The Bling Ring

by Nancy Jo Sales

  “You mean you want to apologize to the celebrities?” I asked.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Nick said. “I mean I don’t even know how they’d take it ’cause I don’t know what they’re thinking.”

  “What would you say to them?”

  “You know, I’m sorry—I mean, personal invasion, to be a victim like that, to have someone in your house where it’s your most personal of sanctuaries; your most private of things go on there. If someone did that to me, I’d have to move. I wouldn’t want to sleep there another night. I know it’s such a high level of privacy invasion—I don’t blame them.”

  “So why’d you do it?” I asked.

  “At the moment I wasn’t thinking,” he said. “I was following Rachel. This was the person that I loved, the person I trusted to have my best interests at heart, and I put all my faith in that person. I learned late in life how to make friendships, how to trust people, and I kind of messed up about that.”

  18

  A man and a woman, connected by crime. . .Nick was right that it was a scenario that has long attracted the American imagination. Bonnie and Clyde, with their gang of outlaws, robbing banks and killing cops at the height of the Great Depression, were two of the first celebrity criminals of the modern era. In their abandoned Joplin, Mississippi, hideout, in 1933, police found rolls of film the pair had shot of each other, posing with Browning Automatic Rifles; there was Bonnie toting a pistol and smoking Clyde’s cigar. Like Nick and Rachel, they liked to take pictures of each other. They clearly saw themselves as very glamorous. Personal photography was relatively new and it was exhilarating in its power to assist in the creation of a self—for Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, a criminal self. You have to wonder what they would have done with Facebook.

  “The Joplin photos introduced new criminal superstars with the most titillating trademark of all—illicit sex,” Jeff Guinn writes in Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde (2010). “With her sassy photographs, Bonnie supplied the sex-appeal, the oomph, that allowed the two of them to transcend the small-scale thefts and needless killings that actually comprised their criminal careers.”

  Like Nick and Rachel, it was Bonnie and Clyde’s penchant for drawing attention to themselves that led to their undoing—and eventual demise. Their gang seemed to go out of its way to make a ruckus wherever it went, partying in hideouts, running loud, drunken card games into the night. They were kids: Bonnie was 20 and Clyde 21 in 1930, the year they met at the home of a mutual friend. Pretty blond Bonnie was a waitress in the then backwater town of Dallas; she loved the movies and dreamed of the life of a movie star, as she would write in a diary she briefly kept. Clyde, born into a poor farming family that had moved from rural Tellico, Texas, to the slums of West Dallas, was sent to Eastham Prison Farm in April 1930 after a series of arrests (he robbed stores, stole cars, and cracked safes). In prison, he beat to death an inmate who had repeatedly raped him. He vowed to get even with the Texas Department of Corrections, to liberate Eastham Prison, which he did, to some degree, in 1934, orchestrating the escape of several inmates.

  Bonnie and Clyde were said to be instantly smitten with each other. Bonnie was the follower, passionately in love, and devoted to Clyde no matter what he did. They knew their crime and killing spree meant death in a shootout or on the gallows, and historians have speculated whether it were not one long suicide mission on the part of Clyde Barrow. Bonnie’s 1932 poem, “The Story of Suicide Sal,” tells the story of a “gangster gal” who vows to follow her outlaw lover to the end: “For him even now I would die.” Twenty thousand people attended Bonnie’s funeral in Dallas after she and Clyde were gunned down by police in Bienville Parish, Louisiana, in 1934.

  There has been speculation, too, as to whether Clyde Barrow was gay. Arthur Penn’s 1967 movie Bonnie and Clyde starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty alludes to Clyde’s possible impotence with women. They were in love, that was for sure, but not necessarily physically intimate. Thinking of them made me remember how a lawyer for one of the Bling Ring kids said his client said that Nick and Rachel used to take showers together.

  19

  “It was weird,” said Nick, “like, I was just, like, I loved her—like she was the first person that befriended me. She was the first person that, like, actually paid attention. I’m sure it wasn’t the best judgment, but I really felt she cared for me.”

  He talked a lot about how deeply drawn he was to her and how much he needed her approval; how he “didn’t want to upset her”; just “wanted to please her”; and “loved her . . . loved her.”

  What he didn’t love was doing the burglaries, he said. “Like, the process was tolerable, but then actually going in—it was just so stressful. But then after the fact, when I walked out, I guess was the only part that was, like, enjoyable, because I could breathe. I was relaxed. It’s like, it was over. I guess that was the best part. When it was over.”

  I asked him if doing a burglary was scary.

  “Oh my God,” he said, “just like being there and the feeling of hearing a noise—just like anything you’d hear, like a car driving by or a little creak in the floorboard, I would jump, I’d run for the door. Rachel was just like, it’s okay. I was terrified all the time.”

  “Does it scare you now to think back on what you did?” I asked.

  “Oh my God,” he said, “every day. Any time I walk into someone else’s house, even when I’m invited, it’s weird. It’s like a haunted feeling. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it’s like I’ll walk in and I’ll feel uncomfortable. Like I don’t why. Maybe I’ll learn that later in life, but it haunts me. To this day. . . .It brings back really uneasy feelings, bad memories. . . .

  “I couldn’t sleep at night,” he said again. “I was so stressed out, I was so, like—everything [stolen] had been moved. . . . And then I made a decision to just make an inventory of everything I had and give it back—come clean with everything just so it wouldn’t haunt me and I could breathe at night. I could sleep, actually, for the first time in years. I felt comfortable with myself. I felt okay, and like I was a good person. I was doing the right thing—which was really hard, especially when I felt like I was also betraying all these people that had been my best friends.”

  “At first you tried to protect Tess and Alexis,” I said.

  He said, “At first I tried to minimize their roles.” It wasn’t until after Tess appeared on X17 Online, distancing herself from Nick that Nick alleged to police that she had been involved. (Again, Tess was never charged with any crime and denied ever being involved in a burglary.)

  “Why them and not Rachel?” I asked.

  “Like, they were my current friends. Rachel moved to Vegas. She wasn’t really in my life as much,” Nick said. “Tess and Alexis kind of filled that void.”

  20

  Did Nick confess, in part, because he was angry at Rachel for leaving him? I wondered.

  It was just a couple weeks after he came back from moving Rachel to Vegas that he was arrested. “And then,” he said, “we were on the phone doing constant communication. Her dad came out here, talked to me, went back. . . . He called me to meet with me, to give me advice on what to do. . . .Rachel told me he was coming. . . . He came here for some business, or to pick something up, but he stopped to see me, to help me. . . . He was trying to help me I guess. So he suggested to me, you know, stay out of the limelight. Maybe join the military. Move to Idaho, because I have a house in Idaho. . . . I think he was just trying to really help and make it go away. I don’t know if that was necessarily right. I feel like his heart was in a good place, but he maybe could have executed it differently.”

  (David Lee did not respond to requests for comment.)

  “Have you talked to Rachel since you confessed to the police?” I asked.

  “No. God, no,” Nick said.

  “Have you tried to contact her?”

  “I feel like it would be in vain,” he said. “I think, ‘What’s the point?
’ I know that she has preconceived notions about everything. As do I. . . .It was a real friendship, and this whole thing’s been really hard.”

  After he got arrested, he said, “I had no idea what to do. I went at this alone. As soon as I was arrested everyone was kind of like, ‘You’re on your own.’ Which also made me feel abandoned. . . .No one was trying to help me. Everyone was just, like, okay, it’s all on you. And I didn’t know what to do. So I was like, what do I need to do for myself?

  “And then, I met Sean,” he said. “I met him at a restaurant; I introduced myself to him. I saw him. . . .And I talked to him a little bit; clicked with him. I felt like he would, you know, be a better attorney than what I had. And I went to his office the next day. I met with him. He advised me to come clean. And I did. I really think that was the right decision. To this day, I really—even though I was charged with more, you know, things, or whatever—I really feel like it was the right thing to do. I feel like I’m a better person for it, and I will be a better person in the future for it. I have nothing over my head. I feel like that was the turning point in my life.

  “I feel like it was the turning point in my life,” he said again. “It really made me. I had no respect for authority. I hated the police. I just had no respect for anything. And after meeting Sean, I really had a respect for the law. I had a different outlook on life and how to be a good citizen and not just to defy everything just because you want to defy it, but to actually try for something and be a good person and have morals and just, you know, it’s a completely different outlook on everything. And like, I’m so grateful. It saved me. Really, it saved me—because if I had continued with Rachel and I didn’t get caught, who’s to say where I would end up? Who’s to say where I could have been when I was twenty, twenty-five—it would have been a lot worse. So, I’m almost grateful for this. You know? What happened. It sucks, of course.”

  21

  “For young people, where do you think the obsession with fame comes from?” I asked.

  “The media. The Internet,” said Nick. “America is just focused on—I mean Paris Hilton is famous for what? A sex tape? The values and stuff that America has are so wrong—people should focus on the politicians and the inventors and the important people. It shouldn’t be about fame and celebrity and people famous for doing things that are not really important and are not helping society.”

  He talked about how Rachel loved celebrity, how she followed the stars and where they lived and what they wore; what parties they went to, who they were dating, where they ate and vacationed.

  Erenstoft was sitting with us on the couch, now, listening; his girlfriend was putting her kids to bed. “Was there anyone, any talent that was off-limits in your mind?” he asked Nick.

  “Like anyone I just respected too much to—?”

  “To even entertain scoping or, or doing?”

  “No,” said Nick. “Rachel gave me a name, pretty much, and I’d Google it, see what I could do with it.”

  “Was there anyone you said ‘No’ to? ‘That’s out of the question,’ ” Erenstoft asked.

  “No,” Nick said, “because everyone that she said was either Paris Hilton, or some, like, you know—I don’t want to say ‘airhead,’ but someone that’s not—not that I didn’t have respect for them—”

  “Were there ever any discussions between you,” I asked, “to the effect of, ‘Oh, they have so much, it doesn’t matter.’ ”

  “Rachel kind of had that thinking,” said Nick. “I never really thought that. I mean, they did earn it in some way or another—it is theirs. And I never really thought that way. Rachel kind of instilled that in my mind.”

  I asked him if they ever discussed the morality of what they’d done. “Did you ever say, ‘This is wrong?’ ”

  He sighed. He didn’t answer.

  “Do you think that she has a sense of right and wrong?” I asked.

  “I think she does,” he said, “but I think she thinks that these people, being celebrities, like you said, they’re so rich. . . .” He talked about how Rachel herself “had money,” how she drove a “brand new Audi. [Her family] lived in like a million-dollar house. The thing about Calabasas and Malibu is the parents are generally well-off people. . . People had nice clothes—and I had nice clothes before this; it wasn’t like I didn’t—the appeal to have more is what it was I guess with Rachel; it was so easy and there were no consequences. . . .

  “I guess my thought was always, you know, ‘Take a little bit so they don’t notice,’ ” said Nick. “Don’t take everything and really screw them over, but just take a little bit so they don’t notice.

  “And I guess Rachel was kind of always, ‘let’s go in, take whatever we can and leave.’ ”

  22

  More than anything, he said, it was about friendship, times when he would be riding around with Rachel in her car, just listening to music and enjoying being together. “There was one song called ‘Satellites,’ ” by September, he said, “it’s kind of a techno-y song, it reminds me of me and Rachel driving on P.C.H. kind of high.” There was a melancholy feeling to their life sometimes, because of the problems they had with their parents and at school. “I love music, music like really helps me emotionally,” he said. “I love Billy Joel’s ‘Vienna.’ ” (“Slow down, you crazy child/You’re so ambitious for a juvenile”).

  “Now that I look back on it,” he said, he understood the seriousness of it—“obviously”—but “when this was going on, it was made so it was, like, so unserious. It was just like, not a rush, but it was so nonchalant. . . .We just did it.”

  I asked him about how everyone in their circle came to know what they were doing.

  “People knew because Rachel would tell one person, I would tell one person, people would talk and it was very interesting,” he said. “People would talk and eventually I guess it led to a tip to the police.”

  I asked him about how it felt to be exposed.

  “Like the one thing that pissed me off about Courtney,” Nick said, “was she said that I danced and like wore Paris Hilton’s shoes.”

  (“He didn’t just want to steal celebrities clothes—he wanted to wear them!” said the New York Post. “Hollywood burglary suspect Nick Prugo was so giddy after getting a hold of hot celebrity goods that he slipped his dainty feet into Paris Hilton’s stolen shoes and did a little victory dance, according to another accused member of a teen robbery gang. ‘He could fit into her shoes,’ Courtney Ames, 18, told The Post in an exclusive interview yesterday. ‘He put them on and got into a dance and said, ‘Don’t I look good?’ ”)

  “We didn’t even take any shoes from Paris Hilton,” Nick said, frowning. Because they were too big.

  I asked him how it felt when Tess talked to X17 Online.

  “You know what,” Nick said, “I took a lot from [Tess and Alexis] with their beliefs in Buddhism and stuff. But I really don’t think that they genuinely believe that. I think they just use it as a front, because if they really did believe that, they’d be living a lot differently. . . .But, like, I still love them. I still love them, I still care for them, I still want the best for them, every one of my friends.

  “Actually, my friend saw Tess at Wonderland a week ago,” Nick said. “And my friend told Tess just to mess with her that I was coming. And Tess freaked out, I guess. I know they still go out. They’re still carefree. Rachel’s carefree. She just has a possession of stolen property charge”—so far.

  “I think if they haven’t charged [Rachel] up to this point,” Erenstoft said, “it’s because they’re holding out hope that she might do the right thing and give up the property that she has. . . . She sort of confessed that she has property.”

  “Do you think she just wants to keep it?” I asked Nick.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I know she does. . . .

  “It sounds like she likes having it,” I said.

  “I liked it too,” he said, “but I gave it back.”

  He seemed bothered th
at his former friends were living the same glamorous life as they had before, as if nothing had happened—as if he weren’t sitting here facing years in jail. “I’ll see comments [on Facebook] between people,” he said, “like, ‘We’re meeting up. We’re going to go out.’ Like, Diana is going to have a party this weekend. On her Facebook page, she’s writing, ‘I’m having a party this weekend.’ On Facebook, for anybody to see! . . . Everything’s just like, normal for them. Rachel’s the same: ‘Let’s go hang out.’ It’s like nothing is affected.”

  He and Rachel were no longer Facebook friends, he said, but he had heard of her postings from other people. Rachel was back in L.A., he said, living at her older sister’s apartment.

  “Do you know how her mother reacted to everything?” I asked.

  “Unfavorably,” Nick said dryly.

  “So you’re saying they’re living like nothing has changed.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “it’s, like, all on me.”

  “You think they think it’s all going to be all on you?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, “and you know, I hope not. I hope it’s not all on me.” He laughed again, but he sounded emotional.

  23

  He said he was getting help now, trying to figure out why he’d done what he did. “I’m seeing a psychiatrist once a month, therapist every week. We talk,” he said. “She’s really helpful. We really just talk about normal things, like school.

  “I’m supposed to start in January,” he said. “It’s the University of Phoenix . . . I think I’m going to do it online, just so I don’t have to deal with people in my area. I’m trying to just get away from the social group that I was in. I want to branch off and start something new for myself. It’s difficult because I don’t have any friend support system, but my family is there for me. And I keep myself busy with school and try to get through this legal stuff, and—I’m really trying. There’s not much more I can do I think. You know?