How Mafia-style fixer to stars including Michael Jackson, Arnie and Sly Stallone has Hollywood quaking over fear he will sell their secrets
HE described himself as a “sin eater for the rich and famous”.
Like a Mob boss consigliere, sharp-suited private investigator Anthony Pellicano used every trick in the book to help some of Hollywood’s biggest stars keep their secrets under wraps.
But now, after his release yesterday from a lengthy jail term, the showbiz world is waiting to see if Pellicano will spill the beans.
Last year, the “fixer” said: “A lot of people are quaking that I’m going to disclose lots of things when I get out. They’ll just have to keep quaking, won’t they?”
From his swanky office on Sunset Boulevard, Pellicano would make problems vanish for high-profile names as well as dig up dirt to make their enemies go away.
Speaking from the Terminal Island jail in Los Angeles last year — where he was caged for offences including witness tampering and intimidation — Pellicano said: “People got away with a lot because of me.”
His clients allegedly included Steven Spielberg, Kevin Costner, Farrah Fawcett, Chris Rock and Courtney Love.
He boasted in 2011 of covering up the misdemeanours of action star and ex-governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger, saying: “If they found that stuff, he never would have become Governor.”
It is thought Pellicano offered his services to Tom Cruise’s divorce lawyer in 2001 when the actor split from Nicole Kidman. Tapes of phone conversations between the pair were found in Pellicano’s office.
He discredited a gay porn actor who claimed to have had an affair with Cruise, insisting there was “no truth to it — he wanted to extort money”.
It is claimed US telly star Roseanne Barr hired Pellicano to find a long-lost daughter, while Stevie Wonder had him do some digging on a lover.
Drug use by other stars was quickly swept under the carpet. Pellicano once told Newsweek: “If you saw the stuff I found in celebrity homes . . . cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, vials of narcotics. There was a doctor shooting up celebrities with morphine for £260.”
He emerged from the shadows in 1993, with Michael Jackson hiring him after claims the singer groomed and molested 13-year-old Jordy Chandler.
Pellicano’s recording of Jordy’s father Evan saying the trial would be a “massacre if I don’t get what I want” lent weight to claims the Chandlers were trying to extort money from Jackson.
But the singer, who died in 2009, settled out of court for £17.5million and Pellicano cut ties with Jackson when he “found out some truths” about the Thriller star.
Pellicano has never revealed details but said: “He did something far worse to young boys than molest them.”
Pellicano, who was released from jail on his 75th birthday, used gadgets and recording devices to dig up dirt on clients’ foes, including enemies of Rocky star Sylvester Stallone.
His work reaped huge rewards. Clients paid a non-refundable retainer of £19,000, while fees could run into hundreds of thousands of dollars before expenses.
Jackson’s fees alone were said to be £650,000, plus the same again as a bonus, and a Mercedes car.
Pellicano had plenty of customers. He said: “I was often the court of last resort for many. People didn’t pay me all that money to hear stories about how I’d failed. I always kept my word and did everything I could to get the job done.”
He drove a two-seater Mercedes to work and owned a plush apartment nearby. His home was in the upmarket suburb of Oak Park, where he lived with fourth wife Kat, their three daughters and a son who has autism.
Sporting a uniform of double-breasted silk suits and dark sunglasses, Pellicano seemed to have stepped out of a Mob drama.
He denies having ties to the Mafia but boasted of certain “associations”, saying: “If you tried to connect me to organised crime, you probably could get close — but no cigar.”
He played up to his reputation for violent intimidation, saying in a 1992 GQ interview: “I’m an expert with a knife. I can shred your face.”
Pellicano’s favourite shades are duplicates of those worn by Al Pacino in The Godfather Part II and he used the film’s theme as his phone music. He is also a big fan of TV mobster show The Sopranos.
The son of Sicilian immigrants, he even named his son Luca after Don Corleone’s hitman Luca Brasi.
Kat once said: “There were times when he would make my children kiss his hand like he was The Godfather. .”
His career took in the US Army Signal Corps and collecting debts before becoming an investigator.
Elizabeth Taylor brought him into the Hollywood fold in 1977 when Pellicano, then living in his native Chicago, claimed to have found the remains of her third husband, producer Mike Todd, whose corpse had been stolen from a graveyard.
He moved to LA in the early Eighties after divorcing his second wife.
Much of Pellicano’s early work was locating missing people — one newspaper report said he had found nearly 4,000 missing people.
Pellicano says he was mentored by Lt Col Allan D Bell, a military intelligence expert who Pellicano said was “closer to me than my own father . . . and more of a father to me”.
Pellicano helped reinvestigate JFK’s killing and Richard Nixon’s Watergate tapes. It is thought he was hired during Bill Clinton’s first White House run to discredit Gennifer Flowers, who claimed to have had an affair with Clinton.
Later, according to the New York Post, Pellicano was hired to investigate Monica Lewinsky.
I could’ve ruined many careers and lives
Anthony Pellicano
There were rumours Pellicano was the private eye tracking OJ Simpson’s wife Nicole before her murder — claims fuelled by revelations that bugging devices found in her home were the same as those Pellicano used at Jackson’s Neverland ranch. Pellicano denied any involvement.
In 2002, the FBI raided his office, prompted by claims he intimidated reporter Anita Busch, who had written unfavourable stories about Pellicano clients Steven Seagal and Michael Ovitz, the ex-Disney boss.
Busch found a bullet hole in her car, “Stop” scrawled on the windscreen and a dead fish with a rose in its mouth on the vehicle — a notorious Mafia warning.
The man who vandalised the car said he was hired by Pellicano, who denied any involvement. During the raid, the FBI found explosives and £150,000 in cash. Pellicano was jailed on weapons charges.
He said: “For 30 years, I’ve been a sin eater for the rich and famous. I just ate one sin too many.”
The dad of nine was convicted in 2008 of wiretapping, intimidation, witness tampering and evidence destruction.
There is no suggestion his clients knew of Pellicano’s illegal methods.
In prison, he avoided other inmates by reading in his cell.
He has been asked to spill the beans before. A newspaper offered him £380,000 for the full story on Michael Jackson but he said no. A former associate says: “Honour is sacred to Pellicano. He built a career on it and views ‘rats’ as “worse than child molesters”.
Others convicted at Pellicano’s 2008 trial included his then girlfriend, two policemen and a lawyer.
“Pellicano alone is responsible,” he insisted, refusing to implicate others while defending himself in court. “That’s the simple truth.”
But he told the Hollywood Reporter: “I could’ve saved myself — or done less time — if I co-operated with the government. I could have ruined many careers and lives.
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“I could’ve hurt law-enforcement personnel, government employees, even judges. But I would have dishonoured myself by doing so.”
However, Pellicano has often grumbled about his financial woes.
We will soon see if his secrets can be bought after all.
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