Speaker 1: I didn't understand what was taking so long, because he
Speaker 1: literally had all the information. So much time had passed.
Speaker 1: I washed my hands of the situation, felt like I
Speaker 1: had done everything I could do.
Speaker 2: Devon Khan had been my original source for the story
Speaker 2: about Carmen Puliafido, but the top betterers at the La
Speaker 2: Times cut him.
Speaker 3: From the story.
Speaker 2: The reporters Me, Harriet Ryan, Matt Hamilton, Sarah Parveni, and
Speaker 2: Adam Mawarack are furious. We're talking about keeping our bylines
Speaker 2: off the story, but that would just give the editors
Speaker 2: an excuse.
Speaker 3: Not to publish.
Speaker 2: Devin had told me from the start that he needed
Speaker 2: to remain anonymous. Now it seems like the editors are
Speaker 2: looking for any pretext to cut him. For one thing,
Speaker 2: they argue that I don't have a phone record to
Speaker 2: prove this person actually called the office of USC President
Speaker 2: Max Takias.
Speaker 3: I know I can get that record from.
Speaker 2: Devon within hours, but he's just about had enough.
Speaker 1: I'm really kind of getting kicked off with him, actually,
Speaker 1: because he's asking me questions that he's already asked me
Speaker 1: numerous times at the time, like, hey man, I've given
Speaker 1: you everything I could possibly give you what is this?
Speaker 2: Devon sends me the record of his six minute phone
Speaker 2: call to the office of Maxakias.
Speaker 3: This seals the deal.
Speaker 2: The editors who are foot dragging on the story, Davon Maharaj,
Speaker 2: Mark Duvason and Matt Dorig, they can't say we don't
Speaker 2: have overwhelming evidence to support the anonymous whistleblowers claims, but
Speaker 2: their delays continue. So I decide to do something I've
Speaker 2: never done in my forty years in journalism, something that
Speaker 2: will cause even more trouble than a secret reporting to you.
Speaker 2: I decide to go to HR. My name is Paul Pringle,
Speaker 2: and this is Fallen Angels. This is a story of
Speaker 2: an investigation that starts in a hotel room in Pasading
Speaker 2: to California and reaches all the way to the top
Speaker 2: of two of the most powerful institutions in the city
Speaker 2: of Los Angeles. This is episode seven, publication day. It's
Speaker 2: June twenty seventeen, more than a year since the incident
Speaker 2: at the hotel Constance, and four months since Davon Maharaj
Speaker 2: killed the story, and there are real stakes to more delays.
Speaker 2: The Warrens are afraid that Pulliofido could burst back into
Speaker 2: their lives at any moment and jeopardize Sarah's sobriety. I'm
Speaker 2: angry all the time. I go to bed angry and
Speaker 2: wake up angry. It gets to the point that even
Speaker 2: my family can't take it anymore. My daughter finally says,
Speaker 2: if you're so angry, why don't you do something about it?
Speaker 2: So a day or two later, I file a formal
Speaker 2: complaint with the Times office about the actions of the
Speaker 2: top editors for many months, I write, Davon and Mark
Speaker 2: unconscionably delayed publication of my reporting on a dangerous drug
Speaker 2: abusing former dean of USC's medical school. The head of
Speaker 2: publishing refers me to Cindy Ballard, the director of HR
Speaker 2: for Trunk Media, the company that owns the La Times.
Speaker 2: We meet and she takes my claim seriously. She calls
Speaker 2: in my fellow reporters as well.
Speaker 4: I went in and I sat down at this little desk,
Speaker 4: and Cindy Ballard was at the desk.
Speaker 5: She seemed very like competent and like a nice person.
Speaker 3: Reporter Harriet Ryan and I.
Speaker 4: Remember she was eating this like giant panini. I don't
Speaker 4: know she ate it through my whole interview, even when
Speaker 4: she was like patting me on the hand. She was
Speaker 4: just like real aggressive, like let's go, let's get to
Speaker 4: the bottom of this, and like she had so many
Speaker 4: appointments that she was eating the panini because she wasn't
Speaker 4: taking lunch. I knew a lot of stuff about what
Speaker 4: happened with Puliafito, but like I saw all this other
Speaker 4: stuff that had happened before. And when she he ask
Speaker 4: me what happened with this other story of the popsy story,
Speaker 4: I mean I literally got like two sentences out and
Speaker 4: I just started crying because like it was so fucked up,
Speaker 4: and like nobody ever acknowledged it, And here was like
Speaker 4: a person in power saying like Okay, that's not okay.
Speaker 4: Nobody should speak to you that way.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, Mark Duvason continues to try to undermine our story.
Speaker 2: He now says, we can't report that Pulliofido uses drugs
Speaker 2: on a regular basis, despite the fact that we have
Speaker 2: three on the record sources confirming that he does, and
Speaker 2: we have photos and videos that show him literally using
Speaker 2: drugs and admitting to it on camera. We point this
Speaker 2: out to Mark, not that we should have needed to,
Speaker 2: and he doesn't budge. Then a couple of days before
Speaker 2: we're scheduled to finally publish, Mark goes back into the
Speaker 2: story and deletes all but one of the references to
Speaker 2: Pulliafido supplying drugs to other people. The fact that he
Speaker 2: gave other people drugs is the worst of the allegations
Speaker 2: against Pulliafida and the most legally damaging to his employer USC.
Speaker 2: When we protest, Mark claims that's the advice of the
Speaker 2: paper's internal legal counsel. But when I asked the lawyer,
Speaker 2: he says Mark hat approached him and asked him to
Speaker 2: come up with, quote, the most conservative version of the
Speaker 2: story possible. Our editors don't care how well we've nailed
Speaker 2: this down. By this point, it's too clear that if
Speaker 2: this story is going to be published at all, it'll
Speaker 2: have to be this watered down version, one that skips
Speaker 2: over most of Puliafido's own drug use and says next
Speaker 2: to nothing about him supplying drugs to other people, including
Speaker 2: seventeen year old Charles Warren. Finally, July seventeenth, we publish,
Speaker 2: and everything explodes.
Speaker 6: A former dean at USC is now to a drug
Speaker 6: overdose with his alleged prostitute girlfriend. He was the dean
Speaker 6: of the university's School of Medicine until he resigned last year.
Speaker 7: Now his secret life is being revealed that don plan involvement.
Speaker 2: That CBS affiliate in Sacramento is just one of many
Speaker 2: news outlets from California to Japan to the UK that
Speaker 2: pick up the story of the hard partying dean of
Speaker 2: the medical school at USC.
Speaker 8: I remember not sleeping the night before and just like
Speaker 8: sweating in my bed.
Speaker 5: It felt like just a relief that it was out.
Speaker 8: There, Matt Hamilton, something that was known to only a
Speaker 8: few people internally was now suddenly public. I had no
Speaker 8: concept of what the reaction would be. I knew it
Speaker 8: would be shocking to people, but I didn't anticipate. I
Speaker 8: didn't know where it would lead us.
Speaker 2: The reaction of CBS Sacramento was fairly typical. People are
Speaker 2: stunned by the news.
Speaker 9: Andel.
Speaker 3: This is nothing short of remarkable.
Speaker 10: These allegations very.
Speaker 11: Shocking stuf hear you, guys. And the dark side of
Speaker 11: this dean did come to light following an overdose by
Speaker 11: an alleged prostitute in his presence. In a report by
Speaker 11: The La Times, the woman claims the world renowned doctor
Speaker 11: paid for her living expenses, bought her drugs.
Speaker 2: And devon khn. It's been a very long road. It's
Speaker 2: his information that got this story started.
Speaker 1: I felt a sense of justice. I was also very
Speaker 1: pleased that it was on the front page, above the fold,
Speaker 1: which I understand is prime real estate in newspapers. There
Speaker 1: was nothing there that would indicate that I was the
Speaker 1: person that it given the information.
Speaker 3: And now US can no longer sweep it under the rug.
Speaker 12: We are outraged and disgusted. The first public comments from
Speaker 12: USC President Max Nikias about a scandal at the medical school,
Speaker 12: he revealed USC is now moving to terminate Puliaffido, and
Speaker 12: USC has hired a former federal prosecutor to investigate who
Speaker 12: knew what and when and why the school took no
Speaker 12: action for so long.
Speaker 2: The k CAL nine report pretty much sums up the
Speaker 2: crisis control going on in the office of Max to Kias.
Speaker 2: There are layers to it. One, make it clear the
Speaker 2: university is done with Puliafido. Two, launch an investigation into
Speaker 2: how this could possibly have gone unchecked.
Speaker 3: For so long.
Speaker 2: What's not Inni Kiyas's statement is any concern for Sarah
Speaker 2: Warren or the other young people Pulliafido did drugs with,
Speaker 2: but it does offer some tender words for Puliafedo himself.
Speaker 2: The school says, quote, we hope that Carmen receives care
Speaker 2: and treatment that will lead him to a full recovery.
Speaker 2: Doctor William Tierney, a professor emeritus with USC, remembers the
Speaker 2: reaction among the faculty.
Speaker 13: That first article in the La Times.
Speaker 3: I mean, who could believe that?
Speaker 13: I mean even the picture of him with the pill
Speaker 13: out his tongue. So Max sends a letter out to
Speaker 13: the whole university saying I'm shocked, shocked. I so hope
Speaker 13: he gets the counseling he needs. Really, that's like a
Speaker 13: cardinal finding out that there's a child abuse in his
Speaker 13: diocese and he says, I'm so amazed that you know,
Speaker 13: father Smith is molesting children. I hope he gets help.
Speaker 13: So that was kind of tone deaf.
Speaker 5: The day that an.
Speaker 13: Article came out, I called Max and he didn't talk
Speaker 13: to me. I've never spoken to him since. I mean,
Speaker 13: it's crazy. The one quality of a leader should be
Speaker 13: to talk to your critics, even loving critics, and say
Speaker 13: where have I gone wrong? And you can reject what
Speaker 13: they say, but where have I gone wrong, but instead
Speaker 13: he's stonewalled.
Speaker 2: USC's internal investigation might be a pr move, but the
Speaker 2: Medical Board of California seems to want to actually get
Speaker 2: to the truth, acting in our reporting, opens an investigation
Speaker 2: into Puliofido. The passing A Police department faces some backlash too.
Speaker 2: In response to our story, the city manager sends a
Speaker 2: memo to the mayor and city council noting that the
Speaker 2: article quote reflects poorly on the city and the pasading
Speaker 2: A Police department. And now the city admits it actually
Speaker 2: has another police recording from that incident at the hotel constance.
Speaker 2: This one features Pullifido in conversation with a police officer
Speaker 2: at Huntingdon Hospital where Sarah Warren was taken after she odeed.
Speaker 10: How do you know her family friend Ruth Dan and
Speaker 10: you're a friend or day.
Speaker 3: You guys have a romantic relationship between each other.
Speaker 10: No, no, just friends, just friends, thinking that's probably why
Speaker 10: he's the con turner.
Speaker 2: The release of this recording way after to the fact
Speaker 2: just makes me that much more suspicious that this was
Speaker 2: a deliberate cover up. Now the story is out and
Speaker 2: it's an investigative coup for the La Times with a
Speaker 2: huge readership.
Speaker 3: Here's Matt Hamilton.
Speaker 8: Suddenly this like ban of five reporters who had been
Speaker 8: kind of persona on grata were like welcomed with open
Speaker 8: arms into Javon's office with Mark and other editors present,
Speaker 8: and it was like the fights and conflict of the
Speaker 8: past few months had not even happened, and that they
Speaker 8: had been champions of the story all along. It was
Speaker 8: really disorienting, actually, because suddenly the follows couldn't come fast enough.
Speaker 5: Suddenly, you know, where are you.
Speaker 3: Going to take the story?
Speaker 4: A lot of the things that we thought were important
Speaker 4: hadn't been in the story, and so it was like,
Speaker 4: now this like rush to try to nail those things
Speaker 4: down follow a bunch of tips that we.
Speaker 3: Had Adam l. Mark.
Speaker 14: Mark said something like going forward, we're not going to
Speaker 14: have five people working on this. When this story was
Speaker 14: published and it was this massive hit, there was no
Speaker 14: question as to having five people and even more working
Speaker 14: on it.
Speaker 8: It was like, wait, did you not just live through
Speaker 8: the last few months. It just it was really clear
Speaker 8: that the editors were basking in the public accolades of
Speaker 8: the story. It just seemed like they were trying to
Speaker 8: memory a hole the last few months of contentious edits.
Speaker 2: But there's one person Davon and Mark haven't forgotten, Shelby grad,
Speaker 2: the editor who supported our work for months, but they
Speaker 2: were trying to kill the story.
Speaker 4: They're basically going to fire Shelby, like move him to
Speaker 4: some job that was going to suck, and then they
Speaker 4: were going to replace him with like one of their friends.
Speaker 4: Me felt that he was being punished because they couldn't
Speaker 4: really do anything to us, like what can you do
Speaker 4: to a reporter, but like he was being punished for
Speaker 4: having not kind of dropped the hammer on us and
Speaker 4: not told us, like stop working on it.
Speaker 2: The top betteritor's treatment of Shelby doesn't play well in
Speaker 2: the newsroom, and Cindy Ballard, the HR director, starts to
Speaker 2: hear from many more reporters than just us, and.
Speaker 4: Then when other people have heard they were trying to
Speaker 4: punish Shelby, other people started writing their own complaint letters.
Speaker 4: I mean I remember seeing that, like people could write
Speaker 4: letters together and the multiple people would sign them, and
Speaker 4: the people that were in other bureaus were just like, yeah,
Speaker 4: this has to stop. And most of the people had
Speaker 4: not had a specific they weren't involved in the pussy,
Speaker 4: they were involved with Uxy Hutton. They just you know,
Speaker 4: heard like, finally somebody is standing up to these guys,
Speaker 4: and I want to be a part of it.
Speaker 2: Trunk intervenes to stop Shelby's emotion, and the pressure starts
Speaker 2: to mount on Davon and Mark. At one pm on Monday,
Speaker 2: August twenty first, the staffers of the La Times receive
Speaker 2: an all company email from Tronk's CEO. It says that Davon, Maharaj,
Speaker 2: Mark Duvasan, and Matt doug will all be leaving the paper.
Speaker 14: The atmosphere in the newsroom was just it was almost
Speaker 14: like festive celebratory. You know, people were high fiving, people
Speaker 14: were hugging each other. It was like one of the
Speaker 14: happiest days in the newsroom I'd ever witnessed.
Speaker 4: I don't want to dance on their graves or anything
Speaker 4: like that, but I felt that the way that the
Speaker 4: Oxy Project had handled and then sc was really unprofessional,
Speaker 4: and that it was completely defensible to show them the door.
Speaker 4: I just thought it would never happen.
Speaker 2: In the email, Tronk's management doesn't say anything about the
Speaker 2: HR investigation, or the move against Shelby or the delays
Speaker 2: in publishing several important stories, but we do feel vindicated
Speaker 2: and finally able to get back doing our jobs as
Speaker 2: investigative reporters. Now, the question is what will USC's response
Speaker 2: be to the revelations about Pulliufido. Will anyone actually be
Speaker 2: held accountable?
Speaker 7: The State Medical Board has suspended the license of former
Speaker 7: USC Medical School Dean Carmen Puliaffido. This is in response
Speaker 7: to an La Times investigation that found that Puliafiedo was
Speaker 7: regularly taking meth and other drugs with other people having
Speaker 7: parties in hotel rooms. The Times now reports the board
Speaker 7: is working on a final decision about whether or not
Speaker 7: he will be able to continue to practice medicine at all.
Speaker 2: About two months after the story comes out, we break
Speaker 2: more news. CBSLA picks up on our reporting that the
Speaker 2: State Medical Board is suspending Pullifido's license. The Warrens believe
Speaker 2: he should be in jail, but at least he won't
Speaker 2: be able to treat patients. The Warren family hires celebrity
Speaker 2: attorney Mark Gerago to represent them in a threatened lawsuit
Speaker 2: against Pulliofido and USC. He tells the mer civil claim
Speaker 2: could be worth ten million.
Speaker 3: Dollars or more.
Speaker 2: The Warrens also provide USC with the images of Pulliafido's
Speaker 2: smoking meth with Sarah. In a new statement to the faculty,
Speaker 2: USC leadership says the images are quote extremely troubling and
Speaker 2: we need to take serious action. The powerful US board
Speaker 2: says nothing. Doctor Tierney is not surprised the.
Speaker 13: Board was really in the president's pocket. That's the classic
Speaker 13: example of what happens to an administration under fire. Anybody
Speaker 13: who says anything is a bad person.
Speaker 15: It is a privilege to be sworn into office on
Speaker 15: the University of Southern California campus. I think President Nikias
Speaker 15: now USC represents so much to me. It has been
Speaker 15: like the iconic center of some of the most important
Speaker 15: events of my life.
Speaker 2: Jackie Lacey is a District attorney for La County in
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen. Like a lot of powerful people in La
Speaker 2: she's a USC alum, proud of her connection to the university,
Speaker 2: and she has helped raise funds for the school, as
Speaker 2: you can hear in that clip from the DA's office.
Speaker 2: She even had her swearing in ceremony on US's campus.
Speaker 2: The Puliafido case, along with the State Medical Board's recommendation
Speaker 2: of criminal charges lands on Lacey's desk in October, but
Speaker 2: Lacey declines to press charges. In a brief memo, prosecutors
Speaker 2: say that quote, the current state of the case does
Speaker 2: not establish sufficient evidence to prove the charges beyond a
Speaker 2: reasonable doubt. It's clear to me there wasn't much of
Speaker 2: an investigation, if any, there's no indication that authorities ever
Speaker 2: searched pullia Fido's car or home for drugs, and the
Speaker 2: DA's office abandons the case without once speaking to the warrants.
Speaker 2: Devon con at least gets some satisfaction as far.
Speaker 1: As I was concerned, As long as he wasn't the dean,
Speaker 1: as long as he wasn't in charge of the new
Speaker 1: doctors going out into the world, that was good enough
Speaker 1: for me.
Speaker 2: As for that ten million dollar lawsuit, the Garrigos firm
Speaker 2: tells the Warrens the best it can do for them
Speaker 2: is a settlement for one point five million, six hundred thousand,
Speaker 2: of which goes to the firm, and it comes with
Speaker 2: a strict non disclosure agreement. The Warrens have to agree
Speaker 2: to never speak publicly about their experiences with Pulliaffedo and
Speaker 2: to wipe their devices of the videos and other images
Speaker 2: featuring his drug use. That's a nice deal for Pulliafido
Speaker 2: in USC. As the weeks pass, I'm bothered by what
Speaker 2: hasn't happened, because even though he's been stripped of his
Speaker 2: medical license and he no longer has a big job
Speaker 2: at USC, there's nothing stopping pull Fido from pushing drugs
Speaker 2: on vulnerable people. Sarah Warren has managed to break free
Speaker 2: of him, but in the course of our reporting, we
Speaker 2: found other young users in his circle, and I can't
Speaker 2: help but think about them as we learned that he
Speaker 2: won't face any charges.
Speaker 3: One of those young people is Dori Yoder.
Speaker 5: Charles and Sarah Warren had told Paul about Dori Yoder.
Speaker 4: She was in that circle of people who were addicts
Speaker 4: and users who were in a lot of the photos.
Speaker 4: This is a woman who was raised in an Amish
Speaker 4: household and then had come to LA to become a star.
Speaker 2: Dora's sister, Miriam, had moved to La first. It was
Speaker 2: a long way from the world they grew up in.
Speaker 9: We grew up in Pennsylvania. My parents had seven children.
Speaker 9: I'm the oldest. We were born there and we were
Speaker 9: part of the Yoder family. We were the second strictest
Speaker 9: order in Pennsylvania. We didn't have running water, I mean electricity,
Speaker 9: I mean obviously, we didn't have anything.
Speaker 4: We lived on a two hundred.
Speaker 9: Acre farm, just lived a very conservative, very hard working,
Speaker 9: homish lifestyle until my dad decided he wanted to leave.
Speaker 9: All seven of us left with my parents in nineteen
Speaker 9: ninety six and I was fifteen. We then moved to
Speaker 9: the Missouri and I lived there until I was twenty
Speaker 9: three and I moved to Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: Mariam and her brothers and sisters had seen firsthand what
Speaker 2: drugs could do to people.
Speaker 9: So my parents became addicted to meth. We were homeless
Speaker 9: for a while. I had to take care of all
Speaker 9: my siblings, and my parents went to rehab and after
Speaker 9: a couple of years they got out of rehab and
Speaker 9: became born again Christian. At that point when they came
Speaker 9: back from rehab is when I left for Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: Dora came to LA to live with her sister. A
Speaker 2: few years later when she was twenty three.
Speaker 9: Dora's life, her whole lifestyle during her teen years were
Speaker 9: wild by people's standards who are not conservative. She was
Speaker 9: a handful for my family. My parents suggested that she
Speaker 9: move in with me, and honestly, I don't know why
Speaker 9: on earth they thought that was a good idea. I
Speaker 9: think they just didn't know how to control Dora, or
Speaker 9: I think they were exhausted from her, so they sent
Speaker 9: her out to live with me. And I was excited
Speaker 9: at the time because I had lived here for three
Speaker 9: years on my own, I had a good job, I
Speaker 9: had a place for her to stay, and I wanted
Speaker 9: her to stay with me, and Dora and I always
Speaker 9: got along, so she moved in with me. She at
Speaker 9: first worked at my hair salon. Her modeling career started
Speaker 9: doing well. She started meeting a lot of people. She
Speaker 9: got hired to model at parties that were private where
Speaker 9: she would just be naked. She would only wear a
Speaker 9: mask in heels and just be naked at the party
Speaker 9: by herself at a stranger's house.
Speaker 12: And that's how.
Speaker 9: Dora started getting back into her old habits, and she
Speaker 9: was just wild in Hollywood, and it wasn't long before
Speaker 9: her and I were fighting all the time. I believe
Speaker 9: it was in that period of time when she managed
Speaker 9: to run into Carmen Puliaffido.
Speaker 2: Dora met Carmen Puliafido through her boyfriend Ario Franco. Like
Speaker 2: Kyle Voyd and Don Stokes, Ariel is yet another drug
Speaker 2: user in Pulliafido's Rolodex. He's also a heroin dealer and
Speaker 2: he's been arrested multiple times for possession.
Speaker 5: In photos and videos, you could see him like in
Speaker 5: the circle with Pillifido and Sarah and you know, various
Speaker 5: high jinks.
Speaker 2: Julia Fido became infatuated with Ariel's girlfriend, Dora, and just
Speaker 2: like with Sarah, he began subsidizing her life in exchange
Speaker 2: for sex.
Speaker 3: Harriet Ryan, she.
Speaker 4: Was still very beautiful at this time, very young and
Speaker 4: stylish and beautiful, and he was like kind of underwriting
Speaker 4: her life. And that life included like a boyfriend, but
Speaker 4: also like a house, a rental house in a duplex
Speaker 4: in Altadena, which is like a pretty short drive from
Speaker 4: his mansion.
Speaker 9: She was living there and just she had no job,
Speaker 9: but she lived in this house at the time that
Speaker 9: was pretty expensive rent and she had everything that she
Speaker 9: wanted and was paying her bills on time. I found
Speaker 9: that to be odd, and I would go see her
Speaker 9: and her house was always sort of messy and stuff.
Speaker 9: And then she'd have a maid come clean it. And
Speaker 9: I just never understood how she had the money to
Speaker 9: do any of these things. And at that point, my
Speaker 9: sister was not yet a drug addict. She was just
Speaker 9: her usual normal self, And so I didn't press the
Speaker 9: issue because I mean, it's Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: It didn't occur to Mariam that Pullofdo was the source
Speaker 2: of her sister's mystery income.
Speaker 9: Initially, when I met Puliafedo, I didn't know what his
Speaker 9: relationship was to my sister. I mean, for all I
Speaker 9: knew at that moment in time, he was just an acquaintance,
Speaker 9: or he was the landlord. I never ever would have
Speaker 9: guessed that he had any sort of romantic affiliation with her.
Speaker 9: Aside from his age, he just looked like a loser.
Speaker 9: My sister was like a supermodel.
Speaker 2: Dora had recently dated Hollywood director Todd Phillips. Pullofido couldn't
Speaker 2: be further out of her league, and he certainly didn't
Speaker 2: look like the dean of a major medical school.
Speaker 9: He was wearing some blues shorts and like a white
Speaker 9: shirt that was really rumpled. It was like a button
Speaker 9: down and it was just wrinkly, and he just looked
Speaker 9: like weird and gross. He wouldn't look me in the eye,
Speaker 9: he mumbled when he talked. He was very strange, and
Speaker 9: Dora was like, oh, this is my friend Carmen. In
Speaker 9: a million years, looking at this man, I would never
Speaker 9: have believed he was the dean of USC Medical. It's insane.
Speaker 2: Eventually, Dora told Miriam that Puliafido was paying for her lifestyle.
Speaker 9: She said, Oh, he just really likes me, and he's
Speaker 9: like my other dad, and he just buys all these
Speaker 9: things for me. And I'm like, Dora, are you sleeping
Speaker 9: with him? She's like, ew, no, I would.
Speaker 5: Not do that.
Speaker 2: Puliafido was also supplying drugs to both Dora and her
Speaker 2: boyfriend Ariel, but at this point it was clear Dora
Speaker 2: had a serious problem.
Speaker 9: The first time I discovered that she really had an
Speaker 9: actual drug abuse problem was it had been a while
Speaker 9: since I spoke to her. I went to her house
Speaker 9: and her house was absolutely disgusting. Food on the stove,
Speaker 9: overgrown with mold, piles of trash outside. My sister started
Speaker 9: flaking a lot on me. When we had set up
Speaker 9: a lunch date. I was really hard to reach her
Speaker 9: on my phone, and I would show up at her
Speaker 9: house and knock on the door, and I could tell
Speaker 9: she was home, but she wouldn't answer. And at one
Speaker 9: point she finally let me in to see her, and
Speaker 9: she was acting strange, and that's when I noticed there
Speaker 9: were needles drug needles on the floor in her house.
Speaker 9: And it's then that I started to realize that she
Speaker 9: wasn't just recreationally using drugs. She had a real drug
Speaker 9: abuse problem.
Speaker 2: Miriam called their parents, with the help of Dora's ex
Speaker 2: boyfriend Todd, they checked her into rehab, but after three
Speaker 2: weeks in treatment, Dora left rehab and went back to Missouri.
Speaker 3: It didn't last long.
Speaker 9: It was not long before she was a mess again,
Speaker 9: and she decided to leave my mom's house, come back
Speaker 9: out here and resume her life. And at that time
Speaker 9: I did not know she was still talking to Puliaffido.
Speaker 9: I still didn't know at that time, none of us did,
Speaker 9: that he was providing her with these drugs. I realized
Speaker 9: she was still on drugs and reached out to my
Speaker 9: parents again.
Speaker 2: Dora's parents brought her back to Missouri, but Miriam discovered
Speaker 2: that Dora didn't come by herself. Puliafido had gotten on
Speaker 2: the flight with her.
Speaker 9: Somehow, Dora ended up back at their house again, only
Speaker 9: this time my parents told me that Pulliaffido was at
Speaker 9: their house and I asked my mom. I was like, Mom,
Speaker 9: why are you letting this man stay in your house
Speaker 9: with Dora. I was like, he's giving her endless, limitless money.
Speaker 9: She's never gonna get off drugs if she has access
Speaker 9: to that much money. My mom was like, Oh, he's nice,
Speaker 9: he's nice.
Speaker 12: I talked to him.
Speaker 9: He's fine, He's not. And this is my mom being
Speaker 9: so gullible. I'm like, Mom, he's seventy years old. Dora
Speaker 9: is like twenty five. What are you talking about?
Speaker 5: I was living.
Speaker 9: It occurred to me that there's more going on than
Speaker 9: just an exchange of money, because he has a thing
Speaker 9: for her that clearly he's having a sexual relationship with
Speaker 9: her and providing her with money. I still didn't know
Speaker 9: he was giving her drugs, and I still didn't really
Speaker 9: know who he was. When I met Ril, I was
Speaker 9: confused because I was like, wait, Dora is having some
Speaker 9: sexual thing with Carmen. And then and I think I
Speaker 9: confronted her at one point and she's like, it's not
Speaker 9: like that with Carmen. Aril's my boyfriend, and Carmen just
Speaker 9: gives us money. It just started to become so strange,
Speaker 9: and I was like, is he giving you more than money?
Speaker 9: Where are you guys getting drugs from? Because Aril was
Speaker 9: clearly on drugs, And I just remember Dora getting really upset.
Speaker 9: We got in a big fight and I threw up
Speaker 9: my hands at that point and I just stopped talking
Speaker 9: to Dora.
Speaker 2: Dora and Polio Fido went back to LA and finally
Speaker 2: Miriam figures out who this man is and the reason
Speaker 2: for his hold on her sister.
Speaker 9: I found out shortly thereafter. I found out he's the
Speaker 9: Dean of USC Medical. I also found out that he
Speaker 9: was prescribing drugs to my sister while he was at
Speaker 9: my parents' house. And I think that's when I finally
Speaker 9: broke through to my parents.
Speaker 2: Miriam's parents were horrified by this discovery. Pull your feet
Speaker 2: on a no longer seemed like an old guy who's
Speaker 2: otherwise harmless. They come out to LA to help Miriam
Speaker 2: confront Dora about her involvement with the dean and his
Speaker 2: connection to her drug use.
Speaker 9: We tried again to do an intervention with her. We
Speaker 9: tried again to get her off of drugs. We show
Speaker 9: up at our house and her house is just like
Speaker 9: a fort. At this point, Puliafido is paying.
Speaker 11: For her house.
Speaker 9: The outside of her door has a biometric lock on it.
Speaker 9: She's got cameras pointed from multiple directions to whoever shows
Speaker 9: up at the porch. But my mom lured her to
Speaker 9: lunch while they were out here, and she told my
Speaker 9: mom that Puliafido tracks her, records her phone conversations, tracks
Speaker 9: who she's calling, tracks her vehicle, and knows everything she does.
Speaker 9: And so my parents started contact the police about what
Speaker 9: was going on. My father ended up calling the Altadena
Speaker 9: Police Department. He made several attempts, but he called them
Speaker 9: to report the drug use, and specifically the carmen has
Speaker 9: cameras on our house, that he can't get a hold
Speaker 9: of his daughter, that he wants them to go do
Speaker 9: a check on her. I think he did that several times,
Speaker 9: and the Altadena police responded, but they put as little
Speaker 9: effort as possible into the whole situation. From day one,
Speaker 9: it was very clear they could care less. And so
Speaker 9: that again left my family wondering how we're going to
Speaker 9: solve this problem.
Speaker 2: Months go by and the older family is still left wondering.
Speaker 2: Like the Warrens, they just can't get this man away
Speaker 2: from their daughter and stop him from giving her drugs.
Speaker 2: Dora seems unreachable. Then Miriam learns that her sister was
Speaker 2: pregnant with Ariel's child and has already had the baby.
Speaker 9: I found out Dora was pregnant about three weeks after
Speaker 9: she had a baby.
Speaker 2: And as far as she knows, Puliafido is still in
Speaker 2: the picture. But now the stakes are much higher.
Speaker 9: I was just horrified and also very lost. How do
Speaker 9: you begin to fix a situation like this. It's hard
Speaker 9: enough when a member of your family is a drug addict,
Speaker 9: but add to that unlimited access to money. I mean,
Speaker 9: how do you get them out of that situation? They
Speaker 9: never hit rock bottom. They're under the control of the
Speaker 9: person giving them the drugs and giving them the money.
Speaker 5: They're an adult.
Speaker 9: How do you get them out of this situation?
Speaker 2: For Miriam and her parents, it seems like the situation
Speaker 2: could not be worse. But on the morning of October fifth, tragedy.
Speaker 13: Strikes Department of Hello, Yes, I'm here.
Speaker 6: Baby not breathing yet, Baby not breathing?
Speaker 4: Are you there?
Speaker 13: At the location right now. My girlfriend there telling us
Speaker 13: a child three weeks three weeks old boy, but he
Speaker 13: was just found like this place.
Speaker 3: Karen, I don't know you called me crying.
Speaker 2: Davon Maharaj, Mark Duvison, and Matt Doyg deny that they
Speaker 2: did anything wrong in their handling of the USC investigation,
Speaker 2: and they maintained that any negative betrayal of their actions
Speaker 2: is false. Next time on Fallen Angels, Matt and Harriet
Speaker 2: launched an investigation into the death of Doriota's baby.
Speaker 8: It's it's not someone who's rattled, but there was something
Speaker 8: about the call that rattled her.
Speaker 9: I mean, a baby doesn't just have mes in its system.
Speaker 2: And we get a new tip about another bad doctor
Speaker 2: at USC.
Speaker 4: There's like a long pause and then the person just
Speaker 4: opened the door and we sat down at the kitchen
Speaker 4: table and they just laid it out.
Speaker 9: There were actually several all instances looking back because I realized, oh.
Speaker 2: Everyone, n that's next time on Fallen Angels. Fallen Angels,
Speaker 2: The Story of California Corruption is a production of iHeart
Speaker 2: Podcasts in partnership with Best Case Studios.
Speaker 3: I'm Paul Pringle.
Speaker 2: This show is based on my book Bad City Peril
Speaker 2: and Power in the City of Angels. Fallen Angels was
Speaker 2: written by Isabel Evans, Adam Pinks, and Brent Katz. Isabel
Speaker 2: Evans is our producer, Brent Katz.
Speaker 3: Is co producer.
Speaker 2: Associate producers are Hanna Leebowitz Lockhart and On Paho Locke.
Speaker 2: Executive producers are Me Paul Pringle, Joe Picarello, and Adam
Speaker 2: Pinkas for Best Case Studios. Original music is by James Newberry.
Speaker 2: This episode was edited by Max Michael Miller with assistants
Speaker 2: from Nisha Venkat. Additional editings, sound design and additional music
Speaker 2: by Dean White. Harriet Ryan, Matt Hamilton, Sarah ParvE and
Speaker 2: Adam Almarik are consulting producers. Our iHeart Team is Ali
Speaker 2: Perry and Carl Catle. Follow and rate Fallen Angels wherever
Speaker 2: you get your podcasts