The Bling Ring

by Nancy Jo Sales

  More likely, I thought, it was fame itself that had acted as a shield, an invisible fence keeping the non-famous out. Until recently, the fame bubble has always seemed magical, impossible to pierce, like the protective force field thrown out by Violet, the “super” girl in The Incredibles. Cary Grant’s cufflinks would be a score, sure—but who would want to rob Cary Grant? He was respected and admired. “Everyone wants to be Cary Grant,” Grant once said. “Even I want to be Cary Grant.”

  Criminals have loved their stars, too—they’re often wannabe stars themselves, flocking to the same nightclubs and vacation spots. The Mob loved Sinatra not just because he was Italian-American, but because he had crossed over into a nether world in which they could never belong. And he got there because he could do something few people in the world could do as well, and no one in the same way: he could sing.

  The history of celebrity has been a history of excellence. Sir Joshua Reynolds could paint; he was an Annie Leibovitz for the Age of Reason, both famous and able to make someone famous with his idealized portraits. Lord Byron, the original bad boy, could write; Sarah Bernhardt could act (and knew how to drive her public wild with stunts that would make Lindsay Lohan blush). Louis Armstrong could play the trumpet like Gabriel himself. Fred Astaire could dance. And while there have always been flash-in-the-pan personalities sensationalized by tabloid media, opportunists who took their fifteen minutes and ran, only to disappear, the real stars—the ones who made it all the way up to that peak where they’ve been granted by adoring fans an almost godlike status—have always been special in some way, blessed with dazzling gifts and/or beauty, both talented and given to hard work.

  “Stars—they’re just like us,” Us Weekly tells us. Well, now they are. Reality television leveled Mount Olympus like a nuclear bomb. On reality TV, even truly gifted and talented celebrities can be seen acting “real”—sometimes too real, like when the late Whitney Houston was taunted by her husband Bobby Brown on Being Bobby Brown (2005) for how he had manually assisted her with a bowel movement. A friend of mine remarked, “That was the end of civilization.”

  The Internet made stars of us all—even the reluctant ones, like the “Star Wars Kid” (the unwilling subject of one of the most famous viral videos of all time).10 “Why is she famous anyway?” President Obama joked at the 2012 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner; he was talking about Kim Kardashian. As probably even the president knows, Kardashian’s fame originated with a sex tape, an unthinkable phenomenon fifty or even fifteen years ago. Kardashian saw her friend Paris Hilton’s star rise after the release of a sex tape in 2003, and in 2007, her own semi-nude romp with the singer Ray J suddenly appeared. It was supposed to be for private viewing only, but somehow it was leaked, and voila, Kardashian, who formerly had a job organizing closets for the rich and famous, was famous.

  Her mother, Kris Jenner, had been shopping around a reality show tied to the fame of her husband, Olympian Bruce Jenner, but now it sold with the help of Kardashian’s sex tape fame. Kardashian, guided by her mother, now also her manager, followed her friend Paris’ celebutante business model with just a few variations. After the reality show came endorsements, clothing, fragrances, personal appearances, books, and then spin-off shows for her sisters, Khloe and Kourtney. But, more important, Kardashian had a more sustainable image: she didn’t do drugs or get arrested for D.U.I. or go to jail, and she didn’t toss around offensive words (as Paris had). She was the nice Paris. In 2010, the Kardashian franchise earned $65 million.

  So why was Kim Kardashian famous? Because she was very good at marketing herself, that was all—and today, that was enough. Corporations are now people and people are now products, known as “brands.” At a time when the 1 percent was getting richer, the 99 percent was suddenly trying to keep up with the Kardashians.

  Maybe, I thought, the Bling Ring kids felt they could just walk into the stars’ homes because stars no longer shined. Maybe the Bling Ring, for all its silliness, represented a turning point in America’s relationship to celebrity.

  18

  Nick said they visited Paris’ house four times between October and December 2008. Paris never seemed to notice that they’d even been in her house, much less that they’d stolen anything. She never reported anything to the police. Nick was always Googling her, checking the news for any signs of trouble. Paris just put another key under the mat, replacing the one they’d taken. Nick said Rachel put that key on her keychain.

  “Paris never really knew anyone was in her house—this was my assumption,” Nick said. One reason for this might have been that, in the beginning, they would only take a few items at a time. “Why not take a little bit,” he said, “I guess my thought was. You know, take a little bit so they don’t notice. Don’t take everything and really screw them over.”

  On those repeated missions to Paris’ house, he said, he felt like he got to know her; he “saw her more as a real person. Being in someone’s house when they’re not there you see all kinds of things.” Sometimes Paris’ house was a mess, and there were signs that she’d been in a hurry, upset, or possibly in a rage. Once, Nick said, a mirror was cracked, as if something had been thrown against it. Maybe a cell phone, he speculated. Sometimes there would be clothes everywhere, as if Paris had tried on a million different things, unable to choose what to wear. He knew the feeling. He’d read that Paris said she’d been diagnosed with ADHD when she was young and was prescribed Adderall. He’d been diagnosed with ADHD, too, and knew lots of kids who took that drug. When Paris was a teenager she’d reportedly been sent to the exclusive CEDU High School for troubled teens in Running Springs, California. It was sort of like being sent to Indian Hills, but with rehab.

  And then there was Paris’ cocaine. “We found about, like, five grams of coke in Paris’ house, or Rachel did,” Nick said. He said they snorted in her house and left. “We drove around Mulholland having the best time of our lives.”

  “I don’t know why anyone would listen to allegations made by a self-confessed thief,” said Dawn Miller, a rep for Hilton.

  Often after doing a mission, Nick said, they would drive around pumping club hits like Lil Wayne’s “Got Money”: “Got money and you know it/Take it out your pocket and show it/Then throw it like/This a way, that a way. . . .” They would get a high just off having done something so wild—like Lil Wayne in the music video for the song, where he robs a bank and then throws the money to grateful pedestrians. Except Nick and Rachel were the pedestrians.

  “You know,” Nick said, “unbeknownst to us, mentally we were acting insane, but it felt so glamorous and wonderful.”

  They went back and back, he said, becoming addicted in a way that mirrored their addiction to cocaine—and to each other. He said that Rachel’s boldness grew despite the fact that once they were almost discovered. One night they when were walking up to Paris’ house, “we see these cops and we jump in the bushes,” he said. “We’re sitting in the bushes for maybe an hour. These cops are just sitting there, looking around with their lights. We’re for sure we’re getting screwed; we’re sitting in the bushes not moving, freaking out. I’m pooping in my pants—like, I’m scared. And then they drive away. So we leave. We don’t even go into the house.”

  But then, he said, “We go back on another occasion. We go back in. It didn’t seem to faze [Rachel] every time we would go into this house.” It was the lure of the things, the intimacy of the things. And the intimacy of the space, and Paris not being there in it.

  Sometimes the things they took were intimately mundane, like a pair of sneakers that belonged to Benji Madden, Paris’ boyfriend. Nick wore them around. And sometimes the things they took were more personal. Nick said Paris had a “safe room and in her safe—it was completely unlocked—she had a thing of, like, maybe eighteen pictures of herself topless and rubbed with, like, some tanning color all over her body.” So they took them. “We thought we might be able to sell them to a tabloid,” he said. “We thought it would be
profitable at the time, but after looking into it we were told everyone has seen Paris Hilton naked so it didn’t really matter. So Rachel just kind of hung on to those.” And Nick did as well.

  Meanwhile, he said, his anxiety over their new hobby grew. When he’d voice his concerns to Rachel, “she’d say like, ‘It’s okay, you’re freaking out over nothing,’ minimizing anything I would worry about. And I would believe that ’cause this was my best friend.” It was, “ ‘I love you. I’d do anything for you.’ ”

  “She was like a family member,” Nick said. “I’d bring her over and we’d celebrate my sister’s birthday together.” His little sister Victoria went to Calabasas High School; he said she was a sweet girl and a good student and knew nothing of his criminal activities.

  “Rachel was my family,” said Nick. “She was my family, I was her family.”

  And that’s why it felt wrong when she started involving other people in their “secret.” “It was, like, our secret,” Nick said, “but Rachel would tell her best friends and I would tell some of my best friends. . . . Rachel kind of recruited Diana [Tamayo] through Indian Hills.” After graduating from high school in 2008 Diana had enrolled in Pierce College, where she was taking business classes.

  “At first I didn’t like Diana,” Nick said, “because I didn’t know her. . .It’s not that I didn’t like her, it was [supposed to be] me and Rachel—it was our friendship, our thing; and I didn’t really agree with bringing other people into it and making it, like, a big thing. I didn’t think it should go that far. . . .Rachel asked me is this okay, should I bring Diana into this? I didn’t feel that should even be an option; I didn’t think it should grow, but it eventually did and Diana came to be involved.”

  Tamayo’s lawyer, Behnam Gharagozli, denies all of Nick Prugo’s allegations about his client. “I don’t agree with the contention that Rachel started the whole thing,” he said. “I don’t think she was the ringleader. Nick had heavy involvement in this whole thing.”

  Once, Nick said, when they went on a “mission” to Hilton’s house, Rachel brought along her former boyfriend (he was a minor at the time). He was a good-looking kid who resembled James Franco when he played bad boy Daniel Desario on Freaks and Geeks (1999–2000). According to the LAPD’s report, this boy was arrested for possession of an unregistered handgun in February 2009. At that arrest, “several items of jewelry” were “recovered. . .and booked into evidence by the arresting deputies.” A few months later, in November, after the Bling Ring was busted, the jewelry was shown to Hilton, who recognized it as hers. (Rachel’s ex was never charged for the burglary of Hilton’s home due to reasons that are still unclear—probably his minor status, which would have complicated the Bling Ring case for the L.A. District Attorney’s office; minors are more difficult to prosecute.)

  “I just found it odd that [Rachel] would want to involve more people,” Nick said. It was becoming a party atmosphere. Now they would hang out in Paris’ nightclub room and smoke cigarettes. They would lie on her bed.

  Another person Rachel allegedly brought along with them to Hilton’s house was Courtney Ames. Ames’ lawyer, Robert Schwartz, denies Ames ever entered Hilton’s house or was involved in any burglary there. “She’s irresponsible, she’s a goofball,” Schwartz said. “That’s who she is. I’m not here to tell you she had no involvement at all or that she’s led an upstanding life. She’s had a drinking problem; she has used terrible judgment on many occasions.” But, he said, his client was innocent of all the crimes of which Nick Prugo accused her.

  Nick said that although he was initially turned off by Courtney’s “hard-rock” exterior, he had grown to like her over time. “Like, there’s like two different Courtneys,” he said. “There’s the one that, after getting to know Courtney, I kind of understand; she’s really like a little girl. She’s not really a hard-ass. She tries to be a hard-ass so much. She hangs out with the worst people. She involves herself with the worst boyfriends, the worst kind of things. But, like, inside, just from knowing her for years, I really see a different part of her. I think that’s what attracted me to her. It obviously wasn’t her looks or her style.”

  From Hilton’s house, Nick said, they took “jewelry and dresses and leather jackets. Courtney took a leather Diane von Furstenberg jacket.” “She was given the jacket by Prugo,” said Schwartz. “He wanted to be a big shot, a big man.”

  19

  Nick told police that he, Courtney Ames, and Roy Lopez planned the $2 million heist of Paris Hilton’s jewelry in December 2008. (Ames’ and Lopez’ lawyers, Schwartz and David Diamond, both deny all of Prugo’s allegations about their clients. “Roy Lopez was never in Paris Hilton’s home,” said Diamond.) Nick knew Lopez from hanging out at Sagebrush Cantina, just off the Mulholland Drive exit in Calabasas, where Courtney briefly worked as a waitress in 2008; Nick said she would serve him and his friends free drinks.

  Lopez was the bouncer there; he was barely making ends meet. “He was staying with friends, at shelters, and on the street,” Diamond said. “He could not even afford to get his car, which had no wheels, fixed.” Lopez would see Nick and his friends coming into the bar wearing expensive designer clothes. “To him it seemed like they had a lot of bread,” Vince, my cop source, said. Lopez saw the topless photos that Nick said he’d stolen from Hilton’s safe; Nick was showing them around. So when Nick and his friends bragged about hanging out at Paris Hilton’s house and stealing her clothes, Lopez had reason to believe that they were telling the truth.

  Lopez proposed they do a bigger robbery of Hilton’s house, Nick told police. Why settle for these smaller things they were coming away with when there was a whole closet full of jewels just sitting there waiting to be taken? Nick had regaled his friends with how he and Rachel had found Hilton’s jewel closet hidden behind a secret door in the wall of the closet with her shoes. He said it was “like a jewelry store,” lined with shelves crammed with velvet-covered stands dripping with sparkling necklaces, bracelets, earrings. “It was like Paris’ own personal Tiffany’s.”

  “Roy [Lopez] promised a ‘cut’ of any proceeds from the upcoming burglary for Prugo’s assistance” in planning it, said the LAPD’s report. “Roy told Prugo that he could expect to receive as much as one hundred thousand dollars after Roy sold the jewelry he expected to steal from Hilton’s residence. Prugo readily agreed to . . . Roy’s proposition. Prugo stated that he was asked to plan this burglary because of his knowledge of the residence that he gleaned through his prior burglaries at Hilton’s residence.”

  In the early weeks of December, “Prugo stated that he met with Ames and Roy on numerous occasions to plan the . . . burglary,” the LAPD’s report said. “Prugo drew a map of the interior of the Hilton residence, which included the location of the jewelry as well as the location of the surveillance cameras installed on the perimeter of the residence. Prugo explained to Roy that the only way to access Hilton’s property was to . . . walk up a hill to the rear of Hilton’s property. Prugo also advised Roy that Hilton kept a key underneath a doormat at the front of the residence.”

  Hilton said in Grand Jury testimony that on the night of December 18, 2009, she left her house at 10:30 p.m. for three or four hours. (She was meeting friends at Bar Deluxe in Hollywood.) She didn’t turn on her alarm, she said, “because, before this, I felt so safe in this gated community, like no one could ever get in, that I sometimes would just go out and not even think to put the alarm on, because I never thought anyone could get in my home.” She also said she usually left her key under the doormat, in a flower planter or “up in a light.”

  When she returned between 2 and 3 a.m., Hilton said, “I just noticed that there was, like, kind of shoe marks with dirt on them that were, like, leading up the stairs. And then when I went into my room, I had black carpet on the floor so you could really see there were prominent footmarks, which led into my closet area where my jewelry was.

  “My closet where all my jewelry is kept had been ransacked and
, you know, basically two full shelves were, I guess, pushed into a bag,” Hilton said in court. Surveillance footage from that night shows a male, about six feet tall and wearing a black hoodie, walking up the stairs to Hilton’s bedroom and later coming out with a Louis Vuitton tote bag. Inside the bag was over $2 million worth of jewelry, Hilton said, including heirlooms that had been in her family for generations. Police pictures of the bag (which was later recovered) show a tangled heap of glittering stones, chunky necklaces and bracelets, all wound together, crisscrossed with strings of pearls.

  After finding her house had been robbed, Hilton called the police; the next day it was all over the news. “Paris Hilton’s Pad Burgled!” said E! Online. “Prugo discovered through the media that Hilton’s residence had been burglarized,” said the LAPD’s report, “Prugo contacted Roy to congratulate him and ask for his portion of the proceeds. [But] Roy advised Prugo that while the burglary was successful, half of the jewelry that he removed from the residence was inexpensive costume jewelry and that [the] remainder were priceless pieces that Roy’s ‘fence’ could not sell. Roy advised Prugo that the jewelry was being stored at a location in the state of Arizona.

  “Prugo stated that he never received payment for the planning of this burglary.”

  “Roy Lopez . . . did not steal anything from Paris Hilton,” said David Diamond, Lopez’ lawyer.