The Bling Ring

by Nancy Jo Sales

  “I’m really just trying to stay positive and do everything I can,” he said. “I do AA meetings. . . . I had a possession charge, so I enrolled in a program where if I complete it it’s expunged from my record. I’m doing that. I’m really busy. I have things to do so I’m not getting in trouble. I’m not out partying. I don’t have a car. I can’t drive anywhere.

  “And I’m just trying to do my best,” he said, “and I’m trying to help the police as much as I can. To this day, I’m in constant communication, helping them every day. Whatever questions they have, I answer. I’m really there for them. I’m really just trying to pay back my debt to society. I gave everything back. I’m just really trying to make whatever amends that I can, especially to these celebrities that I victimized. I really want them to know that I’m sorry. . . . I’m not really sure how I’m going to do that yet. But I really plan on making some formal apology to them—something to just let them know that I am sorry. I really—I am.”

  “What did you want to become? What do you want to become?” I asked.

  He gave a small laugh. “When I met Rachel, I wanted to do fashion,” he said. “Designing. Clothing line. . . . I wanted to be an actor at some point. I wanted to be a plastic surgeon. My career ideas have changed forever. I’ve just been kind of trying to find myself and what I want to do.”

  “What about now?” I said.

  “Now,” he said, “I want to go to school. . . . I’m taking travel, tourism, and hospitality. And maybe I’m going to open up some kind of hotel or restaurant and do something like that. I don’t necessarily want to do entertainment because I think that possibility, um, may be ruined.

  “I just want to be happy, you know?” he said. “I guess my first goal when I was trying to pick a career was for the money or the fame or whatever. But now I’ve realized, just go be happy. It’s about the relationships in your life. It’s not about who’s making the most money or who’s the most famous or whatever. It really is about your family. And I have much more respect for my family and appreciation. They’re the biggest support system I have.”

  He was wearing a pair of good-looking shoes, shiny black sneakers. I asked him where he got them. “A thrift store,” he said ruefully. “Thirteen bucks.”

  24

  Throughout October, November, and December 2009, a parade of celebrities came into Hollywood Station to identify and retrieve their stolen goods; they also identified items of clothing worn by alleged members of the Bling Ring in photographs. Paris Hilton retrieved the Louis Vuitton tote bag full of her jewelry. Audrina Patridge and Rachel Bilson got back clothes and purses and luggage and electronics. Lindsay Lohan recovered some clothing and jewelry and her custom-made black mink coat. Brian Austin Green got back his Rolex watch and his handgun. Detective Steven Ramirez visited Orlando Bloom at his home and returned his recovered Rolexes and his clothes. Many things were returned, but all of the celebrities said in Grand Jury testimony that they only got back a fraction of what was stolen. Many said they were still finding things missing.

  I noticed in the news on December 1, 2009, there was a story about the socialite Casey Johnson, heiress to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, robbing the home of a friend. “Heiress in Theft Scandal,” said the New York Post. Johnson—whom I’d seen around New York when I was covering celebrities and the nightclub scene; she was a friend of Paris Hilton’s—had stolen clothing, jewelry, and other items from a model named Jasmine Lennard, a rich girl and reality star (Britain’s Make Me a Supermodel, 2005–2006).

  Johnson, who had reportedly been cut off from her family after refusing to seek help for her drug addiction, had also taken Lennard’s underwear and shoes. “I believe she was obsessed with me,” Lennard told the Post. Johnson was arrested in Los Angeles and was being held on $20,000 bail at Van Nuys Station. In a month she would be dead, in West Hollywood, of diabetic ketoacidosis.

  25

  Alexis arrived at the Polo Lounge in late 2009 wearing velvet tights, a black blazer, six-inch Christian Louboutin heels, and a cloche hat. She looked like a 21st century flapper. I remarked on the heels. “I got them at a secondhand store,” she said offhandedly. “ ‘It’s A Wrap.’ ” It was a place that sold extras from movie and TV sets.

  “Dude,” Andrea said, settling into the booth. “I got the most amazing Armani suit there for two hundred dollars.”

  We were meeting there with Alexis’ lawyer, Jeffery Rubenstein, to finally discuss Alexis’ case and see what she had to say about the accusation that she had burglarized the home of Orlando Bloom. Her preliminary hearing was coming up in a couple days. She ordered a cappuccino.

  “I met Nick back in March of this year,” Alexis began with a deep breath. “I was never friends with Nick.” This was a slight variation on her story so far, but I figured I’d just let her roll. “I didn’t care for Nick because he took all of Tess’s attention,” Alexis said, “and I didn’t like the amount of partying and stuff that they did together. I wasn’t comfortable with it and I didn’t really ever trust him; he had a rumored past. He was not the greatest kid.” She’d told me earlier that she liked Nick and thought he was a “good guy,” but never mind.

  “He took a pair of my shoes and ruined them,” said Andrea. “Fucking hot heels.”

  “Ruined them doing what?” I asked.

  “Walking around in them,” Andrea said.

  “He would try on our high heels and walk around and stuff like that,” Alexis said. “They were like, pointed stiletto heels, like five-inch. When I would go over to his house to get ready with Tess when we were getting ready to go out in big groups, he’d be doing his makeup and hair—‘Does this look good?’ He would always style me and Tess in our clothes and come over and look in our wardrobes.”

  Asked about this, Nick’s current attorney, Markus Dombois, a colleague of Daniel Horowitz, characterized the girls Nick surrounded himself with as “mean girls—they’re right out of that movie. They’ll say anything about each other. They’re pretty ruthless. They have few scruples.”

  “So you believed [Nick] when he said he was a stylist,” Rubenstein interjected.

  “I did believe him completely,” Alexis said. “I mean he dressed to a tee—polo sweaters and perfect belts to match your shoes and your hat and your glasses. He would always dress us. . .come over to our house.”

  “He accessorized,” said Andrea.

  “He accessorized,” Alexis said. “He was like, ‘I wanna put this on with this.’ ”

  “I was like, ‘Tessy, where are my high heels?’ ” Andrea said. “ ‘Oh, I left ’em at Nick’s house.’ When I got them back they were scratched up way beyond their size. I’m so sad ’cause I can’t replace them now. They were the perfect nineteen-forties-style heels.”

  “She didn’t like Nick,” Alexis said.

  Andrea made a face and mouthed the word “No.”

  “Then we had a falling out,” Alexis said. “I didn’t like the influence that he was on Tess and I chose after a while that I didn’t want to be associated with him—especially when all of the news stuff started coming out. I completely stopped hanging out with Nick and I told Tess I’m not gonna be a part of that anymore. . . .

  “I would never want to surround myself with someone like that ever,” Alexis said. “When I found out that all of this was going on”—she meant when Nick was arrested—“I wasn’t a part of his life anymore by choice.”

  But the problem with the timeline here is that Nick was exposed in the Patridge and Lohan videos months before his September arrest, in February and August 2009. If people in Tess and Alexis’ circle of friends knew of his involvement in the burglaries—and Tess told police she knew—then how is it that Alexis didn’t know, especially by July? July was when Alexis was temporarily living at Nick’s house and when the Bloom burglary occurred. When I attempted to bring all this up, Rubenstein told me, “We’re not answering that.”

  “And I did receive threatening phone calls from [Nick] just saying th
at I’m a ‘stupid reality girl’ and I’m never gonna get anywhere in life,” Alexis went on. “He mentioned some things about my body. He could be very insulting. He threatened me about this situation that he was having, saying you better keep your mouth shut.

  “He gave Tess and I clothes to borrow and we gave them back,” Alexis said. “I remember a little blue vest and a butterfly necklace and a couple of dresses. . . . He said he purchased them when he was doing shoots for magazines and TV shows and he got to keep the clothes. He said he worked for his dad’s company.

  “He really tried to put on a persona in my eyes,” she said. “He was a con artist. He was putting on this act, pretending to be someone that he really wasn’t. . . . I completely believed this, basically, this actor to say who he was. I mean, it’s common. Women go out with men for years until they really figure out who a man is.” She sniffed.

  “And he tried to get into a show that we were eventually going to be in,” Andrea said. She was talking about Pretty Wild. According to Andrea, Nick had tried to get in on the show, to be a character on it.

  Alexis said, “He’s shaking his head ‘no’ ”—meaning Rubenstein—“and he’s been shaking his head ‘no’ at you this entire time because you keep talking!”

  “Shut up,” Andrea muttered.

  “You just told me to shut up!” said Alexis, eyes flying open. “Don’t tell me to shut up!”

  They glared at each other.

  “I am looking forward to my day in court,” Alexis said, “and I can’t wait to kick some ass and get this all cleared up and get found not guilty and tell my story ’cause it’s powerful.”

  “Then why don’t you tell it to me now?” I pressed. “I thought that’s what we came here for—”

  Rubenstein cut in, offering, “If I can put it to you this way: you’re stuck in the rain and you need to get home and a friend drives up and offers you a ride and you’re cold, you’re wet, you want to get out of the rain and get home and your friend gets drunk and gets in a car accident—do you get hurt? Yes, but was it your fault? No. I would analogize that to Alexis’ involvement.”

  26

  Alexis brought her reality crew to her preliminary hearing on December 1, 2009. I sat with the Pretty Wild supervising producer, Gennifer Gardiner, on a bench outside the entrance to Department 30 before the proceedings began. Gardiner—wearing her usual walkie-talkie and yoga gear—didn’t seem concerned about the fate of the star of her show. “They think it’s all good,” she said of Alexis and Tess. “They said they weren’t in the surveillance videos. They were celebrating. They say they had no idea” what Nick was doing.

  Gardiner said that Alexis and Tess were now “in a fight” and not speaking, and that Tess was “living with friends.” I asked her what they were fighting about, but she said she didn’t know: “They’re teenage girls.”

  Alexis wore jeans and ballet flats that day; her hair was in a braided bun. She frowned and rolled her eyes throughout Brett Goodkin’s testimony about how she could allegedly be seen on the surveillance videos from Orlando Bloom’s home; how Nick Prugo had identified her as one of his accomplices in the burglary; and how she allegedly came and went from the house carrying bags of goods to Prugo’s car. Detective Jose Alvarez testified that Alexis said that she was drunk and didn’t know what was going on during the three hours of the burglary. He also said that at first Alexis said she didn’t know it was Orlando Bloom’s house her friends were robbing, but then she said she did.

  Alexis’ lawyers attacked Prugo’s credibility: couldn’t he have lied? How many burglaries was he charged with? Eight? On the witness stand, Goodkin countered that “everything Prugo said proved reliable through investigation.” Judge Darrell Mavis rejected the motion to dismiss based on the argument that Alexis never knew she was involved in a burglary and that she never intended to commit a crime.

  In the parking lot after the hearing, Andrea was upset at the negative decision. She told me she truly believed Alexis’ legal ordeal would be over that day. I walked with her to her car. She was wearing a fashionable suit and heels. She seemed to really believe that Alexis was innocent and that this whole thing was the result of Nick Prugo’s lies.

  “I never liked Nick,” Andrea said, standing by her SUV, “but I never thought he would do something like this. I left home at fourteen. I had a mentor, a gay man I called ‘Uncle Kit.’ He basically raised me. I was his little protégée and he taught me how to dress, how to walk, how to do my makeup and hair. He was what we were hoping Nick would become for the girls. Teach them how to dress.”

  “But why did you kick Alexis out of the house?” I asked.

  “I never kicked Alexis out, I kicked Tess out,” Andrea protested in her breathy voice. (Tess did not respond to requests for comment.) “I gave both of the girls two weeks [to prove] that they were serious about their professional careers. . . . Then they started socializing with the professionals in the industry and they were staying out and not waking up and getting started with their day and going out in Hollywood at night. I was paying all their bills. I said if you’re going to develop your careers, then you’d better be up and out of bed at seven in the morning. This had been going on for months. . . . I had them in therapy. . . . And the therapist said to me if they weren’t going to get serious I had to kick them out and they had to get jobs. . . . My therapist said the only way they’ll take you seriously is if you kick them out. I knew they had a place to go. The day I decided I was kicking Tessy out, Alexis decided to go with Tessy. It had nothing to do with [drugs]. Alexis was not kicked out of the house. It had nothing to do with drugs at all.

  “They both moved in with Nick, but then Tess was getting jealous of the growing friendship of Alexis and Nick, and she moved out so Alexis was there alone with Nick,” she said.

  27

  In December 2009, as I was closing my story, I persuaded Jeffrey Rubenstein to let Alexis give me a statement about the Bloom burglary. If she wasn’t going to talk about it openly, after all this talk, I wondered if she could at least offer something prepared. So Alexis read me this statement over the phone, with Rubenstein listening in on the three-way call:

  “I was staying with Nick Prugo for a short time in the middle of July two thousand nine,” Alexis said. Her squeaky voice was trembling, and I wondered if she were going to start crying again. “I did not know what he was up to,” she continued. “There were personal reasons for why I needed to spend some time away from my home and unfortunately the week that I needed to take a break from the drama at home, was the same week in which Orlando Bloom’s home was robbed. On July thirteenth, Nick got me involved into a situation that I had no part of or knowledge of. I was very, very drunk, and after drinking with Nick at Beso I was so drunk that I threw up. I did not do this. I did not take anything. I never disguised myself or wore a hoodie. It is not me in the surveillance videos or photos. Nick Prugo is very troubled and I hope that someday he gets the help that he needs but at this time he has only caused harm. I have learned a great deal of lessons based upon what has occurred. I used to be a trusting person, but I am now more guarded. . . . It is risky for me to make this statement with a pending case and my lawyers advised me against it”—I wondered whether Rubenstein had asked for this wording—“but I am hoping that by telling you this will help me clear my name and will help others as well. Thank you for listening to me and my story.”

  Later I asked Vince the cop if he believed her. “I don’t know if I believe any of them totally,” he said. “They’re just pretty little liars, all of them.”

  28

  On January 13, 2010, I saw that Rachel Lee turned herself in at Hollywood Station, whereupon she was re-arrested and finally charged with three counts of residential burglary, for Paris Hilton, Audrina Patridge, and Lindsay Lohan. Apparently, it had taken this long for Rachel to be charged because she’d continued to dangle the prospect of returning stolen property.

  But “Rachel Lee never returned any property,�
�� L.A. Deputy District Attorney Christine Kee told me on the phone. “A lot of property is still missing.” Rachel was released on $150,000 bail. She still hadn’t spoken in an interview with the police. She hadn’t ratted out anyone, nor had she discussed her own involvement in the crimes—and never would. She still had not given an interview to any member of the media, and her lawyer, Peter Korn, had said very little to anyone.

  29

  My story, which my editor headlined “The Suspects Wore Louboutins,” appeared in the first week of February 2010. The day it came out I got a text message from Andrea’s phone: “What r u u r not even human.”

  I thought it was a pretty straightforward story, so I didn’t reply. One night a couple days later my phone started ringing. I saw it was Andrea calling so I didn’t pick up. I had some friends over, and wasn’t able to talk.

  Later I listened to my voicemail and heard it had actually been Alexis calling; she’d left several messages. They were kind of strange: she would stop and start again, saying the same thing over and over, until she would be interrupted by her mother and they would start screaming at each other.

  Message One: “Nancy Jo, this is Alexis Neiers calling.” She sounded choked up. “I’m calling to let you know how disappointed . . . fuck!”

  Message Two: “Nancy Jo, this is Alexis Neiers. I’m calling to let you know how disappointed I am in your story, how horrible you—