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Whores

Page 8

by Brendan Mullen


  DAN NAVARRO: Although he died before any of us grandkids were born, our grandfather set the tone for everything his sons and grandchildren would do with regards to the importance he placed on finding creative expression in life. He nurtured that in my father and my uncles. . . .

  JOHNNY NAVARRO: Dan’s closer to embracing the positive sides of that spirit because he is further up the tree, whereas Dave and I really had a hard time with it. Dave has the same feeling I do. We talked about it and decided, fuck all that “You’re a Navarro” bit. You walk with it, but at the same time, you rebel. We’re just like everybody else. We have fucked up and gone into sobriety and gone through some really dark shit because we were “Navarros.” But of course you must know there are times when Dave does think he’s better than anybody else.

  MATT PALADINO: I was born and raised in Bel Air, grew up in a house on Linda Flora Drive, near where the Navarros lived. They were about ten houses away. From age five to about age seven I lived in that area. There were three families on that block that hung out. There was the Tomichs, my mom and dad, and the Navarros. There was always a neighborly dinner party thing, that’s probably how these families first got together.

  DAN NAVARRO: Dave had gone to school at John Thomas Dye, then he went to school at St. Paul’s. . . .

  MATT PALADINO: I never really hung out with Dave like tight buds or anything—Dave’s several years older than I am—but there were three brothers in the Tomich family. I was about the same age as the middle brother; the older brother, Steven, was Dave’s age. At family get togethers Mike and Connie and Dave were always there. My mom and Connie Navarro, and subsequently, Mary Louise Tomich were three best of friends for years and years. . . .

  REBECCA AVERY: Dave was like my first love. I started going out with him in junior high or high school. I was probably a freshman and he would have been a sophomore. Age-wise, I was probably fifteen and he was seventeen. I met Dave’s dad, Mike, at the house several times, also when there were parties the cousins would be there. He and his dad just seem to genuinely like each other. His dad always seemed to treat him with respect.

  MATT PALADINO: Dave was a boisterous, in-your-face bully, a rowdy kid, an only child, who was seen as the bad seed of the neighborhood in terms of pranks. He ran with Steven Tomich, who was also seen as a bit of a bad egg. Dave was always in trouble for something, mainly juvenile vandalism stuff, flower pots broken, shaving cream on cars, annoying petty nuisance shit, all of it ordinary for a growing kid. Authorities were never involved. This was old Bel-Air off of Roscomare, where it was never “Let’s get the police involved.” It was more like you called the family and said, “Your son did this, your son did that.” I remember playing with the younger Tomich brother and Dave would just come in and fuck with us, take our toys away. We were just little kids so we’d get upset and go tell, but Dave never got in trouble for anything. We resented it that there was never any consequence for anything he did, because if we’d done those things we’d have been in deep shit with our parents or teachers, but when Dave pulled shit we were always told to just keep our mouths shut. Just go play with something else. Dave was a classic, compulsive exhibitionist who had to be the center of attention at all times. He was always showing off to us.

  DAVE NAVARRO: My dad is suave: [a] tall, dark, and handsome James Bond type [who] could just pull women. He’d say, “twenty-four and out the door,” meaning that when [a] girlfriend turned twenty-four, that was it.15

  REBECCA AVERY: Mike Navarro had money, lived in a nice house. He got Dave nice things and cars. Dave would crash them one after the other. Dave was in many car accidents as a young lad. I think probably because of the divorce, maybe guilt, his dad gave Dave as much as he wanted. He was spoiled in the way that he could have parties all the time and never had to be concerned about working or money. He was drinking a lot.

  DAVE NAVARRO: I’d hear yelling at night. I’d wake up and come into my parents’ room and they would tell me that the dog was making a mess. I knew they’d been fighting.16

  MATT PALADINO: Mike wasn’t really around. He traveled a lot—he was a big-time ad exec. When he was around he overcompensated for his absence by spoiling Dave. He’d just buy him off with all kinds of stuff to make up for it. Whenever one of the families would throw one of these dinner party get-togethers, if Dave didn’t like something or didn’t want to do something, he’d throw a tantrum. Whether it was, “I don’t want to eat that” or “I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to do that,” Mike would always give Dave whatever he wanted, whatever it took to appease him, irrespective of the consequence it might have on the other people. Mike was kind of an asshole, really strict. I remember him like spanking the other kids, but with Dave it was always whatever Dave wanted, Dave got.

  Dave with Rebecca Avery (center) and Kelly Wooldridge. (Courtesy Rebecca Avery)

  REBECCA AVERY: Dave’s dad was great, a funny guy. His cousins, Dan and Johnny, too. Great people. Very creative, too. I met them at parties and coming to shows, all that kind of stuff.

  MATT PALADINO: Connie was always really loving, really nice, really sweet, never much of a disciplinarian. Mike was the uptight over-controller, and Connie was very mellow, but in the long run, Mike providing Dave with whatever he needed, whatever he wanted . . . allowed him the complete freedom and the financial support to develop into this amazingly accomplished musician. . . .

  DAN NAVARRO: Dave’s family was affluent enough that he never had to fill out a job application in his life. He’s never worked at the video store, never bagged groceries. He never did anything else but play and study music. He was eighteen when he really started playing out. At that age, maybe he would have had summer jobs like the other kids. He just never considered anything else as what to do with his life.

  JOHNNY NAVARRO: Where is it written in stone that you have to come from the other side of the tracks to play great rock ’n’ roll?

  DAVE’S MUSICAL INFLUENCES

  DAVE NAVARRO: My earliest influences when I first started playing rock were Hendrix, Page, The Who, The Doors. Cream. Not so much as a guitar player, just stuff I listened to. I went through this classic rock phase, a heavy metal phase, a punk-rock phase, a gothic-English phase. There was even a Grateful Dead phase. All of those phases helped develop the player I am. The jamming thing came from Hendrix. When I went to Dead shows I was too fucked up on acid to know that they were jamming! I didn’t find out about that until ten years later.

  DAN NAVARRO: Dave was first into Elton John, then it was Kiss. I remember the posters in his room. Like most young kids he blew through the Kiss phase pretty quickly. Soon he shifted to the Doors, The Who, and Hendrix. He picked his influences really well, the ones that caused him to really dive headfirst into what he was doing. The Doors, for sure, brought him to a darker viewpoint of the world.

  JOHNNY NAVARRO: Dave was probably sixteen when he got the Les Paul. I said, “Dude, gimme a little Eddie [Van Halen]” and he goes, “Wanna hear ‘Eruption’?” That was considered the most virtuoso piece of electronic rock guitar music there was in GIT geek circles at that time. I’m like, “Yeah . . . sure, man.” He fuckin’ played it note for note. That’s how good his ear was. I said to myself, “This kid is going to be a rock star.” You can’t be that good of a mimic without having the ability to do your own thing. Jimmy Page was the same. A teenage musical prodigy who never did anything else. Dave could play absolutely anything you wanted to hear in classic rock. Wanna hear Zeppelin? Want some Jimi Hendrix? The Who? The Dead? Name it.

  DAVE NAVARRO: I was twelve in my first band. We did really horrible Cream, Hendrix, and Zeppelin covers. Then I stopped listening to rock music altogether. All I listened to was classical music or talk radio.17

  DAN NAVARRO: During the time I was living with Mike and Dave, I was beginning to play out in the clubs as a solo artist. There was always a piano in the house and I had guitars around all the time. Dave took guitar lessons to start around 1977. He learned really fast a
nd outstripped his teacher in very short order. It was already evident to our family that we had a musically gifted child prodigy in our midst. Later, he told me in so many words that seeing me playing and writing and living that life made him think maybe he wanted to do that, too. I didn’t teach him to play guitar, but I think I may have shown him his first three guitar chords, like A, E, and D or something.

  MURDER OF CONNIE NAVARRO

  DAVE NAVARRO: I had premonitions . . . for a whole month. I knew things were shit in the house.18

  REBECCA AVERY: Dave and I would be together and then he’d break up, then we’d get back together again, and then he’d break up with me again. Dave would just get really drunk and call me up and want to get back together again. Of course I’d just be tickled pink and then he wouldn’t remember the next morning. Or we would be together for a month or two and he’d break it up and then he’d get drunk again. He was getting so drunk all the time and dropping acid. It was a crazy time emotionally. It was during one of those periods that Dave’s mom died.

  DAN NAVARRO: Probably one of the watershed events in Dave’s creative development was his mother’s death. It led him to a kind of introspection where he began experimenting with the darker side of life and art, although taking such a big dive into the dark side musically and aesthetically is something I wouldn’t have wished for him as someone who loves him. That he would go there with a vengeance again and again and again with the music of Jane’s and what Jane’s represented was a very frightening thing for me as a member of his family. It was extremely distressing for us. We were very worried for him.

  DAVE NAVARRO: I come from a divorced household. I’ve gone through the murders of my mother and her best friend, Sue Jory, a woman I used to call my “aunt.” I’ve gone through drug addiction. I spent a lot of time with the wrong people. I’ve seen that just about anybody will stab you in the back, given the opportunity. But at the same time, I feel that I have a good outlook and a realistic sense of humor about life. I feel very lucky. It’s not like I walk around feeling as if I’m doomed in a world of doom, and that there’s no hope in anything.19

  DAN NAVARRO: He was fifteen when his mom died. It was as traumatic as you could imagine. It led him to a feeling that he’s not able to trust anyone. It’s led to a certain glibness when he’s delving into some of the deeper parts of his psyche, although he is remarkably open about his biggest foibles, which I’ve always found to be an incredibly endearing quality.

  REBECCA AVERY: When Dave’s mom died, we knew he was either going to clean up and get on the straight and narrow and get his act together, or he was just going to spiral down, which is what ended up happening. It got much worse with the drinking and drugs.

  DAN NAVARRO: We loved Connie, who loved Mike and Dave. She was still my aunt in my mind, although she and my Uncle Mike had split up. One day, Mike asked if I’d trade cars with Connie for a week because she had been threatened by her boyfriend, who she was trying to break up with. His real name was John Riccardi, but he went by the name of Dean.

  DAVE NAVARRO: [Dean] broke in, held me up at gunpoint and made me promise not to tell anyone. And I didn’t. A week later he killed my mother.20

  DAN NAVARRO: [Dean] was a bodybuilder. Dave had grown pretty close with him. There was always some question as to how he made his income. I wasn’t aware Connie had been trying to get a restraining order against him until later. When she didn’t turn up for an appointment, which was not like her, a day or two after we traded cars back again, Mike went to her condo to check on her. Everybody was on edge because of these threats. Mike called demanding I get over there right now. He was virtually hysterical. When I arrived, he was in handcuffs. Cops were everywhere. My immediate thought was, “Oh, my god, he got into a fistfight with Dean.” I yelled, “What happened?” The police just cut me off and Mike turned to me and said, “She’s dead.” I couldn’t really comprehend it. Just couldn’t process it. I said, “Who’s dead?” “Connie’s dead.” The rest was surreal. Cops arrive on the scene and find dead bodies and a guy alive. Understandably, they’re going to cuff the guy they find at the scene until they know what’s going on. As soon as the cops let Mike out of the cuffs he collapsed in my arms. My first question was, “Does Dean know where you live?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Where’s David?” “At my house.” We immediately got a detective and rushed up to the house. I was there when Dave was told what happened and it was beyond comprehension. It was a scene I never want to see again. It’s as devastating as anything could be.

  REBECCA AVERY: Dave knew the guy really well. I remember him being scared but I think people around him were even more so. Mike and the cousins were worried about his well-being. I just remember them being scared not knowing where this lunatic is and that he could come again at any time. We found out that his mom had been killed through Lisa Rasmussen, who was a mutual friend who lived across the street.

  DAN NAVARRO: Mike told me later he opened the door and entered the condo because he had keys and called out for her, but there was no reply. Her car was not there either. It turned out that Dean had tried to cover his tracks by moving the car a couple of blocks away so that people wouldn’t drive by and decide to drop in. It took them several days to find it. Mike went upstairs and discovered the bodies.

  DAVE NAVARRO: My mom’s death was a major contributing factor to my drug problems. I went to therapy for a long, long time, and then to anonymous group meetings, and I’m okay with it now.21

  DAN NAVARRO: It’s beyond comprehension in terms of the impact on our extended family. It was a difficult period for Dave, where he was starting to act out, understandably, and he got into the kinds of things that would lead him to the person he is now. It was a very difficult time for the family for quite a few years. There is no such thing as “closure.” You just get to the point where you learn how to say it out loud, without going to that place, and then it becomes this surreal event in your life that still exists. Facing that kind of horror at such a young age—Dave was fifteen going on sixteen—had unfathomable psychological consequence. . . .

  DAVE NAVARRO: I discovered I didn’t feel it as badly when I was loaded [on heroin].22

  ERICA PAIGE (former club doorperson, friend of Dave’s, TV producer): [The murder of his mother] definitely came up a lot when I was around him. Those are the feelings you want to make go away; try to drown it out with alcohol and drugs. You don’t become a drug addict because you have a horrible thing happen, but if addiction is something you’re already on the road to, it definitely gives you an even greater reason to pursue it.

  JOHNNY NAVARRO: There was much darkness in Dave’s life. He started doing even more drugs after his mom died. That was the shove he needed. Dave would have been an addict anwyay. He was going in that direction and that gave him a justification and motivation at the same time. He was doing acid, he was doing coke, and he was drinking crazy amounts, weed all the time, and a lot of mushrooms.

  DAVE NAVARRO: I’m sad my mom is gone . . . and I’m grateful that I have such a wonderful father. I used to focus on the tragedy and how certain catastrophic negative things have defined my life. It took a long, long time to realize that I could just as easily be defined by the positive things.

  REBECCA AVERY: I remember going to the funeral . . . open casket . . . it was so weird. She’s buried in that cemetery in Westwood, the one where Marilyn Monroe is buried. The service was there. It was just really sad, one of those freakish things that you just can’t believe. It really did fuck with him in a bad, bad way. None of us knew what to do. We were so young. I’d listen for hours, he just talked terrible thoughts and terrible things. We didn’t have the wherewithal at that age to get together to say we need to approach someone. He needs some serious help. We thought we’ll just listen and be supportive. What else can you do at that age?

  ERICA PAIGE: They finally got the guy years later after they talked up the case on America’s Most Wanted. . . .

  DAVE NAVARRO: They finally cau
ght him [August 1994]. He killed my aunt at the same time. I had to see him in court, and let me tell you, it was fucking heavy. (There were pictures from the scene on a fucking board. I had to ask for them to be covered.)23 I could testify to a lot of stuff that had happened earlier. I was the only witness. I hadn’t seen him for like twelve years, but he’d lived with us for five years before the murder. He was sentenced to death. I go back and forth about how I feel about it. I spent all these years wanting him to die. The way I look at the death penalty is that I don’t have to feel any way about it; he did what he did and was judged that way, and not by me. He made his own destiny, and I’m not personally saying, “Kill him,” and I’m not pulling the switch. The court thing was a nice closure to something that had been hanging over me [for twelve years].24

 

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