The Pellicano brief - Hollywood, California, private investigator Anthony Pellicano
Los Angeles Magazine, Feb, 1994 by John Connolly
Early last summer, I received a telephone call from Anthony Pelicano, who informed me that he was working for Steven Seagal, about whom I had just written an unflattering article for Spy magazine. Pellicano said he was "going to get" me and then began a tirade, calling me every name in the book and linking some curse words in couplets I had never heard before. I interrupted him long enough to ask if he always spoke to people he'd never met in such an obnoxious manner. He responded by screaming that I was a "cockroach" and went on to say I should be glad I was in New York and not on his turf in L.A. I asked Pellicano if he was always a tough guy. "I'm not only a tough guy," he said, "I'm connected to the right people, you asshole."
I concluded the conversation by telling Pellicano the date of my arrival and the hotel I would be staying at during my next trip to L.A. and suggested he bring his famed Louisville Slugger. He never showed.
It was my first encounter with the man who has been called "America's most famous private investigator." Since last summer, Pellicano has rarely been out of the news. He was seen with Columbia's Mark Nathanson in the Heidi Fleiss affair. His face was a nightly fixture on television the entire month of September as he led the counter-offensive in the media circus following the child-molestation allegations against client Michael Jackson. He's been profiled in GQ and People. He's appeared on Larry King Live and Donahue.
Pellicano's office is located in a high rise, fittingly, on Sunset Boulevard, just on the fringe of Beverly Hills. People who have visited have said the secretaries tend to be young and attractive. His staff includes electronics experts and assistants. When you call, the receptionist answers, "Good morning. May I help you?"--never mentioning you are calling Pelliciano Investigations. Apparently, he believes this adds to the mystique. (Pellicano declined to be interviewed, while conceding that Los Angeles Magazine has "a Fifth Amendment right to write anytying you want.") Friends and detractors alike cite his tremendous ego and gift for self-promotion. He's been called "Hollywood's best-kep secret" or, better yet, "Hollywood's best secret-keeper"--not to mention "the Neutralizer," "the Intimidator" and "Thug to the Stars."
Pellicano has been involved in virtually every Hollywood scandal of the year, but is he is a security consultant, as the papers say, or a spin doctor with sometimes questionable methods? Contrary to his TV demeanor, he's been accused of threatening people, discrediting reputations and wiretapping adversaries and journalists. Years ago, when industrial barons had trouble with strikes, they hired Pinkerton goons to settle matters by busting heads. Now, when Hollywood's barons want something settled, they hire Pellicano. Anthony Joseph Pellican Jr. was born in 1944, the grandson of Sicilian immigrants. He was raised in Cicero, Illinois, a lower-middle-class Italian stronghold outside Chicago. (His grandfather had dropped the o from their surname; in a burst of Italian pride, Pelicano later restored it.) He left h igh school at 16 and got his equivalency diploma during a stint in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, where, he says, he worked as a cryptographer. (Perhaps sensitive about his lack of formal education, Pellicano boasts of belonging to Mensa and claims his work consists of "Sherlock Holmes-type things.")
After his discharge, he went to work for the Spiegel Company in Chicago. He was placed in the collections department, his job to "skip-trace" people who had fallen behind in their payments. He seems to have done so with some flair. Also called "the man with a thousand voices," he says, "I'm probably better than any actor in Hollywood," a reference to his fondness for using ruses to locate deadbeats. On the phone, he could pass for a man or a woman, white or black, a northern urbanite or a rural southerner. He gave himself a colorful moniker, Tony Fortune.
In 1969, Pellicano set himself up as a private investigator in Chicago. But in 1974, he was forced to file for bankruptcy. In his petition, he listed as one of his debts a $30,000 loan from the son of a reputed organized-crime figure, Paul "the Waiter" DeLucia. Pellicano concedes he has known a few gangsters but insists he is not connected with the Mob. Of course, in Pellicano's line of work, it is not necessarily a bad thing to have, or be known for having, acquaintances in nefarious places. Pellicano first hit the headlines in June 1977, when the remains of producer Mike Todd, Elizabeth Taylor's third husband, were discovered missing from his grave in a Chicago cemetery. A few days later, Pellicano, accompanied by a local news crew, found them just 75 yards from Todd's open grave. He said an anonymous tipster had told him the location. A recent L.A. Times story reported that an informant told authorities the Chicago Mob had exhumed Todd's remains, wrongly believing he was buried wearing a 10-carat diamond ring given to him by Taylor. According to Chicago P.I. Ernie Rizzo, a longtime rival of Pellicano, it was supposedly "common knowledge" Pellicano engineered the whole thing. Thought the Times said "there is no evidence linking Pellicano to the disappearance," and Pellicano has ridiculed Rizzo's claim, Lt. Joseph Byrnes of the Forest Park, Illinois, police told me, "Seven patrolmen and I, walking shoulder to shoulder, searcher every inch of that small cemetery, and we found nothing. The very next day, Pellicano makes a big deal of finding the remains in a spot we had thoroughly checked."
In 1983, Pellicano's life took a dramatic turn. He divorced his first wife and then moved to L.A. after getting hired by the attorneys for John DeLorean, the glamorous, onetime high-flying automobile manufacturer who was charged with cocaine trafficking. Pellicano, by then an expert in electronic surveillance, interpreted key government tapes and phone lists and revealed information that helped undermine the credibility of some of the witnesses for the prosecution.
DeLorean was acquitted. Howard Weitzman, one of DeLorean's attorneys, has said, "Pellicano's work was in large part responsible for my ability to win that case." The relationship between the two continues profitably to this day. In fact, Weitzman is Pellicano's own attorney. Perhaps, in terms of dealing with distasteful matters, Pellicano is to Weitzman as Weitzman is to his more exalted associate, attorney-to-the-stars Bertram Fields.
After the DeLorean victory, Pellicano was hired by the D.A.'s office and the LAPD to do audio work. He had become adept at dissecting tapes and setting up "audio-surveillance countermeasures." Over the next decade, his career was boosted by his relationship with Weitzman and Fields, both of whom introduced him to high-profile Hollywood clients. More recently, he's done work for Seagal, Jackson, Nathanson and producer Don Simpson. He also found time to help James Woods with his Sean Young problem; to assist the Jackson family by discrediting La Toya and her husband, Jack Gordon, before publication of their book alleging that Jackson Sr. had abused his children; and even to offer an opinion on the legitimacy of the Gennifer Flowers-Bill Clinton tapes. The former skip-tracer from Chicago has come a long way. It is Pellicano's much-hyped celebrity work that has forged his reputation--some of it infamous. Hollywood's toughest guy doesn't ride a horse. He drives a Lexus. He also has a black belt in karate and a master's rating in kung fu. He once said, "I'm an expert with a knife. I can shared your face." If you think this doesn't sound much like Sherlock Holmes, you're right. Pellicano's methods are decidedly different.
A case in point: On September 14, 1989, a 31-year-old African-American clerk named Deryl Brown was summoned to the personnel office at Paramount, where he'd worked for seven years. The director escorted Brown into a private room and introduced him to another man, whom he said was an attorney. According to a later complaint Brown filed in superior court against Paramount and Pellicano, the director then left the room.
The complaint said the "attorney" then accused Brown of conspiring with a female coworker to sell drugs and steal valuable company memorabilia. When Brown protested, he was told that unless he admitted his guilt, he would be both fired and prosecuted. "You're in deep shit, asshole!" Brown says the man screamed at him. "You don't want to make an enemy of me." When he tried to leave, the lawyer blocked the doorway and, said Brown's attorney, Helena Wise, "made racial slurs," saying Brown couldn't afford to live in the neigborhood he did unless he was dealing drugs. After a half hour, he was allowed to leave.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_...i_14956511/pg_1
Los Angeles Magazine, Feb, 1994 by John Connolly
Early last summer, I received a telephone call from Anthony Pelicano, who informed me that he was working for Steven Seagal, about whom I had just written an unflattering article for Spy magazine. Pellicano said he was "going to get" me and then began a tirade, calling me every name in the book and linking some curse words in couplets I had never heard before. I interrupted him long enough to ask if he always spoke to people he'd never met in such an obnoxious manner. He responded by screaming that I was a "cockroach" and went on to say I should be glad I was in New York and not on his turf in L.A. I asked Pellicano if he was always a tough guy. "I'm not only a tough guy," he said, "I'm connected to the right people, you asshole."
I concluded the conversation by telling Pellicano the date of my arrival and the hotel I would be staying at during my next trip to L.A. and suggested he bring his famed Louisville Slugger. He never showed.
It was my first encounter with the man who has been called "America's most famous private investigator." Since last summer, Pellicano has rarely been out of the news. He was seen with Columbia's Mark Nathanson in the Heidi Fleiss affair. His face was a nightly fixture on television the entire month of September as he led the counter-offensive in the media circus following the child-molestation allegations against client Michael Jackson. He's been profiled in GQ and People. He's appeared on Larry King Live and Donahue.
Pellicano's office is located in a high rise, fittingly, on Sunset Boulevard, just on the fringe of Beverly Hills. People who have visited have said the secretaries tend to be young and attractive. His staff includes electronics experts and assistants. When you call, the receptionist answers, "Good morning. May I help you?"--never mentioning you are calling Pelliciano Investigations. Apparently, he believes this adds to the mystique. (Pellicano declined to be interviewed, while conceding that Los Angeles Magazine has "a Fifth Amendment right to write anytying you want.") Friends and detractors alike cite his tremendous ego and gift for self-promotion. He's been called "Hollywood's best-kep secret" or, better yet, "Hollywood's best secret-keeper"--not to mention "the Neutralizer," "the Intimidator" and "Thug to the Stars."
Pellicano has been involved in virtually every Hollywood scandal of the year, but is he is a security consultant, as the papers say, or a spin doctor with sometimes questionable methods? Contrary to his TV demeanor, he's been accused of threatening people, discrediting reputations and wiretapping adversaries and journalists. Years ago, when industrial barons had trouble with strikes, they hired Pinkerton goons to settle matters by busting heads. Now, when Hollywood's barons want something settled, they hire Pellicano. Anthony Joseph Pellican Jr. was born in 1944, the grandson of Sicilian immigrants. He was raised in Cicero, Illinois, a lower-middle-class Italian stronghold outside Chicago. (His grandfather had dropped the o from their surname; in a burst of Italian pride, Pelicano later restored it.) He left h igh school at 16 and got his equivalency diploma during a stint in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, where, he says, he worked as a cryptographer. (Perhaps sensitive about his lack of formal education, Pellicano boasts of belonging to Mensa and claims his work consists of "Sherlock Holmes-type things.")
After his discharge, he went to work for the Spiegel Company in Chicago. He was placed in the collections department, his job to "skip-trace" people who had fallen behind in their payments. He seems to have done so with some flair. Also called "the man with a thousand voices," he says, "I'm probably better than any actor in Hollywood," a reference to his fondness for using ruses to locate deadbeats. On the phone, he could pass for a man or a woman, white or black, a northern urbanite or a rural southerner. He gave himself a colorful moniker, Tony Fortune.
In 1969, Pellicano set himself up as a private investigator in Chicago. But in 1974, he was forced to file for bankruptcy. In his petition, he listed as one of his debts a $30,000 loan from the son of a reputed organized-crime figure, Paul "the Waiter" DeLucia. Pellicano concedes he has known a few gangsters but insists he is not connected with the Mob. Of course, in Pellicano's line of work, it is not necessarily a bad thing to have, or be known for having, acquaintances in nefarious places. Pellicano first hit the headlines in June 1977, when the remains of producer Mike Todd, Elizabeth Taylor's third husband, were discovered missing from his grave in a Chicago cemetery. A few days later, Pellicano, accompanied by a local news crew, found them just 75 yards from Todd's open grave. He said an anonymous tipster had told him the location. A recent L.A. Times story reported that an informant told authorities the Chicago Mob had exhumed Todd's remains, wrongly believing he was buried wearing a 10-carat diamond ring given to him by Taylor. According to Chicago P.I. Ernie Rizzo, a longtime rival of Pellicano, it was supposedly "common knowledge" Pellicano engineered the whole thing. Thought the Times said "there is no evidence linking Pellicano to the disappearance," and Pellicano has ridiculed Rizzo's claim, Lt. Joseph Byrnes of the Forest Park, Illinois, police told me, "Seven patrolmen and I, walking shoulder to shoulder, searcher every inch of that small cemetery, and we found nothing. The very next day, Pellicano makes a big deal of finding the remains in a spot we had thoroughly checked."
In 1983, Pellicano's life took a dramatic turn. He divorced his first wife and then moved to L.A. after getting hired by the attorneys for John DeLorean, the glamorous, onetime high-flying automobile manufacturer who was charged with cocaine trafficking. Pellicano, by then an expert in electronic surveillance, interpreted key government tapes and phone lists and revealed information that helped undermine the credibility of some of the witnesses for the prosecution.
DeLorean was acquitted. Howard Weitzman, one of DeLorean's attorneys, has said, "Pellicano's work was in large part responsible for my ability to win that case." The relationship between the two continues profitably to this day. In fact, Weitzman is Pellicano's own attorney. Perhaps, in terms of dealing with distasteful matters, Pellicano is to Weitzman as Weitzman is to his more exalted associate, attorney-to-the-stars Bertram Fields.
After the DeLorean victory, Pellicano was hired by the D.A.'s office and the LAPD to do audio work. He had become adept at dissecting tapes and setting up "audio-surveillance countermeasures." Over the next decade, his career was boosted by his relationship with Weitzman and Fields, both of whom introduced him to high-profile Hollywood clients. More recently, he's done work for Seagal, Jackson, Nathanson and producer Don Simpson. He also found time to help James Woods with his Sean Young problem; to assist the Jackson family by discrediting La Toya and her husband, Jack Gordon, before publication of their book alleging that Jackson Sr. had abused his children; and even to offer an opinion on the legitimacy of the Gennifer Flowers-Bill Clinton tapes. The former skip-tracer from Chicago has come a long way. It is Pellicano's much-hyped celebrity work that has forged his reputation--some of it infamous. Hollywood's toughest guy doesn't ride a horse. He drives a Lexus. He also has a black belt in karate and a master's rating in kung fu. He once said, "I'm an expert with a knife. I can shared your face." If you think this doesn't sound much like Sherlock Holmes, you're right. Pellicano's methods are decidedly different.
A case in point: On September 14, 1989, a 31-year-old African-American clerk named Deryl Brown was summoned to the personnel office at Paramount, where he'd worked for seven years. The director escorted Brown into a private room and introduced him to another man, whom he said was an attorney. According to a later complaint Brown filed in superior court against Paramount and Pellicano, the director then left the room.
The complaint said the "attorney" then accused Brown of conspiring with a female coworker to sell drugs and steal valuable company memorabilia. When Brown protested, he was told that unless he admitted his guilt, he would be both fired and prosecuted. "You're in deep shit, asshole!" Brown says the man screamed at him. "You don't want to make an enemy of me." When he tried to leave, the lawyer blocked the doorway and, said Brown's attorney, Helena Wise, "made racial slurs," saying Brown couldn't afford to live in the neigborhood he did unless he was dealing drugs. After a half hour, he was allowed to leave.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_...i_14956511/pg_1