3: Oh and Pelicano it seems yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm like, does nobody ever think, like, wait a minute,
Speaker 2: this is just like on Law and Order, And I
Speaker 2: hate it when they do it there anyway. But on so.
Speaker 3: Pelicano he had other stuff to do with Don Simpson.
Speaker 3: In August of nineteen ninety five, the doctor who was
Speaker 3: supposedly working with Simpson to address his addictions was found dead.
Speaker 2: And I'm not laughing about him dying. I'm like, the
Speaker 2: man who's trying to help you with your addiction dies,
Speaker 2: have a drug lasted, the guy who's been hired to
Speaker 2: help you with this stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so Pelicano's called before the cops. So he
Speaker 3: gets there toxicology though, like he cleans up the scene.
Speaker 3: Toxicology eventually revealed that the doctor had a whole messa
Speaker 3: drugs in the system. Oh so who knows what else?
Speaker 6: Pelican he was helping him by doing the drugs again,
Speaker 6: I'll do all your drugs.
Speaker 2: I would do the cocaine faster.
Speaker 3: See the same thing happened in nineteen ninety six. The
Speaker 3: next year, when Simpson himself was found dead of an overdose,
Speaker 3: Pelicano was called before the police.
Speaker 2: Tragic day for my friend.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 3: Another client of Field's former beatle, George Harrison, he had
Speaker 3: a problem.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have expected that.
Speaker 3: He was getting threatening letters. And that's when he brought
Speaker 3: that security expert Gavin de Becker into his life. So
Speaker 3: Fields hired Pelicano again, and Pelicano found the letter writer
Speaker 3: within two days, and the letters immediately stopped.
Speaker 2: Damn, he is good. I gotta do that.
Speaker 3: So this is why Fields work, right, So Fields told
Speaker 3: the New Yorker quote, he came up with stuff that
Speaker 3: other people didn't. He did that over and over again.
Speaker 3: He was just better. I don't know how he did it.
Speaker 3: It certainly wasn't wire tapping. So like wire tapping, why
Speaker 3: would you say.
Speaker 2: Why did you who brought tapping?
Speaker 3: Who said that? But wiretapping is the tip of the
Speaker 3: iceberg on this, it's the good stuff, wiretapping or not.
Speaker 3: Fields was all in with Pelicano. So, according to Pelicano's employees,
Speaker 3: per Vanity, fair Fields quote brought Pelicano into DreamWorks Animation
Speaker 3: CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg's litigation with Disney's Michael Eisner.
Speaker 2: Oh, a huge case.
Speaker 3: Tom Cruise's defense against a gay porn stars sex allegations.
Speaker 3: Another big one, Imagine Entertainment suit against Mike Myers, but
Speaker 3: a few totally.
Speaker 2: I forgot about the Mike Myers.
Speaker 3: You liked the late great Gary Shandling, right, Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, love him.
Speaker 3: He was a comic genius, bit of a tortured.
Speaker 2: Soul, totally but a good dude, totally good.
Speaker 3: Yes, Since I can't think of an occasion when you
Speaker 3: hadn't at least heard of something, most likely even no
Speaker 3: facts and details about, especially when it comes to Hollywood
Speaker 3: stuff or obscure Eastern European Western Asian ancient history. I
Speaker 3: think you've heard about the beef between Gary Shandling and
Speaker 3: his manager Brad Gray.
Speaker 2: I'm familiar.
Speaker 3: He yeah, So let's take a break when we come back,
Speaker 3: I'll tell you all about it and how Anthony Pelicano
Speaker 3: factors into it.
Speaker 5: Yes, welcome, Hey.
Speaker 3: So when we last spoke, I was telling you about
Speaker 3: Gary Shandling and Brad Gray.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 3: So Gray he started out in Hollywood as a talent
Speaker 3: manager and from there he added in work as a producer.
Speaker 3: His first gig was in nineteen eighty six with It's
Speaker 3: Gary Shandling Show on Showtime. This is first producing thing,
Speaker 3: so Shanling. In that show, he played a stand up
Speaker 3: comic who also knows that he's a TV character, so
Speaker 3: he like interacts with the studio audience and he messes
Speaker 3: with storylines. Huge hit, critically acclaimed, ran for four seasons,
Speaker 3: and then it went into syndication on Fox. So the
Speaker 3: show led to Shanling getting another show on HBO, The
Speaker 3: Larry Sanders Show. That's another success. But in nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: eight there was a falling out. Shanling sued Gray for
Speaker 3: one hundred million dollars. He said that Gray cheated him
Speaker 3: out of the money he made from the Larry Sanders Show.
Speaker 3: Gray hired Bert Fields and countersued. Yeah. So Fields, of
Speaker 3: course brings in Anthony Pelicano. Pelicano had a cop run
Speaker 3: unauthorized background checks on Shanling, a former girlfriend of his,
Speaker 3: his personal assistant, his business manager, and actor Kevin Nelan,
Speaker 3: who was like one of Shanling's best friends. So he
Speaker 3: also wiretapped every single one of those people. Both lawsuits
Speaker 3: were settled, keeping it out of court, but it started
Speaker 3: two things, the open secret of Pelicano's illegal wiretapping and
Speaker 3: Pelicano's close friendship with Gray. So Pelicano he once gave
Speaker 3: Gray an eight inch silver plated switchblade as a gift,
Speaker 3: and the two of them were supposedly working on an
Speaker 3: HBO show together all of the Sopranos about the Yeah,
Speaker 3: the Sopranos, but when that fell through, one of the
Speaker 3: writers for that project went on to develop a little
Speaker 3: show called Ray Donovan about a ruthless Hollywood fixer. Yeah
Speaker 3: sounds awful familiar.
Speaker 2: I wonder where they got the material.
Speaker 3: I know some inspiration. So Pelicano, he's obsessed with the
Speaker 3: mob in the Sopranos. His ex wife Kat said that
Speaker 3: Pelicano watched The Sopranos every Sunday night, quote like he
Speaker 3: was going to church.
Speaker 2: Is so into it.
Speaker 3: The whole music in his Office was the soundtrack for
Speaker 3: The Godfather. Like the score for the film, he wore.
Speaker 2: Sunglasses eighteen times.
Speaker 3: I know you're like waiting for you. He wore sunglasses
Speaker 3: that were an exact copy of the ones Pacino wore
Speaker 3: in Godfather Took. His son, Luca, was named after Luca Brozi,
Speaker 3: don Corleone's favorite assassin.
Speaker 2: Who was an actual mob enforcer, and then got brought
Speaker 2: on because he was a what do you called a
Speaker 2: I think at that point a bodyguard for one of
Speaker 2: the families. And they're like they'd worked out, like you
Speaker 2: got to hire some of our guys.
Speaker 3: You know what. He sleeps with the fishes, dude, Luk.
Speaker 3: So that SAMEX wife Kat one of many I've said.
Speaker 3: Quote there were times when he would make my children
Speaker 3: kiss his hand like he was the Godfather. He started
Speaker 3: to think he was Don corleon Oh no, yea. So
Speaker 3: he kept a baseball bat in the trunk of his car,
Speaker 3: and he threatened people.
Speaker 2: With it, so that O and Pelicans really jumping out
Speaker 2: for him.
Speaker 3: He once told a reporter quote, guys who with me,
Speaker 3: get to meet my buddy here talking about the bat bat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, his old friend Louisville exactly mister slugger.
Speaker 3: He was like deep into the whole Omerta.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, coda silence, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Loyalty silence. He had his staff abide by Omerta.
Speaker 2: How was he They do it with a ritual, like
Speaker 2: making them like they come into the office on on
Speaker 2: Tuesday night, we're doing.
Speaker 3: We're going to burn a prayer card. I don't know.
Speaker 3: He called himself the sin eater, Oh God, that he
Speaker 3: absorbed his clients sins and wrongdoings and made them disappear
Speaker 3: by making them his. So let's circle back though to wire.
Speaker 2: I guess that's better than being the death eater, you know, So.
Speaker 3: Wire Wire, what I didn't say? He was a wire tapper.
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety five, he got himself a computer programmer
Speaker 3: named Kevin Katchikian, and he had Kachiki and develop a
Speaker 3: system to intercept telephone. Yeah right, gotta love them. The
Speaker 3: two of them called this system that he developed teleslouth okay,
Speaker 3: and they even applied for a trademark on it. Nothing
Speaker 3: ever came of that, but Kachikian developed another program that
Speaker 3: went along with Telesleuth called Forensic Audio Sleuth Okay. This
Speaker 3: one analyzed and enhanced audio recordings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm sure they kind of used similar with
Speaker 2: the use now with all the like the passes where
Speaker 2: they do a past and they can do gain exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: So he he creates one Pelicano then bribed two Pacific
Speaker 3: Bell employees to rig poes so that Teleslouth could listen
Speaker 3: in on the calls.
Speaker 2: We need material.
Speaker 3: Tell us the interception was done at the level of
Speaker 3: the phone company. It wasn't done in the home.
Speaker 2: He wasn't wiring there, he wasn't breaking in.
Speaker 3: He's not there's no home break in. If he's sweep
Speaker 3: for bugs, you're not gonna find any, tell us. Luth
Speaker 3: then link the calls to Pelicanos office computers and.
Speaker 2: It says like someone else is on this line.
Speaker 3: What the hell they'd hear like little clicks and whatever. So,
Speaker 3: since the computers could only wire tap recordings from their
Speaker 3: own area code in order, like so he's in three
Speaker 3: ten and he's able to tap three tens. So but
Speaker 3: for him to get calls in three two, three two
Speaker 3: on three six, two, six, eight, one eight, all the
Speaker 3: other south Land area codes, he had to rent an
Speaker 3: apartment in each area code where he could establish a
Speaker 3: computer and a hard drive. Yeah, exactly. All of this
Speaker 3: was totally illegal. Oh yeah, totally because in California, all
Speaker 3: parties to any confidential conversation have to give their consent
Speaker 3: to be recorded.
Speaker 2: You cannot record a person on the phone in California.
Speaker 3: That's in most places it's two parties and it's one,
Speaker 3: but that means that one of the already has to
Speaker 3: be the originator of the recording this. You know, he's
Speaker 3: just snoop and it's illegal everywhere. So everyone suspected that
Speaker 3: Pelicano was tapping phones somehow, and he most certainly was,
Speaker 3: and it was getting him results. The La Times called
Speaker 3: him the least private private eye in town. So he
Speaker 3: got He got hired by Tom Cruise during his divorce
Speaker 3: from Nicole Edman. Kidman had her phone swept for bugs
Speaker 3: all the time, and she knew about Pelicano, and the
Speaker 3: sweeps always came up empty because the tap wasn't on
Speaker 3: her phone. When she was talking to friends, she would joke, quote, Tom,
Speaker 3: are you listening? Am I saying what you want me
Speaker 3: to say? And Pelicano. Pelicano also had a direct line
Speaker 3: to the National Inquirer, and so he would leak stories
Speaker 3: to them all the time, and he did that a
Speaker 3: lot for Tom Cruise against Nicole Kidman.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 3: He had tons of celebrity clients. Jerry Springer used him
Speaker 3: to find out how he was videotaped in a threesome
Speaker 3: with porn star Kendrid Jade and her stepmom.
Speaker 2: What yeah, I read that and what I don't sentence?
Speaker 3: I say what, but I want it to stop right there.
Speaker 2: One time mayor of Cleveland.
Speaker 3: Exactly, Chris Rock came to Pelicano when he was facing
Speaker 3: a paternity lawsuit filed by a Hungarian model. The tapes
Speaker 3: of their conversations are amazing.
Speaker 2: Wait, the Hungarian model Chris.
Speaker 3: Rock no Pelicano and Rock Pelicano calls Rock honey. He's like, listen, honey,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna yeah. Chris Rock is just like exasperated to
Speaker 3: the whole thing. They have a very graphic conversation about
Speaker 3: like how this could have happened. Okay, Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 3: There's a tape of him talking to Courtney Love and
Speaker 3: he calls her a baby and he postures about like
Speaker 3: his strong arm tactics.
Speaker 2: So Pelicanna just calls everybody baby baby honey.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. He tells her quote, if you come to me,
Speaker 3: that's the end of that. I'm an old style Sicilian.
Speaker 3: I only go one way. I'm very heavy hand in. Honey,
Speaker 3: love super into it.
Speaker 2: She's like yeah, oh, She's like perfect, I need a
Speaker 2: hammer just like you.
Speaker 3: And that's the thing, Like there's an appeal to a
Speaker 3: fixer like that, this is what you want from a
Speaker 3: someone can just make your make your problems go way. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And there's a certain excitement, like a romance of the
Speaker 3: notion that, like this person is ruthless and they'll use
Speaker 3: muscle and intimidation to do your bidding.
Speaker 2: Mmmm. And also I think though, if you go one
Speaker 2: step past that, you want the Ray Donovan, which is
Speaker 2: discretion is the better part of valor. So not only
Speaker 2: will he like crack heads or like make people cried
Speaker 2: and say I take back what I said or whatever,
Speaker 2: but also no one ever.
Speaker 3: Hears, oh never knows exactly. But see there's always another
Speaker 3: side to it. That's like those on the receiving ends.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, it's terrible for them. This is not
Speaker 2: anything we would know or recognize as justice.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 3: His most infamous case was in nineteen ninety three, Bert
Speaker 3: Field's and a team of lawyers. They brought Pelicano in
Speaker 3: to help defend Michael Jackson from child molestation charges.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is where they attack the family.
Speaker 3: Pelicano signs on, but he said he would only do
Speaker 3: so if Jackson wasn't guilty. I will only work for
Speaker 3: him if he didn't do this, okay. And then he
Speaker 3: said he told Jackson, quote, you don't have to worry
Speaker 3: about or lawyers. If I find out anything, I will
Speaker 3: you over. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Damn. Does he know that Michael Jackson was always alleged
Speaker 2: to be an actual cryp, like like an honorary crypt
Speaker 2: he only wore blue. He was like, the rumors. I
Speaker 2: don't know the truth of it, but the rumors, the
Speaker 2: alleged rumors is that Michael Jackson's affiliated, like deep with
Speaker 2: the crips.
Speaker 3: I am in love with that rumors. So you know, Pelicano.
Speaker 3: He threatens Jackson, if you really did this, it's over
Speaker 3: for you.
Speaker 2: It's curtains for you, okay.
Speaker 3: And then he turns around. He goes after the family
Speaker 3: of the thirteen year old accuser and digs up any
Speaker 3: dirt he can find. He then organized a CNN interview
Speaker 3: with Wade robson a kid who was in that Jackson sphere.
Speaker 3: He later goes on to be like a choreographer, I think,
Speaker 3: but at the time he's like a tween staying at
Speaker 3: Neverland Ranch. And in the interview, Robson he just like
Speaker 3: vehemently denies that anything like that had happened. He says,
Speaker 3: he slept in the same bed as Jackson, but absolutely nothing.
Speaker 2: Under story of like, I vehemently denied these allegations because
Speaker 2: nothing like that happened for me.
Speaker 3: Right, But then years later Robson goes public says, yes,
Speaker 3: I was actually sexually abused by Jackson.
Speaker 2: Oh god, yeah.
Speaker 3: Robson's mother said that she was coerced by Pelicano into
Speaker 3: doing the CNN interview that absolved Jackson of all guilt.
Speaker 3: So Jackson in the original family they have eventually settled.
Speaker 3: Pelicano he got a pretty penny out of the world.
Speaker 2: How pretty this penny?
Speaker 3: A million dollar fee, a million dollar bonus, and a
Speaker 3: Mercedes Benz convertible. Wow, throwing a Benz.
Speaker 2: He's throwing like a picture of a sign, picture of bubbles,
Speaker 2: the chimp.
Speaker 3: Probably handprint on it, exactly. So Pelicano later said though
Speaker 3: that he fired Jackson as a client. What he said
Speaker 3: he fired him because he said he apparently he found
Speaker 3: out about other even darker truths about Jackson. Pelicano said, quote,
Speaker 3: he did something far worse to young boys than molest them,
Speaker 3: which I don't.
Speaker 2: Want to know what that could be. I don't even
Speaker 2: want to imagine.
Speaker 3: And Pelicano was like, I'm out of here, which he
Speaker 3: kind of he was supposed to be out of earlier.
Speaker 2: And also he was supposed to f people up if
Speaker 2: he found out that he was guilty. He did not
Speaker 2: live up to his word.
Speaker 3: Mister Omerta, who's not alive right now?
Speaker 6: Oh, I just I just a joke because I'm not
Speaker 6: I'm not accused that doctor.
Speaker 2: Wasn't just so you know, absent minded or whatever.
Speaker 3: But here's the thing, like, uh, Pelicano, he claimed that
Speaker 3: he was offered five hundred thousand dollars to tell the
Speaker 3: story of whatever darker deeds, but he refused why. I
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 2: I thought he loved money and all that.
Speaker 3: I don't know. So Pelicano, he just keeps wire tapping
Speaker 3: and intimidating along.
Speaker 2: She was like, I got wire tapping to do. I
Speaker 2: don't have time to.
Speaker 3: Talk, so busy about this. So there's a Canadian newspaper
Speaker 3: publishing era named Taylor Thompson. She hired Pelicano to assist
Speaker 3: her in a custody battle.
Speaker 2: Okay, like Toronto Star paper.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, all the like yeah, the bigness. So Thompson
Speaker 3: was rich, violently rich, as I like. Oh yes, her
Speaker 3: family is worth fourteen point nine billion. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 3: Forbes said that she was the one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: ninth richest woman in the world.
Speaker 2: Congratulations, it's me.
Speaker 3: Thompson was living in la with her toddler daughter, as
Speaker 3: is the fashion for the rich who don't have a
Speaker 3: day job, she hired a nanny. Oh of course, kid,
Speaker 3: a woman named Pamela Miller. So Thompson's ex still lived
Speaker 3: in Canada. He wanted more visitation rights for his daughter.
Speaker 3: Cue the lawsuits. Miller's paycheck came from Thompson, so when
Speaker 3: it came time to go to court, she felt like
Speaker 3: she had to back up her employer. Of course, but
Speaker 3: it wasn't the truth. Miller thought Thompson was lying when
Speaker 3: she said she spent a lot of time with her daughter,
Speaker 3: because Miller said the truth was I was the one
Speaker 3: who had the kid all day long and Thompson was
Speaker 3: away from home many many nights. That's not all. Here's
Speaker 3: here's the amazing, horrible stuff. Miller wasn't allowed to give
Speaker 3: the two year old any carbohydrates because her mother, quote
Speaker 3: wanted her to be very thin.
Speaker 2: You got a two year old on a diet. She's like,
Speaker 2: look at these rolls? Can we get rid of my roll?
Speaker 3: All up in the ass makes the kid?
Speaker 2: I don't like it. I want to see the bone.
Speaker 3: I want the bone. I want I want to see.
Speaker 2: Color and ribs. That's what I want to see. February
Speaker 2: a racehorse ribs.
Speaker 3: February of two thousand and two. The little girl complained
Speaker 3: of an earache, and Miller, the nanny, said that Thompson
Speaker 3: the mom poured olive oil and sawtaed onions into the
Speaker 3: ear to soothe the pain.
Speaker 2: What I can't is that, even like an old wife,
Speaker 2: the kid's not an omelet.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I've never heard that sawtaed onions in
Speaker 3: an ear?
Speaker 2: Are you shoving it down in the netty pot? Like
Speaker 2: how does that work?
Speaker 3: I don't know? Like, of course it doesn't work. So
Speaker 3: the kid is even in more pain. Yeah, Miller had
Speaker 3: to stay up all night to soothe her because like,
Speaker 3: where's the mom. She dumps the stuff in her ear
Speaker 3: and takes.
Speaker 2: Off, and now she's got like a mess and an infection. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So that was the last straw for Miller than nanny.
Speaker 3: She rang up the dad in Canada. He was understandably upset.
Speaker 2: Because he's like, I can't take care of the kid
Speaker 2: and you are in the air.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Miller is now on his side in the
Speaker 3: court case. She signed an affi David affirming that you
Speaker 3: know what she'd seen and what she experience and of course,
Speaker 3: you know, Thompson gets word of this and fires her. Okay,
Speaker 3: So Thompson found out that she had called you know,
Speaker 3: the and was planning to help in the case. So
Speaker 3: she turns around and she hires Anthony Pelicanoh charge was
Speaker 3: to make Miller's life miserable.
Speaker 2: Yes, I call that one.
Speaker 3: According to Vanity Fair quote, whenever she would get a
Speaker 3: new nanny job, she would be let go. Within weeks
Speaker 3: of her being hired by a member of the Michael
Speaker 3: Douglas family, she was let go. The same thing happened
Speaker 3: when she went to work for producer John Peters. Pelicana
Speaker 3: would stalk her going as far as to sit directly
Speaker 3: behind her in a movie theater. She was wiretapped, and
Speaker 3: members of her family had their private information illegally accessed.
Speaker 3: They went so far as to take photos of her
Speaker 3: when she was with the children she had been hired
Speaker 3: to watch. Needless to say, not many wealthy parents wanted
Speaker 3: to keep a nanny who was being photographed with their children. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: so charming. Charming.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: It wasn't just the foes of his clients that he
Speaker 3: went after. He also went after well, yeah, the press exactly.
Speaker 3: So there's this journalist with the show Hard Copy, which
Speaker 3: I'm tempted to put the word journalist in quotation marks.
Speaker 3: We're talking about that show. But I suppose technically she
Speaker 3: was a journalist named Diane Diamond. She got a first
Speaker 3: hand taste of the Pelicano technique. She broke a lot
Speaker 3: of news about the Michael Jackson case, and following that
Speaker 3: she was pretty sure her work and home phones were tapped,
Speaker 3: so she said a trap. She tells the story of
Speaker 3: this in the New York Times documentary about Pelicano called
Speaker 3: The Sin Eater, which is very good to trap Pelicano
Speaker 3: in his wiretapping ways, she had her husband ring her up.
Speaker 3: He didn't identify himself and just started talking to her
Speaker 3: about a documentary on Anthony Pelicano. He's going on and
Speaker 3: on about how he is this information, and Diamond is
Speaker 3: telling him that the project is really cooking along. It's
Speaker 3: going to be so great. She hangs up a phone.
Speaker 3: A couple of minutes later, a lawyer from the Hard
Speaker 3: Copy Legal Department calls her. They asked if she was
Speaker 3: working on a documentary about l a Anthony Pelicano. She
Speaker 3: acts stunned, what are you talking about? Well, apparently they'd
Speaker 3: just gotten a call from attorney Howard Weitzman's office saying
Speaker 3: she was working on an Anthony Pelicano documentary. He wanted
Speaker 3: more information. There was her proof, because there was no
Speaker 3: Pelicano doc. Yes, that call with her husband was the
Speaker 3: only time she'd ever mentioned one.
Speaker 2: And the only time she said the words.
Speaker 3: Out loud, exactly. And there it is, you know, boom trap.
Speaker 2: An ego trap, It's like a money trap an ego exactly.
Speaker 3: But it wasn't just Diane Diamond who was the focus
Speaker 3: of this. LA Times reporter Anita Bush was also a target. Bush,
Speaker 3: a former New York Times reporter, was working on stories
Speaker 3: about the movie industry. One was about an allegation that
Speaker 3: one of Action stars Steven Sagall's producing partners was in
Speaker 3: with the Gambino crime family.
Speaker 2: I mean, come on, that surprised.
Speaker 3: She was also doing another piece about Michael Ovitz, the
Speaker 3: founder of CAA talent and one time president of Disney.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, big lawsuit against Michael Eisner.
Speaker 3: Uh huh. So she had been writing about how his
Speaker 3: agency was failing something he didn't take kindly to. Let's
Speaker 3: take a break. When we come back, we'll find out
Speaker 3: what he did to Anita Bush.
Speaker 7: Oh, Zarin, Elizabeth, close your eyes.
Speaker 2: Oh you snuck it up on me. I'll right my eyes.
Speaker 3: I want you to picture it. Yes, it's the morning
Speaker 3: of June twentieth, two thousand and two. You're standing on
Speaker 3: the front lawn of your house, watering your hydranges before
Speaker 3: the heat kicks in. The birds are singing, and you
Speaker 3: wave at two kids riding by on their bikes. They
Speaker 3: see you and give you the middle finger. You scoff
Speaker 3: and go back to watering your plants. You casually look
Speaker 3: over at your neighbor's house. She's a nice lady. Newspaper
Speaker 3: reporter for the Times As you glance over, you see
Speaker 3: that there's something wrong with her audi in the driveway.
Speaker 3: The windshield appears to be cracked pretty severely, and there's
Speaker 3: something resting just above the wiper blades. Now, you were
Speaker 3: outside sweeping your front steps when she came home yesterday morning,
Speaker 3: and you didn't hear her car leave after that, so
Speaker 3: you know she didn't come home with a windshield looking
Speaker 3: like that. Like what, You're just an attentive neighbor or car.
Speaker 3: You turn off the hose. You head over to her house,
Speaker 3: stopping to scoop up the La Times that had been
Speaker 3: delivered early that morning. You had heard it slap on
Speaker 3: the pavement of her driveway. You know you're just listening.
Speaker 3: You're attentive. You walk up to her front door and
Speaker 3: you ring the bell. After a moment, she opens the door.
Speaker 3: Good morning, Anita, here's your paper. I noticed there's something
Speaker 3: wrong with your windshield and wanted to let you know. Thanks, Gladys,
Speaker 3: she says. Then she pads out in her slippers to
Speaker 3: look at the car. As she approaches it, she turns
Speaker 3: back to you with a quizzical look on her face.
Speaker 3: You both see that what's sitting at the bottom of
Speaker 3: the windshield. Cradled between that and the hood of the
Speaker 3: car is an aluminum baking pan. A piece of paper
Speaker 3: is taped to the glass above it. Odd, you say.
Speaker 3: You both step closer, and you see that written on
Speaker 3: the paper in big red letters is the word stop
Speaker 3: all caps. You gasp. Anita reaches into her pocket for
Speaker 3: her phone and calls the police. She explains the situation.
Speaker 3: They tell her not to touch the tray and to
Speaker 3: just wait for them. The two you sit together on
Speaker 3: her front stoop. As you wait for the authorities. The
Speaker 3: Lapd rolls up, follows closely by the FBI, their radios crackling.
Speaker 3: They approach and lift the aluminum prey. Underneath is a
Speaker 3: dead fish with a rose in its mouth. Wow, the
Speaker 3: color drains from Anita's face. You gasp again and then
Speaker 3: faint onto Anita's lawn. The same kiss as before, ride
Speaker 3: by and once again give you the finger. So the
Speaker 3: investigation of this whole fish incident, which, by the way,
Speaker 3: a dead fish with a rose in its mouth.
Speaker 2: Yes, like what that's the look of Brazzi thing, but
Speaker 2: with a touch of class.
Speaker 3: It's a touch of glass. So the FEDS discovered that
Speaker 3: an lapd sergeant named Mark Arneson, who was on Pelicano's payroll,
Speaker 3: had run a background and address check for Bush.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: The investigation then kind of turns over to the OVID stories.
Speaker 3: According to the New Yorker quote, Ovitz told the FBI
Speaker 3: that he paid Pelicano seventy five thousand dollars to investigate
Speaker 3: two CAA agents and, among others, his former partner Ron Mayer,
Speaker 3: David Geffen, and the reporters Anita Bush and Bernard Wintraub,
Speaker 3: then with The New York Times, who were allegedly harming
Speaker 3: his ability to sell Artists Management Group. Wow, huh so
Speaker 3: they knew, Okay, well, maybe this has to do with him.
Speaker 3: Ovitz said he asked Pelicano for quote all kinds of information,
Speaker 3: but he said that Bush was a friend of his
Speaker 3: and he was never behind any threat to her. He
Speaker 3: also denied knowing anything about any illegal actions Pelicano may
Speaker 3: have done, saying, quote, I'm assuming whatever he did, he
Speaker 3: did it legally. I never instructed him to do anything illegal.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking it's back to the Steven Sagal Gambino crime family.
Speaker 2: But that's just oh interesting call.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, when asked about Pelicano's ties to Illinois mobsters,
Speaker 3: Ovid said that he never saw them. Quote to me,
Speaker 3: this is going to sound really stupid, but the couple
Speaker 3: of times I met him, he seemed really out of shape.
Speaker 3: He was just a regular looking middle aged man. He
Speaker 3: didn't look like those imposing guys on the Sopranos are
Speaker 3: in The Godfather. I'm like, did you watch the Sopranos
Speaker 3: that It's not just a bunch of like card bodies exactly.
Speaker 3: I think if you want regular looking middle aged men,
Speaker 3: there's your show.
Speaker 2: Just get some tracksuits, valure and you got it.
Speaker 3: Boom okay. So Bush later sued Ovids and Pelicano, and
Speaker 3: they settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. On
Speaker 3: November twenty first, two thousand and two, the FBI rated
Speaker 3: Pelicano's Sunset Boulevard office. Are you saying? They found there
Speaker 3: a safe full of quote, explosives, two hand grenades, loaded pistols,
Speaker 3: and bundles of cash, totaling about two hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: So his go bag his going exactly.
Speaker 3: He said that the explosives belonged to a celebrity client,
Speaker 3: likely Don Simpson, and that he confiscated them and was
Speaker 3: going to dispose of them by throwing them off of
Speaker 3: a friend's boat, as you do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's how I get rid of it.
Speaker 3: That's the best way.
Speaker 2: If I don't, if I can't reach your pier, I'm like, hey,
Speaker 2: was this go out this weekend?
Speaker 3: Toss it.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna bring some explosives. I need a dump.
Speaker 3: So two months later the FBI raided his offices again.
Speaker 3: They discovered that most of what had been in the
Speaker 3: office was now shredded or gone, including the entire Michael
Speaker 3: Jackson case. Everything's gone. However, they found something in the
Speaker 3: back room. Pellicano called that the bat cave or the
Speaker 3: war room, and in it were computers and like those
Speaker 3: cd ROMs. Sure full of hundreds of hours of encrypted,
Speaker 3: illegally wired tapped conversations and things.
Speaker 2: I'm sure he didn't understand how to destroy, so he's probably.
Speaker 3: And then there were also but he could destroy one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty thousand pages of transcribed recordings. Oh wow,
Speaker 3: this transcriptions. So the FBI cracked the password on the
Speaker 3: protected files. Yes, it was office Dash three two two
Speaker 3: dash omerta. The files weren't the recordings of tape of
Speaker 3: the tapped calls for clients that they were hoping they'd
Speaker 3: be okay, like the you know, unwing tap. No, they
Speaker 3: were conversations that Pelicano had taped of himself, conversations with
Speaker 3: his clients.
Speaker 2: Oh, his own clients. Okay.
Speaker 3: These served as his notes. He told the feds.
Speaker 2: Ah, they're not like his blackmail leverage.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 3: But according to the New York Times, quote in the calls,
Speaker 3: mister Pelicano was often heard posturing as if he were
Speaker 3: a Coosonostram mobster, boasting of his Omerita like code of honor,
Speaker 3: his connection to gangsters, and his distaste for quote rats.
Speaker 2: For somebody who has a love of America, he really
Speaker 2: doesn't understand the silent part.
Speaker 3: Of it, exactly exactly, he.
Speaker 2: Understands the code part. He's got that.
Speaker 3: When you watch that documentary The Sin Eater, they play
Speaker 3: the tapes and it's just like the way he's just
Speaker 3: posturing is phenomenal.
Speaker 2: Anyone who really is involved with in the Omerica, you
Speaker 2: probably won't ever hear anything about it. It's gonna be
Speaker 2: like someone talking about the Warriors. They just don't talk
Speaker 2: about that.
Speaker 3: That's the whole point. Well, so these tapes and the
Speaker 3: interviews with employees that the FEDS did exposed how Pelicano
Speaker 3: dug up all the information in the dirt he needed.
Speaker 3: So Vanity Fair lays this out. First, you get his
Speaker 3: or in lots of juicy cases, her address, No problem there.
Speaker 3: A police sergeant on Pelicano's payroll would tap into the
Speaker 3: LAPD computer databases. Now that you have the address, getting
Speaker 3: the phone number is equally easy. A Pacific Bell employee,
Speaker 3: also on the take would track it down along with
Speaker 3: the coded numbers of the cables servicing the phone. The
Speaker 3: rest could have been done either in the central station
Speaker 3: or if necessary, at a terminal box. Next to the
Speaker 3: red and green wires that service the line would be
Speaker 3: a tangle of yellow and black wires what wiremen called
Speaker 3: the spare pair. Normally, the spare pair is used to
Speaker 3: hook up an extension or another line. Only now the
Speaker 3: yellow and black wires would be wireman familiar with the
Speaker 3: technique theorized spliced into the mainline and with the help
Speaker 3: of some technomagic. The subject's phone was a party line,
Speaker 3: and Pelicano was the one having the party. A phone
Speaker 3: would ring, say in a mansion in bel Air or Brentwood,
Speaker 3: and automatically, silently simultaneously, computers in his office on Sunset
Speaker 3: Boulevard would start taping the conversation. Every move you'd make,
Speaker 3: plan you'd make, every valued break, Pelicana would be listening
Speaker 3: to you. Right. So, February of two thousand and four,
Speaker 3: he pleads guilty to possession of illegal explosives and was
Speaker 3: sentenced to thirty months in prison. That's after that first raid,
Speaker 3: right before he's like getting ready to get shipped off
Speaker 3: to the clink, he and six others are indicted and
Speaker 3: taken into custody on charges of quote, conspiring to wiretap,
Speaker 3: blackmail and intimidate dozens of celebrities and other targets. So
Speaker 3: he first gets the thirty months. Now he's going back
Speaker 3: to court. He pleads not guilty on this. He was
Speaker 3: held without bail after the prosecution quote alleged he was
Speaker 3: issuing threats from prison against potential witnesses.
Speaker 2: I'm guessing at this point all of his big lawyer
Speaker 2: friends have turned on him and he doesn't have the
Speaker 2: ability to get a tumble.
Speaker 3: Them are like in the cross.
Speaker 2: They want to have as much distance as they can.
Speaker 3: Well, here's the thing, Okay, So the trial begins in
Speaker 3: March of two thousand and eight, he represented himself. Oh
Speaker 3: my god, that's no way to win.
Speaker 2: He's not even a lawyer, no way to win.
Speaker 3: But he said he we knew he was going to lose,
Speaker 3: and I know that. He said he wasn't going to
Speaker 3: rat on anyone. Okay, he knew his employees.
Speaker 2: Would sing to the Feds like Pavarati.
Speaker 3: But he said he knew the most about the case.
Speaker 3: And he said he didn't know a lawyer smart enough
Speaker 3: to take the case, So why pay if the inevitable
Speaker 3: him going to jail is going to happen.
Speaker 2: Wait to get the insult in there to all the
Speaker 2: lawyers he knows on the way to I'm going to jail.
Speaker 3: He announced mid trial that he would not take the stand. Quote,
Speaker 3: I am not mister Pelicano is not going to discuss
Speaker 3: conversations with clients. It's not going to happen ever, no
Speaker 3: matter the consequence.
Speaker 2: He's sitting in one chair, your honor, just one secondly,
Speaker 2: going to consult My client, jumps chairs and whispers to
Speaker 2: himself and he listens. Okay, I guess it, fights with himself,
Speaker 2: jumps back chairs, your honor. My client is being unreasonable.
Speaker 3: Exactly, he said later, quote, I could have saved myself
Speaker 3: or at least done less time if I had even
Speaker 3: slightly cooperated with the government. I could have ruined many
Speaker 3: careers in lives, and I could have hurt many law
Speaker 3: enforcement personnel employees, even judges. But I would have dishonored
Speaker 3: myself by doing so. I remember them telling the court
Speaker 3: that they disagreed with my form of honor, but respected it.
Speaker 2: So he only likes to brag for little chits of like, hey,
Speaker 2: you know, cool I am. But when it comes down
Speaker 2: to like being able to free himself from anything, that's
Speaker 2: when the America.
Speaker 3: Kemes yeah, but no the owners, Yeah, he firm, he
Speaker 3: held firm. So May of two thousand and eight, he's
Speaker 3: convicted on seventy six counts of wire tapping, racketeering, and
Speaker 3: other charges. It took the judge an hour to read
Speaker 3: the full verdict. Oh wow, he gets sentenced to fifteen
Speaker 3: years in prison.
Speaker 2: That's all.
Speaker 3: He Also he had to forfeit more than two million
Speaker 3: dollars that he made from his wire tapping work. Michael Ovitz,
Speaker 3: Brad Gray, Bert Fields, all of the other Hollywood elite
Speaker 3: in his orbit. They all escaped charges or implications. Of course,
Speaker 3: many thought the trial would implicate, you know, all of
Speaker 3: these elite but it never did.
Speaker 2: They can I'll say, I'd never unless they have a
Speaker 2: tape of him saying I'll do this for you, and
Speaker 2: then they're lawyer. A lot of them are lawyers. They're
Speaker 2: not going to let somebody.
Speaker 3: Say that out exactly exactly. So there were some who
Speaker 3: did get in trouble for their work with Pelicano.
Speaker 2: Non lawyers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a former phone company worker was found guilty of racketeering, conspiracy,
Speaker 3: and wire tapping, but was acquitted of four of nine
Speaker 3: of the wire tapping accounts. Remember Kevin Kachikian, Yes, hell Yeah,
Speaker 3: developed tell Us luth. He was convicted of possessing a
Speaker 3: wire tapping device and conspiracy to wire tap, but he
Speaker 3: got acquitted of nine counts of wire tapping. Abner Nachierri
Speaker 3: he was charged with listening to and translating a business
Speaker 3: adversaries in intercepted calls. He was convicted of aiding and
Speaker 3: abtting wire tapping. Mark Arnison, that LAPD sergeant who would
Speaker 3: run the place the Feds found almost one hundred times
Speaker 3: when Pelicano and Arnison accessed confidential law enforcement records, including
Speaker 3: FBI's National Crime Information Center database. So they did this
Speaker 3: to get intel about targets including Gary Shanling, Kevin Neeland,
Speaker 3: dozens of others. Director John McTiernan Diehard huntfhredic to October
Speaker 3: he was caught lying to FBI agents about having had
Speaker 3: Pelicano wiretap Producer Charles Roven who did Three Kings Batman Begins.
Speaker 3: He was later charged with two counts of making false
Speaker 3: statements to federal agents.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 3: One count of perjury for a statement to a federal
Speaker 3: judge while seeking to withdraw his plea, and he got
Speaker 3: a year in prison.
Speaker 2: I'm telling you.
Speaker 3: A couple days after the initial indictment, Pelicano and Terry Christiansen,
Speaker 3: a Hollywood lawyer, they were each indicted on two new
Speaker 3: counts of conspiracy and wiretapping. Christiansen pleaded not guilty. So
Speaker 3: that's one lawyer who went down. December two thousand and eight,
Speaker 3: The La Times reported that Mark Rossini, quote, a veteran
Speaker 3: FBI agent, has been accused of illegally accessing computers at
Speaker 3: bureau headquarters in Washington, d C. And what prosecutors suspect
Speaker 3: was a failed bid to help Hollywood private eye Anthony
Speaker 3: Pelicano defend himself against federal racketeering and wire tapping charges.
Speaker 3: So he's accused of this and then turns around and yeah.
Speaker 2: And does it. And then this guy's like, I'll take
Speaker 2: that money.
Speaker 3: When he did those searches, the Rossini he was dating
Speaker 3: actress Linda Fiorentino. Get out, I will not Fiorentino friend
Speaker 3: of Pelicano.
Speaker 2: Of course I hear.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So apparently she told Rossini quote, she was researching
Speaker 3: a script about an LA wiretapper extraordinaire Anthony Pelicano and
Speaker 3: needed to see the documents exactly.
Speaker 2: I was doing research exactly.
Speaker 3: So Rossini he pleads guilty to five misdemeanor counts of
Speaker 3: unauthorized FBI computer access, and he admitted to quote conducting
Speaker 3: more than forty unauthorized searches of the Bureau's automated case
Speaker 3: support system, which contains confidential and sensitive information related to
Speaker 3: ongoing and historic cases investigated by the FBI. Many of
Speaker 3: the searches related to the criminal case against Pelicano, who
Speaker 3: was tried and convicted earlier in Los Angeles. Yeah, so Rossini,
Speaker 3: he gets sentenced to a year probation. Yeah, given a
Speaker 3: five thousand dollars fine.
Speaker 2: I thought he's gonna get like one to three.
Speaker 3: They're like, he's love sick, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: He also loves He had to resign, wouldn't you.
Speaker 3: He had to resign from the FBI. In prison, Pelicano wrote,
Speaker 3: Haikus did crosswords, so like at this point, wrote Haikus
Speaker 3: and did crosswords. He's me. In college, he played chess,
Speaker 3: he read two thousand books. Okay, it's still me. And
Speaker 3: then he did high level geometry problems, so that's you.
Speaker 2: Okay, he's got one of me. Mostly tell me, he.
Speaker 3: Said, quote, I don't make any friends. I'm absolutely unsociable.
Speaker 3: You have to understand there are guys here who are
Speaker 3: looking for ways to get information, to get their sentences
Speaker 3: reduced and all that. There's always a guy who will
Speaker 3: ask me a question that will lead to another question.
Speaker 3: So I just don't answer people. I keep to myself.
Speaker 2: Wow, and he made it through.
Speaker 3: Yeah. He was released on his seventy fifth birthday, March
Speaker 3: twenty second, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: I guess he was in such an old head that
Speaker 2: they just let.
Speaker 3: Him set to the side.
Speaker 2: In twenty eighteen, he's hanging out on the chapel doing geometry.
Speaker 3: Exactly twenty eighteen, he told the Hollywood Reporter, quote, the
Speaker 3: government claimed that I compromised the judicial system, and I did.
Speaker 3: I was off in the court of last resort for
Speaker 3: many people. People and not just famous ones. Didn't pay
Speaker 3: me all that money just to hear stories about how
Speaker 3: I had failed to get things done.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: I always kept my word and I did everything I could, good,
Speaker 3: bad or indifferent to get the job done. And I
Speaker 3: was successful.
Speaker 2: Now can you imagine the good at his job Anthony
Speaker 2: pelicannor who's out there right now doing all the same
Speaker 2: stuff for all this people. So we aren't going to
Speaker 2: hear about it because exactly they aren't telling around going hey,
Speaker 2: I'm a merit dem every.
Speaker 3: Joker we have on this podcast, there's got to be
Speaker 3: another who we don't find out about. Yes, so he
Speaker 3: gets out. He has lost his PI license for good,
Speaker 3: No worries. He's still quote negotiated for friends. Twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: Ron City experts Ron Mayer, the vice chairman of NBC Universal,
Speaker 3: asked him to represent producer Joel Silver in a negotiation
Speaker 3: with Canadian billionaire and businessman Darryl Kate's. Okay, Pelican, he
Speaker 3: got power of attorney to act on Silver's behalf for
Speaker 3: these negotiations.
Speaker 2: Got power of attorney for Joel.
Speaker 3: Silver, limited power to sole.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Joel Silver trusted him a power of attorney the
Speaker 2: man who defended himself in court and.
Speaker 3: Pelicana wouldn't say how he settled the argument. But quote,
Speaker 3: folks in the media call me a fixer. So that's
Speaker 3: a term you could use. I'm legally allowed to do that.
Speaker 2: I'm a legal fixer, right so, and my buddy Lougal
Speaker 2: slugger At he said.
Speaker 3: Quote people like to call me a fixer. The term
Speaker 3: I use is negotiator. I negotiate on behalf of clients.
Speaker 3: Am I doing anything illegal?
Speaker 2: No? I am not. Ah see, I like to call
Speaker 2: myself a facilitator.
Speaker 3: He settled the Silver Kates thing, but then August of
Speaker 3: twenty two, Kate's hired him, apparently impressed with his fixing
Speaker 3: skills just by being amazed. So Kate's had been accused
Speaker 3: of paying seventy five thousand dollars for sex with a
Speaker 3: seventeen year old ballet dancer, Oh Jesus. Kate said that
Speaker 3: they didn't have sex, and that he paid her fifty
Speaker 3: thousand dollars for a proposed film project and then anyway,
Speaker 3: she was eight when he met her.
Speaker 2: Sir, Yeah, sir.
Speaker 3: The allegations are dismissed in court, but Pelicano was able
Speaker 3: to get them dismissed quote with prejudice so they wouldn't
Speaker 3: come up later.
Speaker 2: Alec Baldwin, Alec AaB I have personal tized to him.
Speaker 3: Researcher Marissa described him as quote the ultimate sycophant, which
Speaker 3: is so spot on. That's a really good call, Yeah, Baldwin.
Speaker 3: He interviewed Pelicano for his podcast. Here's the thing. Okay,
Speaker 3: here's Baldwin kissing up to Pelicano. Quote. I do believe
Speaker 3: from the research I've done, you're obviously a very smart guy.
Speaker 3: You're a very tough guy. You're a guy with a
Speaker 3: lot of principles. You went through hell because of your principles.
Speaker 3: But when you really tortured yourself in service of your principles.
Speaker 2: You would one percent two hundred percent have hired him
Speaker 2: and then said I want to hear the legal stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly, And then right now he's just saying, don't
Speaker 3: ever come at me with Pelicano told Alec Baldwin quote
Speaker 3: to me, the most important thing in my life was
Speaker 3: honor and my word. It still is today because they
Speaker 3: took everything away and that's what I've got left, and
Speaker 3: that's all I really cherish. When I had a client,
Speaker 3: they became a member of my family, and nobody with
Speaker 3: my family.
Speaker 2: Certain none of your family talks to you.
Speaker 3: Well, apparently money buys entry into the family.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's how it works.
Speaker 3: So what's your ridiculous takeaways? Aaron? Thanks for asking.
Speaker 2: These these rental families. I just do not trust them.
Speaker 2: I know, either you're talking about the real mafia or
Speaker 2: just the Pelicano mafia. If I'm buying my way into
Speaker 2: a family, I don't know. I mean, money spends so quick.
Speaker 2: Exactly what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 3: Losing exactly what yours was?
Speaker 2: Oh nice, look at that symmetry.
Speaker 3: That's all I have for today. You can find us
Speaker 3: online at ridiculous crime dot com. We're also at ridiculous
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