When detectives found her little black book (actually several red Gucci day planners) even they were amazed at the size of her enterprise and the number and caliber of clients. She really did service the cream of the crop of tycoons, movie studio executives, and heads of state.
Fleiss’s arrest and trials were a media sensation—much of Hollywood was trembling: would she tell tales of debauchery and kinky sex, maybe reveal her clients? Say what you will about the madam, but she stayed loyal, never giving up her clients. “She probably could have traded off that,” said her attorney Anthony Brooklier, “but she never did.” He says Fleiss told him she didn’t ever want to have some sixth grader go to school after seeing his dad’s name in the paper.
Fleiss pled not guilty to pandering and narcotics possession charges, but the jury found her guilty on the pandering charge; she was sentenced to three years in prison. The verdict was overturned on appeal, Heidi then pled guilty to one pandering charge in exchange for an eighteen-month sentence. The federal government stepped in as well, charging Fleiss with tax evasion and money laundering. She was convicted in 1995, sentenced to thirty-seven months and served both the state and federal sentences concurrently.
Fleiss wasn’t happy with the outcome of the trial. “I am going to prison, and for what?” she asked. “Sex. That’s it. I would never hurt another human being. I’m a vegetarian because I can’t even think of hurting animals. The police, the FBI—nobody cares about the men! They’re not even being investigated.”
After her release from prison, Fleiss struggled to find her place in the world. She wrote a biography called Pandering; made sex-tip videos with her friend Victoria Sellers (actor Peter Sellers’ daughter); got into an abusive relationship with actor Tom Sizemore; and decided to open a brothel in Nevada, but with a twist—it would be a stud farm for women. The locals didn’t let that happen, so instead, Fleiss opened a Laundromat called Dirty Laundry. In recent years, she’s made appearances on reality shows like Celebrity Rehab.
The high life and good times are now just part of the Hollywood Madam’s past. Heidi summed up what happened best in a 2003 interview. “I think that I came about it in a unique time period. And that time period is over. I mean, now it’s modems, not madams.”
At age twenty-five, Heidi Fleiss was making millions a year with more than one hundred call girls, many “stolen” from her former mentor-turned-rival Madam Alex, aka Elizabeth Adams.
Madam Alex, aka Elizabeth Adams.
Fleiss did not name names in her book, but actor Charlie Sheen admitted he paid Fleiss more than fifty thousand dollars for “her girls.”
1993
Hotel Chef Murders Wife? • A Beverly Hills Most-Wanted Case
Children of divorce never have it easy, but for nineteen-year-old Michelle Sison, divorce created a special kind of hell. Michelle’s mom and dad, Annie and Errol Sison, had been separated for about a month; it wasn’t an amicable split. Her mother had moved out and was now living at her business in Sun Valley. Michelle was living with her dad in the family condo at 424 North Palm Drive.
On Friday night, January 3, 1993, Michelle was on her way out to go visit friends when she noticed her mom in the kitchen with her dad. The pair was planning on having a “discussion.” Michelle said goodbye to her parents, hoping they’d at least be cordial with one another; the two had been arguing lately about alimony and child support.
Michelle came back home around 8 p.m., but her parents weren’t there. She called out their names: no answer. She dialed her mom’s work number, no answer. Then she phoned the Beverly Wilshire hotel where her father worked as the executive chef. The staff told her he wasn’t working. In fact, he had called in to request four unscheduled vacation days. Michelle was perplexed. Her dad hadn’t mentioned he was going out of town, but her parents weren’t acting predictably of late. She decided to spend the night at a friend’s house.
For the next two days, Michelle repeatedly tried calling her parents, but they never answered their phones. On Sunday morning, Michelle tried calling her parents again. This time when there was no answer, the very worried daughter called police and filed two missing persons reports. She called and asked her uncle to come over and meet her at the condo.
Michelle walked into her parent’s bedroom and sat down on the bed. She leaned over to turn on the answering machine to listen for possible clues. After a few minutes, she felt a wet spot along the side of her thigh. She reached down and looked at her hand. Blood. It was seeping through the comforter. She looked at the carpet, saw more red and screamed for her uncle. He raced into the bedroom; Michelle was staring at the crimson patch on the comforter. Her uncle pulled back the sheets. She helped him move the pillows, and that’s when she saw her mother again, wedged between the headboard and the mattress. Annie Sison had been bludgeoned to death.
When police arrived to gather evidence, they were able to determine the killer must have used some kind of blunt object to kill Annie, perhaps a meat cleaver, a tenderizer, or a hammer. The weapon never was found. (But whatever instrument was used to kill Annie Sison, the force from the blows was so tremendous, that her injuries looked like knife wounds.) The coroner estimated the mother had been struck at least twenty times to the head, arms, and rest of her body.
Police immediately issued an arrest warrant for Errol F. Sison. Family members reported seeing the victim’s husband for a moment at Sison’s funeral, watching from afar before he drove off. He fled the country soon after and has played a cat-and-mouse game with Beverly Hills detectives ever since. Investigators found his car in Mexico shortly after the murder—he’d sold it to a new owner for two hundred dollars. Several tips have come into the department, and there have been several sightings of Sison working at various luxury resorts outside the U.S., but every time detectives get close, he suddenly leaves his job and disappears.
Michelle, who is now in her late thirties, told officials she’s had no contact with her father. To this day, the executive chef is on the Beverly Hills Police Department’s “Most Wanted” list, most likely cooking up gourmet meals somewhere in Mexico or Central America at a lovely vacation resort along the beach.
Clark Fogg’s Analysis:
This case is currently open. Detectives are seeking the suspect with the help of Mexican authorities. Unfortunately, with all the unrest in Mexico and the drug cartels war currently in full swing, it means this case is not a high priority and progress is extremely slow. However, the murder scene has been memorialized with extensive documentation and photography. The department is confident that the suspect will be arrested and brought to justice for Michelle Sison’s murder.
Errol Sison is on the run, accused of murdering his wife.
1998
The Black-and-White Robbers • Makeup to Breakup
When ex-cons Anthony Crite and Derrick Miles, both twenty-four-year-old African American men, decided to rob yet another bank, they wanted a really good disguise. So they hired a Hollywood special effects makeup artist to “turn them into white guys.” They told the artist they were working on a class project about racism, and they nonchalantly handed over the fee upfront in cash: two thousand dollars each. They wanted the best mask money could buy.
It took several hours to apply the latex. The artist carefully painted and glued the skin-like, light tan latex around the eyes, nose, mouth, ears and hands, all the way up to the forearms. With their makeup complete and wearing heavy jackets, the now Caucasian-looking duo began their real project: robbing a Beverly Hills bank on Wilshire Boulevard. They walked up to the entrance ever so casually, rang a bell, and were buzzed in to a glass-enclosed area known as “the mantrap.” The two waited for the next buzzer to get inside the bank, but a savvy teller hesitated—something didn’t look quite right. She motioned to co-workers; what was that stuff on those men’s faces?
Crite and Miles knew instantly something was wrong. They pulled out their guns and threatened to start firing unless the doors were ope
ned. The staff refused and the firing began. Several bullets pierced the glass and tore through a wall between the bank and a restaurant next door. In an only-in-Hollywood moment, one of the bullets zipped past the head of a customer, actor Don Adams, who starred in the television show Get Smart (a satire of intelligence agencies). “It missed me by that much!” he told reporters, using a line from his show.
The two gunmen blasted their way out of the bank and as they were running away, started tearing off their masks. Sirens were getting closer. They pulled harder at the latex, but all they could rip off were bits and pieces; the makeup artist had done her job too well. Police closed in on the robbers who gave up and surrendered. Lesson learned: really good makeup lasts a long time—in this case, all the way to jail.
(left) Derrick Miles and Anthony Crute (right) had gotten away with robbing several banks before getting caught in Beverly Hills.
Paparazzi Paradise
The 2000s
Just like a lot of its residents, Beverly Hills is getting a little face-lift. Sidewalks are widened, and new landscaping is put in; Canon, Beverly and Rodeo Drives never looked so good.
But one big change that most people around the world haven’t really noticed: Beverly Hills, a former movie star Mecca, is no longer the address of choice for the really big celebs. They’ve moved to places like Malibu and Brentwood to get off the tour-bus track. Also missing from that tourist route: the home of Guess founder Georges Marciano. Sightseers used to stop by to gawk at the sculptures and multiple red Ferraris that were in the blue-jeans mogul’s driveway. The cars and the designer are gone, the result of a blistering financial scandal.
Sixty-two-year-old Marciano, a rags-to-riches success story, had sold his shares of Guess in 1993, investing successfully in real estate and art. After a bitter divorce, employees say he began taking larges doses of painkillers and became erratic. He accuses his staff in 2006 of embezzling his fortune. Marciano spends over twelve million dollars in legal costs with seventeen different law firms trying to prove his case. He loses; the staff wins, successfully countersuing for some $460 million in damages. Marciano sells many of his assets and moves to an undisclosed location, reportedly far away from Beverly Hills.
Funnyman David Spade decides to leave his Beverly Hills home as well, after his former personal assistant, David Malloy, inexplicably attacks the actor while he is sleeping. The three-hundred-pound, six-foot-two-inch assistant woke up the five-foot-seven-inch Spade at 5 a.m. “He beat me, stun-gunned me, then beat me again,” explains the actor, who escaped by running out of the house. “I thought I was gonna die.”
Malloy, high on drugs, is arrested; he tries to commit suicide that same day. He is later sentenced to probation and community service. “He’s a good friend who just snapped,” says Spade.
And while some stars may not be living within city limits anymore, they’re still getting in trouble here. In 2005, Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone gets arrested on suspicion of drunk driving and drug possession. He pleads guilty and is sent to rehab. A few years later, the young actress Lindsay Lohan begins her star turn as a trouble magnet. She crashes her car on Sunset Boulevard, is arrested for drunk driving, and promptly checks in for one of many rehab stints.
But the most tragic case of a falling star involves Lane Garrison, a costar of the television show Prison Break. The twenty-seven-year-old actor meets some teenagers at a supermarket on the night of December 2, 2006, and not only buys them liquor, but he also parties with them. While driving them to get more alcohol, the actor, drunk and high, crashes his Land Rover into a tree on Beverly Drive near Olympic, killing a seventeen-year-old boy and injuring two fifteen-year-old girls. Garrison is charged with homicide and spends forty months behind real-life bars. As one of the teens at the trial puts it, “He should have been the adult.”
Beverly Hills gets a new police chief in 2004, David Snowden. He presides over a department that has not only impressive response times of about two minutes, but also has one of the nation’s top CSI labs.
A big case in 2005 that isn’t widely reported involves a shocking random slaying. It happens at the Wells Fargo Building (the same building where, in the Eighties, the Zimmelman pawnshop owners were killed). Two commercial painters, Jurgen Hapke and Helmut Mende, are painting outside around 7 a.m. on December 15, when a stranger in a sedan suddenly pulls up next to them, gets out, and begins stabbing both of the elderly men with a kitchen knife. Hapke, sixty-five, is slashed to death. Mende, seventy-one, is seriously injured, but survives. Officers arrest fifty-year-old Nathan Hall for the crime. Hall, an African American parolee, tells police he attacked the painters because he “wanted to kill a white person” in order to avenge the December 13, 2005 execution of former Crips gang founder “Tookie” Williams. Hall is spending the rest of his life in Soledad prison.
Another case a few years later doesn’t make the news either, but it would make a great episode for an “Unluckiest Criminals” special. A hotel cat burglar has just cleaned out several rooms at the Beverly Hills Peninsula hotel. Fearing he is about to be discovered, the thief jumps from a second-story balcony only to land on a contingent of Israeli Defense Forces special forces who are guarding a VIP guest.
As the first century of crimes and scandals in Beverly Hills comes to a close, one thing is certain, headlines featuring stories about the troubles of the rich and famous have the same mesmerizing effect on the public now as they did back when the city was young. When it comes to crimes and headlines, there’s just no place like Beverly Hills, where stars and drama are as constant as the sunshine.
The stabbings occurred in the parking lot area of the Wells Fargo Building; the newspaper was used to obscure the knife as Hall attacked the painters.
The chef’s knife used to stab both of the painters was purchased at a ninety-nine-cent store.
Lane Garrison’s blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit and traces of cocaine were found in his system.
David Spade’s attacker was nicknamed “Skippy.”
Lindsay Lohan fled the accident scene; officers tracked her down at a hospital.
2001
Actress Winona Ryder Caught Shoplifting • “Scissorhands” Star Seeks Five-Finger Discount
A Saks Fifth Avenue security guard leaned in to the surveillance monitor—sure enough, there she was, the world-famous actress, Winona Ryder. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing: the thirty-one-year-old movie star was stuffing merchandise into bags. Among the items: lots of socks (including purple Calvin Klein knee-highs), a $750 white YSL blouse (size thirty-eight), a five-hundred-dollar Natori purse, and a simple-yet-sexy, $1,500 white Gucci dress.
The Academy Award-nominated actress went from floor to floor—there she was in the accessories department taking hundred-dollar hair bows off the display—then she passed through the hat section, cramming one Eric Javits black Fedora into a bag, plopping another one, called the “Lucky,” on her head. The guard alerted the store’s loss-prevention officer, Colleen Rainey, who followed the actress as she walked into a fitting room with all the loot. Rainey described what happened next in this excerpted police report:
On Dec. 12, 2001, at 1619 hours I observed Ms. Ryder cut the sensor tags off of two handbags…as well as several other pieces of merchandise…Ms. Ryder then exited the fitting room with her shopping bags full of concealed Saks merchandise…after exiting, Ms. Ryder purchased 3 pieces she had selected but made no attempt to purchase the prior merchandise she had concealed. At approximately 1733 hrs I apprehended Ms. Ryder.
Ryder was taken into the security office, where she said, “I’m sorry, didn’t my assistant pay for it?” Then she explained she was shoplifting because her director told her to do it for an upcoming role in a movie called Shopgirl. Next, the nervous Ryder offered to pay for everything, saying she “understood the economy was in bad shape.”
When Beverly Hills police arrived to take Ryder into custody, she continued to make excuses, this time clai
ming she was doing research for an upcoming movie called White Jazz based on a James Ellroy book. Ryder also declared she’d never shoplifted before. But according to a 1997 Buzz magazine interview, the movie star admitted she’d been caught shoplifting comic books as a kid, “The police brought me home, and my parents tried to beat them up.”
Instead of accepting a plea bargain, Ryder decided to take her chances in court. Reporters from around the world came to cover the trial, where Ryder pled not guilty. The prosecution tried to introduce evidence that the actress had a history of shoplifting, including documented incidents at Barneys New York and at the Neiman Marcus store in Beverly Hills, but the motion was denied. Deputy District Attorney Ann Rundle instead relied on the evidence and this explanation, “It must have occurred to some of you, why would Winona Ryder steal? Nowhere does it say people steal because they have to. People steal out of greed, envy, spite, because it’s there, or for the thrill.”
Ryder’s attorney, Mark Geragos, argued his client was the victim of overzealous security guards who planted evidence. But the jury (which included Hollywood producer Peter Guber) didn’t buy any of the excuses. After about five hours of deliberation, they came back with a guilty verdict.
Beverly Hills Confidential : A Century of Stars, Scandals and Murders Page 13