Nation/world news in brief

2008-07-05

The Chattanooga Times (Tennessee)

June 4, 1996, Tuesday

BYLINE: Wire services

SECTION: World, Pg. A2

LENGTH: 841 words

Beached

Strollers eye a ship that ran aground on Rio de Janeiro's fashionable Leblon Beach during a storm Monday. Brazilian officials are pondering how to refloat the vessel but admit to being at a loss since they've never had this problem before.

Searchers find another crater

MIAMI -- Divers recovering wreckage from ValuJet Flight 592 discovered a large hole Monday at the southern tip of the murky crater, raising the possibility that much more of the jet's wreckage may lie below.

Half the airplane is still missing, including the cockpit section. Nothing from that part of the plane has been recovered yet, authorities said.

Divers hoped to enter the newly discovered crater today.

On Monday, divers also collected a "substantial amount of human remains," including a skull.

Earlier in the day, a trucker who worked transporting the crash wreckage was charged with stealing parts of the aircraft, including a circuit breaker panel that could yield clues.

2 women found dead in park

LURAY, Va. -- The deaths of two women hikers, whose bodies were found over the weekend at a campsite near the Appalachian Trail, are being investigated as homicides, authorities said Monday.

Two rangers found the bodies of Julianne Williams, 24, and Lollie Winans, 26, Saturday near the park's Skyland Lodge, about 25 miles from Luray, said Ron Fankhauser of the Park Service.

Driver awarded $150 million

HANYNEVILLE, Ala. -- A man whose Chevrolet Blazer flipped after he fell asleep at the wheel was awarded $150 million Monday for injuries suffered in the 1991 accident.

Alex Hardy claimed General Motors knowingly sold Blazers with defective door latches that opened in wrecks such as the one that left him paralyzed.

GM denies the allegations, arguing Hardy was at fault because he had been drinking and fell asleep. Witnesses for the automaker testified during trial that Hardy flew through a window because he was not wearing a seat belt.

Jewelry show boon for thieves

LAS VEGAS -- An international jewelry show attended by 35,000 jewelers, has also attracted hundreds of professional thieves, trying their luck at lifting some of the estimated $8 billion in glittering gems.

The annual J.C. Kay Jewelry Show opened Thursday, and by Monday an estimated $1.8 million in gems had been stolen, police said. The show ends today.

Nine people have been arrested for theft, but most of the jewelry was already gone, police said.

5 are indicted in robbery ring

CONCORD, N.H. -- Five men were indicted Monday after being linked to a string of bank and armored car robberies by a singular piece of evidence: a burning car containing bank bags, a bulletproof vest and a T-shirt emblazoned with a masked leprechaun and the words "Boston Bandits."

The heists took place in five states across New England, including a brazen daylight holdup of an armored car in Hudson, N.Y., in which two guards were shot to death.

Stephen G. Burke, 40, Patrick J. McGonagle, 57, Michael K. O'Halloran, 38, Matthew McDonald, 34, and Anthony M. Shea, 33 all have criminal records. McDonald and Shea were already in prison when the federal indictment was handed down.

NATO getting an overhaul

BERLIN -- Easing France's re-entry into NATO, the United States and its allies approved historic changes in the 47-year-old European defense structure Monday to prepare for Bosnia-like crises in the next century.

Slow to respond to the ethnic bloodshed in Bosnia, the alliance will be revamped to be able to react more quickly to conflicts -- perhaps even beyond Europe -- with European commanders and using U.S. weapons and possibly troops, provided Washington concurs.

The revamping was the result of compromises between Europeans, led by France, seeking a larger role, and the United States, determined to make sure it retained a veto over use of American troops, intelligence or weapons.

Detectives' offer draws rebuke

SAN FRANCISCO -- OK, O.J., you lost your chance. Looks like you won't be getting any free help from Bay Area gumshoes after all.

An offer by six San Francisco area private eyes to track down the "real" killer of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman was denounced by Simpson's own private investigator last week as the work of publicity seekers trying to "prostitute themselves."

Bill Pavelic's beef was the television and radio appearances San Francisco detective Hal Lipset and five local colleagues made to pursue Simpson's alleged tips that the killer of his ex-wife and her friend could be in the city.

Bill Pavelic said the offer was "designed for propaganda purposes and self- aggrandizement" rather than genuine help.

Britain starts a gun turn-in

LONDON -- British police forces hoped to collect hundreds of illegal firearms during a four-week gun amnesty that began Monday.

Anyone turning in an illegal weapon at a police station in England, Wales and Scotland through June 30 will not be prosecuted, unless police find that the firearm was used in a crime.

LOAD-DATE: September 26, 1996

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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SPECTOR EVIDENCE STOLEN BY O.J. TEAM?

2008-06-29

 

Daily News (New York)

May 3, 2007 Thursday 

SPORTS FINAL EDITION

 

BYLINE: BY MICHELLE CARUSO DAILY NEWS WEST COAST BUREAU mcaruso@nydailynews.com

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 336 words

LOS ANGELES - Tooth or nail . . . or a big red herring?

Phil Spector's murder trial was thrown into chaos yesterday when a former clerk for lawyer Robert Shapiro came forward and swore the rock mogul's first defense team found and may have concealed a key fragment of tooth or fingernail at the crime scene.

Spector, 67, hired Shapiro, an ex-member of the O.J. Simpson defense Dream Team, immediately after he was booked for Lana Clarkson's slaying on Feb. 3, 2003, but he later fired and sued the high-profile lawyer.

Ex-clerk Gregory Diamond kept mum until about two weeks ago regarding the alleged evidence tampering he claims he saw during a Shapiro-led defense team visit to Spector's mansion. Then he contacted authorities.

Diamond named Shapiro's associate, lawyer Sara Caplan, as the person who picked up something "white, whitish and quite small" on the floor "lodged between the carpet and the staircase."

He said Caplan gave the item to Dr. Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist working for Spector's team, who examined it and said it might be "a fragment of a tooth," Diamond testified.

Diamond testified the white item was "passed around" to other defense team members at Spector's house, including another ex-Simpson minion, private investigator Bill Pavelic.

"I don't know who had it last," Diamond said.

Prosecutors suspect the tiny item could be a missing fragment of Clarkson's acrylic thumbnail.

Diamond denied he earlier told cops he had seen Pavelic put the white fragment in his pocket.

"That question was put to me and I said 'No,' " he replied.

The ex-law clerk's story dovetails with a 2004 allegation that the defense team had found at the scene - and hidden away - a missing sliver of Clarkson's nail that could prove she struggled before she died or might have tried to block the fatal shot.

But Baden testified immediately after Diamond and denied the incident ever happened.

Today, Caplan, Shapiro and other members of the defense team will be called to the hot seat to tell their sides of the story.

LOAD-DATE: May 3, 2007

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: EXCLUSIVE PHOTO: Lana Clarkson one month before she was found dead B-movie starlet Lana Clarkson at convention. Photo by John Chennavasin - ZUMA Press

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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Hotline shut down as 'tips' plummet

2008-06-05

Hamilton Spectator (Ontario, Canada)

August 25, 1994 Thursday Final Edition

SOURCE: FROM ASSOCIATED PRESS

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A8

LENGTH: 320 words

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES

 

Calls to a hot line created for tipsters with possible leads in the O.J. Simpson murder case have dropped off so precipitously in recent weeks that his attorneys have decided for now to pull the plug on the highly publicized effort, members of Mr. Simpson's defence camp said yesterday.

"Like anything, the initial impact was the biggest," said Robert Shapiro, one of Mr. Simpson's attorneys. "Since then, it's worn off some."

In its first week of operation, the toll-free number generated thousands of calls -- Mr. Simpson's attorneys say they logged more than 250,000 tips within days, a rush so intense that they were forced to install extra lines to capture the recorded comments deluging the hot line.

Many of the calls came from people sympathetic to the football star charged with murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman. Others sought to cash in on Mr. Simpson's offer of a $500,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the "real killer or killers."

But in the weeks since that first burst of phone calls, members of Mr. Simpson's team say the quantity and quality of calls have tapered off dramatically. In recent weeks, tantalizing tips mostly have been replaced by wackier offerings and meddlesome wanna-be investigators, Mr. Simpson's representatives say.

"Initially, it was a very good idea," said Bill Pavelic, an investigative consultant working with the Simpson team who recommended that the hot line be shut down. "We got a lot of good leads. But the calls lately have not been as good. We get people who want to tell us how to do things, not people who have information."

Because of that, the service was temporarily disconnected, and Mr. Shapiro said Mr. Simpson's attorneys expect to decide later this week whether to leave it off permanently. Tuesday, callers to the number got a recorded message saying that the number was "temporarily out of service."

 

LOAD-DATE: October 13, 2002

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Shapiro

TYPE: News

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I WAS TRYING TO HELP THIS BOY BUT NOW I FEEL GUILTY

2008-05-26

The Sun

                                     November 25, 2003

BYLINE: Antonella Lazzeri in Los Angeles

LENGTH: 427 words

 Charity boss sent lad to Jacko

 A CHARITY boss who introduced Michael Jackson to the 12-year-old lad he is accused of repeatedly molesting said last night he is tortured by guilt.

 Jamie Masada, who runs a charity for sick children, was told by Gavin Arvizo's relatives that the boy had just weeks to live -and it was his dying wish to meet Jacko.

 Jamie said: "I got on the phone to arrange it but now I think, 'Was it a mistake?'

 "I was trying to help this boy but now I feel so guilty. When I heard about the charges my first thoughts were, 'Oh my God!'

 "I have felt bad ever since. I keep thinking, 'Is it really true or is it not true?' I just don't know." Jamie told how Gavin's concerned mum contacted him before the sex abuse allegations were made to say Jacko had asked her to sign some kind of agreement.

 He added: "She was worried because she didn't know what she was signing. It was around the time of the Martin Bashir documentary."

 The notorious programme showed Jacko cuddling Gavin -and admitting he had shared a bed with him.

 Jamie also denied claims that Gavin's family want a cash settlement, adding: "They are not after money. His mother is very religious and she just wants justice."

 Jacko's legal team have hired the man who dug up dirt on the main witnesses in the OJ Simpson murder trial to investigate the Arvizo family.

 Private eye Zvonko "Bill" Pavelic is said to be investigating the backgrounds of family members in a bid for information that might discredit them as witnesses.

 Drugs

 The news came as sources close to Jacko claimed Gavin's mum has previously threatened to sell her story unless the star hands over cash.

 Other employees of the singer claim they saw her high on drugs and in angry rows with Jacko.

 The singer is due to make his first court appearance on January 9. But yesterday a legal expert said it might take a year for a proper trial to start.

 Professor Carol Chase said the star's legal experts could delay the trial for months by claiming they needed time to prepare a case.

 When Jacko was accused of molesting 13-year-old Jordy Chandler a decade ago, the case was eventually dropped after a multi-million dollar deal with the lad's family.

 But a change in the law means Gavin would be forced to give evidence at court even if he had accepted a pay off.

 Meanwhile, Jacko has cancelled plans to attend a tribute concert at London's Dominion Theatre on December 14.

 The conditions of his Pounds 1.75million bail ban him from leaving America.

LOAD-DATE: November 26, 2003

LANGUAGE: English

PUB-TYPE: Newspaper

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Investigators make formidable team

2008-05-19

The Boston Herald

July 22, 1994 Friday THIRD EDITION

BYLINE: HELEN KENNEDY

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 004

LENGTH: 277 words

The detectives hired to help clear O.J. Simpson include a respected veteran gumshoe and a bitter former Los Angeles police officer with a possible grudge against the department. John McNally, a former New York City police detective sergeant who joined the case Wednesday, has been the right hand of Simpson's lawyers for 20 years.

'He's a top-notch investigator who is excellent in interviewing and reinterviewing witnesses,' said attorney Dan Leonard, partner of Simpson defense attorney F. Lee Bailey. McNally is best known for his single-handed 1964 arrest of notorious jewel thief Jack 'Murf the Surf' Murphy. He also spent three years working on the Patty Hearst bank robbery with Bailey and Boston lawyer J. Albert Johnson, who called McNally 'extremely thorough and highly effective.'

The other investigator, Zvonko G. Bill Pavelic retired abruptly from the LAPD in 1992 - just before passing the 20-year mark which would have allowed him to collect his pension. Pavelic, who often publicly attacked the LAPD and former chief Darryl Gates, told the Associated Press he quit because he was 'sick and tired of watching innocent people get framed, especially members of minority groups.'

Bill Pavelic was originally scheduled to be called as a witness in the Reginald Denny beating case to testify that the black men being charged were victims of a racist department. Prosecutors called Pavelic angry, bitter and paranoid.

Mike Pirouzian, president of Private Investigators of California, said neither detective has a private investigators license and questioned whether any evidence they turn up would be legally admissable.

LOAD-DATE: March 08, 1995

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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Cloud of Controversy Hangs Over Chief Selection Process

2008-05-02

Los Angeles Sentinel

March 18, 1992

BYLINE: Mitchell, Marsha
 
Cloud of Controversy Hangs Over Chief Selection Process.
In what can be considered as more than an ironic twist, Bill Pavelic , an 18-year veteran detective, charged that Police Chief Daryl Gates is the arget of a Los Angeles Police Department probe for allegedly interfering with internal investigations of top-ranking LAPD officers. The charge comes on the heels of the Police Commission's decision to allow Gates to supervise the investigation of three top-ranking officers who are now finalists to succeed him.

Notwithstanding the fact that Police Commission President Stanley Sheinbaum denied Pavelic's allegations of an internal investigation, the detective maintains that it is a well known fact in the department that Gates protects his top personnel even when misconduct is evident.

"There's a double standard in the Los Angeles Police Department when it involves staff and command officers, even when they are engaged in a criminal misconduct," Pavelic told the reporters. "Chief Gates has always protected members of management." Pavelic went on to further say that even when undisputable evidence of wrongdoing has been presented, Chief Gates has shielded favored personnel. The seasoned officer, who is assigned to the Southwest station, added that taxpayers would be shocked if they knew how many investigations had been retarded and impeded at the command of Gates.

Although the police chief has yet to comment on the allegations, his spokesman, Cmdr. Robert Gil, said that they had not heard of any such probe.
Gil challenged Pavelic's integrity because the detective has apparently raised similar accusations about other top personnel in the past that proved to be unfounded.

"This is a man who has had problems with authority in the past," Gill said. "The chief has had the integrity and ethics to carry this department for 14 years. For him to say the chief is covering up is ridiculous. If he had hard evidence, we'd see an investigation." In his defense, Pavelic said he felt he had come forward because of the Police Commission's decision to allow Gates to head an inquiry into charges that three finalists to succeed the chief either obstructed justice or abused departmental policies. And to prove his credibility, Pavelic said that he would repeat his claims under oath.

 The investigation was launched as a result of NEWS For America telling the Police Commission that three of the six finalists in the race to be chief are under internal scrutiny. The group, which is composed of a coalition of Latino business, community and public employee group's became incensed because the police selection process includes no Latino finalist. And although the group wanted swift action from the commission, it is dismayed that former assistant chief Jesse Brewer has been placed in charge of the probe.

"I think it raises some serious questions...They have a situation where Mr. Brewer either supervised, was involved in the promotion of, or had personal relationships with some of the candidates in question. I'm talking about cop relationships. Policemen stick together. Why not have two commissioners who were not police officers," said Xavier Hermosillo.

Currently, the names of the targeted officers have yet to be released, but it is believed that Deputy Chief Bernard C. Parks, Matthew Hunt and Assistant Chief David D. Dotson are the commanders in question. Parks allegedly intervened in the release of his daughter's boyfriend after he was arrested last December on two counts of attempted murder. Hunt is accused of refusing to release a suspect whom detectives believed was innocent.

According to sources, Hunt detained the man even though he had asked for a blood test to prove his innocence. Dotson, the only officer to cknowledged that he is involved in an internal inquest, has been under investigations since last July for an improper, romantic involvement with a female subordinate.

Despite Sheinbaum's statements that the ongoing investigations will not affect the three commanders chances to become chief, and that the nvestigation will be completed within two weeks so it will not impede the selection process, Leroy Baca believes that it should. Baca, who commands  the sheriff department's Court Service Division, filed an appeal with the city's Civil Service Commission because he was eliminated from the police chief selection process.

The would-be chief contends two participants on the seven-member citizens panel "could have been biased" toward him and another Hispanic emifinalist who was also passed over. Baca said that he doesn't plan to pursue a court battle, and that his only motive is to be reinstalled to the selection process. He does not feel that his appeal is unreasonable due to the fact that he received the third highest score of the 12 semi-finalists. He contends that his score proves he is more than qualified to be in the running to be the next chief of police.

He also charged that the panel headed by former California Attorney General John Van de Kamp, ignored established rating standards used by interview panels for candidates seeking top municipal posts. Those standards, Baca said, hold that individual panelists' ratings cannot diverge from one another by more than five points. But, officials say that despite the fact that Baca scored well, he failed to outscore all of the LAPD insiders competing for the job, as candidates are required to do by the City Charter, to advance to the final phase.

As if the selection process for the new chief needed any further aspersions cast upon it, earlier this month Chief Gates told the commission that he knew of "a couple of people" who had their essays prepared for them. LAPD Cmdr. Frank Piersol, a contender who failed to make the semi-finalist list, made the same allegation. Later, however, both Gates and Piersol retracted their accusations stating they had based their comments on hearsay.

The fact that Gates would make such damaging charges proves to some that he is a hindrance to the process which he has openly criticized from the beginning. Because Gates and Piersol withdrew their statements, and the 12 finalists signed affidavits stating they had prepared their own material, the commission was convinced that nothing was amiss. Neither Gates nor Piersol would return the Sentinel's calls, however, sources within the department assured reporters that the finalists' characters were not being called into question, as much as the process of "take-home exams."
"He (Gates) said from the beginning that the process is flawed. If you want to measure someone's knowledge and skills to be the police chief for a major department, why don't you lock them in a room and test them. There were no controls in place," said police spokesman Gil.
Other finalists for Gates' job are Philadelphia Police Commissioner Willie L. Williams, who scored at the top of the list, and LAPD deputy chiefs Mark A. Kroeker and Glenn A. Levant.
Article copyright Los Angeles Sentinel.

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Woes Follow AIDS Victim Accused of Selling Blood

2008-04-15

By Terry Pristin and Cathleen Decker, Times Staff Writers

SECTION: Metro; Part 2; Page 1; Column 5; Metro Desk

When authorities in Grand Rapids, Mich., allowed Joseph Edward Markowski to move to San Francisco to serve out a probation sentence stemming from a bur-glary, they hoped that he might feel less like an outsider in a city with a large gay population.
A more sympathetic environment, they thought, might help him conquer his drinking problem and put his troubled life back on course.
It was a "unique disposition," his former attorney remembers. It was also a gamble that did not pay off.

Within a few weeks, Markowski, allegedly violated the terms of his probation, and three years later he has become the subject of nationwide attention. Last week he was charged in Los Angeles with attempted murder for allegedly selling AIDS-tainted blood to a private plasma center and also for allegedly having sex while knowing he had the deadly, contagious disease.
Appearing thin and pale, Markowski, 29, pleaded not guilty at his arraignment last week in Los Angeles Municipal Court. A preliminary hearing was set for Fri-day.

Although details of Markowski's life remain sketchy, he is remembered in Grand Rapids primarily for his role in helping police solve an October, 1983, apartment burglary in which a 60-year-old woman was nearly suffocated.
Markowski's part in the crime was "very minimal," his attorney, Patrick C. Bowler, said. He pleaded guilty to misdemeanor larceny and was sentenced to three years' probation.

Bowler said Markowski fully cooperated with police before any arrests were made and later testified against a co-defendant who was sentenced to more than 40 years in prison.

"I want to emphasize that (Markowski) was a very likable young chap," said Bowler, now a Grand Rapids District Court judge. "My client unfortunately became a hanger-on with a group of desperadoes. . . .
"Joe was not a natural criminal in my mind. He was a kid who had a lot of problems."
 
Arrests for Minor Offenses
These problems had resulted in "six or eight" arrests dating back to 1981 for minor offenses like disorderly behavior and urinating in public, according to Grand Rapids police spokesman Lt. Victor Gillis. Police records show that Markowski was suspected of being suicidal, Gillis said.
Bowler said Markowski was unable to hold a steady job: "He kind of bounced around."

Teachers and other officials at the high school where he graduated in 1976 have only faint memories, if any, of Markowski, who played in the school jazz band for about a year. "He seemed to be a fairly quiet person," said David Ellis, who directed the Creston High School jazz band at that time.
"He really did not hang out with the kids in the school. He was a loner," said Pat Reagan, the school's senior class adviser since 1972.
Markowski "does not know who his biological parents are or anything about them," said Marlene O'Hara, his probation officer in Grand Rapids. His adoptive father died in 1968.

His adoptive mother, Margaret, a Fire Department clerk, did not respond to a reporter's telephone calls. Other family members declined to be interviewed.

Markowski was sent out of town -- and ultimately to California -- in part be-cause of fear that his testimony in the burglary case had put his life at risk, Bowler said. Just after sentencing, he was briefly placed in an alcohol reha-bilitation center in Flint, Mich., more than two hours by car from Grand Rapids.

Then, at his request, he was put on a bus for San Francisco, where, under the terms of his probation, he went to live at Acceptance Place, a small alcohol and drug rehabilitation program for homosexuals.
"We wanted to put him in a program where he could survive and progress," Bowler said. "You can appreciate the problems of mixing Joe with people who don't understand his ways."
 
Left Program

But within a "very, very short amount of time," Markowski left Acceptance House, probation officer O'Hara said. In August, 1984, a bench warrant was is-sued for his arrest and remains pending, although Michigan authorities are not expected to try to extradite him.
Acceptance House counselors refused to discuss Markowski, citing confidenti-ality restrictions.
At some point within the last two years, Markowski turned up in the Los Ange-les area, where, police said, he worked as a hustler and lived on the streets, occasionally spending the night in one shelter or another.
Efforts to locate local friends or acquaintances of Markowski were unsuccess-ful.
"I don't know this guy. He's crazy," a male prostitute working a stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard frequented by gay hustlers told UPI. "Nobody knew him."

Last February, Los Angeles police detectives learned that Markowski had AIDS. Since then, they or West Hollywood sheriff's deputies have arrested him nine times for misdemeanor charges including shoplifting, vandalism and public drunk-enness.
And on seven occasions during the last five months, he has been taken to a psychiatric ward for observation because of suicidal behavior, police said. In six of those instances, he was admitted to County-USC Medical Center but quickly released.
The last referral to County-USC occurred June 23 after Markowski created a disturbance in a bank and asked a security guard to kill him because he has AIDS.

Questioned by police, Markowski "indicated . . . that he had lost 10 to 12 pounds and was not feeling too well," said Detective Bill Pavelic of the depart-ment's mental evaluation unit.
 
Receipt Found
Deputy Dist. Atty. Antonio Baretto Jr., who is prosecuting Markowski, said that when police found a receipt in Markowski's pockets indicating that he had sold his blood, they asked him if he knew he could infect others with the lethal disease.
Baretto, reading from a police report, said Markowski responded: "I don't care about the people. It's illegal and immoral but (obscenity) the people. When you're hurting for money, you've got to fill your palm. I've sold blood many times and under different names. I need help. Please take me to a hospital."

Pavelic said County-USC officials were informed in writing that Markowski could endanger the lives of others and were asked to notify police upon his re-lease. But when Markowski was released the next day, police were not alerted, Pavelic said.
Markowski was arrested June 25 when he attempted once again to sell blood to a plasma center, authorities said.
Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, who filed 10 felony charges against Markowski, in-cluding four counts of attempted murder, last week criticized County-USC for its "irresponsible actions" in releasing him without notifying police. County health officials have refused to comment on the case.
After Markowski's arrest, Reiner disclosed, he gave police the names of five men with whom he had had sex. Two of the attempted murder charges stem from al-leged sexual encounters with Paris Shaerrell, 44, who is currently in custody at the Hall of Justice.
Shaerrell pleaded guilty May 14 to grand theft.

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Bill Pavelic

2007-11-20

Detective Bill Pavelic has investigated every conceivable crime and he is considered an expert in police procedures, interrogations and case biopsies. Bill Pavelic is a recipient of over 200 commendations and letters of appreciation from private and governmental institutions, including the United States Department of Justice. Prior to his retirement in early 1993, Bill Pavelic was honored by the City of Los Angeles as the Detective Supervisor of the Year for his professional competence, unimpeachable integrity, and for serving the civilian community with distinction, courtesy and honor.

 

During his 19 year tenure with LAPD, Bill Pavelic earned a Master's Degree from Pepperdine University and acquired an extensive background in administrative and criminal investigations. Det. Bill Pavelic openly challenged the Los Angeles District Attorneys Office and the Los Angeles Police Department for it's "contribution" to racial injustice and for sending deplorable signals to police officers on the force that it was OK to frame people, falsify official investigations, violate the LAPD manual, discredit the Code of Ethics and be dishonest, as long as it protects or benefits the LAPD brass and a handful of LADA prosecutors.

 

Private investigator Bill Pavelic, who worked for the defense on the OJ Simpson, Robert Blake, and Phil Spector cases.

 

"Guilty of Incompetence" is a hard hitting book that will expose the facts instead of fiction, and take you behind the scenes to see how LAPD and LADA helped create the OJ Simpson "race card", covered up the existence of suspect "Charlie", mismanaged the investigation and botched the "Trial of the Century".

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FBI Recognized O.J. Simpson Plan Earlier

2007-11-02

LOS ANGELES - Federal agents learned three weeks in advance that O.J. Simpson and a memorabilia dealer planned an operation to retrieve personal items Simpson said were stolen from him, according to FBI reports obtained Friday by The Associated Press.

Dealer Thomas Riccio said he reported to the FBI on Aug. 21 that a collector claimed to have belongings taken from Simpson, and that Simpson wanted to videotape the confrontation with the person peddling thousands of pieces of his memorabilia.

Riccio told AP that he raised the subject while talking with the FBI about an unrelated subject: a video of Anna Nicole Smith. But he said agents dismissed his report, telling him "they didn't want to be involved in another weird celebrity case."

"The guy flat-out told me he had items stolen from O.J.'s house," Riccio told the AP. "I have a legitimate business."

FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said Riccio did not indicate a crime would be committed.

Riccio was advised to contact a lawyer before taking any action and was told that alerting the FBI would not absolve him of any potential crime, agent Linda Kline wrote of the meeting, which occurred in Los Angeles.

He was not clear how the operation would unfold. There was no mention in the report of any plans to use guns.

"I went along with O.J.'s plan," Riccio said. "It was a self-organized sting operation. Except for the final result, with him bringing people who had guns. I knew nothing about that."

Simpson, 60, and five other men were arrested after they allegedly stormed a Las Vegas hotel room with guns drawn Sept. 13 to seize items that were believed to include family photos and the suit Simpson wore the day he was acquitted of murdering his ex-wife and her friend.

Las Vegas police said the FBI did not alert them before the confrontation between Simpson and collectors Alfred Beardsley and Bruce Fromong.

"They contacted us afterward and provided us with the documentation," said Las Vegas Police Detective Andy Caldwell, the investigator handling the case.

Caldwell said he had no information about any FBI investigation into the incident.

Riccio, who had previously sold Anna Nicole Smith's diary, said he spoke for an hour with FBI agents about a video he obtained from a doctor who recorded Smith's 1994 breast implant surgery. A Texas doctor claimed in June he gave Riccio permission to use the video after Smith died. A judge has barred release of those videos in an unrelated case.

After discussing Smith, FBI agents gave Riccio about 15 minutes to discuss Simpson, but they expressed little interest, he said.

Riccio said he contacted the Los Angeles Police Department, where he said he was switched from department to department before finally being told to file a civil complaint.

"No one seemed to be concerned about it," Riccio said.

An LAPD spokesman declined to comment on Riccio's account.

Simpson is charged with an assortment of felonies including armed robbery and kidnapping. Three of his co-defendants have since pleaded guilty to lesser charges and said they would testify against Simpson. A preliminary hearing is scheduled next week in Las Vegas.

The FBI reports, written Aug. 21 and Sept. 19, said Riccio told agents he had been approached by Beardsley, who wanted to sell thousands of Simpson items.

The documents said Riccio described Beardsley as a fanatic and said Riccio contacted Simpson about the items. Simpson said his belongings were stolen from his Florida house by his former agent, Mike Gilbert, and others who had worked for him.

"Riccio and Simpson want to do a television broadcast confronting Beardsley regarding the items that were stolen," one report said. "Simpson wanted Riccio's assistance in setting up the operation and helping obtain interviews for Simpson through various media outlets after the fact."

Beardsley told police he had been robbed by Simpson and a group of men wielding guns. Simpson has denied there were any guns involved. He said Riccio set up the meeting and he planned to surprise Beardsley and retrieve his property.

Simpson told the AP he went to the hotel room after being alerted by Riccio that Beardsley and another collectibles dealer, Fromong, were trying to sell his possessions. Simpson knew both dealers.

Riccio has released a tape recording he made of the incident and been granted immunity by prosecutors.

Associated Press Special Correspondent Linda Deutsch reported from Los Angeles. AP writer Ken Ritter reported from Las Vegas.

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The Machiavelli of muck: Anthony Pellicano's double-dealing made him Hollywood's top investigator. Then it all fell apart.

2007-10-29

Domanick, Joe

THE PALE, AGING PRISONERS IN THE ARMY GREEN WINDBREAKER, navy blue pants, and leg irons exits the U.S. courtroom in Los Angeles doing the chain-gang shuffle with the line of men to whom he's shackled. Already incarcerated for more than three years, Anthony Pellicano has just learned on this May 2007 day that it will be nine more months before he stands trial on 112 counts of wiretapping, identity theft, racketeering, conspiracy, witness tampering, and destruction of evidence, charges that could land him in prison for a decade or more. Until next February he'll be forced to sit in a cell in the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown L.A., jailed without bail as a flight risk.

Once Hollywood's charismatic, high-flying private eye to the stars, the 63-year-old Pellicano now appears small and stooped, his ample nose made more prominent by a new gauntness. His jowls are loose and hanging, his mouth is sad and downturned--a look, given his receding chin and balding pate, that puts one in mind of Homer Simpson.

Just a handful of reporters have shown up for the hearing, and their articles, if they appear at all, will be consigned to the back pages, the surest sign that the man once thought to be at the center of Hollywood's own Watergate scandal is fast fading into irrelevance. A story that was supposed to blow the lid off the Industry has instead come to seem about as scandalous as kissing your sister. It's a remarkable denouement in a prosecution that once promised to suck in some of the Industry's biggest names.

Pellicano's troubles began with a November 2002 raid by FBI agents on his detective agency offices in a swank 12-story glass tower on the western end of the Sunset Strip. The raid was triggered by a tip from a jailhouse informant alleging that Pellicano was behind a bizarre incident the previous June, when a rose, a dead fish, and a cardboard sign reading STOP were left on the cracked windshield of an Audi belonging to then-Los Angeles Times reporter Anita Busch. She had been investigating a connection between the actor Steven Seagal--an old client of Pellicano's--and an organized-crime figure. Pellicano never faced federal charges in the incident (although a single count growing out of the case has been filed by the L.A. County district attorney). Nevertheless, it was enough to set up all that followed.

As the agents fanned out, Pellicano showed them two loaded handguns in a desk drawer and opened two combination floor safes. Inside were two hand grenades, military-grade plastic C-4 explosives, a detonator, jewelry, gold coins and bullion, and $200,000 in cash. In subsequent searches, agents carted off 36 pieces of electronic equipment, including wiretapping software, computer hard drives and storage files, 150,000 pages of documents, encrypted transcripts of phone conversations, and more than 1,300 tape recordings.

About a year later Pellicano pleaded guilty to possessing illegal explosives and was sentenced to 27 to 32 months in federal prison. On the day before he was scheduled for release in February 2006, he wash it with the multi count federal wiretapping indictment. When the indictment came down, Hollywood was awash in speculation about who would be next. Thus far 11 others have been charged or have pleaded guilty, including Pellicano clients Terry Christensen, the attorney to multibillionaire Kirk Kerkorian; Die Hard director John McTiernan; Sandra Carradine, former wife of actor Keith Carradine; three other clients; two police officers; two phone company employees; and a software programmer.

No small potatoes by any means, but hardly the Hollywood kingpins whose names had been bandied about. Chief among them--and named by prosecutors as a "person of interest"--was Bert Fields, il cupo di tutti capi of entertainment attorneys and a man with whom Pellicano had been closely associated for more than a decade. Fields's clients include Brad Grey, a manager and producer at the time and now the chairman of Paramount Pictures, who was locked in ugly, high-stakes lawsuits with actor-comedian Garry Shandling and screenwriter "Bo" Zenga. Both of them--in addition to four others linked to Fields's clients--allegedly were wiretapped by Pellicano.
Then there was Michael Ovitz, the former head of Creative Artists Agency. According to summaries of FBI interviews of Ovitz obtained by The New York Times, in early 2002, Ovitz paid Pellicano to gather dirt on 15 to 20 people, including high-level former CAA agents and partners he was at war with, like current Universal Studios head Ron Meyer, Richard Lovett, Kevin Huvane, and Bryan Lourd. New York Times reporter Bernard Weinraub and Busch, who had been writing critical articles about Ovitz's financial difficulties, were also targeted.

There's been no shortage of speculation, but it's unlikely that Fields, Ovitz, or any of those not already indicted ever will be. Federal prosecutors, signaling they were ready to go ahead with their case at the hearing in May, unsuccessfully opposed postponing the trial until February. The statute of limitations has run out on many of the potential crimes.

Meanwhile, Pellicano remains in jail, vowing to take his punishment "like a man" and refusing to implicate others in the wide-ranging wiretapping scheme he created. According to the indictment, that scheme was devised to gather and use information to secretly gain "a tactical advantage in litigation by learning [his] opponents' plans, strategies, and perceived strengths and weaknesses and other personal information of a confidential, embarrassing or incriminating nature." Among the 63 wiretapping victims were Sylvester Stallone, Keith Carradine, Kevin Nealon, and Donna Dubrow, the former wife of McTiernan.

Pellicano never responded to interview requests left with his lawyer. Whatever the outcome of Pellicano's trial, he'll go down in pop history as one of Hollywood's great characters. He's the Rudy Giuliani of private eyes: audacious, narcissistic, emotionally immature, and egomaniacal, a guy who sold exactly what Giuliani is now hawking--protection. Working for people who wanted their toilets scrubbed without getting their fingers dirty, for two decades Pellicano played his role of Hollywood factotum to perfection, an all-service provider presenting himself to his clients as their consigliere, operative, and intimidator. He conveyed that he was someone possessing a great cache of knowledge, someone who knew guys who knew guys and could solve any problem--just like Mr. wolf in Pulp Fiction. "I need everything from refinement [to threats with] baseball bats," the singer Courtney Love once told him in a tape leaked to The New York Times. "And I need them all under one roof ... when I have a problem of any stripe--A to Z,I can go to you. That's what I need." To which Pellicano replied: "Listen, Courtney, if you come to me, that's the end of that. I'm an old-style Sicilian. I only go one way. My clients are my family, and that's it."

"He took care of people's problems," his wife, Kat, told a New York Times reporter. "That's what he did for a living. And he did it very well."

But what has been frequently overlooked is that he was also an astonishing self-creation. He came to the land of make-believe and fooled the people whose business it is to spin tales and create lies, fooled them into believing the myth of Anthony Pellicano: the world's greatest private investigator; the smartest-guy-in-the-room Mensa member; the super expert in the esoteric quasi-science of voice and audio identification technology; the tracer of missing persons extraordinaire. Hiding in plain sight was a prime-time bullshitter and first-rate showman.

His black-bag jobs, dirty tricks, anonymous threatening late-night phone calls, and thug-for-hire intimidations were common knowledge among high-end divorce and paternity lawyers and Hollywood reporters. Rather than obscuring what he did, Pellicano made it his brand, thriving on the notion that he was a mobbed-out guy. The mere chance that you could be exposing yourself or your family to such a man worked wonders for him, and people backed away when he pushed.
He dressed in expensive double-breasted wise-guy suits and leatherjackets set off by patent leather shoes, man-with-no-eyes shades, and a pinkie ring. He slicked back his thinning hair, doused himself with cologne, and popped Chiclets the way Kojak used to suck on lollipops. He was, said Kat, "the only man I ever met that could make a silkshirt look like polyester." In the '80s, he papered the walls of his office in bordello red velvet, later graduating to a hipper decor, highlighted by black leather furniture. His oak-finished office doors were painted in gold lettering announcing that you were entering the Pellicano Investigative Agency Ltd./Forensic Audio Lab/Syllogistic Research Group. He installed what he claimed was the latest in audio analysis equipment. He had his receptionist talk over the piped-in Puccini and offer cappuccinos to prospective clients. Once visitors were led through the hallways lined with framed magazine articles heralding the magnificence of himself, he played the role of professional goombah. "What can I tell ya," he would say with a shrug. "I'm Sicilian."

"He was like a hungry kid looking at a candy store when he talked about the mob," says novelist Jacquelyn Mitchard, who spent time as a young reporter with Pellicano in the late '70s. "He loved to play up his connections, making a point of referring to 'Lucky' Luciano as 'Paul'--because that's what real mob guys did. It was kind of sad. He always reminded me of Butch Cassidy looking back to a time that was over, refusing to believe there was just no place for a gunslinger anymore." More recently, Sunday night--Sopranos night--had become a sacred rite for Pellicano. He prepared for High Mass on HBO with a massage from Kat and enforced absolute silence throughout the house.

He billed himself as a kung fu master and bragged that he carried a Louisville Slugger in the trunk of his car--just in case. What frightened some intrigued others, who seemed to view Pellicano as an actor in his own amazing movie. In the early '90s, he worked with producer-director Michael Mann, developing a television series for NBC while also writing a screenplay based on his experiences. Neither the show nor the movie ever materialized, but just before Pellicano's arrest, his client Brad Grey had been in talks with HBO about developing a similar series.

His specialty was unique for a private eye: protecting the image of stars. That's why Michael Jackson, Roseanne Barr, Kevin Costner, Tom Cruise, John Travolta, James Woods, Farrah Fawcett, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Chris Rock sought him out. Just how much they valued his protection was demonstrated by a phone call from Rock to Pellicano in 2001, asking for help in neutralizing an accusation that he'd had sex with a woman without her consent. "I'm better off getting caught with ... needles in my arms," he told Pellicano in a tape leaked to The New York Times. "Needles with pictures [saying,]'Here's Chris Rock shooting heroin: [That would be] a much [lesser] blow to the career." No charges were filed.

His reputation enabled him to charge a $25,000 retainer, to live in a million-dollar canyon-view home in suburban Ventura County an hour and a half drive from his work, to take Kat to the best hotels and restaurants, to drive a classic two-seater Mercedes, a jet-black Lexus SUV, and a second Mercedes, and to own a West Hollywood condo in a building a short walk from his high-priced office.

Attorneys, producers, agents, and film executives loved him, too. Ovitz admired Pellicano's "innovativeness and resourcefulness." Producer Don Simpson saw him as a fierce protector of his clients, a "lion at the gate" whom you never wanted to be "on the wrong side of." And attorneys Bert Fields and Howard Weitzman considered Pellicano an invaluable investigator. Weitzman admired his "rock-solid loyalty," Fields his efficiency. "Time after time," says Fields, "he comes up with the witness I'm looking for. He gets results."

How he got them only Pellicano really knew until that life-defining, career-destroying 2002 search of his office. Before then, everybody in Hollywood--including the media--was drinking Pellicano's Kool-Aid in huge gulps. Only the spin varied: Either he was a Mensa man/techno genius or a bat-wielding Mafia thug. But the truth was much more complex and, therefore, far more interesting.
THE GRANDSON OF SICILIAN IMMIGRANTS, Anthony Joseph Pellicano was born in Chicago in 1944. A grandfather had anglicized the family name; the grandson would later restore it. He was raised by a divorced single mother on the mob-dominated, Italian-immigrant streets of Cicero, a ten-minute ride from Chicago. Cicero was then a place where guys wore wife-beater T-shirts with suspenders and played pinochle on the stoop, where the Irish priests ate their pork chops, peas, and boiled-potato dinners out on Saturday night, and people were happy that their daughter Rose went to novena with the niece of a local gangster. Al Capone set up his headquarters there when Chicago police started busting his speakeasies and gambling operations; by the 1960s, it was billed as "the Walled City of the Syndicate" and was filled with strip clubs, gambling joints, and bars.

His mother, Pellicano once said, was a "working lady who never made more than $150 a week," and he was forced to "fend for himself at age 14 [working in] a barbershop for a dollar an hour and a lesson cutting hair." By his own description, he was a "hot-tempered, skinny little kid who lived by [my] wits"; neither of his parents, he said, "gave me any education at all." Possessing "the attention span of a hyperkinetic six-year-old," he left high school at 16.

In the early '60s, he joined the U.S. Army Signal Corps and received his GED while serving as a cryptographer, coding and decoding messages. "When I got out," he told Playboy magazine, "the majority of people who were doing crypto work were in cosmetics or toy manufacturing.... It wasn't all that thrilling to me." Instead he took a job chasing deadbeats for the Spiegel catalog company.
In 1969, he opened his own private-eye firm, focusing on collections and the removal of secretly placed surveillance equipment. He liked to wear huge, amber-tinted aviator glasses and three-piece jeans suits with foot-long collars and huge knotted ties; in repose he was almost handsome, with curly dark hair, large, heavy-lidded, expressive eyes, and full lips--the effect broken only when he smiled and revealed large, uneven buckteeth. On occasion he wore a white lab smock embroidered with an eye surrounded by concentric circles, the symbol of his detective agency, Fortune Enterprises. In 1974, he filed for bankruptcy, a setback he blithely ignored as he hired a press agent and launched an all-out assault on the gullibility of the Chicago press.

Throughout the mid-1970s, he sold the legend of "Tony" Pellicano to anyone who would listen. His message was simple: He was the baddest, sagest practitioner of the "praying mantis style of kung fu." He had a "100 percent success rate" in tracking down exactly 3,968 missing persons. Most amazingly, they were all "cases other people couldn't solve."

There he was on Channel 7 talking about runaway teens, on WBBM radio discussing "the families of missing persons," flying to New York to appear on To Tell the Truth, and then back to Chicago to do Friday Night with Steve Edwards. Then it was over to the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University to speak as "one of the top debugging experts in the United States" and off to lecture at the Phi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity at Chicago-Kent College. He went to Marquette University Law School to make a presentation on the "psychological stress evaluator," then to the Maywood Rotary Club, then to the International Association of Bomb Technicians and Investigators.

At the same time, he was playing footsie with seemingly every reporter in Chicago. They gushed over his plush office, with its silver walls, black furniture, and full-length mirrors in the waiting room. They marveled over the mammoth gold zodiac that dominated his office--beneath which hung samurai swords and two nunchaku sticks, which he'd take off the wall to demonstrate how he could kill a reporter, while his pet piranha looked on.

He didn't carry a gun, he told Oui magazine, "because my hands are lethal weapons." In fact, he couldn't legally carry a gun because he'd never been employed by a law enforcement agency. He recounted how he was knifed in a Mexican bar while working on a kidnapping case but "went into my kung fu stance and beat the hell out of him." He boasted of having $300,000 worth of electronic equipment, an unlikely possibility given that in his bankruptcy he'd listed his assets as $50 in clothes and $28 in cash. Nevertheless, he was good at finding people.

Even his bankruptcy fed the Pellicano myth, for it revealed that he'd received a $30,000 loan from a friend, Paul DeLucia Jr., the son of mobster Felice DeLucia (aka Paul "the Waiter" Ricca). He was also a pallbearer at the eider DeLucia's 1972 funeral and named DeLucia Jr. the godfather of one of his daughters. He claimed that the younger DeLucia "was just like any guy in the neighborhood." From then on he both denied and promoted his mob connections as it served his purposes. The governor of Illinois took the loan seriously enough, however, to force Pellicano to resign from a state law enforcement advisory board.

A recent story from the Chicago Sun-Times alleges, with little evidence, that Pellicano was once a member of Chicago gangster Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo's crew and had done investigative work for Lombardo in 1974, helping clear him as a suspect in a murder case. But as Joe Paolella, a former Secret Service agent from Chicago says, "Pellicano never promoted being connected in Chicago the way he did in L.A.--a place where he could portray himself as some kind of mob guy to an upper-middle-class Hollywood clientele that didn't know any better, if you're a real crook in Chicago, you don't want anybody to know about it." In any case, there's no public record of Pellicano being arrested or convicted of a crime before the 2002 FBI raid, of his having his record sealed, or of any significant association with organized crime in L.A. Nor for that matter has there surfaced any public or police complaint against him for using his famous Louisville Slugger in an assault. Stare-downs, threatening phone calls, and intimidation, yes, but actual physical violence, well, the proof is hard to come by.

What's clearer, however, is that like Johnny Fontane--the Frank Sinatra character in The Godfather--Anthony Pellicano did gain fame with a grotesque assist. In 1977, after 19 years of resting peacefully in a small Jewish cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois, the body of Elizabeth Taylor's third husband, Hollywood producer Mike Todd, was stolen by grave robbers. They'd moved his tombstone, pried open his bronze coffin, and made off with his remains. Eight local cops searched the graveyard without finding the body. Then the police heard from Pellicano, who told them he'd received "a number of phone calls" revealing Todd's . Arriving at the cemetery with a local Channel 2 news anchor and a camera crew, Pellicano found bones and Todd's old belt buckle in a pile of mud, leaves, and branches about 75 yards from his grave. The robbers, Pellicano later told the police, had hoped to find "a ten-karat diamond ring," a gift from Taylor they mistakenly thought had been buried with Todd. Accused of orchestrating the incident as a publicity stunt, Pellicano denied it, asking, "Why would I need publicity?"

The incident caught the attention of defense attorney Howard Weitzman, who brought Pellicano to Los Angeles. (He left his wife and five kids in Chicago.) Together they would work on the case that made both their careers: the 1983 drug-entrapment trial of automaker John DeLorean. Desperately trying to raise money to save his company from bankruptcy, DeLorean ran into a government sting fueled by a paid informant and ambitious federal prosecutors. DeLorean was acquitted, and Weitzman gave Pellicano a large share of the credit for tarnishing the informant. That kind of attention had not been showered on a private eye in Hollywood since the days of Fred Otash.

A rogue ex-LAPD vice detective, Otash was also a pimp, wire-tapper, friend to Mickey Cohen, and informant to the FBI on Cohen and fellow L.A. mobster Johnny Roselli. Otash always wanted to be "Hollywood's most spectacular private eye," newspaper columnist Paul Coates wrote in 1959, "and had made it a special point to cultivate the right people. Attorneys, the movie set, the TV crowd." After which he made it a point to exploit them. There are unconfirmed reports that Otash, who died in L.A. in 1992, mentored Pellicano, who arrived in the early '80s.

Born in Massachusetts in 1922, Otash worked as a lifeguard at the Miami Biltmore Hotel before enlisting in the Marine Corps in 1942. Discharged in 1945, he joined the LAPD and operated undercover out of the Palladium nightclub, where he met both lowlifes and stars. He allegedly ran a prostitution ring with the bartender. Forced to resign from the department in 1955, he was hired as a private eye by Confidential magazine, the fountainhead for much that's cheap and tawdry in the media today.

Confidential's 1950s heyday synchronized perfectly with the final days of the Hollywood star system. For decades the studios had maintained their own security forces to shield their stars from unfavorable publicity and had worked hand in glove with the Los Angeles, Culver City, and Beverly Hills police departments. They would receive a call from the cops about a star they'd arrested but not booked, send a studio rep to get him, cover things up, and take him home and put him to bed.
Using what an FBI report called "a seemingly inexhaustible list of call girls" who brought information to him, Otash cultivated sources for Confidential. Otash and Confidential spied on Rock Hudson talking about his homosexuality, and then played the tape for Columbia studio boss Harry Cohn--who agreed to become an informant in return for the magazine's not outing Hudson. Operating a sound truck stocked with surveillance and wiretapping equipment, Otash broke into the homes of Marilyn Monroe and Peter Lawford to get information on the Kennedys. At 3 a.m. on the night Monroe died of a drug overdose, Lawford, as Otash later told it, called him to sweep the house of bugs before calling an ambulance.

Eventually Otash had his PI's license revoked, and the stars and studios banded together with a California senate investigating committee to sue Confidential for criminal libel.
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The case ended in a mistrial, but the magazine went broke defending itself and folded, bringing the era to a close.

Pellicano brought to Los Angeles several personal traits that would serve him well: an adoration of old-school Mafia values that resonated deeply among people who found it difficult to differentiate between the movie fictions they created and reality, and an easy, soothing intimacy, it was all "buddy" and "pal" and "honey" on the phone to both women and men.

He was also "a very charismatic, eccentric, entertaining personality with an entrepreneurial spirit that allowed him to make phone calls and ask for work," says Howard Weitzman. "People were impressed by that and by his ability to [subsequently] follow up and deliver information."
Others were less impressed with the cold calls. Phoning Century City defense attorney Harland W. Braun, Pellicano hinted in an answering machine message that he was connected to the Chicago mob, as a kind of recommendation. Braun's reaction was, "Why would I ever want to hire a guy like that?" and he never called back. But others did.

As his profile rose, so did the profile of the celebrities he worked for--or against. They included Heidi Fleiss, "Beverly Hills Madam" Elizabeth Adams, Sylvester Stallone, and Kevin Costner. He investigated the OD death of John Belushi and found the daughter Roseanne Barr had given up for adoption (and then leaked the story to the tabs).

Working with Weitzman and Fields in the early '90s, he helped beat back allegations that Michael Jackson molested a 12-year-old boy by producing evidence of extortion by the boy's father and damaging information about the family--a job for which he later claimed to have received $2 million. During the case, according to Diane Dimond, then a senior correspondent at Hard Copy, Pellicano tried to intimidate her and discourage her coverage critical of Jackson. She became convinced that Pellicano was tapping her phone.

Meanwhile, Pellicano was building relationships with law enforcement, reaping payments for appearing as an expert audiotape witness, and collecting numerous letters of praise. Commendations rolled in from federal prosecutors across the country, from district attorneys throughout Southern California, from two California attorneys general, from the U.S. Navy's Judge Advocate General's Corps, the Arizona State Senate, and the mayor of Houston.

Among the raves, hard questions rarely came up. Just how good an audio-video expert was he? How many of the letters came from law enforcement clients who were happy because they got the analysis they wanted? What is clear is that he had no formal linguistic, mathematical, or scientific education in a complex field.

Pellicano solidified his reputation as an audio-video expert during the DeLorean trial. Weitzman recalls his doing "a very good job" in his tape analysis. But according to Roger Shuy, a professor emeritus of linguistics at Georgetown University who also worked on the DeLorean defense team, Pellicano's work was sloppy. "I reviewed the transcripts of the tapes that Pellicano made against the actual tapes," says Shuy. "And I found dozens and dozens of places where Pellicano was in error--where the transcripts didn't show what was on the tape. I had to go through and correct them all. It was weird, because most of the mistakes weakened the defense case and helped the prosecution."

Shuy is hardly alone in his criticism. "I was representing one of Hollywood's biggest agents who was in criminal trouble," says Century City defense attorney William Graysen, "and he asked me to hire Pellicano as an expert witness. I called him, and he said, 'I'll cross any river and climb any mountain to do what I have to do to win the case.' I took that to mean falsifying evidence. I went back to my client and said, 'This guy is bad news.' And we didn't use him."

During a late 1990s case in Tampa, Florida, investigated by the L.A. Times, the U.S. Attorney's office was prosecuting a couple for the disappearance of their child based on remarks allegedly made on a secretly recorded audiotape. When the FBI failed to detect the remarks on the tape, prosecutors hired Pellicano, who declared that the alleged incriminating utterances existed and that he could clearly hear them. To which the judge replied, when they were played in court, "The government hears what no reasonably prudent listener can. It interprets what can be heard as no prudent listener would." Federal authorities dropped the case, and the defendants were awarded $2.9 million for wrongful prosecution.

In 1990, then-freelance journalist Rod Lurie acquired a list of paid sources used by the National Enquirer and contracted to do a story about it for Los Angeles magazine. Pellicano was allegedly paid $500,000 by the Enquirer to have the story killed. The huge amount of money was an indication of how desperate the tabloid was. The Enquirer couldn't continue to exist if its sources were burned. Moreover, the company was in the process of going public on Wall Street, and this was a terrible time to have the kind of embarrassing revelations they themselves made their living generating.

Pellicano's way of dealing with recalcitrant reporters involved perseverance--he'd start with "I'm a tough guy, don't luck with me," and when that didn't work, he'd try "I'm getting a lot of money. If you don't think I'm going to get paid, you're out of your mind." He'd follow that with "You're an intelligent guy. I really like you. I've checked you out" and finally graduate to bribery: "You shouldn't write this story. I can get you six figures elsewhere."

By the late '80s, Pellicano had become involved in a far more complex dance with the tabloids. In 1997, Jim Mitteager, a reporter for the National Enquirer and the Globe, died of cancer. Shortly before his death, he gave hundreds of tapes he had secretly recorded to Paul Barresi, an informant and sometime investigator for Pellicano. The tapes capture little people fighting over crumbs tossed around as celebrities try to protect their images. Transcripts of the tapes provided by Barresi, a former porn star and producer currently working as an unlicensed investigator, show Pellicano trading gossip and planting stories with Mitteager and Globe reporter Cliff Dunn while paying to have other stories killed.

During a 1994 conversation, Mitteager, Dunn, and Pellicano agree to get together the following Tuesday, and Pellicano, who was working for Michael Jackson, promises to find out for them what's happening with the L.A. grand jarls looking into child molestation accusations against the star. The reporters then inform Pellicano that actress Whoopi Goldberg, a friend and client of his, went to Saint John's Hospital for a mammogram and that Dunn was tipped off by a hospital source that she had breast cancer (a rumor unconfirmed by Los Angeles). "I want that source," Pellicano tells Dunn. "For how much?" replies Dunn."What the fuck kind of question is that?" Pellicano shoots back. "You can't say, 'How much?' to me. You have to give me a price and say, 'This is what I want!'" Dunn answers, "I want five grand. Then you blow him out of the water [i.e., expose him as a source], and he's used on every celebrity story [at the hospital]."
They next turn to Elizabeth Taylor.

Pellicano: Now let me ask you a question on Liz Taylor. You say that they are going after her?
Mitteager: Well, of course. She's in the hospital. Liz Taylor sells goddamn books.

Pellicano: Because I don't care what you do with her. As a matter of fact, if I can help you with her, I will.... What do you want to know on her?
Mitteager: Any story that would make the front page.
Pellicano: I know that she is fucking drinking again. That's a fact.
Dunn: That's something. If we can confirm that.
Pellicano: I just told you!
Dunn: I can't say to [the Globe] lawyers that my source is Anthony Pellicano.
Mitteager: We need to work together to get some sort of network of people.
Pellicano: We'll go further on that. But you guys are guaranteed the three grand on Tuesday.
Barresi says he worked with Pellicano on cases involving Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Jackson, Barry Bonds, and Tom Cruise. Pellicano, he says, "worked mostly with entertainment attorneys--they were his favorite clients--to keep salacious information about their clients away from the public. It was a great way for them to make big money."

"If you find dirt on a celebrity, then you go to the attorney, or directly to the client, and say, 'Hey, there's a story brewing with the tabs, we need to quash it: Most celebrities are not gonna hesitate, because a celebrity is the most naive, infantile person in the world. They get preferential treatment, but if boulders fall on their head in real life, they don't know what to do, other than dig deep into their pockets," says Barresi. "Pellicano was the master of getting them to do that--the celebrity never knew how simple it was to put a fire out, or that sometimes there was never really a fire in the first place. There would be a story brewing, but the reporter couldn't nail it down. So Pellicano would light the fire. He was the arsonist-and then he'd come back and put the fire out."
Often, says private investigator Bill Pavelic, who worked for the defense on the O.J. Simpson, Robert Blake, and Phil Spector cases, "Pellicano would have the source in his hip pocket and be able to pay him right off the bat to kill the story or rumor. But he wouldn't tell his clients that. He'd simply say, 'I can make the problem go away.'" That fed right into the Pellicano mystique. If you're a magician, you don't tell the audience how you do your tricks.

Thus it's entirely plausible that attorneys like Bert Fields were never informed about Pellicano's illegal activities, his connections with the police, or his association with the tabloids--because he didn't want them to know. During one phone conversation, for example, Mitteager asks if Fields knows Pellicano is getting information from tabloid reporters. "I'm not telling anybody anything," Pellicano replies. "When Cliff [Dunn] comes to my office, I go to meet him in the fucking parking lot.... I don't tell them [his attorney and other clients] these things. I have a cash slush fund that I use. And that's what you guys have been getting [paid from]."

The last case Barresi says he worked on for Pellicano involved Tom Cruise. A male hustler, as Barresi tells it, asked for help in landing a book deal about a sexual relationship he'd allegedly had with Cruise, and Barresi mentioned it to Pellicano. The guy's story, Pellicano told Mitteager in a taped phone conversation, "was so far off the wall, it was pathetic." Well then why, asks Mitteager, "has Bert Fields jumped all over it?" (On November 20, 2002, Fields sent a letter to the accuser threatening legal action.) "Because," replies Pellicano, Cruise "is a new client, and he has to do that shit." The bottom line, says Barresi, was that it quickly became apparent that the accuser had made the story up. "I brought him into Pellicano's office to be interrogated," says Barresi, "and after it was over, it was clear his story was falling apart. But Pellicano said, 'You know, this guy sounds credible to me.' I know now that he wanted to create a credible case, because he couldn't go to Bert Fields and say, 'I got this guy who's a kook.'" Instead, according to Barresi, "he made the guy more legit. Because that was where the money was."

It's a rare good moment for Anthony Pellicano--his March wedding day, a last hurrah before his trial next February. When he spots his three daughters in federal court, all holding bridesmaid's bouquets of red roses, he raises his wrists, points to the shackles that wind around his waist, and jokes about his "new jewelry." Standing by is Kat Jane Pellicano, a blond, animated woman of 50, draped in a white sleeveless dress. In her hands is a white shirt she's brought for Pellicano to wear during their remarriage ceremony.

The scene is pure Pellicano, as he had invited AP reporter Linda Deutsch, the doyenne of the L.A. courthouse press corps, along with Chuck Phillips of the Los Angeles Times, People magazine's veteran celebrity profile writer, Frank Swertlow, and the New York Times entertainment industry reporting team of David M. Halbfinger and Allison HopeWeiner (who are themselves under investigation for printing leaked grand jury tapes of conversations between Pellicano and various clients and stars).

Sitting together after the ceremony, Kat and Pellicano kiss and hold hands as they watch the vows of two other couples. Kat, a native Oklahoman and mother of four of Pellicano's nine children, had first met her husband in 1984 while working in the Luckman Plaza tower where his offices were. She'd found him macho, which for Kat translated into attractive. By 2002, however, Pellicano's life was falling apart. Weary of the 60-mile round-trip from his office to their Ventura County home, Pellicano took to staying overnight at their West Hollywood condo. Stressed, consumed with anger, and unable to find release, he became explosive in the office. In the mid-'90s, the Internet was making information more accessible, but private investigators had lost legal access to voter registration addresses and DMV information as resources for tracking people down. Despite his success, Pellicano was still a small businessman, still hustling for customers after 30 years on the job. He was approaching 60. "When I was representing Robert Blake during his murder case, Pellicano would call me," says Harland Braun, "and say, 'Robert's friends are asking me to help out on the case: But I knew he just wanted to get his name back in the paper and get some publicity, and I told him no thanks."

At home he was tense and moody, craving solitude, demanding that the kids not have friends over on weekends. Kat filed for a divorce that became final in September 2002. Pellicano--a man who needed the structure of a family and the support of a wife even as he ignored them--was cast adrift. Two months later, the FBI raided his office.

Alex Proctor, the small-time hood whose conversation with a government informant triggered the search of Pellicano's office, told the informant he saw a change. "Anthony is losing it. He's getting to an age, quite frankly, that there's deterioration. I see it," he said.

Pellicano's remarriage received almost no coverage, and only Deutsch noted how happy Kat Pellicano seemed. "It's not often," Kat said, "that you get to marry the love of your life twice." All had been forgiven--her driving him out of their house and divorcing him, his flying to Las Vegas on his last weekend before going to prison to marry Teresa Ann DeLucio, a 42-year-old former dancer and bartender, in a Bellagio hotel chapel. They subsequently divorced.

Before their remarriage, Kat had been unable to visit Pellicano because of detention rules limiting visits to immediate family and legal counsel. Now that would change. Cynics saw the reunion as a way to prevent Hat from having to testify against her husband. Hat had helped make the cynics' point after Pellicano's Vegas marriage by boasting that she'd been pressured by FBI agents but had told them nothing, even though she'd discussed her husband's cases with him and had helped "solve half of them." But with Pellicano in jail she was broke. As she put it to The New York Times, "What is the benefit to me of talking to them? It's more benefit to me for Anthony to be out of jail than in jail."

Pellicano had initially turned down the assistance of a public defender, declaring that he intended to defend himself. Cooler heads prevailed, and two respected defense attorneys volunteered to represent Pellicano pro bono. They will make the argument that the search warrant was based on the false premise that Pellicano had been involved in the threats and vandalizing of Anita Busch's car, and that what they were really after was evidence about an entirely different case, in which Pellicano illegally wiretapped an FBI agent speaking to an Israeli businessman Pellicano was surveilling.

As a result, the defense will ask the judge to declare the original search warrant invalid, thereby negating the entire case. The chances of that happening are slim. A better shot at an acquittal will probably rest on the government's having to prove most of its case circumstantially. Thus far prosecutors have produced only one wiretap, that of the wife and brother of Los Angeles billionaire Alec E. Gores discussing their extramarital affair. According to the government, Pellicano was hired by Gores to investigate the two lovers. Gores has already admitted that Pellicano played the tapes of their conversations for him.

A guilty verdict will probably cost Pellicano ten years in prison. Barring an acquittal, his only hope is to roll over and implicate some of the Hollywood moguls and attorneys who employed him. But as Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson, a former U.S. attorney, points out, "Any prosecutor would be out of his mind to try and make a case against Bert Fields based on the testimony of Pellicano--who would have zero credibility. Every word he said would have to have corroboration. They'd be fighting the best lawyers money can buy and have to convince a jury that a man of Fields's stature would stoop to such cheap tricks."

Consequently, assistant U.S. attorney Daniel Saunders, the lead prosecutor, appears unwilling to take a chance on any high-profile losses and has decided to focus on Pellicano, the lowest-hanging fruit. "He's got Pellicano and Terry Christensen," says Levenson. "When you take down a major partner in a major law firm in a city like Los Angeles, you're making a statement and issuing a warning that lawyer abuse of the system won't be tolerated."

Limiting the prosecutions also means that the most compelling aspects of the case won't be resolved: How much did Fields, Ovitz, Grey, Kerkorian, and all the rest know? How did Pellicano stay off law enforcement's radar for so long? Was it because he was an informant, like Fred Otash? How many dirty tricks did Pellicano and his clients perpetrate? What would have been revealed if Hollywood had had its Watergate hearings?

At least Pellicano will have achieved what he's always craved: pop immortality. Back in the early '90s, Sylvester Stallone described Pellicano's life as "the kind of script that can only get better as his experiences grow." What has turned out to be so good for the script, has, however, been a disaster for the man.
Crossed Wires
12 degrees of Anthony Pellicano
BARRY BONDS
An ex-porn star claims Pellicano worked an a case involving the slugger
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
TERRY CHRISTENSEN
Attorney to the powerful has been indicted for illegal wiretapping
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
TOM CRUISE
Frequently relied on Bert Fields to make rumors go bye-bye
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
BERT FIELDS
Entertainment attorney named as a "person of interest" by the feds
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
GENNIFER FLOWERS
Her recordings of Bill Clinton received the investigator's analysis
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
MICHAEL JACKSON
The PI helped beat back molestation charges filed against the singer
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
JOHN MCTIERNAN
The director has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about eavesdropping
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
MICHAEL OVITZ
The agent hired the snoop to spy on 15 to 20 associates and journalists
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
STEVEN SEAGAL
His alleged ties to organized crime may have triggered Pellicano's troubles
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
GARRY SHANDLING
The comic actor has possibly been spied on by the investigator
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
DON SIMPSON
The late producer's appetites kept Pellicano busy and helped make him rich
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
HOWARD WEITZMAN
The attorney brought the Chicago investigator to Hollywood in 1983

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Bill Pavelic New Book Guilty of Incompetence

2007-10-22

"Guilty of Incompetence" is a hard hitting book, that will expose the facts instead of fiction, and take you behind the scenes to see how LAPD and LADA helped create the OJ Simpson "race card", covered up the existence of suspect "Charlie", mismanaged the investigation and botched the "Trial of the Century".

 

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THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL

2007-10-10

Los Angeles Times

March 1, 1995, Wednesday, Home Edition

UCLA law professor Peter Arenella and Loyola University law professor Laurie Levenson offer their take on the Simpson trial. Joining them is Los Angeles de-fense lawyer Albert DeBlanc Jr., who will rotate with other experts as the case moves forward. Today's topic: Rosa Lopez and defense discovery violations.
 
PETER ARENELLA

On the prosecution: "Marcia Clark should be grateful that Judge Ito did not grant her request to have the conditional examination of Rosa Lopez terminated. Ito's decision to delay the testimony until Thursday gives Clark more time to prepare what could be a lethal cross-examination and gives Lopez more time to worry about what is in store for her. If Clark's request had been granted, Lopez might have disappeared and the defense later could have complained that they lost a material alibi witness whose testimony could have been preserved."
On the defense: "Johnnie Cochran has to be concerned that the defense might be losing credibility with Ito. That concern might explain Cochran's pointed re-mark that his subordinate, Carl Douglas, did not take responsibility for discov-ery matters until January. Left unsaid, but implied, is that the inexcusable failure to turn over the July 29 audiotape of Lopez's statement occurred while Robert Shapiro was in charge."
 
LAURIE LEVENSON

On the prosecution: "They finally have put the defense on the defensive. It's good for them to be on the moral high ground in the eyes of Ito. Also on the plus side, the tape and interview memos that were turned over give the prosecu-tors even more ammunition to cross-examine Lopez. On the down side, Cochran now has until Thursday to consult with Lopez and prepare to reconcile the inconsis-tencies in her statements."
On the defense: "Sandbagging seems to be the name of their game. Ito appar-ently has decided that the question is not whether the defense should be sanc-tioned but how severe those sanctions should be. It's unclear if these viola-tions will harm the defense in the jurors' eyes because the panel does not know why they have been sitting around for almost a week, not listening to testimony. Additionally, Bill Pavelic's value as a credible investigator is out the win-dow."
 
ALBERT DEBLANC JR.

On the prosecution: "They did very well Tuesday. Clark has successfully taken the thunder out of Lopez, whose initial testimony of what she saw on June 12 was good and clear. But just before Lopez left Tuesday, she refused to answer any more questions. She is in total shutdown, uncooperative and very upset. She ap-pears to be a very fragile person."
On the defense: "They have their work cut out for them, but they also have an opportunity to settle Lopez down and get her back on track. In addition, Cochran now has her tape-recorded statement. He has time to prepare, to neutralize the impact of any inconsistent statements Lopez made because he still has her on di-rect examination. It remains to be seen whether she will be in sufficient good spirits to give Cochran what he needs to conclude his direct examination."

 

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Why Bill Pavelic So Popular?

2007-09-07

Detective Bill Pavelic retired from the Los Angeles Police Department in December of 1992. During his nineteen year tenure with LAPD, Bill Pavelic earned a Master's Degree from Pepperdine University and acquired an extensive background in administrative and criminal investigations. Pavelic has investigated every conceivable crime and he is considered an expert in police procedures, interrogations and case biopsies. Bill pavelic a retired police investigator / detective supervisor and in his capacity as an Investigative Consultant and case manager, Bill pavelic hire and fire Private Investigators. Furthermore, Bill pavelic is specialize in police corruption cases and he makes it own business to expose people like LAPD Det. Mark Fuhrman, Mark Arneson and Private Investigator Anthony Pellicano.

Detective Bill Pavelic received over 200 commendations and letters of appreciation from private and governmental institutions, including the United States Department of Justice. Prior to his retirement, Pavelic was honored by the City of Los Angeles as the Detective Supervisor of the Year for his professional competence, unimpeachable integrity, and for serving the civilian community with distinction, courtesy, and honor.

Bill Pavelic has been the subject of many articles nationally and internationally for speaking out against police corruption and police abuse which he personally witnessed mostly against minorities and non English speaking immigrants.

Bill pavelic personally consulted on controversial cases involving prominent celebrities ala Michael Jackson, OJ Simpson, Gordon Jones, Andrew Luster, Steven Segal and Anthony Pellicano, to name a few.

For more Visit website Bill pavelic

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William Bill Pavelic’s Letter to Ms. Brenda Hope – BSIS Enforcement Analyst

2007-09-04

To: Ms. Brenda Hope (BSIS Enforcement Analyst)
Re: Anonymous Complaint - Conducting Business as a Licensed PI

Dear Ms. Hope,

I am in receipt of your letter, dated April 25, 2006, to with Case Number IA
2006 2251, pertaining to a complaint(s) that I may be conducting business as a licensed private investigator. As you know from my file, this is not the first such anonymous complaint initiated via California Bureau of Security and Investigative Services. The pattern is clear and unambiguous. The complaints seem to surface whenever I am personally consulted on controversial cases involving prominent celebrities ala Michael Jackson, OJ Simpson, Gordon Jones, Andrew Luster, Steven Segal and Anthony Pellicano, to name a few.

The issues in the most current complaint mirror what transpired 12 years ago, when I exposed LAPD Det. Mark Fuhrman in the OJ Simpson case. That's when I received my first complaint via BSIS and nothing has changed since then. Suffice it to say that I am not representing myself as a private investigator, nor am I engaging in work that "private dicks" normally do.

It is beneath me to do surveillances, engage in obstruction of justice, intimidate witnesses, milk and frame clients, sell information to tabloids, search trash cans, act as a snitch for the police, bug telephones, falsify transcripts, run police data bases, process phony subpoenas and or serve as a taxi for defense attorneys and their witnesses.

I am a retired police investigator / detective supervisor and in my capacity as an Investigative Consultant and case manager, I hire and fire Private Investigators. Furthermore, I specialize in police corruption cases and I make it my business to expose people like LAPD Det. Mark Fuhrman, Mark Arneson and Private Investigator Anthony Pellicano.

With Anthony Pellicano's corrupt LAPD and LADA connections, going back to approximately 1984, it is not surprising that your office is once again, being used to silence and or discredit me.

Respectfully,

Bill Pavelic

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Bill Pavelic's Interview On ABC - Good Morning America

2007-08-29

ABC NEWS
January 30, 1997

SHOW: ABC GOOD MORNING AMERICA (7:00 am ET)

FORMER LEAD SIMPSON INVESTIGATOR VISITS GMA

GUESTS: BILL PAVELIC

BYLINE: ELIZABETH VARGAS

SECTION: News

LENGTH: 1901 words

HIGHLIGHT: RESPONSE TO LANGE AND VANNATTER

ELIZABETH VARGAS, Host: As we said earlier, former LAPD detectives Phil Vannatter and Tom Lange were guests on our show yesterday. Today -- and they were emphatically defending the integrity of their investigation, we must say. Today, we are going to speak with Bill Pavelic. He was the chief investigator of the OJ Simpson criminal trial, civil trial, and the custody case involving his two young children, Sydney and Justin. Bill Pavelic joins us this morning. Welcome, thank you for being here.
 
BILL PAVELIC, Former Simpson Lead Investigator: Thank you.
 
ELIZABETH VARGAS: Former detectives Lange and Vannatter took on the air -- were on the air -- concede they made mistakes, but they emphatically deny framing OJ Simpson. Why are you so sure that, in fact, they did?
 
BILL PAVELIC: In fact, their book even substantiates that premise even more. They basically falsified the affidavit, the search warrant affidavit. The information that they provided to the judge in order to get the search warrant was basically fabricated. They lied to the judge by informing her that OJ Simpson left on an unscheduled flight, thus leaving them with the impression -- leaving her with the impression that he was fleeing California. They did not tell her that they scaled the wall. They told her that they recovered the glove while securing the evidence. And as you know from the trial, that's absolutely incorrect. I could go on, but I don't think we have the time.
 
ELIZABETH VARGAS: But even if we grant, even if we were to accept everything you just said on face value, which clearly detectives Lange and Vannatter deny and do not, you were an LA police officer for 19 years yourself. What you are suggesting is a conspiracy of such an enormous scope. They would have had to have planted Mr. Simpson's blood at Bundy. They would have planted Mr. Goldman's blood in Mr. Simpson's Bronco, planted Nicole's blood and Simpson's blood at the Rockingham estate. It goes on and on, and it seems fantastic to many people.
 
BILL PAVELIC: Yes, it does. But if you look at the facts, even Judge Ito supported our premise, and that is that Vannatter, for all intents and purposes, was dishonest. If Vannatter was dishonest, his partner obviously is just as culpable as Vannatter. What we found in this book, in fact, is, that Vannatter was shopping for a favorable prosecutor, in this case, Marcia Clark. Vannatter contacted Marcia Clark before he obtained the search warrant or the affidavit, completed the affidavit for the search warrant, before he went to Judge Lefkovitz (ph). So now we learn from his book that the prosecutor had a much bigger role in this conspiracy than we initially thought.
 

Visit given below link

Full Interview

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A guide to key players in the Peterson case

2007-08-16

Scripps Howard News Service

October 27, 2003, Monday

 

SOURCE: Modesto Bee

 

SECTION: DOMESTIC NEWS

 

LENGTH: 320 words

 

DATELINE: MODESTO, Calif.

 

For the defense:

 

Dr. Henry Lee

 

Forensic authority who has testified in more than 1,000 legal proceedings, including for the defense in the O.J. Simpson double-murder case. Also consulted in JonBenet Ramsey murder and President Kennedy's assassination.

 

Dr. Cyril Wecht

 

Nationally recognized forensic expert and coroner of Allegheny County, Pa., which includes Pittsburgh. Examined remains of Modesto's Chandra Levy.

 

Bill Pavelic

 

Private investigator and former veteran Los Angeles police detective. Previously worked on Simpson's defense team.

 

Gary Ermoian

 

Local private investigator retained when Modesto police began focusing on Scott Peterson. Authorities secretly monitored part of one of his calls to Peterson.

 

For the prosecution:

 

Steve Jacobson

 

Investigator with the Stanislaus County district attorney's office and former police officer. Supervised wiretaps on Peterson's phones.

 

Jon Buehler

 

Modesto police detective. Amber Frey, Peterson's girlfriend, reported to Buehler after telephone conversations with Peterson, which continued at least a month after Frey went public with their romance.

 

Craig Grogan

 

Modesto police detective and lead investigator in the Peterson case. Previously named in a federal lawsuit filed by the family of 11-year-old Alberto Sepulveda, who was killed by another officer during a 2000 raid.

 

Al Brocchini

 

Modesto police detective. Helped escort Peterson from San Diego to Modesto after his arrest in April. Defense lawyers say Brocchini mishandled a hair found in Peterson's boat.

 

James Brazelton

 

Stanislaus County district attorney since 1996 and a local prosecutor since 1985. Previously worked as a policeman and in private practice.

 

John Goold

 

Chief deputy district attorney since 1999 and former Bay Area policeman. Often serves as a spokesman for the Peterson prosecutors.

 

(Distributed by Scripps-McClatchy Western Service, http://www.shns.com.)

 

LOAD-DATE: October 29, 2003

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OJ SIMPSON IS INNOCENT- kAELIN IS THE TRUE MURDERER

2007-08-13

Do you think you know much about the O.J. Simpson case? Well, then, do you know that:

1. Contrary to widespread belief, KAELIN HAS NO ALIBI FOR THE TIME OF THE MURDERS.

2. Kaelin had his own secret entrance into O.J.'s main house? This entrance was NOT on the house alarm system, even though O.J. himself wrongly thought it was.

This meant that whever Kaelin was alone at Rockingham, he had free access to all of O.J.'s property, including his clothes closets, his personal papers (including such things as his rolodex and telephone books), and his garbage.

3. Kaelin HAD HIS OWN EXTENSION LINE OF THE ROCKINGHAM SYTEM, so that not only did he have the ability to "tap" O.J.'s telephone, he had the ability to make calls from the Rockingham system which would be recorded by the phone company's computer as coming from O.J.

4. That Kaelin knew when anyone rang at the Ashford gate -- such as the limo driver picking up OJ, and the police detectives arrived at Rockingham just after the murders -- because all the phones at Rockingham rang when someone did so.

5. That the ONLY believable explanation for the "thumps" Kaelin reported IS THAT KAELIN MADE THEM UP. This is because no one can, or has so far, offered an explanation that fits the surrounding evidence, or made sense in terms of what a real person would do. Actually, the thumps did not happen because they could not have happened. They violate the laws of physics.

6. There is not the slightest shadow of a doubt that the five bloods drops with OJ's DNA in them were planted.

Contrary to popular myth THEY DID NOT LINE UP WITH THE FOOTPRINTS, they were dropped from less than two feet high, from a stationary source, and contained less than 1% of the DNA one would expect to find in drops of that type.

7. Kaelin lied about having driven the Bronco at a time when his only possible motive for doing so was to throw the police off his trail.

None of what you have just read is "guessing" or "speculative". Every single thing I you just read IS BACKED UP BY INDISPUTABLE EVIDENCE.

Read more at http://www.billpavelic.com/current/oj-simpson/

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About Bill Pavelic on “AMERICAN TRAGEDY” BY LARRY SHILLER

2007-08-09