Speaker 1: Content warning. This episode contains talk of addiction. If you
Speaker 1: were someone you know is struggling with addiction, there are
Speaker 1: resources in our show notes for today's episode. This episode
Speaker 1: will feature legal declarations given by Sarah and Charles Warren.
Speaker 1: The voice of Sarah is read by Kat Protano and
Speaker 1: the voice of Charles is read by Dylan Saunders.
Speaker 2: I had struggled with drug and alcohol use since I
Speaker 2: was like younger, and I just, you know, I was
Speaker 2: really lost. We moved up to California and I had
Speaker 2: started using math.
Speaker 3: In my head. Just really wasn't screw down street.
Speaker 1: The first time I speak with Sarah Warren, she's in
Speaker 1: the car during an outing from rehab with her father Paul.
Speaker 1: He calls and puts Sarah on speaker. I asked her
Speaker 1: to start at the beginning.
Speaker 2: I think because of my drug use and everything, Like,
Speaker 2: our family was fighting a lot and I just wanted
Speaker 2: I wanted out, and I thought running away would somehow
Speaker 2: fix it. I think I was just really kind of
Speaker 2: spiteful at the time, and I kind of wanted to, like,
Speaker 2: you know, like fuck you to my parents. I'm going
Speaker 2: to like do something really crazy, and I just like
Speaker 2: got a lot more than.
Speaker 1: I bargained for, and there was a lot Sarah didn't
Speaker 1: bargain for, especially once she got involved with Carmen Puliafido,
Speaker 1: the dean of the medical school at USC. That relationship
Speaker 1: led to a cycle of drugs and rehab that had
Speaker 1: no end in sight. But now she's decided to talk
Speaker 1: on the record, so maybe there is a way out
Speaker 1: for her after all. My name is Paul Pringle and
Speaker 1: this is Fallen Angels. This is a story that started
Speaker 1: in a hotel room in Pasadena and it ends with
Speaker 1: the undoing of some of the most powerful people in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. It's about influence and money and the way
Speaker 1: they can eat away at people and make them look
Speaker 1: past things they know are very, very wrong. This is
Speaker 1: episode six, Sarah's story.
Speaker 2: I met Carmen Puliafido working as a prostitute. I had
Speaker 2: like a lady pimp at the time, who connected us
Speaker 2: through a website called Backpage that I was.
Speaker 3: Not aware I was even on.
Speaker 2: She had set up a profile and he had his
Speaker 2: own profile on that site, found mine and contacted who he.
Speaker 3: Thought was me, but it was really this woman.
Speaker 2: And then he came to a hotel room out in
Speaker 2: Branchio Cucamonga and met me there for the first time.
Speaker 2: That first night, we used meth together, we had sex.
Speaker 2: I got his number that night. I could tell he
Speaker 2: had money because he just didn't like hesitate to give
Speaker 2: me more when I asked for it, and usually that
Speaker 2: was something that people would argue about. So from then
Speaker 2: on he would contact me, not that lady, to come
Speaker 2: see and it just escalated really like quickly to where
Speaker 2: you know, he would take me out to dinner and
Speaker 2: pay me like money to go out to dinner with him. Afterwards,
Speaker 2: they always included like sex and meth. He was always
Speaker 2: excited to like try new drugs or bring his own drugs.
Speaker 2: So at first he would pay me, and then after
Speaker 2: he would start buying me like laptops and like just
Speaker 2: like larger gifts. I would kind of just spend time
Speaker 2: with him because he was giving me like so much.
Speaker 3: There came a time where he just.
Speaker 2: He has such a big personality that it really turned
Speaker 2: me off and I had decided that I wasn't going
Speaker 2: to see him, and I stopped seeing for about two weeks.
Speaker 1: But then she found herself in a dangerous situation. A
Speaker 1: man she met online invited her to fly to Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 1: but when she met him there, he frightened her. She
Speaker 1: didn't have the money to get home, and she was
Speaker 1: not going to call her parents for help.
Speaker 2: I was desperate at the time, you know, and I
Speaker 2: just felt really unsafe at the situation, Like the man
Speaker 2: was not who he said he was, and like kind
Speaker 2: of turned violent, and I didn't know who to turn to.
Speaker 2: And I just I knew Carmen would be that he
Speaker 2: could have to fly me back out, and I knew
Speaker 2: he would be interested, and so I called him and
Speaker 2: he flew me back out to California and ended up
Speaker 2: putting me in the Hilton for a couple of months
Speaker 2: and then later.
Speaker 3: Helping me get an apartment.
Speaker 1: Juliafido paid Sarah's rent, he bought her clothes, paid for trips,
Speaker 1: and he bought her drugs.
Speaker 2: Like if he brought me like a large supply of heroin,
Speaker 2: you know, that was like six hundreds, seven hundred dollars,
Speaker 2: But if he got like d that's like more expensive.
Speaker 2: Or if he brought like a stash of roxies, those
Speaker 2: are really expensive.
Speaker 1: Roxies is a street name for a brand of voxy codone.
Speaker 1: Pulliafido doesn't seem concerned about the money. He has a
Speaker 1: surgery practice, not to mention his job as dean of
Speaker 1: the medical school. But he didn't let either of those
Speaker 1: get in the way of a good time.
Speaker 2: His office was in like Beverly Hills, when he would
Speaker 2: most of the time come by after, but sometimes before.
Speaker 2: I remember one time that he was really late and
Speaker 2: he was telling me about how like a doctor like
Speaker 2: him always makes his patience wait at least four hours.
Speaker 2: So he was late to seeing a patient because he
Speaker 2: was getting high.
Speaker 1: And well, the Fido didn't seem that concerned about keeping
Speaker 1: his two lives all that separate. He would sometimes bring
Speaker 1: Sarah to the Kech campus.
Speaker 2: There were times he would set up doctor's appointments for
Speaker 2: me at USC. He just introduced me to all at first.
Speaker 2: He always says his niece, and I know it's like surprise,
Speaker 2: like this nineteen year old niece or twenty year old
Speaker 2: I've had we'se drugs like in the car. We were
Speaker 2: definitely both high. One time, I think it was like
Speaker 2: three am, and we like went to his office and
Speaker 2: had a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: I mean like used.
Speaker 2: Drugs in his office and raided the T shirts and stuff, uh, methamphetamines, ecstasy, GHB,
Speaker 2: sometimes ketamine, sometimes like MDMA. Sometimes I would always use heroin,
Speaker 2: and then later on he started using heroin too, pretty
Speaker 2: much anything.
Speaker 1: And Sarah confirms what her mother had told me about
Speaker 1: pulling your FEEDO delivering drugs to her while she was
Speaker 1: in rehab.
Speaker 2: One rehab I actually got kicked out of because he
Speaker 2: later came back and brought me champagne and like dildo's
Speaker 2: and like xanax bars, and then like four am the
Speaker 2: next morning he brought like math and a torch. I
Speaker 2: think if I, like, had I not been kicked out
Speaker 2: of Creative Care, I probably would have gotten sober sooner.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: However, like he found me like I was a prostitute
Speaker 2: just having sex with people for money. So in a
Speaker 2: way he kind of like took me out of that
Speaker 2: CD world and like put me into his own kind.
Speaker 1: These stories of pull your FEETO enabling a recovering addict
Speaker 1: to relapse, these are the details that should force our
Speaker 1: editors to act. I asked Sarah to tell me what
Speaker 1: happened at the hotel Constance, the incident that was my
Speaker 1: starting point for this story.
Speaker 2: So we were at the Hotel Constance, and we I
Speaker 2: had stayed there the night prior, you know, using like
Speaker 2: meth and heroin, and I also had.
Speaker 3: Like taken a drug called GHB.
Speaker 2: It was me and Carmen, and the night before there
Speaker 2: was like another mail escort.
Speaker 1: There, a male escort for Sarah to have sex with
Speaker 1: so Puliafido could watch. According to Sarah, he's an avid voyeur.
Speaker 3: I just took way too much.
Speaker 2: He was on like like escort websites, like looking at
Speaker 2: male escorts to come in for us, and I was
Speaker 2: like getting ready. I was putting on makeup, and like
Speaker 2: right before I overdosed, he was just taking a lot
Speaker 2: of photos of me. I even have those photos now,
Speaker 2: and I can see in the photos that I was
Speaker 2: like starting to just heavily perspire, and then right before
Speaker 2: I overdosed, he was like trying to have sex with me.
Speaker 2: And then I think I just like passed out, and
Speaker 2: that's when I think he might have like left me
Speaker 2: alone for a while. But then we had to we
Speaker 2: had to move hotel rooms because somebody wanted that room,
Speaker 2: and that's when they found out.
Speaker 1: The fact that they had to move hotel rooms may
Speaker 1: have saved Sarah's life if they've been able to stay
Speaker 1: in the room. She thinks Pulliofido, a practicing doctor, would
Speaker 1: have let her sleep off her overdose and she may
Speaker 1: never have woken up again. Sarah also tells me that
Speaker 1: Pulliofido had made sure that the cops didn't find everything
Speaker 1: they had in the room.
Speaker 2: I think the police found the drugs, well, they just
Speaker 2: found the math because Carmen, I guess, was able to
Speaker 2: hide the heroine, the bongs, some of the math, and
Speaker 2: the jeep. He hid it in the stairwell like a
Speaker 2: couple floors down in the stairwell, and when we went
Speaker 2: back to the hotel, we went got it.
Speaker 1: Sarah and Carmen Pullliofido had gone back to the hotel.
Speaker 1: That's news to me. Devon Khan, the whistleblower who worked
Speaker 1: at the hotel Constance and who had first told me
Speaker 1: about what happened there, didn't have that detail. Sarah woke
Speaker 1: up six hours after her overdoes in the hospital. That
Speaker 1: same night, she and Puliofido returned to the hotel to
Speaker 1: continue their party in another room. It says something about
Speaker 1: pullio Fido's sense of his own invulnerability, even though the
Speaker 1: police had questioned him. He wasn't worried about returning to
Speaker 1: the scene, and it gives you a feeling for his
Speaker 1: recklessness as well. Sarah had o deed. But here they
Speaker 1: were again doing drugs.
Speaker 3: After I woke up.
Speaker 2: I was probably only in the hospital for like thirty minutes.
Speaker 2: They did a walk test and then they released me.
Speaker 2: I called Carmen and he came and picked me up,
Speaker 2: and we went back to the hotel and got another room,
Speaker 2: and when got the drugs out of the stairwell, he
Speaker 2: was just so proud of himself.
Speaker 1: Sarah tells me that this is not the only time
Speaker 1: she ended up in the hospital after doing drugs given
Speaker 1: to her by Six months later, they're at the Balboa
Speaker 1: Bay Resort, a fancy waterfront hotel in Newport Beach.
Speaker 2: He gave me all the drugs. He watched me use them,
Speaker 2: but then he left when I started spinning out. So
Speaker 2: this is like a meth overdose, or like technically it
Speaker 2: was like a meth psychosis, So like it's not an overdose,
Speaker 2: like you fall asleep, like I went insane, and I
Speaker 2: was on the roof yelling. I was talking with like
Speaker 2: aliens and demons, and the world was ending, and I
Speaker 2: was like very violent.
Speaker 1: The hotel staff founder on the roof screaming. They called
Speaker 1: the cops, who came with paramedics.
Speaker 2: The police came and I was trying to fight them
Speaker 2: and they had to.
Speaker 3: Sit a me.
Speaker 1: Sarah tells me there was someone else there that day,
Speaker 1: her sometimes boyfriend, a Huntington Beach DJ named Don Stokes.
Speaker 1: Stokes is seventeen years older than Sarah and, like her,
Speaker 1: struggling to beat a drug addiction. I ask Mary Anne
Speaker 1: and Paul Warren if they'll put me in touch with him,
Speaker 1: and they do. Don Stokes and I meet for lunch
Speaker 1: at a family restaurant in Huntington Beach. So when did
Speaker 1: you first start.
Speaker 4: To struggle with.
Speaker 1: Addiction?
Speaker 5: I believe it was somewhere in my mid twenties.
Speaker 6: I thought, in my eyes, like a cup of coffee
Speaker 6: in the morning, to some people, some folks can't function
Speaker 6: without that first cup of coffee. I would wake up,
Speaker 6: do a small amount of math, and continue onward.
Speaker 7: With my day.
Speaker 1: And so, how did you meet Sarah.
Speaker 5: At one of my shows?
Speaker 6: I showed up and she was living in a complex
Speaker 6: next door, and we started speaking and she says, you're
Speaker 6: a cowboy, Yes, you're honest, Yes you're self employed. Yes,
Speaker 6: these are not three traits that apparently women find together nowadays,
Speaker 6: and she couldn't believe it. I saw hers just learning
Speaker 6: and exploring life and being fun loving again. She was
Speaker 6: very young. I was in silver livings drugs. I was
Speaker 6: not using drugs.
Speaker 1: Don was in a solber living program in Orange County
Speaker 1: after getting arrested for drugs. It was a condition of
Speaker 1: his parole. But he didn't stay for long after meeting
Speaker 1: Sarah Warren because along with Sarah came Carmen Puliofido.
Speaker 6: I first met Carmen three four days later after I
Speaker 6: met Sarah. She introduced him to me and was very
Speaker 6: elusive regarding who he was.
Speaker 5: He was a friend, is what I was told.
Speaker 6: I had no idea that he was supplementing her lifestyle
Speaker 6: by taking care of the rant, by taking care of
Speaker 6: a number of superfluous amenities, I'll call it less amenities.
Speaker 1: Does that include the drugs.
Speaker 6: The drugs were just present, whether they came from her,
Speaker 6: whether they came from him, whether I brought something.
Speaker 5: To the table, because I had.
Speaker 6: Broken my own promise to myself at that point in
Speaker 6: time and started dabbling once again, even behind the backs
Speaker 6: of those that trusted me from the Sober Living.
Speaker 1: At first, Puliafido tried to get rid of the new guy.
Speaker 1: He threatened to cut off Sarah's drugs and rent money
Speaker 1: if he didn't dumped on Stokes, but Sarah ignored him,
Speaker 1: so Pulliofido changed course, inviting don to join them for
Speaker 1: their parties, like the one at the ball Bola Bay
Speaker 1: Resort that ended with Sarah on the roof.
Speaker 6: I had been told that Sarah was going to be
Speaker 6: going into a treatment program of some type, and the
Speaker 6: date came where she was going to be going in.
Speaker 6: She said, okay, I'm going to be staying down in Newport.
Speaker 6: We're going to go get a hotel for a week,
Speaker 6: and you're welcome to come down. I've asked Carmen and
Speaker 6: he said okay. So I informed the management at Sober
Speaker 6: Living that I was going to be staying elsewhere for
Speaker 6: the night and got a haul passed basically for the day,
Speaker 6: and rode down there in aneuver. When I arrived at
Speaker 6: the Balbo Bay Club, I was blown away. Beautiful place,
Speaker 6: very upscale. Went to the room and there was a
Speaker 6: huge water pipe. We're talking at least three foot tall,
Speaker 6: handblown glass, and I'd never seen one with an adapter
Speaker 6: to smoke methomphetamines through.
Speaker 5: I got very, very high, very quick.
Speaker 6: At which point in time, Sarah starts getting louder and louder,
Speaker 6: and I said, I'm on probation at this juncture, Okay,
Speaker 6: I need you to rain it in a bit, otherwise
Speaker 6: I'm going to have to leave because you're causing a disturbance.
Speaker 6: And she's laughing uncontrollably and just slipping further and further
Speaker 6: into this different person.
Speaker 5: She wasn't talking to me anymore.
Speaker 6: She was talking to herself, to other voices in her head.
Speaker 6: She starts yelling about how much meth is in the room.
Speaker 6: I said, I cannot be here for this. I got up,
Speaker 6: put my clothes on, and headed out the door, called
Speaker 6: for a ride, and stood on the corner of PCHM
Speaker 6: and the street at Balboa waiting for my ride for.
Speaker 5: Well over twenty five thirty minutes.
Speaker 6: In that span, I saw no less than a half
Speaker 6: dozen police units roll in to take Sarah inticustody as
Speaker 6: she was on the balcony and running through the hotel
Speaker 6: wearing nothing but a bathrobe.
Speaker 5: Screaming about all the method fetamines.
Speaker 6: In the room that night, going back to the sober
Speaker 6: living that I had told him I was going to
Speaker 6: be staying elsewhere, climbing onto the top rack of a
Speaker 6: bunk bed and being spun out like nobody's business.
Speaker 5: Obviously, I couldn't.
Speaker 6: Sleep, but to lay there shaking and going, my God,
Speaker 6: I hope she's okay. I was very concerned for her health,
Speaker 6: for her mental well being, for her legal wellbeing as
Speaker 6: well in that scenario, because again she was being taken
Speaker 6: into custody.
Speaker 5: She was released the next day. Finally I get her
Speaker 5: on the phone.
Speaker 6: She said, I'm really truly sorry about putting you in
Speaker 6: that scenario myself. Had I been there when the police arrived,
Speaker 6: I would have gone to prison for six years because
Speaker 6: I was on probation. I was being kicked out of
Speaker 6: this sober living because I obviously tested dirty after that night.
Speaker 6: So I stayed for a few days in Sarah's old
Speaker 6: apartment and then literally packed up a couple bags and
Speaker 6: headed to the Phoenix House. In fact, I was informed
Speaker 6: while I was there, like Carmen was paying for my
Speaker 6: storage and offered to do so. Just said as long
Speaker 6: as you're pursuing your sobriety. I will help continue pay
Speaker 6: for the storage unit, and I know that that unit
Speaker 6: was not cheap. He spent several thousand dollars just to
Speaker 6: make sure that my personal belongings were there.
Speaker 1: Don saw this as pulledio Fido doing him a favor,
Speaker 1: but I'm not so sure. Don has seen a lot
Speaker 1: and Nadan had a lot to lose. Don talked paying
Speaker 1: for a storage and it would be a small price
Speaker 1: to pay for Don stokes silence.
Speaker 3: I was facing jail time.
Speaker 2: And I needed to get this community service or this
Speaker 2: community labor done. So I broke it off as much
Speaker 2: like fun, and I use fun very loosely as everything was.
Speaker 2: Having him like touched me and having to be intimate
Speaker 2: with him was by far the hardest aspect of all
Speaker 2: this because I'm not attracted to him, you know, And
Speaker 2: you know, I loved that lifestyle, but I also really
Speaker 2: like hated it because it felt like he was really
Speaker 2: obsessed with me and he really couldn't understand why I
Speaker 2: wanted like other people.
Speaker 3: And not him.
Speaker 2: Right before I went into rehab for this final time,
Speaker 2: we were talking about looking at houses and stuff.
Speaker 3: I knew that I just was unhappy, and I knew
Speaker 3: he had to get out of my life for me
Speaker 3: to get sober. I went into.
Speaker 2: Detox November ninth of twenty sixteen, and that's the last.
Speaker 3: Time I saw him. Well, I take that back.
Speaker 2: He came to my community labor one day and I
Speaker 2: saw him from afar. But I, like, you know, told
Speaker 2: my supervisor that, like, I do not want to see
Speaker 2: this man, and like you need to tell him to leave.
Speaker 1: Sarah's out of rehab almost five months sober and wants
Speaker 1: to tell her story, and she encourages her teenage brother
Speaker 1: to talk to me too. I heard a little about
Speaker 1: Puliafido's involvement with Charles Warren from his mother, Mary Anne,
Speaker 1: but Charles has a lot more to say. Again. These
Speaker 1: are his words from an official transcript read by an actor.
Speaker 8: My initial encounter with doctor Carmen Puliaffido would be about
Speaker 8: the age, at approximately the age seventeen. My sister had
Speaker 8: invited me over to one of the many apartments that
Speaker 8: she had gotten over the course of time that she
Speaker 8: had spent with him.
Speaker 7: And he, you know, he was just surprising character.
Speaker 8: He is a sixty five year old guy that partied
Speaker 8: like harder than I had ever seen anybody my age party.
Speaker 8: He took methamphetamine to a whole another level. He would
Speaker 8: go to liquor stores and bring me with him buy
Speaker 8: kegs of beer.
Speaker 7: My first encounter was when he was providing me with.
Speaker 8: Nitrous oxide and other substances such as marijuana xanax.
Speaker 7: There was ecstasy involved, and there was also heroin.
Speaker 1: Again, Polifido didn't bother to keep the two sides of
Speaker 1: his life apart. He would sometimes be partying with seventeen
Speaker 1: year old Charles Warren, what would still take work calls.
Speaker 8: He would answer calls and then he'd be like, all right,
Speaker 8: this girl really wants to suck my dick. Be quiet,
Speaker 8: so I'm going to answer this. And I went to
Speaker 8: his office as well.
Speaker 9: I was taken down to the bookstore by his secretary,
Speaker 9: who was an Asian woman, and she seemed equally as
Speaker 9: scared of me as she seemed of Carmen, which really
Speaker 9: made me uncomfortable.
Speaker 7: Every time I saw him.
Speaker 8: If I was home alone at the house and I
Speaker 8: wanted something, I could call him up and he would
Speaker 8: send a package that's filled with alcohol.
Speaker 7: Even ecstasy at the time. If I was asking for.
Speaker 8: It, and definitely marijuana. He would give it to an
Speaker 8: uber driver and say it's important medical supplies or it's
Speaker 8: important school supplies that need to get there, immediately send
Speaker 8: it over from Pasadena to me. He had like a
Speaker 8: metal box that he would keep drugs in. There's a
Speaker 8: felt wining and he keeps his emergency dash of math
Speaker 8: under the felt lining. So you can go in there
Speaker 8: with a knife and prop up the felt lining and
Speaker 8: get under there, and there will be meth under there.
Speaker 8: It's guaranteed.
Speaker 1: What I hear from Charles Ward makes for the most
Speaker 1: damning allegations against Pulliafido yet, since Charles was a minor
Speaker 1: when Pulliafido first gave him drugs. Devon Maharaj, the editor
Speaker 1: in chief of the La Times, had told me he
Speaker 1: was quote open to more reporting when he killed the
Speaker 1: first Pulliafido story. I didn't believe that, but either way,
Speaker 1: this is more reporting. Now. The team and I go
Speaker 1: to work to get this story into the paper. Reporter
Speaker 1: Harriet Ryan writes a draft that includes this explosive new material.
Speaker 1: We submit through revised draft to California editor Shelby Grad
Speaker 1: who agrees it's ready for the top editors. He sends
Speaker 1: it on to the number two editor at the paper,
Speaker 1: Mark Duvason. I also said Mark an email saying we
Speaker 1: need to get this published as soon as possible. My
Speaker 1: sense of urgency isn't just because it's taken near a
Speaker 1: year to get to this point. I've talked to two
Speaker 1: medical ethicists who told me that The Times has an
Speaker 1: obligation to disclose the information about pulldia Feedo promptly because
Speaker 1: he's still treating people. Sarah Warren told me he would
Speaker 1: see patients while he was high. Mark writes back, quote
Speaker 1: the new and much improved story was given to me
Speaker 1: a few days ago. I read it last night, We'll
Speaker 1: read it again tonight, and we'll follow up with any questions.
Speaker 1: Shelby Grad's edits are straightforward, but Mark keeps dithering, just.
Speaker 10: As sort of a sort of king pong back and
Speaker 10: forth of adding detailed, adding explanations, taking some things out
Speaker 10: that they thought, you know, we might not need restructuring
Speaker 10: here and there. It was a very contentious process.
Speaker 1: Reporter Sarah Pargini.
Speaker 10: Any journalist, any reporter or editor could tell you that
Speaker 10: at times, especially when it comes to an investigation, the
Speaker 10: editing process isn't always fun, but it was the first
Speaker 10: time in my experience where.
Speaker 3: It wasn't just.
Speaker 10: The sort of standard back and forth editing process of
Speaker 10: like maybe you get a little bit angry at the editor,
Speaker 10: or the editor might think like you are not seeing
Speaker 10: clearly on something, and you sort of have a little
Speaker 10: bit of a bicker about that. It was just an
Speaker 10: actually contentious process that was upsetting.
Speaker 1: Shelby tells us his story is at the final stage
Speaker 1: of lawyering for publication, but days pass with still no
Speaker 1: word from Shelby's boss Mark. I'm so frustrated that I
Speaker 1: tell the Times legal counsel that if the story is
Speaker 1: killed again, I'll complain to HR. Not long after that,
Speaker 1: Mark tells me to come to his office. I've never
Speaker 1: seen him so angry. He slaps his desk and jabs
Speaker 1: his fingers at me. The newsroom handles its own problems,
Speaker 1: he says, we do not involve HR. It seems like
Speaker 1: for Mark, I've crossed the line. He takes the story
Speaker 1: away from Shelby, who's been working with us for months,
Speaker 1: and gives it to the paper's new investigations editor, Matt Doig,
Speaker 1: who was just recently hired. Reporter Matt Hamilton.
Speaker 11: Suddenly it's being kind of diverted to this other editor
Speaker 11: who has just arrived, has no idea how we've gotten
Speaker 11: to this point, and it felt like a delay tactic. Frankly,
Speaker 11: the edits came back in increments, and there were edits,
Speaker 11: there were questions, there were requests to tighten certain sentences
Speaker 11: or cut or move, but we address those really quickly.
Speaker 11: I mean almost within hours of getting the edits. We
Speaker 11: immediately turned it around and it's like back into that
Speaker 11: very slow waiting period.
Speaker 1: Reporter Adam Lmar is dumbfounded by this new editor's judgments
Speaker 1: about the story.
Speaker 4: He took the draft and he basically threw it out
Speaker 4: and suggested his own draft that he thought would be
Speaker 4: better to publish. And we looked at it and we
Speaker 4: just thought it was not publishable, that it wasn't up
Speaker 4: to the standards of the La Times. There were certain
Speaker 4: things that were that just right off the bat didn't
Speaker 4: make sense. He wanted to take Sarah Warren off the record.
Speaker 4: Sarah Warren was on the record, cooperative source, our most
Speaker 4: important source in the story. He wanted to take her
Speaker 4: off the record because well, one day she might be
Speaker 4: thirty five and want to get a real job, and
Speaker 4: this will come back to haunt her. With his rationale,
Speaker 4: I've never really encountered that before where an editor says,
Speaker 4: let's take a main cooperating source who has no problem
Speaker 4: being on the record. Let's take that person and put
Speaker 4: them off the record. That was just flabbergasting to me.
Speaker 4: Another thing was he tried to refer to Pullifido as
Speaker 4: somebody who's not a public figure. There was a sentence
Speaker 4: in there that said something like, you know, The Times
Speaker 4: doesn't normally write about people who are not public figures
Speaker 4: or your government officials as far as like their private lives.
Speaker 4: And it was one of those things where it's like, Wow,
Speaker 4: you're kind of like giving Pulifido his own legal defense here.
Speaker 4: You're just opening it up for it when.
Speaker 11: You have this kind of bulletproof, well reported story that
Speaker 11: has taken a lot of resources sitting in the queue
Speaker 11: where you're like, what the hell is going on? Step
Speaker 11: reading out the public health concerns, the public interest concerns
Speaker 11: of like, well, he's still seeing patients, Sarah one's still
Speaker 11: trying to deal with her drug addiction. The sources are
Speaker 11: pressing for progress, and it waits I can't convey how
Speaker 11: each day it goes unpublished intensifies the frustrations and takers
Speaker 11: of this team of people.
Speaker 1: The back and forth with Mark Duvison and editor Matt
Speaker 1: doy goes on for months. I noticed that the story
Speaker 1: won't run during the La Times Festival of Books, which
Speaker 1: is hosted by USC. It doesn't run during USC's May
Speaker 1: commencement ceremonies. I hear for my longtime confidential source at USC,
Speaker 1: a person I call Tommy Trojan. He tells me that
Speaker 1: there are rumblings among Nikias's lieutenants about an embarrassing story
Speaker 1: that might be coming, but not until after the end
Speaker 1: of the school year. How anyone at USC could know
Speaker 1: that is beyond me. My fear is that it's being
Speaker 1: leaked directly from the newsroom. We keep trying to address
Speaker 1: the edits to our draft that seem designed to downplay
Speaker 1: Pullafido's crimes or any hint of a cover up by USC.
Speaker 1: The section on USC's poaching of the Alzheimer's sure is
Speaker 1: cut in half are reported in two of Pullifeto's criminal
Speaker 1: associates is cut for no reason.
Speaker 4: So we kind of had to comb through this draft
Speaker 4: to see, well, what has been cut. There were a
Speaker 4: couple of key cuts that were like, Wow, we don't
Speaker 4: I don't think we can let this pass. One of
Speaker 4: them was the whistle blower. There was a whistle blower
Speaker 4: who had called the USC president's off.
Speaker 1: The whistleblower is Devon Cohn.
Speaker 4: He was cut from the draft, which was really disheartening
Speaker 4: because this is the only indication that we had that
Speaker 4: US soon knew that PULLI Fido was in the presence
Speaker 4: of a young woman who'd overdose, and I'm telling him
Speaker 4: that was being taken out, which was something that we
Speaker 4: couldn't really allow that to happen. We emailed Mark and
Speaker 4: we said we have some concerns about this draft in
Speaker 4: terms of holding USC accountable. We outlined maybe some other concerns,
Speaker 4: and we asked to have a meeting.
Speaker 1: The reporting team. Harriet, Sarah, Adam, Matt and me all
Speaker 1: agree that this is one cut too far. That Devon
Speaker 1: Cohn has to stay in the story. Harriet Ryan, we.
Speaker 12: All worked in a part of the La Times old
Speaker 12: newsroom that was called Baja. The newsrooms arranged like California,
Speaker 12: and so when you get far away from the city
Speaker 12: desk and the big offices, you get into Baja and
Speaker 12: then Cabo like way out in the in the end
Speaker 12: of the building, and so we all worked out there
Speaker 12: and so we could talk over our cubicles and stuff,
Speaker 12: but we were going down to meet with the big bosses.
Speaker 12: We would walk down this like long quarter that went
Speaker 12: past all of our colleagues to the big glass offices.
Speaker 12: People would watch you move and there's like five of us,
Speaker 12: and so it's like this huge group going down and
Speaker 12: like the eyes of the newsream are on you and
Speaker 12: they're just like, what's going on. So we go into
Speaker 12: Mark dubs Sun's office. It's glass on two sides view
Speaker 12: of a city desk. He's sitting behind his desk, and
Speaker 12: then there's Matt Day He's sitting in front of his desk.
Speaker 1: Adam l. Mark.
Speaker 4: We talk about the whistleblower and how he's being cut.
Speaker 4: Mark just kept saying, well, you don't have a second
Speaker 4: corroborating source. It was not This is really important fact
Speaker 4: to holding USC accountable in this story. This is an
Speaker 4: indication that USC knew what was going on. How do
Speaker 4: we beef this up or how do we make this
Speaker 4: even stronger? It was just not for me to cut it.
Speaker 4: You don't have a secondary source. We just we just
Speaker 4: need to get rid of it. And this was a
Speaker 4: very critical, uncomfortable truth in this story that USC potentially
Speaker 4: knew about Puliafido's conduct, and so to cut that was
Speaker 4: it just betrayed what I thought was our mission in journalism.
Speaker 4: And so they said cutting the whistleblowers as unethical. I don't,
Speaker 4: I can't stand by it.
Speaker 12: It just got more and more intense, to the point
Speaker 12: where I remember being told to stop shouting. Paul and
Speaker 12: I had had such scarring experiences with the management that
Speaker 12: we're just like we're ready to go, like we're ready
Speaker 12: to fight at any point because of what we've seen
Speaker 12: in the past. It was just clear like they were
Speaker 12: going to try to take this guy out, and like,
Speaker 12: you take him out, you're taking out the accountability of USC.
Speaker 12: We're writing about this guy because of who USC is,
Speaker 12: not because of who he is, and we're starting to
Speaker 12: grasp like they're going to try to just like gut
Speaker 12: the main point in the story. And then Mark says, guys, guys,
Speaker 12: whether this is it or not, this is already going
Speaker 12: to be the worst day of Max m Keys's career.
Speaker 4: It was a surreal moment. Why would do we care
Speaker 4: whether this is already going to be the worst day
Speaker 4: of Max nicky's' his life. What is the implication of
Speaker 4: that that we should ease up on USC because it's
Speaker 4: already going to be a bad day for them. Up
Speaker 4: to then and since then, I've never heard anyone say
Speaker 4: on an investigative story about a powerful institution, you know what, guys,
Speaker 4: this is already going to be the worst day of
Speaker 4: so and so politicians life. So let's just excise a
Speaker 4: couple of bad facts that they wouldn't like to be
Speaker 4: out there.
Speaker 1: Our investigation is filled with bad facts about Puliafido, about
Speaker 1: the leadership of USC. We have bad facts confirmed in
Speaker 1: court records, through videos and photos, in nine to one
Speaker 1: one recordings with witnesses, and on the record interviews. But
Speaker 1: it seems like our editors want to get rid of
Speaker 1: the one bad fact that looks the worst for USC.
Speaker 12: I have a sense of just like blood rushing in
Speaker 12: my ears, so so frustrated and I not knowing what
Speaker 12: I want to scream or burst into tears that this
Speaker 12: thing was happening again. When I think about the class
Speaker 12: on Marx Walls, I just picture it just sort of
Speaker 12: like pulse, like the rage and frustration in that room.
Speaker 3: It was a turning point.
Speaker 12: I just remember saying, Okay, if that's your decision, we
Speaker 12: need to go talk because we're gonna decide what we're
Speaker 12: going to do. And that's code for we're taking our
Speaker 12: names off the story. That's a huge deal because they're
Speaker 12: not going to run the story without our names.
Speaker 1: The meeting has left all of us more determined to
Speaker 1: restore Devon Khan to the story, determined to get the
Speaker 1: story into the paper.
Speaker 4: There was no way for the story not to be run.
Speaker 1: These bad facts have to see the light of day.
Speaker 1: Dave On Maharaj, Mark Duvson, and Matt Doig deny that
Speaker 1: they did anything wrong in their handling of the USC investigation,
Speaker 1: and they maintained that any negative betrayal of their actions
Speaker 1: is false. Next time on Fallen Angels, our fight to
Speaker 1: publish reaches a boiling point. At the LA Times, she
Speaker 1: was just like.
Speaker 3: Real aggressively, let's go, let's get to the bottom of this.
Speaker 12: And here was like a person power saying like, okay,
Speaker 12: that's not okay.
Speaker 3: Nobody should speak to you the way, but.
Speaker 1: Our sources are starting to lose faith at the time.
Speaker 7: Why hey man, I've given you everything I could possibly
Speaker 7: give you.
Speaker 3: What is it?
Speaker 1: And we discovered that Sarah Warren is not alone.
Speaker 3: Door was like, oh, this is my friend, Carmen.
Speaker 4: I mean, in a million years looking at this man,
Speaker 4: I would never have believed he was the dean of
Speaker 4: USC Medical.
Speaker 5: It's insane.
Speaker 2: My parents started contacting the police about what was going on.
Speaker 1: That's next time on Fallen Angels. Fallen Angels, The Story
Speaker 1: of California Corruption is a production of iHeart Podcasts in
Speaker 1: partnership with Best Case Studios. I'm Paul Pringle. This show
Speaker 1: is based on my book Bad City, Peril and Power
Speaker 1: in the City of Angels. Fallen Angels was written by
Speaker 1: Isabel Evans, Adam pink and Brent Katz. Isabel Evans is
Speaker 1: our producer. Brent Katz is co producer. Associate producers are
Speaker 1: Hannah Leebowitz, Lockhart and On Paho Locke. Executive producers are Me,
Speaker 1: Paul Pringle, Joe Piccarello, and Adam Pinkus for Best Case Studios.
Speaker 1: Original music is by James Newberry. This episode was edited
Speaker 1: by Max Michael Miller, with assistants from Daniel Turek and
Speaker 1: Nisha Venkat, additional editings, sound design and additional music by
Speaker 1: Dean White. The voice of Sarah is read by Cat
Speaker 1: Protano and the voice of Charles is read by Dylan Saunders.
Speaker 1: Harriet Ryan, Matt Hamilton, Sarah Parvini and Adam Olmaik are
Speaker 1: consulting producers. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Carl Catle.
Speaker 1: Follow and rate Fallen Angels wherever you get your podcasts