Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
They are worried about what names will come out and
which heads will roll because of it. People live double lives.
As a matter of course. It is part of the
fabric of American life. And who creates American life more
than Hollywood? Julia Phillips, producer.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
You know what, So what if I knew Canton and
Goober and Nathanson or whatever. Who cares if I knew
every single person who worked on the Columbia lot. What
if I just happened to know them and never did
these alleged things. It's ludicrous.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Heidi Flies.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
We are looking to win this case. Anthony Brooklier, Heidie
Flice's defense attorney.
Speaker 5 (01:14):
Sometimes she is sweet and other times she's a vicious
little vixen. I'm her hero, you know, but she had
to rob me. If you will notice, all the customers
are my customers. All the names are people I knew.
Alex Fleming, Madam.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
It's beyond Hollywood. It's studio and police and everything.
Speaker 6 (01:39):
Previously on Heidie World, Heidi Flier's high end escort service
has been busted in a sting operation. Now she is
going to court for two trials, and she is terrified.
Welcome to Heidi World. Chapter seven, The Trial of the
(02:08):
Century nineteen ninety four to nineteen ninety five. Welcome back
to Heidi World. I'm your host, Mollie Lambert. It is
nineteen ninety four. Heidiflices is under fire from every direction,
(02:32):
being pursued by law enforcement, the IRS, and the mass
media who circle helicopters over her house trying to catch
a glimpse of her. She is forced to list the
Tower Grove estate for a cool one point eight million.
She's running out of money and places to hide, but
she's also the most famous girl in the world, and
between stressing out about her forthcoming court case for pandering,
(02:56):
she manages to film a cameo as a clerk at
a liquor store in director Gregor Rocki's cult classic cool
Kid La movie The Doom Generation. In a monkey's paw situation.
Everyone in Los Angeles wants Heidi Flice, but not in
the way she wanted them to. So guess where she goes.
That's right to a reporter to tell her side of
(03:19):
the story. This time it's Lynn Hirschberg for Vanity Fair
for a story titled Heidi Does Hollywood Will. Trusting a
journalist to tell her story responsibly be a mistake. Let's
find out.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
I'm not Madonna. I don't want to be famous.
Speaker 6 (03:44):
Earlier in the day, the TV tabloid news show Hard
Copy showed up to Heidie's front door and gave her
back a nineteen ninety two planner that they had bought
from someone in Heidi's circle. Heidi has agreed to do
an interview with hard Copy in exchange for the return
of the planner, and they have agreed. Heidi says she's
given the planner to her friend Lahua Reed, a beach
(04:06):
blonde who looks like Heather Locklear and, like Locklear, also
dated Richie Sambora from Bon Jovi. Reid gave Heidi money
for a lawyer when she got busted, and loaned her
the famous Norma Kamali rap dress that she made her
first court appearance in before Dulce and Gabbana offered to
provide Heidi with a wardrobe for her trial. Lahua Reid
(04:28):
claims she gave the planner back to Heidi weeks ago,
but Heidi is certain that Lahua is the one who
sold it to hard Copy.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
When you picture California, you picture Lhua. She was a
good friend. I don't know why, but I know she
did it. I hope she made a lot of money
off it.
Speaker 6 (04:55):
Lynn Hirschberg gets a look at the planner and says
that it looks like any business woman's planner, hair appointments,
spa trips, and paying the pool guy. Heidi's sports bets
are noted in the upper right corner of each page,
listing amounts like fifteen hundred dollars on the Raiders game
and whether she won or lost. She has lists of
girls working and where they're being sent. But she's already
(05:15):
blacked out a lot of stuff by scribbling over it
with a pen.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
See I was smart? Anything important?
Speaker 6 (05:24):
I in doubt, Lynn Hirschberg says. Heidi looks painfully thin,
almost skeletal, but fierce as she tromps around her house
in black boots and leggings with a black jacket thrown
over her gaunt frame. Heidi opens up to Lynn Hirschberg
about what life is like under the net.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
A lot of people are afraid of me, and they
should be leaders of countries called me and asked for sex.
You look at any picture of a politician with some
girls around him, and at least three of them will
be mine. If I really came out and talked, I
could have stopped nafta.
Speaker 6 (06:09):
Heidi has invited Lynn Hirschberg over to watch CNN tape
a segment about Heidie's new line of cotton sleepwear, which
she has dubbed Heidiewear. Models are milling around the room,
most of them are Heidi's friends. Her brother Jesse, now sixteen,
gets his hair styled for photos. Heidie's facialist. A woman
(06:29):
named Nance models a pink terry cloth bathrobe from Heidiewear.
There's a man in his fifties that Heidi calls Fig,
who she says she had a crush on in her teens.
Fig is Paul Fagin, an entertainment lawyer and former multi
millionaire who invented a proto we work called Fagan Sweets,
where he subly so out office space to clients, mostly
(06:51):
small law firms. After a real estate crash in the
early eighties, Fig sold the business and decided he wanted
to pursue his true love match while still practicing law
on the side, He reinvented himself as a magician named
the Fantastic Fig. On the day of the shoot, he's
entertaining at Heidi's house with card tricks and other close
(07:11):
up magic. A blonde guy named Rob is trying on
the Heidiwar flannel boxers. Heidi shows him where the condom
pocket is and slips a trojan into it.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
You put that sure?
Speaker 3 (07:27):
What do you think my sleep wear?
Speaker 6 (07:32):
Heidi is still entertaining at the mansion for as long
as she can. Lynn Hirschberg says it feels like a
sorority house with barely any furniture and beautiful girls wandering
in and out of rooms. She takes the CNN producer
on a tour of the house, while Lynn Hehirschberg observes.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
You feel like you own the town from here.
Speaker 6 (07:58):
Facing a possible scent so of eleven years in jail,
Heidi is pulling out all the stops while she's still free.
She already botched one Heidi Wear photo shoot for a
London publication and know she's running out of last chances
to sell her brand before the heat closes in on her.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
I had to take a valume. I don't want that
to happen again.
Speaker 6 (08:24):
Heidi's best friend, Victoria Sellers, appears in a black catsuit
with big black boots, clutching her two pit bull puppies,
quarter Pounder and green eyes. Talking about the tanning salon,
she just went to.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
What's going on?
Speaker 7 (08:41):
Oh my god, I forgot all about this. Victoria Sellers
Heidi's best friend.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Victoria is a nymphomaniac. We had contests on how many
guys we could go out with simultaneously. Victoria would do
fun stuff like say, we got two guys on the phone,
do you want the blonde or the brunette. We were
total perverts. We'd fuck the same guy in the same bed.
Victoria liked rough sex and I didn't, so I'd leave sometimes,
(09:10):
so with plenty of mornings, we'd wake up and say,
what was his name?
Speaker 7 (09:14):
It was like that, I like sex, but I'm not crazy.
A little over a year ago, I used to like
to be mean to guys, but not anymore.
Speaker 6 (09:29):
Victoria is living with Heidi after a boyfriend became abusive.
It's the summer after the car accident that landed her
a drug charge, but Lynn Hirschberg notes that Victoria appears
to take a tiny plastic bag filled with something from
one of the models at the house. Heidi's brother Jesse
watches it go down and walks outside to tell his sister,
(09:51):
while the CNN cameras are filming one of her friends
prancing on the lawn in the boxer shorts with the
waist rolled down.
Speaker 8 (10:00):
I think some of Victoria's friends brought her drugs. Don't
be mad at her, Jesse Flace.
Speaker 6 (10:07):
Heidi is pissed she can't be seen anywhere near drugs
after catching her coke charge, let alone in front of
a journalist who might report on it.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Someone with a joint on them can get me in trouble.
Now I just have a prescription for valume and that's it.
Listen to me. I don't even sound like myself. I
can't have any fun anymore. I used to have fun,
and now I don't. Thanks will never be the same again.
Speaker 6 (10:45):
Heidi is flustered by the various misconceptions and exaggerations about
her being circulated in the press that she's a drug addict,
a sexually obsessed deviant, a bad girl par excellence.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
A nun. But I've never smoked a cigarette, and I've
only smoked dope twice in my life. I do take
a coilude to pergiden once in a while, just since
I've been in trouble.
Speaker 6 (11:12):
The next time, Lynn Hirschberg goes to Heidi's house to
follow up. It's winter. Heidi is wearing white sportswear with
a massive diamond ring. She says the richest man in
Brazil gave her. She shows Hirshberg a scrap book of
all her recent mentions in the press.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
My sister Shana started collecting this after the troubles began.
I call it the troubles.
Speaker 6 (11:40):
Hirshburg details the infighting between madams and girls that plagues Heidi,
her troubled but loving relationship with Madame Alex, the deep
betrayal she feels by the girls who were busted at
the Beverly Hilton and turned on her. Hirshburg compares it
to junior high clicks.
Speaker 5 (11:58):
A madam's nightmare is to have girls testify against her.
He drives the steak in your heart. Heidi has four
girls testifying against her. You have to ask yourself, why
are her girls so disloyal?
Speaker 9 (12:14):
Did you take a cut from the girls after the
cops busted them? Did you take your fucking forty percent cut?
I bet you fucking did. It's just the beginning. You know,
every fucking agency, from the CIA to the NBA to
the PTA to the irs are going to knock on
your fucking door. We're your worst fucking nightmare. You can't
fuck with us, Alexandra daydeg.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
I can't get mad at them. I just can't. The
police tried to get us to turn on each other,
but I won't turn on them. Not those girls. I
just know them, I know them.
Speaker 6 (12:50):
Heidi drives Lynn Hirschberg down the hill from her house
and the white Mustang. Her corvette got impounded when she
lent it to a girl named Susie, who then got
pulled over with expired red gstration into joints in her purse.
Heidi got a bail bondsman to bail out Susie, but
the corvette is still at the impound lot because Heidi
feels too paranoid about being stared out in public to
(13:10):
go to the DMV. Heidi is also exceedingly paranoid about
the wiretap tapes that informant Dan Hanks has of some
of the scandals more high profile involved parties that he's
been trying to sell to tabloids and news channels. The
tapes have gone out to outlets like Vanity Fair, where
people have heard them, but not published any of them.
(13:33):
Yet there are over sixty hours of recorded conversations between
Heidi clients and employees, and Fox TV is interested in
airing them as part of a special. Heidi is heading
to see her lawyer, Anthony Brookleer, who is making a
deal with Fox that they will not air the tapes
in exchange for an interview with Heidi.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
There's a lot of phone sex on there, but Muslims
worried about Evans.
Speaker 6 (14:05):
Heidi means Robert Evans, who once again we can talk
about as a confirmed client because he is dead. Robert
Evans is freaked out that his involvement with Heidi will
mean the end of his most recent and possibly last
ever studio production deal. He wants to hold tight to
the bosom of Paramount Pictures for as long as he
(14:25):
possibly can. On one of the tapes, Heidi and Bob
Evans discuss sending a call girl to see Evans's boss's son,
which they do. They don't tell the son he's being
set up with a call girl. They spend the week
together without the sun, ever realizing that this vacation fling
was arranged and paid for by Robert Evans. Evans and
(14:47):
Heidi discuss on tape, using the information to blackmail Evans's boss.
If he tries to cut Evans loose.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
It would kill Evans got out. He says, being my
friend has cost him dearly.
Speaker 6 (15:11):
When Heidi World returns, we'll tell you what happened with
the secret tapes. Welcome back to Heidi World. Fox Television
(15:42):
bought the Hanks tapes and even started running promotions for them,
calling them the tapes Heidi doesn't want you to hear.
But her lawyer, Anthony Brooklier, jumped in and got them
to agree to an interview with Heidi instead, a much
bigger get for the network.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
The only reason Charlie Sheen's name came out is that
when I was arrested, I had Travelers checks my purse
with his name on them on the stand. He said
a much lower amount than he actually spent with me.
He probably spent closer to a three hundred or four
hundred grand on girls. He said something like sixty thousand.
Speaker 6 (16:22):
Heidi talks openly about a few of her clients, and
Vanity Fair prints the names of both John Peters and
Charlie Sheen, although she tries to make the magazine redact
their names after the story runs. I think at this
point in history, there is not a person alive who
doesn't know that Charlie Sheen sometimes enjoys the company of
paid escorts. He would pay for girls for his friends,
(16:45):
to be a generous host at the parties. He had
to watch big sports events on TV.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Charlie was a gentleman. He'd pay for all his friends.
They want to be studs. They don't want to say
they pay for sex. Charlie gave a party for the
Snatti Reds at his house. They played the Dodgers the
next day, and I bet thirty thousand dollars on the
Dodgers because I figured the Reds have been out all
night with girls and drinking, and I still lost the money.
Speaker 6 (17:13):
The problem with Charlie Sheen is that the working girls
all fall in love with him. He helps this along
by constantly proposing marriage to them. Who's well documented. Kink
was for the girls, mostly blondes, to dress as cheerleaders
and pretend it's the night before the big home game
and he's the star quarterback.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
I've really mixed feelings about Charlie. His secretary called when
everything happened. I thought, why didn't a secretary call when
he wanted girls a weird hours, or if he wanted
drugs at weird hours.
Speaker 6 (17:47):
She also has a sex tape of Charlie and two
Heidi girls.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
He's sitting there high and two of the girls start
kissing him. You can imagine the rest.
Speaker 6 (18:03):
Heidi tells Lynn Hirschberg about some other famous clients that
she keeps off the record but blind itemizes, and some
clients that didn't work out because they were too cheap.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Shannon Doherty called up once to ask for two girls
for her fiance's bachelor party. She said, I want them
to be pretty, but not too pretty. She was giving
me all these orders and then she said, I only
want to pay two hundred bucks apiece, And I said,
why don't you do it yourself? And I hung up
on her.
Speaker 6 (18:33):
You will remember, of course, that Shannon also got in
a fight with Heidie's friend Bonita Money at the Roxbury.
Shannon Doherty responded that Heidie's story was distorted, but cop
to the fact that she did call Heidi to make
an inquiry. Hollywood celebrities and industry big mockers make up
only a fraction of Heidie's client tell The real money
(18:55):
is still overseas.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
A man called me once and said, the king is
coming over, and it's not a Saudi king. I said,
the Saudi is paying twenty five hundred dollars apiece. How
much are you paying? He said, it's not a paying
kind of thing. He's a king. I said, no, thank you.
Even kings should have manners.
Speaker 6 (19:17):
Heidi also says she supplied call girls to members of
the Bush Senior and Clinton administrations. She would get calls
asking for arm candy for elite men for fundraising events
in Washington, DC, although she says she paid less attention
to which gray haired senator was going on dates with
which girl than maybe she should have been. Hirshberg wonders
(19:40):
why these powerful rich men who could date beautiful women
for free bother paying for it. Ivan Naje tells her
his take.
Speaker 10 (19:51):
The appeal of getting a prostitute is control. Men can
tell these girls what to do, and they do it,
and then they leave. The man is in control, Ivan niche.
Speaker 6 (20:05):
Of course, the sex workers do not think this at all.
They are the ones actually in control, milking these vain
rich men's bank accounts by massaging their egos, pretending to
be interested in them essentially acting.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
I always take advantage of them. Name someone I know
all the sleeves. If he's a high roller or a
creep or sleazy, I know, I've heard of them. I
hope some of these guys get it. I can't take
the fall for everyone.
Speaker 6 (20:40):
Yvonne Nage is also personally harassing Heidie's girls, encouraging them
to flip or defect to him. He also refers to
himself now as mac Daddy, the name he gave himself
for his line of erotic ceed rams. He calls one
Heidi girl named Susie to scare her and tapes the call.
Speaker 10 (21:01):
You're welcome to be friends with Heidi. I mean you
can be friends with al Capone. I don't care. But
birds of a feather, you know, you need to distance
yourself from that garbage, distance yourself from them. Let her
call Bob Evans. Maybe they can get that joining jail cells.
(21:21):
You don't fuck with mcdaddy, bitch, You fuck with Macdaddy
and it's adios, motherfucker.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Just like that.
Speaker 10 (21:28):
You saw what happened to fucking Alex. She used to
have that big house on the hill, but she got
shot out of the water like a fucking buffalo. You
know she fucked with mcdaddy, So just be straight, be cool,
and don't run no games.
Speaker 6 (21:44):
Yvonne Naj claims this is just his way of flirting
with Susie. Meanwhile, Heidi arrives to meet Anthony Brooklyer, the
lawyer who she was referred to by Madam Alex who's
pandering sentence he got reduced to probation.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
If all lawyers like Tony, there wouldn't be any lawyer dukes.
Speaker 6 (22:06):
Brooklyar coaches Heidi through their defense strategy, which is to
point out the hypocrisy of the men who illegally paid
for sex getting off without charges. While Heidi is punished,
he runs her through some various court scenarios, giving her
prompts of how to respond. If she's guilty of pandering,
surely the johns are also guilty of paying for sex.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
If I'm guilty, the men are guilty, and that's it.
I'm a twenty seven year old girl and they're big,
powerful men.
Speaker 6 (22:44):
Heidi's lawyer, Anthony Brooklyar, is a handsome Italian American guy.
His hero is Elvis Presley, whose pompadour he imitates. Brooklyer
is known as a mob attorney because his first major
case was defending his father, Dominic Brooklyar, who was in
the La Mafia. He then defended a number of other
(23:04):
mob guys, including Michael Rustello, during the decline and fall
of the Italian mafia in southern California at the hands
of the FBI with rico charges, which you may know
about from the Sopranos. Brooklyar's current strategy is to get
the john so scared that they'll be named, they try
to force the city to drop the charges.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
We want all these guys to call their lawyers and
tell them to call the DA's office. Elvis, the King
would have filed this motion.
Speaker 6 (23:35):
Hirshberg calls Heidi and Anthony Brooklyar's relationship flirty and a
little paternal, Heidi's favorite. Heidi laughs at his jokes and
Elvis impressions, but becomes solemn when the camera crew shows
up to film her interview, reminded of the gravity of
her situation. As soon as the story comes out, Heidie's
lawyer sends a letter to Vanity Fair demanding a retraction,
(23:57):
stating the articles quotes can earning James Kahn, Charlie Sheen,
Robert Evans, John Peters, Steve Roth, Claudia Carnisella, and Susie
Sterling are completely false and defamatory of mis Flies. Moreover,
the innuendo relating to mis Fleiss's private life and her
alleged affair with an individual named Mimi is equally untrue.
(24:21):
Anthony Brooklyer was used to doing damage control for high
profile clients, the first of whom was his father, Dominic,
who I will tell you about now because it's another
interesting detour that fits into the whole subterranean history of
Los Angeles. Dominic Brooklier went by the name Jimmy Ragatz
when he joined up with notorious Jewish gangster Mickey Cohen's
(24:43):
gambling syndicate in nineteen forties Los Angeles. Jimmy Ragotz then
defected from Mickey Cohen to the boss of the Los
Angeles mob, a guy named Jack Dragna, and he officially
became a made man in nineteen forty seven. Nineteen forty nine,
he's part of a failed hit on his old boss,
(25:03):
Mickey Cohen at a restaurant on the Sunset Strip as
part of an escalating mob battle called the Sunset Wars
for control of vice in La In the late forties
and early fifties, Jimmy mainly gets into loan sharking, and
in the nineteen sixties he ends up with a crew
in Orange County and works his way up from capo
to boss.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
There.
Speaker 6 (25:24):
He also legally changes his name to Dominic Brooklier, an
anglicized version of his real birth name, Dominick Brocolari.
Speaker 8 (25:36):
I don't know what it was.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
I saw it when I was five years old. My
father could walk into a place and for whatever reason,
the room would stop.
Speaker 8 (25:45):
It was as if every eye was on him.
Speaker 4 (25:48):
He just had an incredible charisma in a very subtle way.
He wasn't loud, he wasn't fast talking, he was understated,
but men respected my father.
Speaker 6 (26:01):
Tony Brooklyer says the only hint of his dad's secret
life was a strange, sudden vacation the whole family took
to Texas right after his dad failed to kill Mickey Cohen.
Tony was the one to answer the door of their
suburban Anaheim house when cops came for his father, and
vividly recalls seeing his father held at gunpoint by fifteen
cops for a charge that was later dropped. He saw
(26:24):
his father's name in connection with the mafia for the
first time in a newspaper. Before that, he believed his
father's story that he was a humble Orange County used
car salesman and as a kid, Tony washed the cars
in the used car lot after school. Dominic Brooklyer only
referred to LaCOSA Nostra with the terminology gangsters used to
(26:45):
avoid ever referencing the mafia directly, calling it this thing
of ours. When Dominic finally let his son in on
the secret of the real family business, he spoke as
though it was in the past. In reality, Dominic Brooklyer
was still working for the Los Angeles crime family throughout
his son's life. Tony Brooklyar got good grades and enrolled
(27:07):
in the Naval Academy. During his freshman year, a national
report on organized crime was released that fingered his father
as a high ranking member of the mafia in La
Tony claims one of his commanding officers told him not
to expect to succeed in the Navy, implying his mafia
heritage would keep him from success. So Tony dropped out
(27:29):
and transferred to Loyola, then went to UCLA law. He
says he became a lawyer out of a desire to
defend his own dad should they ever come for him again.
In nineteen seventy four, Dominic Brooklyer and his underboss are
charged with racketeering under the Rico Act, and he pleads
guilty to one charge. In nineteen seventy five, Dominic Brooklyer
(27:52):
orders the murder of a Los Angeles hitman named Frank
the Bomb Bompin Sierro, who he suspects of being a rat.
Brooklyer tried to kill bomp and Siero for a year,
but failed to convince the Bomb he wasn't trying to
kill him. He appointed him Consiglieri. However, Brooklire's suspicion was correct.
(28:12):
Bomp and Sero was a rat for the FBI. The
FBI used him as an informant and rang a sting
operation creating a fake pornography business in Van Nuys. Then
had Bomp spread the word around town about it and
suggests the mob should shake them down.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Naturally.
Speaker 6 (28:29):
I wondered if Sopranos creator David Chase was in Los
Angeles working as a TV writer yet in this era,
and read the Los Angeles Times when the story took place.
A rat for the FBI, whose last name is Bompinciero.
Was there any chance he'd named Big Pussy Bompinciero on
The Sopranos after this guy? So, because I am the
(28:51):
best journalist in the world, I asked my friend, the
writer Matt Zaller sites if he would ask David Chase.
I made him an offer he could refuse.
Speaker 5 (29:01):
No.
Speaker 6 (29:01):
I just sent him a DM on Twitter and he
said yes. He wrote David Chase, who said no, It's
just a coincidence. I guess there are a lot of
snitches with similar names, and the bomb is maybe a
pretty common name for snitches in the mob. But now
we know. Dominic Brooklyer made good on his promise that
(29:22):
bomp and Sierro would have to be killed, and shortly
after that, bompin Sero was shot to death in a
phone booth. In nineteen seventy seven. Dominic Brooklyar claimed to
his son that he had nothing to do with the murder,
and Tony Brooklyer believed him enough to take on the case.
Another one of Dominic Brooklyar's underlings flipped on him, and
(29:43):
in nineteen eighty he was charged with racketeering. The plot
to extort money from bookmakers, loan sharks, and pornographers, as
well as Frank Bomp and Sierro's murder. Ultimately, Dominic was
convicted for racketeering and extortion of Frank the Bomb bompin
Sierro's murder. He was sentenced to five years. The FEDS
(30:05):
cracked down on organized crime in Los Angeles in nineteen eighty,
rounding up and prosecuting the remaining living old school gangsters.
Dominic Brooklyar was tried, with his son, Anthony Brooklyar, acting
as his lawyer, making an emotional plea At the sentencing
in nineteen eighty one, Anthony Brooklyar tearfully begged the judge
(30:27):
to spare his father from prison.
Speaker 4 (30:31):
There are things in his past he shouldn't be proud of,
and I'm not proud of, but he's always provided for
his family. Whatever sentence he does, he'll be missed every day.
Speaker 6 (30:45):
Dominic Brooklar was sent to serve his sentence in an
Arizona prison. When Tony Brooklyar was flying to see his
father in the Tucson prison before his death, he begged
his dad not to get involved in the mafia again.
When he was released, Dominic's wife. Tony's mother, Frances, recalls
seeing her husband in prison and thinking he had aged
(31:07):
so much from being in jail that he seemed about
ninety years old.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
Now, I hope that this was over, that the family
couldn't take any more of this.
Speaker 8 (31:17):
My mother couldn't take any more of this.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
And he said, sort of in a philosophic way, it's
been over for a long time.
Speaker 8 (31:25):
We're dinosaurs.
Speaker 6 (31:30):
In July of nineteen eighty four, Dominic Brooklyar drops dead
of a heart attack in jail. From then on, Anthony
Brooklyer takes a stand for loan sharks, radio payola blackmail scammers,
a carpet cleaning business, stock scam called zzzzz which involves
someone skimming money from their Jewish boss into a white
(31:51):
supremacist group, and two women accused of running a ten
million dollar boiler room telemarketing outfit in Encino. He also
defends whoever was still left from the world of organized
crime in Los Angeles.
Speaker 4 (32:06):
You just do not have organized crime in southern California,
at least in the Italian mafia sense that we all
read about back east. Here you have somebody hitting somebody
over the head with a rolled up newspaper.
Speaker 8 (32:17):
Back there, they shoot people. It's different.
Speaker 6 (32:24):
In nineteen eighty nine, he defends Mike Rizitello, who was
accused of killing a man named Bill Carroll over control
of a topless bar in Costa Mesa called the Mustang.
The Mustang was under investigation for alleged prostitution and drugs.
It allegedly netted a profit of one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars a month. The Mustang was controversial in conservative
(32:46):
Orange County, which tried and failed to shut down the
topless bar after it opened on Harbor Boulevard. In nineteen
eighty two, Bill Carroll met Mike Rizitello at an Italian
restaurant in Santa Ana. Riztel Hello brought his driver, Joey Grosso,
who owned a limo service called Diplomat Limousine Service in
Newport Beach, but arrived with no car. After dinner, Risitello
(33:10):
asked Carol for a ride back to their car, which
was in Costa Mesa. Risitello directed him to an empty
parking garage, where he and Grosso allegedly tackled Carol and
put three bullets in his head with a silencer. Bill
Carroll lived but lost his vision. He refused to name
(33:32):
his attackers for eighteen months until he faced his own
set of bank fraud charges and flipped. Two other people
associated with the Mustang Strip Club were assassinated. The Mustang's
actual owner, Jimmy Casino, Yes, Jimmy Casino, was shot to
death in his Buena Park home. On New Year's Day.
(33:52):
A six foot seven inch tall guy who was a
bouncer known as Big George Yodzevich was shot three times
in the sad head and killed in Irvine. So Anthony Brooklyar,
son of the last mob down in southern California, continues
to defend cocaine dealers, money launderers, and the like at
(34:14):
his Beverly Hills law firm, Marx and Brooklyre. He helps
out whichever of his dad's old friends are still alive
and gets their sentences softened. By nineteen eighty nine, Anthony
Brooklyer was trading on his mob pedigree for publicity. He
was the subject of a profile in the La Times.
The profile tells how Brooklyre played backyard catch with a
(34:36):
hit man named Jimmy the Weasel, how he thought his
father was really an Orange County used car salesman and
how he left his job as a deputy state Attorney
general to defend his father. The profile notes that Tony
Brooklyar wears Hugo boss suits, is one of the costliest
lawyers in LA and has the front table at a
restaurant named Giuseppe, where he fraternizes with mobsters and hollywod
(35:00):
With types alike, sometimes grabbing a mic to sing his
signature song Volare. In nineteen ninety, Anthony Brooklyer made a
cameo appearance in a failed TV pilot attempting to capitalize
on the success of the hit show La Law called
Bar Girls. Bar Girls is a show about bad girl lawyers,
(35:20):
and its most notable cast member is a very young
Elizabeth Moss, so you can see exactly why Tony Brooklyre
appealed to Heidie Flie, who also came from a close
loyal family and whose father was a public servant, but
the sort who sometimes had his picture taken for the newspaper.
(35:41):
Tony Brooklyer is Heidi's type of guy, a dashing, handsome, charismatic,
fast talking guy with ethics that bend towards her own.
The Hugo Boss Suits probably didn't hurt, So Anthony Brooklyer
decides to argue that Heidie's entire escort operation was nothing
more than consensual sex between consenting adults.
Speaker 8 (36:07):
You're honored no one was hurt in this case, no
one was coerced, and no one operated under duress.
Speaker 6 (36:18):
When Heidi World returns, how the mainstream media railroaded Heidi
flyesen sex workers' rights to fit their predetermined narrative. Welcome
(36:48):
back to Heidi World. The nineties news media did not
take up a pro sex work angle on the Heidi
Fly story because it did not jibe with theirs, which
was exploit Heidi for media coverage while condemning her practice.
In mainstream media, all sex work is conflated into one
dangerous mass, ignoring the fact that voluntary sex work is
(37:11):
different from sex trafficking. The trope basically says that doing
sex work is self victimization and implies that women who
do it are knowingly putting themselves in the line of fire.
They never suggest that the answer to violence against sex
workers is decriminalizing sex work. In this framing, women can
never be consensual participants in selling their own bodies because, surprise, surprise,
(37:36):
in our misogynistic world. Women's bodies don't really belong to them.
They are chattel for reproduction, and if a woman's sex
appeal is going to be sold for profit, the person
who profits must be male. This is not to say
that women can't also exploit other women and girl boss
gatekeep gaslight, just that nobody wanted to say that Heidi
(37:58):
could be running an ethical business, because the idea that
sex work can exist ethically, let alone that it exists
naturally and should be decriminalized rather than trying to eradicate it,
is still a third rail. The Heidi Fly story didn't
fit the framework. Nobody died, and seemingly Heidi's potential for
violence was always aimed right back at Heidi herself. She
(38:21):
was a self destructive person with violent, abusive partners, and
the only person at risk of going to jail was
Heidi herself, and mainly because she couldn't stop herself from
talking about it. The game didn't stop just because Heidi
left it, and I'm sure that somebody is probably running
high end escorts in LA to this day, someone who,
(38:41):
if they're smart, will make sure that we never hear
their name. Heidi could have had a very comfortable, upper
middle class, straight life. But she chose to gamble at
all on Vice and hit the jackpot. She pulled Hollywood's
pants down and exposed the entertainment business for what it
really is, a grift to make money that occasionally accidentally
(39:03):
produces great art.
Speaker 11 (39:07):
Everybody is titillated by this, but people have been murdered,
studios have covered up for them all seasons of actors.
People have supported the drug habits of actors, and other
people have built into budgets allowances for cocaine. Those are
horrible things. Prostitution is weigh down.
Speaker 8 (39:29):
On my list.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Liz Smith, Gossip.
Speaker 6 (39:32):
Columnist, Heidi is well aware that her trial is a
show trial. The LAPD are trying to use it as
propaganda to show how tough they are on crime. But
Heidi is seen through experiences like the death of her
friend Wendy Tar, that the LAPD are actually incompetent, ineffective
(39:52):
fools when it comes to important issues like domestic violence
or serial rape. They did nothing to solve the murder
of her friend and Wendy Tar, or find her murderer,
James Edward Knowle, who Heidi helped find by going on
a TV show.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
The police knew who killed her.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
They knew all about Noel's criminal history and how dangerous
he was. They had already tied Noel to at least
ten other rate cases, yet they did nothing about it.
Speaker 6 (40:22):
She called the cops constantly to see how the Wendy
Tar case was progressing, which made her realize that the
cops didn't do anything. However, they put all of their
money and effort into rating her somebody conducting a consensual business.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
When it came to investigating me, a twenty seven year
old girl with no violent criminal record, a task force
the size of the National Guard was called out to
search and destroy at virtually any cost.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
I am not complaining about my arrest.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
What I did was my choice, and I accept responsibility
for it. But how many violent criminals are ignored because
law enforcement priorities are in the wrong order.
Speaker 6 (41:07):
Lynn Hirschberg takes a side trip to meet Yvonne Naj
for herself. Yvonne Naj is now fifty five years old,
living at a condo in Century City whose walls are
hung with his art collection of Klaus Oldenburg lithographs, some
Liechtenstein's and one Rauschenberg. He meets her wearing jeans and
a sweatshirt. He points out the classiness of his place
(41:30):
and says he's nothing like the scumbag he's being portrayed
as in the press. The Macdaddy is a high class guy.
There are some tasteful nude photographs of young women on
the mantelpiece. He says he's not involved in the escort business.
He's just a natural magnet for hot girls.
Speaker 10 (41:48):
The question should be how do they meet me. It's
terrible for me to say at this point because I
can be looped into this whole group, but highly has
an affinity for real slimeballs.
Speaker 6 (42:04):
Yvon Nage has sold his life rights for a TV
movie for one hundred thousand dollars. He wants to be
played by the actor Armand de Sante and direct the
project himself.
Speaker 10 (42:17):
The networks didn't really like it.
Speaker 6 (42:23):
Despite the constant influx of young, beautiful women, which he
calls a life ruining occupational hazard, he still seems to
pine for Heidi for an abusive boyfriend who says he
really hates her. He's oddly sentimental about their relationship. He
saw her on Memorial Day that spring for the last time.
Speaker 10 (42:45):
We spent the night together at the Mariat. She was
really emotional. She knows I'm the most decent thing that
has happened to her.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
I thought, I'll sleep with him and I'll be free
for six months.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
But I started hitting him in the middle of the night.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
I said, you're a freak, leave me alone, and I
ran out.
Speaker 10 (43:10):
I wanted to marry him, but I can to be
married to a drug addict. Heidie has a problem dealing
with reality, so she has to be anesthetized. I'm riding
the wave. I don't really think I have a purpose.
Speaker 6 (43:30):
Back at Heidie's in her girly bedroom, everything is pink,
polka dotted or trimmed with lace. There's a mirror on
one wall and a picture of Ben Franklin that she
says Robert Evans gave her.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
I once told him I'd rather see Ben Franklin than
go to his house for a screening, and he sent
over that picture.
Speaker 6 (43:51):
Heidi is bummed out because she missed the Fly's family
Thanksgiving for the first time in her life. She felt
too sad and guilty about everything to face them on
the holiday.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
It's the only time of the year that the entire
Flies clan gets together, but I just couldn't.
Speaker 6 (44:13):
She spent Thanksgiving with her chosen family instead. Kelly Lang,
the first female nighttime newscaster in LA who married the
director William Friedkin, Claudia Curnecella who sold a red Corvette
to help Heidi pay her legal bills, and Heidi's bff,
Victoria Sellers.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
It was great, except Victoria showed up two and a
half hours late and she seemed really strung out.
Speaker 6 (44:41):
As a connoisseur of moneymaking, Heidi can't help but understand
why some of her most loyal girls are taking the
money to appear on camera. Brandy McLain is guesting on
the show A Current Affair, another nighttime tabloid show, and
signed a contract to be their correspondent on the Heidi
Fly Scandal.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
They shot enough of Brandy for a miniseries. I know
Brandy's a jabber jaw.
Speaker 6 (45:08):
But Brandy says only nice things about Heidi on camera
and calls Heidi to make sure everything is cool between them.
Heidi was also worried about a sex tape that she
made herself with the Penthouse Pet that the Penthouse Pet
threatened to blackmail her with to get ahead of it.
She gave it to one of her girls to put
on the market herself.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
It's very explicit that the phone tabs and the videotapes
and Brandy on TV, there's not one secret left.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
I feel like a circus event.
Speaker 6 (45:40):
A few days later, Heidi has kicked Victorias Sellers out
of the house for doing the unthinkable, betraying her to
a UK tabloid without asking Heidi first. The interview runs
with the title how I became a Hollywood hooker and
sold my body for four thousand dollars a night, and
cashes in on the British tabloid heel of her father,
(46:01):
being the famous British comedian Peter Seller's.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
She was supposed to get one hundred thousand dollars to
the interview, but she says she never got the money.
Victoria stabbed me in the back. I told her, if
you don't lean now, I think I'll kill you. The
thing with Victoria is that we were never lovers, but there.
Speaker 3 (46:26):
Was a lot of sex stuff.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
You don't share that with everyone. I'm so upset. This
bothered me more than the arrest.
Speaker 6 (46:37):
The Lynn Hirschberg profile for Vanity Fair ends with an
image of Heidi flies alone, betrayed by her best friends,
left out to dry by rich clients and the press,
exiled from her family in the spotlight, and totally isolated
from everything and everyone she loves. Pursued day and night,
(46:58):
but completely alone.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
I never thought it would end up this way, But
this Victoria thing, there's some.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Things you don't do. You have to draw the line somewhere.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
People will do anything for money, and I don't mean sex.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
They will do anything. That's what I've learned.
Speaker 6 (47:31):
Next time on Heidi World, Heidi harnesses the media frenzy
around her trial to launch a cutting edge line of
sleepwear called Heidiwear, while director Nick Broomfield makes a documentary
about Heidi Mania,