Chapter 7: The Trial Of The Century: 1995 How Court TV revolutionized the 24 hour news cycle and how Heidi Fleiss redefined tabloid celebrity with it
While awaiting her trials Heidi sits for another big magazine profile, this time with Vanity Fair. Her lawyer Anthony Brooklier makes a case against the johns, and we tell you about his father Dominic Brooklier the last mob don of Southern California. Ivan “Mackdaddy” Nagy returns to terrorize Heidi’s employees and get sentimental about Heidi. And Heidi Fleiss finds herself in the world spotlight and isolated from everyone.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yea. They are worried about what names will come out
and which heads will roll because of it. People live
(00:22):
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. You know what,
So what if I knew Canton and Gouber and Ethanson
(00:43):
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. Heidi Flace. We are looking to win this case.
(01:06):
Anthony Brooklyer, Heidi Flice's defense attorney. Sometimes she is sweet,
another 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
(01:26):
names are people I knew. Alex Fleming, Madam. It's beyond Hollywood.
It's studio and police and everything. Previously on Heidi World,
Heidi Flice's high end escort service has been busted in
a sting operation. Now she is going to court for
(01:49):
two trials, and she is terrified. Welcome to Heidi World,
Chapter seven, The Trial of the Century. Welcome back to
(02:24):
Heidi World. I'm your host, Molly Lambert. It is Heidi
Flice is under fire from every direction, being pursued by
law enforcement, the I R s, 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
(02:46):
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, she
manages to film a cameo as a clerk at a
liquor store in director Gregor Rocky's cult classic Cool Kid
l a movie The Doom Generation in a monkey's paw situation.
(03:07):
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
the story. This time it's Lynn Hershberg for Vanity Fair,
for a story titled Heidi Does Hollywood. Will trusting a
(03:28):
journalist to tell her story responsibly be a mistake. Let's
find out. I'm not Madonna. I don't want to be famous.
Earlier in the day, the TV tabloid news show Hard
Copy showed up to Heidi's front door and gave her
(03:50):
back 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 La Hua Reid, a beach blonde who looks like
Heather Locklear and like Locklear, also dated Richie Sambora from
(04:11):
Bon Jovi. Reid gave Heidi money for a lawyer when
she got busted, and loaned her the famous Normacamali rap
dress that she made her first court appearance in before
Dulce and Gabana offered to provide Heidi with a wardrobe
for her trial. Lahua Reid claims she gave the planner
back to Heidi weeks ago, but Heidi is certain that
(04:32):
La Hua is the one who sold it to hard Copy.
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. Lynn Hershberg gets a look at the planner
(04:57):
and says that it looks like any businesswoman's planner, hair appointments,
spa trips, and paying the pool guy. Heidi sports bets
are noted in the upper right corner of each page,
listing amounts 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 blacked out a lot
of stuff by scribbling over it with a pen. See
(05:21):
I was smart, anything important? I ainked out? Lynn Hershberg says.
Heidi looks painfully thin, almost skeletal, but fierce as she
trumps around her house in black boots and leggings with
a black jacket thrown over her gaunt frame. Heidi opens
(05:42):
up to Lynn Hershberg about what life is like under
the net. 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
(06:03):
and talked, I could have stopped NAFTA. Heidi has invited
Lynn Hershberg over to watch CNN tape a segment about
Heidi's new line of cotton sleepwear, which she has dubbed
Heidi War. Models are milling around the room. Most of
them are Heidi's friends. Her brother Jesse, now sixteen, gets
(06:25):
his hair styled for photos. Heidi's facialist. A woman named
Nance models a pink terry cloth bathrobe from Heidi Ware.
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 Fagen, an entertainment lawyer and former multimillionaire
who invented a proto we work called Fagin Sweets, where
(06:48):
he subly so out office space to clients, mostly 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
(07:09):
house with card tricks and other close up magic. A
blonde guy named Rob is trying on the Heidiwear flannel boxers.
Heidi shows him where the condom pocket is and slips
a trojan into it. You put that here? What do
you think my sleepwear? Heidi is still entertaining at the
(07:34):
mansion for as long as she can. Lynn Hershberg 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 Hershberg observes, you feel like you own the
town from here. Facing a possible scent and so eleven
(08:00):
years in jail, Heidi is pulling out all the SOPs
while she's still free. She already botched one Heidi were
photo shoot for a London publication and no she's running
out of last chances to sell her brand before the
heat closes in on her. I had to take a valume.
I don't want that to happen again. Heidie's best friend,
(08:25):
Victoria Sellers appears in a black cat suit with big
black boots, clutching her two pit bull puppies, quarter Pounder
and green Eyes, talking about the tanning salon. She just
went to what's going on? Oh my god, I forgot
all about this. Victoria sellers Heidi's best friend. Victoria is
(08:51):
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
we have plenty of mornings we'd wake up and say,
(09:13):
what was his name? 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 two guys, but
not anymore. Victoria is living with Heidi after a boyfriend
became abusive. It's the summer after the car accident that
(09:36):
landed her a drug charge, but Lynn Hershberg notes that
Victoria appears to take a tiny plastic bag filled with
something from one of the models at the house hid
His brother Jesse, watches it go down and walks outside
to tell his sister, while the CNN cameras are filming
one of her friends prancing on the lawn in the
boxer shorts with the waist rolled down. I think some
(10:00):
of Victoria's friends brought her drugs. Don't be mad at her,
Jesse Flicce. 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. Someone
with a joint on them can get me in trouble.
(10:22):
Now I just have a prescription for valium 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 We'll never be the same again.
(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. I'm
on a nune, but I've never smoked a cigarette, and
I've only smoked dope twice in my life. I do
(11:06):
take a quite louder perkad in once in a while,
just since I've been in trouble. The next time Lynn
Hershberg 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 Hershberg a scrapbook of all her recent mentions in
(11:27):
the press. My sister Shana started collecting this after the
troubles began. I call it the troubles. Hershberg details the
infighting between madam's and girls that plagues Heidi, her troubled
but loving relationship with Madam Alex, the deep betrayal she
(11:49):
feels by the girls who were busted at the Beverly
Hilton and turned on her. Hershberg compares it to junior
high clicks. A madam's nightmare is to have girls testify
against her drives the steak in your heart. How do
you have four girls testifying against her? You have to
ask yourself, why are her girls so disloyal? Did you
(12:14):
take a cut from the girls after the cops busted them?
Did you take your fucking cut? I bet you fucking did.
It's just the beginning. You know, every fucking agency, from
the CIA to the NBA, to the p t A
to the I R S are going to knock on
your fucking door. We're your worst fucking nightmare. You can't
funk with us, Alexandra Dadegg. I can't get mad at them.
(12:38):
I I just can't. The police try 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.
Heidi drives Lynn Hershberg 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
(12:58):
pulled over with expired red frustration and two 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 go to the d m V. Heidi is also
exceedingly paranoid about the wire tap tapes that informant Dan
Hanks has of some of the scandals more high profile
(13:21):
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 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
(13:43):
special Heidi is heading to see her lawyer, Anthony Brooklyer,
who is making a deal with Fox that they will
not air the tapes in exchange for an interview with Heidi.
There's a lot of phone sex on there, but Muslims
read about Evans. Heidi means Robert Evans, who once again
(14:08):
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 possibly can. On one of the tapes,
(14:28):
Heidi and Bob Evans discussed sending a call girl to
see Evans's boss's son, which they do. They don't tell
the Sun 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 Heidi discuss on tape using the
(14:50):
information to blackmail Evans's boss if he tries to cut
Evans loose. It would kill Evans if that got out.
He says, being my friend has cost him dearly. When
(15:11):
Heidi World returns, will tell you what happened with the
secret tapes. Welcome back to Heidi World. Fox Television bought
(15:43):
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 Brooklyer, jumped in and got them
to agree to an interview with Heidi instead, a much
bigger get for the network. The only reason Charlie Sheen's
(16:03):
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
three hundred or four hundred grand on girls, He said,
something like Heidi talks openly about a few of her clients,
(16:24):
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
(16:44):
friends to be a generous host at the parties. He
had to watch big sports events on TV. 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 this snatty reads
at his house. They played the Dodgers the next day,
and I bet thirty thou dollars on the Dodgers because
(17:06):
I figured the Reds have been out all night with
girls and drinking, and I still lost the money. 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. His well documented kink was
for the girls, mostly blonds, to dress his cheerleaders and
(17:28):
pretend it's the night before the big home game and
he's the star quarterback. I've really mixed feelings about Charlie.
His secretary called when everything happened. I thought, why didn't
a secretary called when he wanted girls a weird hours,
or if he wanted drugs a weird hours. She also
has a sex tape of Charlie and two Heidi girls.
(17:53):
He's sitting there high and two of the girls start
kissing him. You can imagine the rest. Heidi tells Lynn
Hershberg 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. Shannon Doherty called
(18:16):
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. You
will remember, of course, that Shannon also got in a
fight with Heidi's friend Bonita Money at the Roxbury. Shannon
(18:40):
Doherty responded that Heidi's story was distorted, but cop to
the fact that she did call Heidie to make an inquiry.
Hollywood celebrities and industry big mockers make up only a
fraction of Heidie's clientele. The real money is still overseas.
A man called me once and said King is coming over,
(19:01):
and it's not a Saudi king. I said, the Saudie
is paying a piece. 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.
Heidi also says she supplied call girls two members of
(19:22):
the Bush Senior and Clinton administrations. She would get calls
asking for arm candy for elite men for fundraising events
in Washington, d C. 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 Hershberg
wonders why these powerful rich men who could date beautiful
(19:43):
women for free bother paying for it. Van Nage tells
her his take, the appeal of getting a prostitute is control.
Men can tell these girls what the duel, and they
do it, and then they leave. The man is in control.
(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 I always take advantage
of them. Name someone I know all the sleeves, if
(20:26):
he's a high roller or a creep or sleezy, I know,
I've heard of him. I hope some of these guys
get it. I can't take the fall for everyone. Van
Nage is also personally harassing Heide's girls, encouraging them to
flip or defect to him. He also refers to himself
(20:48):
now as mac Daddy, the name he gave himself for
his line of erotic cd ROMs. He calls one Heidi
girl named Susie to scare her and tapes the call.
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
(21:10):
yourself from that garbage, distance yourself from them. Let her
call Bob Evans. Maybe maybe they can get that joining
jail cells. You don't funk with mcdaddy, bitch, You funk
with mcdaddy and it's odios, motherfucker, just like that. You
saw what happened to fucking Alex. She used to have
(21:31):
that big house on the hill, but she got shut
out of the water like a fucking buffalo. You know
she fought with mcadaddy. So just be straight, to be
cool and don't run no games. Van Naj claims this
is just his way of flirting with Susie. Meanwhile, Heidi
arrives to meet Anthony brook Clyre, the lawyer who she
(21:52):
was referred to by Madame Alex who's pandering sentence he
got reduced to probation. If all lawyers like Tony, there
wouldn't be any lawyer jokes. Brooklyer 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.
(22:15):
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. If I'm guilty, the men are guilty,
and that's it. I'm a twenty seven year old girl
(22:38):
and they're big, powerful men. 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,
(22:58):
Dominic Brooklyer, who was in the l A mafia. He
then defended a number of other mob guys, including Michael Rostello,
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. Brookelyer's current
strategy is to get the john so scared that they'll
(23:19):
be named, they try to force the city to drop
the charges. We want all these guys to call their
lawyers and tell them to call the d a's office. Elvis,
the King would have filed this motion. Hershberg calls Heidi
and Anthony Brooklyer's relationship flirty and a little paternal, Heidi's favorite.
(23:42):
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, Heidi's lawyer sends a letter to
Vanity Fair demanding a retraction, stating the articles quotes Can Earning,
James con Charlie Sheen, Robert Evans, John Peters, Steve Roth,
(24:05):
Claudia Carni Sella, and Susie Sterling are completely false and
defamatory of ms flics Moreover, the innuendo relating to ms
Flice's private life and her alleged affair with an individual
named Mimi is equally untrue. Anthony Brooklyer was used to
doing damage control for high profile clients, the first of
(24:26):
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 Brooklyer went
by the name Jimmy Ragotze when he joined up with
notorious Jewish gangster Mickey Cohen's gambling syndicate in nineteen forties
Los Angeles. Jimmy Ragotze then defected from Mickey Cohen to
(24:51):
the boss of the Los Angeles Mob, a guy named
Jack Dragna, and he officially became a made man in seven.
In nine, he's part of a failed hit on his
old boss, 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 l A and
(25:11):
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 there. He also legally changes
his name to Dominic Brooklyar, an anglicized version of his
real birth name, Dominic Broco Larry. I don't know what
(25:36):
it was. I saw it when I was five years old.
My father could walk into a place and for whatever reason,
the room would stop. It was as if every eye
was on him. 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. Tony Brooklyer
(26:02):
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
Annaheim 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 his
(26:25):
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 Brooklyar only referred to
l Cosa Nostra with the terminology gangsters used to avoid
(26:45):
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 Brooklyer got good grades and enrolled in the Naval Academy.
(27:08):
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 l A, 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 and transferred to Loyola,
(27:30):
then went to u c. L a law He says
he became a lawyer out of a desire to defend
his own dad should they ever come for him again.
In nine seventy four, Dominic Brooklyer and his underboss are
charged with racketeering under the Rico Act, and he pleads
guilty to one charge. In dominic, Brooklyer orders the murder
(27:53):
of a Los Angeles hitman named Frank the Bomb bomp
In Sierra, who he suspects of being a rat. Brooklyer
tried to kill Bompin Cerro for a year, but failed
to convince the Bomb he wasn't trying to kill him.
He appointed him consigliari. However, Brooklyer's suspicion was correct, Bumping
Sero was a rat for the FBI. The FBI used
(28:16):
him as an informant and rang a staying operation, creating
a fake pornography business in Van Nuys, then had Bomb
spread the word around town about it and suggest the
mob should shake them down. Naturally. I wondered if Sopranos
creator David Chase was in Los Angeles working as a
TV writer yet in this era and read the Los
(28:37):
Angeles Times when the story took place a rat for
the FBI whose last name is Bompin Cerro, was there
any chance he'd named Big Pussy Bompincerro on The Sopranos
after this guy? So because I am the best journalist
in the world. I asked my friend, the writer Matt Saller,
sites if he would ask David Chase. I made him
(28:58):
an offer he could didn't refuse. No. I just sent
him a d M 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 U the bomb is maybe a pretty common name
for snitches in the mob. But now we know. Dominic
(29:21):
Brooklyer made good on his promise that bomp and Cerro
would have to be killed, and shortly after that, bomp
and Cerro was shot to death in a phone booth
in v seven. Dominic Brooklyer 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 Brooklyer's underlings flipped on him, and in
(29:44):
eighty he was charged with racketeering the plot to extort
money from bookmakers, loan sharks, and pornographers, as well as
Frank bomp and Cerro's murder. Ultimately, Dominic was convicted for
racketeering and extortion, but a it did. Of Frank the
bomb bomp and Ciro's murder. He was sentenced to five years.
(30:04):
The Fed's cracked down on organized crime in Los Angeles,
rounding up and prosecuting the remaining living old school gangsters.
Dominic Brooklyer was tried, with his son, Anthony Brooklyer acting
as his lawyer, making an emotional plea at the sentencing
in Anthony Brooklyer tearfully begged the judge to spare his
(30:27):
father from prison. 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. Dominic Brooklyer was sent to
serve his sentence in an Arizona prison. When Tony Brooklyer
(30:51):
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, Francis, recalls seeing her husband in prison and
thinking he had aged so much from being in jail
that he seemed about ninety years old. Now. I hope
(31:13):
that this was over. That the family couldn't take any
more of this. My mother couldn't take any more of this,
and he said, sort of in a philosophic way, it's
been over for a long time. We're dinosaurs. In July,
Dominic Brooklyer drop stead of a heart attack in jail.
(31:36):
From then on, Anthony Brooklyer takes a stand for loan sharks,
radio payola, blackmail scammers, a carpet cleaning business, stock scam
called zz z z z which involves someone skimming money
from their Jewish boss into a white supremacist group, and
two women accused of running a ten million dollar boiler
room telemarketing outfit in Encino. He also defends whoever was
(32:00):
still left from the world of organized crime in Los Angeles.
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. Back there,
they shoot people. It's different. In Night nine, he defends
(32:26):
Mike Rizatello, 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
a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month. The Mustang
was controversial in conservative Orange County, which tried and failed
(32:48):
to shut down the topless bar after it opened on
Harbor Bowl of Art. In two Bill Carroll met Mike
Risatello at an Italian restaurant in Santa Anna. Ris a
Hello brought his driver, Joey Groso, who owned a limo
service called Diplomat Limousine Service in Newport Beach, but arrived
with no car. After dinner, Risatello asked Carol for a
(33:11):
ride back to their car, which was in Costa Mesa.
Risatello 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 his attackers for eighteen
(33:33):
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, a six ft seven inch tall
(33:54):
guy who was a bouncer known as Big George Ydsovich
was shot three times in head and killed an Irvine
so Anthony Brooklyer, son of the last mob Dawn in
southern California, continues to defend cocaine dealers, money launderers and
the like at his Beverly Hills law firm, Marks and Brooklyer.
(34:17):
He helps out whichever of his dad's old friends are
still alive and gets their sentences softened. By nine Anthony
Brooklyer was trading on his mob pedigree for publicity. He
was the subject of a profile in The l A Times.
The profile tells how Brooklyer played backyard catch with a
hit man named Jimmy the Weasel, how he thought his
(34:38):
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
Brooklyer wears Hugo Boss suits, is one of the costliest
lawyers in l A and has the front table at
a restaurant named Giuseppe, where he fraternizes with mobsters and
(34:59):
Holly with types alike, sometimes grabbing a mike to sing
his signature song Volare. Anthony Brooklyer made a cameo appearance
in a failed TV pilot attempting to capitalize on the
success of the hit show l a law called Bar Girls.
Bar Girls is a show about bad girl lawyers, and
(35:20):
it's most notable cast member is a very young Elizabeth Moss,
so you can see exactly why Tony Brooklyer appealed to
Heidi Flys, 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. Tony
(35:41):
Brooklyer is Heidie'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
decided to argue that Heidie's entire escort operation was nothing
more are than consensual sex between consenting adults. Your honor,
(36:08):
no one was hurt in this case, no one was coerced,
and no one operated under du risk. When Heidi World returns,
how the mainstream media railroaded Heidi Fly, send sex workers
rights to fit their predetermined narrative Welcome back to Heidi World.
(36:52):
The nineties news media did not take up a pro
sex work angle on the Heidi Flight story because it
did not jibe with theirs, which was to 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 different from sex trafficking.
(37:13):
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, in
(37:36):
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 solved 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
gate keep gas light, just that nobody wanted to say
(37:57):
that Heidi 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
(38:19):
Heidi herself. She was a self destructive person with violent
abuse of 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 on escorts in l A
(38:39):
to this day, someone who, 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 it all on vice and hit
the jackpot. She pulled Hollywood's pants down and exposed the
entertainment business for what it really is, a griff to
(39:00):
make money that occasionally accidentally produces great art. Everybody is
titilated by this, but people have been murdered. Studios have
covered up for them all feasons of actors. People have
supported the drug habits of actors, and other people have
(39:21):
built into budgets allowances for cocaine. Those are horrible things.
Prostitution is way down on my list. Liz Smith, gossip calumnist.
Heidi is well aware that her trial is a show trial.
The l a p D are trying to use it
as propaganda to show how tough they are on crime.
(39:45):
But Heidi is seen through experiences like the death of
her friend Wendy Tar, that the l a p D
are actually incompetent, ineffective fools when it comes to important
issues like domestic violence or serial rape. They did nothing
to solve the murder of her and Wendy Tar, or
find her murderer, James Edward Noel, who Heidi helped find
(40:05):
by going on a TV show. The police knew who
killed her, 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. She called the cops constantly to see how
the Wendy Tar case was progressing, which made her realize
(40:27):
that the cops didn't do anything. However, they put all
of their money and effort into rating her somebody conducting
a consensual business. 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
(40:48):
called out to search and destroy at virtually any cost.
I am not complaining about my arrest. What I did
was my choice, and I accept responsibility for it. But
how how many violent criminals are ignored because law enforcement
priorities are in the wrong order. Lynn Hershberg takes a
side trip to meet vonn Nag for herself. Van Nag
(41:12):
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 Lichtenstein's, and one Rauschenberg.
He meets her wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. He points
out the classiness of his place and says he's nothing
like the scumbag he's being portrayed as in the press.
(41:34):
The MC daddy 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. The question should
be how do they meet me. It's terrible for me
to say at this point, because you know, I can
(41:56):
be looked into this whole group. But Heidi has an
affinity for real slime balls. Yvan Nage has sold his
life rights for a TV movie for a hundred thousand dollars.
He wants to be played by the actor armand as
Sante and direct the project himself. The networks didn't really
(42:19):
like it. 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.
(42:39):
He saw her on Memorial Day that spring for the
last time. We spent the night together at the Matriott.
She was really emotional. She knows I'm the most decent
thing that has happened to her. I thought, a sleep
with him and I'll be free for six months. But
(43:00):
I started hitting him in the middle of the night.
I said, you're a freak, leave me alone, and I
ran out. I wanted to, but I can't be married
to a drug addict. Heidi has a problem viewing with reality,
so she has to be anesthesized. I'm riding the wave.
(43:24):
I don't really think I have a purpose. Back at Hyde'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 Ovans
gave her. I once told him I'd rather see Ben
(43:45):
Franklin then go to his house for a screening, and
he sent over that picture. 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. It's the only
time of the year that the entire Flies clan gets together,
(44:10):
but I just couldn't. She spent Thanksgiving with her chosen
family instead. Kelly Lang, the first female nighttime newscaster in
l A who married the director William Friedkin, Claudia Cornicella,
who sold a red Corvette to help Heidi pay her
legal bills, and Heidi's bff, Victoria Sellers. It was great,
(44:34):
except Victoria showed up two and a half hours late,
and she seemed really strung out. As a connoisseur of
money making, Heidi can't help but understand why some of
her most loyal girls are taking the money to appear
on camera. Brandy McClain is guesting on the show A
Current Affair, another nighttime tabloid show, and signed a contract
(44:56):
to be their correspondent on the Heidi Fly Scandal. They
shot enough of Brandy for a miniseries. I know Brandy's
a jabber jaw, 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
(45:17):
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. It's very
explicit that the phone taps and the video tapes and
Brandy on TV. There's not one secret left. I feel
like a circus event. A few days later, Heidi has
(45:42):
kicked Victoria's 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, a
heel of her father, being the famous British comedian Peter Seller's.
(46:06):
She was supposed to get a 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 mean now, I think I'll kill you. The
thing with Victoria is that we were never lovers, but
there was a lot of sex stuff. You don't share
(46:29):
that with everyone. I'm so upset. This bothered me more
than the arrest. The Lynn Hershberg profile for Vanity Fair
ends with an image of Heidi Flice alone, betrayed by
her best friends, left out to dry by rich clients
and the press, exiled from her family in the spotlight,
(46:52):
and totally isolated from everything and everyone she loves, pursued
day and night, but completely early alone. I never thought
it would end up this way, but this Victoria thing,
there's some things you don't do. You have to draw
the line somewhere people will do anything for money, and
I don't mean sex. They will do anything. That's what
(47:16):
I've learned. Next time on Heidi World, Heidi harnesses the
media frenzy around her trial to launch a cutting edge
(47:38):
line of sleepwear called Heidi Ware, while director Nick Broomfield
makes a documentary about Heidi Mania,
Yea. They are worried about what names will come out
and which heads will roll because of it. People live
(00:22):
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. You know what,
So what if I knew Canton and Gouber and Ethanson
(00:43):
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. Heidi Flace. We are looking to win this case.
(01:06):
Anthony Brooklyer, Heidi Flice's defense attorney. Sometimes she is sweet,
another 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
(01:26):
names are people I knew. Alex Fleming, Madam. It's beyond Hollywood.
It's studio and police and everything. Previously on Heidi World,
Heidi Flice's high end escort service has been busted in
a sting operation. Now she is going to court for
(01:49):
two trials, and she is terrified. Welcome to Heidi World,
Chapter seven, The Trial of the Century. Welcome back to
(02:24):
Heidi World. I'm your host, Molly Lambert. It is Heidi
Flice is under fire from every direction, being pursued by
law enforcement, the I R s, 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
(02:46):
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, she
manages to film a cameo as a clerk at a
liquor store in director Gregor Rocky's cult classic Cool Kid
l a movie The Doom Generation in a monkey's paw situation.
(03:07):
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
the story. This time it's Lynn Hershberg for Vanity Fair,
for a story titled Heidi Does Hollywood. Will trusting a
(03:28):
journalist to tell her story responsibly be a mistake. Let's
find out. I'm not Madonna. I don't want to be famous.
Earlier in the day, the TV tabloid news show Hard
Copy showed up to Heidi's front door and gave her
(03:50):
back 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 La Hua Reid, a beach blonde who looks like
Heather Locklear and like Locklear, also dated Richie Sambora from
(04:11):
Bon Jovi. Reid gave Heidi money for a lawyer when
she got busted, and loaned her the famous Normacamali rap
dress that she made her first court appearance in before
Dulce and Gabana offered to provide Heidi with a wardrobe
for her trial. Lahua Reid claims she gave the planner
back to Heidi weeks ago, but Heidi is certain that
(04:32):
La Hua is the one who sold it to hard Copy.
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. Lynn Hershberg gets a look at the planner
(04:57):
and says that it looks like any businesswoman's planner, hair appointments,
spa trips, and paying the pool guy. Heidi sports bets
are noted in the upper right corner of each page,
listing amounts 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 blacked out a lot
of stuff by scribbling over it with a pen. See
(05:21):
I was smart, anything important? I ainked out? Lynn Hershberg says.
Heidi looks painfully thin, almost skeletal, but fierce as she
trumps around her house in black boots and leggings with
a black jacket thrown over her gaunt frame. Heidi opens
(05:42):
up to Lynn Hershberg about what life is like under
the net. 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
(06:03):
and talked, I could have stopped NAFTA. Heidi has invited
Lynn Hershberg over to watch CNN tape a segment about
Heidi's new line of cotton sleepwear, which she has dubbed
Heidi War. Models are milling around the room. Most of
them are Heidi's friends. Her brother Jesse, now sixteen, gets
(06:25):
his hair styled for photos. Heidi's facialist. A woman named
Nance models a pink terry cloth bathrobe from Heidi Ware.
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 Fagen, an entertainment lawyer and former multimillionaire
who invented a proto we work called Fagin Sweets, where
(06:48):
he subly so out office space to clients, mostly 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
(07:09):
house with card tricks and other close up magic. A
blonde guy named Rob is trying on the Heidiwear flannel boxers.
Heidi shows him where the condom pocket is and slips
a trojan into it. You put that here? What do
you think my sleepwear? Heidi is still entertaining at the
(07:34):
mansion for as long as she can. Lynn Hershberg 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 Hershberg observes, you feel like you own the
town from here. Facing a possible scent and so eleven
(08:00):
years in jail, Heidi is pulling out all the SOPs
while she's still free. She already botched one Heidi were
photo shoot for a London publication and no she's running
out of last chances to sell her brand before the
heat closes in on her. I had to take a valume.
I don't want that to happen again. Heidie's best friend,
(08:25):
Victoria Sellers appears in a black cat suit with big
black boots, clutching her two pit bull puppies, quarter Pounder
and green Eyes, talking about the tanning salon. She just
went to what's going on? Oh my god, I forgot
all about this. Victoria sellers Heidi's best friend. Victoria is
(08:51):
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
we have plenty of mornings we'd wake up and say,
(09:13):
what was his name? 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 two guys, but
not anymore. Victoria is living with Heidi after a boyfriend
became abusive. It's the summer after the car accident that
(09:36):
landed her a drug charge, but Lynn Hershberg notes that
Victoria appears to take a tiny plastic bag filled with
something from one of the models at the house hid
His brother Jesse, watches it go down and walks outside
to tell his sister, while the CNN cameras are filming
one of her friends prancing on the lawn in the
boxer shorts with the waist rolled down. I think some
(10:00):
of Victoria's friends brought her drugs. Don't be mad at her,
Jesse Flicce. 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. Someone
with a joint on them can get me in trouble.
(10:22):
Now I just have a prescription for valium 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 We'll never be the same again.
(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. I'm
on a nune, but I've never smoked a cigarette, and
I've only smoked dope twice in my life. I do
(11:06):
take a quite louder perkad in once in a while,
just since I've been in trouble. The next time Lynn
Hershberg 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 Hershberg a scrapbook of all her recent mentions in
(11:27):
the press. My sister Shana started collecting this after the
troubles began. I call it the troubles. Hershberg details the
infighting between madam's and girls that plagues Heidi, her troubled
but loving relationship with Madam Alex, the deep betrayal she
(11:49):
feels by the girls who were busted at the Beverly
Hilton and turned on her. Hershberg compares it to junior
high clicks. A madam's nightmare is to have girls testify
against her drives the steak in your heart. How do
you have four girls testifying against her? You have to
ask yourself, why are her girls so disloyal? Did you
(12:14):
take a cut from the girls after the cops busted them?
Did you take your fucking cut? I bet you fucking did.
It's just the beginning. You know, every fucking agency, from
the CIA to the NBA, to the p t A
to the I R S are going to knock on
your fucking door. We're your worst fucking nightmare. You can't
funk with us, Alexandra Dadegg. I can't get mad at them.
(12:38):
I I just can't. The police try 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.
Heidi drives Lynn Hershberg 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
(12:58):
pulled over with expired red frustration and two 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 go to the d m V. Heidi is also
exceedingly paranoid about the wire tap tapes that informant Dan
Hanks has of some of the scandals more high profile
(13:21):
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 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
(13:43):
special Heidi is heading to see her lawyer, Anthony Brooklyer,
who is making a deal with Fox that they will
not air the tapes in exchange for an interview with Heidi.
There's a lot of phone sex on there, but Muslims
read about Evans. Heidi means Robert Evans, who once again
(14:08):
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 possibly can. On one of the tapes,
(14:28):
Heidi and Bob Evans discussed sending a call girl to
see Evans's boss's son, which they do. They don't tell
the Sun 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 Heidi discuss on tape using the
(14:50):
information to blackmail Evans's boss if he tries to cut
Evans loose. It would kill Evans if that got out.
He says, being my friend has cost him dearly. When
(15:11):
Heidi World returns, will tell you what happened with the
secret tapes. Welcome back to Heidi World. Fox Television bought
(15:43):
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 Brooklyer, jumped in and got them
to agree to an interview with Heidi instead, a much
bigger get for the network. The only reason Charlie Sheen's
(16:03):
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
three hundred or four hundred grand on girls, He said,
something like Heidi talks openly about a few of her clients,
(16:24):
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
(16:44):
friends to be a generous host at the parties. He
had to watch big sports events on TV. 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 this snatty reads
at his house. They played the Dodgers the next day,
and I bet thirty thou dollars on the Dodgers because
(17:06):
I figured the Reds have been out all night with
girls and drinking, and I still lost the money. 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. His well documented kink was
for the girls, mostly blonds, to dress his cheerleaders and
(17:28):
pretend it's the night before the big home game and
he's the star quarterback. I've really mixed feelings about Charlie.
His secretary called when everything happened. I thought, why didn't
a secretary called when he wanted girls a weird hours,
or if he wanted drugs a weird hours. She also
has a sex tape of Charlie and two Heidi girls.
(17:53):
He's sitting there high and two of the girls start
kissing him. You can imagine the rest. Heidi tells Lynn
Hershberg 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. Shannon Doherty called
(18:16):
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. You
will remember, of course, that Shannon also got in a
fight with Heidi's friend Bonita Money at the Roxbury. Shannon
(18:40):
Doherty responded that Heidi's story was distorted, but cop to
the fact that she did call Heidie to make an inquiry.
Hollywood celebrities and industry big mockers make up only a
fraction of Heidie's clientele. The real money is still overseas.
A man called me once and said King is coming over,
(19:01):
and it's not a Saudi king. I said, the Saudie
is paying a piece. 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.
Heidi also says she supplied call girls two members of
(19:22):
the Bush Senior and Clinton administrations. She would get calls
asking for arm candy for elite men for fundraising events
in Washington, d C. 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 Hershberg
wonders why these powerful rich men who could date beautiful
(19:43):
women for free bother paying for it. Van Nage tells
her his take, the appeal of getting a prostitute is control.
Men can tell these girls what the duel, and they
do it, and then they leave. The man is in control.
(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 I always take advantage
of them. Name someone I know all the sleeves, if
(20:26):
he's a high roller or a creep or sleezy, I know,
I've heard of him. I hope some of these guys
get it. I can't take the fall for everyone. Van
Nage is also personally harassing Heide's girls, encouraging them to
flip or defect to him. He also refers to himself
(20:48):
now as mac Daddy, the name he gave himself for
his line of erotic cd ROMs. He calls one Heidi
girl named Susie to scare her and tapes the call.
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
(21:10):
yourself from that garbage, distance yourself from them. Let her
call Bob Evans. Maybe maybe they can get that joining
jail cells. You don't funk with mcdaddy, bitch, You funk
with mcdaddy and it's odios, motherfucker, just like that. You
saw what happened to fucking Alex. She used to have
(21:31):
that big house on the hill, but she got shut
out of the water like a fucking buffalo. You know
she fought with mcadaddy. So just be straight, to be
cool and don't run no games. Van Naj claims this
is just his way of flirting with Susie. Meanwhile, Heidi
arrives to meet Anthony brook Clyre, the lawyer who she
(21:52):
was referred to by Madame Alex who's pandering sentence he
got reduced to probation. If all lawyers like Tony, there
wouldn't be any lawyer jokes. Brooklyer 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.
(22:15):
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. If I'm guilty, the men are guilty,
and that's it. I'm a twenty seven year old girl
(22:38):
and they're big, powerful men. 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,
(22:58):
Dominic Brooklyer, who was in the l A mafia. He
then defended a number of other mob guys, including Michael Rostello,
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. Brookelyer's current
strategy is to get the john so scared that they'll
(23:19):
be named, they try to force the city to drop
the charges. We want all these guys to call their
lawyers and tell them to call the d a's office. Elvis,
the King would have filed this motion. Hershberg calls Heidi
and Anthony Brooklyer's relationship flirty and a little paternal, Heidi's favorite.
(23:42):
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, Heidi's lawyer sends a letter to
Vanity Fair demanding a retraction, stating the articles quotes Can Earning,
James con Charlie Sheen, Robert Evans, John Peters, Steve Roth,
(24:05):
Claudia Carni Sella, and Susie Sterling are completely false and
defamatory of ms flics Moreover, the innuendo relating to ms
Flice's private life and her alleged affair with an individual
named Mimi is equally untrue. Anthony Brooklyer was used to
doing damage control for high profile clients, the first of
(24:26):
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 Brooklyer went
by the name Jimmy Ragotze when he joined up with
notorious Jewish gangster Mickey Cohen's gambling syndicate in nineteen forties
Los Angeles. Jimmy Ragotze then defected from Mickey Cohen to
(24:51):
the boss of the Los Angeles Mob, a guy named
Jack Dragna, and he officially became a made man in seven.
In nine, he's part of a failed hit on his
old boss, 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 l A and
(25:11):
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 there. He also legally changes
his name to Dominic Brooklyar, an anglicized version of his
real birth name, Dominic Broco Larry. I don't know what
(25:36):
it was. I saw it when I was five years old.
My father could walk into a place and for whatever reason,
the room would stop. It was as if every eye
was on him. 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. Tony Brooklyer
(26:02):
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
Annaheim 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 his
(26:25):
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 Brooklyar only referred to
l Cosa Nostra with the terminology gangsters used to avoid
(26:45):
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 Brooklyer got good grades and enrolled in the Naval Academy.
(27:08):
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 l A, 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 and transferred to Loyola,
(27:30):
then went to u c. L a law He says
he became a lawyer out of a desire to defend
his own dad should they ever come for him again.
In nine seventy four, Dominic Brooklyer and his underboss are
charged with racketeering under the Rico Act, and he pleads
guilty to one charge. In dominic, Brooklyer orders the murder
(27:53):
of a Los Angeles hitman named Frank the Bomb bomp
In Sierra, who he suspects of being a rat. Brooklyer
tried to kill Bompin Cerro for a year, but failed
to convince the Bomb he wasn't trying to kill him.
He appointed him consigliari. However, Brooklyer's suspicion was correct, Bumping
Sero was a rat for the FBI. The FBI used
(28:16):
him as an informant and rang a staying operation, creating
a fake pornography business in Van Nuys, then had Bomb
spread the word around town about it and suggest the
mob should shake them down. Naturally. I wondered if Sopranos
creator David Chase was in Los Angeles working as a
TV writer yet in this era and read the Los
(28:37):
Angeles Times when the story took place a rat for
the FBI whose last name is Bompin Cerro, was there
any chance he'd named Big Pussy Bompincerro on The Sopranos
after this guy? So because I am the best journalist
in the world. I asked my friend, the writer Matt Saller,
sites if he would ask David Chase. I made him
(28:58):
an offer he could didn't refuse. No. I just sent
him a d M 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 U the bomb is maybe a pretty common name
for snitches in the mob. But now we know. Dominic
(29:21):
Brooklyer made good on his promise that bomp and Cerro
would have to be killed, and shortly after that, bomp
and Cerro was shot to death in a phone booth
in v seven. Dominic Brooklyer 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 Brooklyer's underlings flipped on him, and in
(29:44):
eighty he was charged with racketeering the plot to extort
money from bookmakers, loan sharks, and pornographers, as well as
Frank bomp and Cerro's murder. Ultimately, Dominic was convicted for
racketeering and extortion, but a it did. Of Frank the
bomb bomp and Ciro's murder. He was sentenced to five years.
(30:04):
The Fed's cracked down on organized crime in Los Angeles,
rounding up and prosecuting the remaining living old school gangsters.
Dominic Brooklyer was tried, with his son, Anthony Brooklyer acting
as his lawyer, making an emotional plea at the sentencing
in Anthony Brooklyer tearfully begged the judge to spare his
(30:27):
father from prison. 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. Dominic Brooklyer was sent to
serve his sentence in an Arizona prison. When Tony Brooklyer
(30:51):
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, Francis, recalls seeing her husband in prison and
thinking he had aged so much from being in jail
that he seemed about ninety years old. Now. I hope
(31:13):
that this was over. That the family couldn't take any
more of this. My mother couldn't take any more of this,
and he said, sort of in a philosophic way, it's
been over for a long time. We're dinosaurs. In July,
Dominic Brooklyer drop stead of a heart attack in jail.
(31:36):
From then on, Anthony Brooklyer takes a stand for loan sharks,
radio payola, blackmail scammers, a carpet cleaning business, stock scam
called zz z z z which involves someone skimming money
from their Jewish boss into a white supremacist group, and
two women accused of running a ten million dollar boiler
room telemarketing outfit in Encino. He also defends whoever was
(32:00):
still left from the world of organized crime in Los Angeles.
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. Back there,
they shoot people. It's different. In Night nine, he defends
(32:26):
Mike Rizatello, 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
a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month. The Mustang
was controversial in conservative Orange County, which tried and failed
(32:48):
to shut down the topless bar after it opened on
Harbor Bowl of Art. In two Bill Carroll met Mike
Risatello at an Italian restaurant in Santa Anna. Ris a
Hello brought his driver, Joey Groso, who owned a limo
service called Diplomat Limousine Service in Newport Beach, but arrived
with no car. After dinner, Risatello asked Carol for a
(33:11):
ride back to their car, which was in Costa Mesa.
Risatello 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 his attackers for eighteen
(33:33):
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, a six ft seven inch tall
(33:54):
guy who was a bouncer known as Big George Ydsovich
was shot three times in head and killed an Irvine
so Anthony Brooklyer, son of the last mob Dawn in
southern California, continues to defend cocaine dealers, money launderers and
the like at his Beverly Hills law firm, Marks and Brooklyer.
(34:17):
He helps out whichever of his dad's old friends are
still alive and gets their sentences softened. By nine Anthony
Brooklyer was trading on his mob pedigree for publicity. He
was the subject of a profile in The l A Times.
The profile tells how Brooklyer played backyard catch with a
hit man named Jimmy the Weasel, how he thought his
(34:38):
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
Brooklyer wears Hugo Boss suits, is one of the costliest
lawyers in l A and has the front table at
a restaurant named Giuseppe, where he fraternizes with mobsters and
(34:59):
Holly with types alike, sometimes grabbing a mike to sing
his signature song Volare. Anthony Brooklyer made a cameo appearance
in a failed TV pilot attempting to capitalize on the
success of the hit show l a law called Bar Girls.
Bar Girls is a show about bad girl lawyers, and
(35:20):
it's most notable cast member is a very young Elizabeth Moss,
so you can see exactly why Tony Brooklyer appealed to
Heidi Flys, 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. Tony
(35:41):
Brooklyer is Heidie'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
decided to argue that Heidie's entire escort operation was nothing
more are than consensual sex between consenting adults. Your honor,
(36:08):
no one was hurt in this case, no one was coerced,
and no one operated under du risk. When Heidi World returns,
how the mainstream media railroaded Heidi Fly, send sex workers
rights to fit their predetermined narrative Welcome back to Heidi World.
(36:52):
The nineties news media did not take up a pro
sex work angle on the Heidi Flight story because it
did not jibe with theirs, which was to 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 different from sex trafficking.
(37:13):
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, in
(37:36):
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 solved 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
gate keep gas light, just that nobody wanted to say
(37:57):
that Heidi 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
(38:19):
Heidi herself. She was a self destructive person with violent
abuse of 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 on escorts in l A
(38:39):
to this day, someone who, 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 it all on vice and hit
the jackpot. She pulled Hollywood's pants down and exposed the
entertainment business for what it really is, a griff to
(39:00):
make money that occasionally accidentally produces great art. Everybody is
titilated by this, but people have been murdered. Studios have
covered up for them all feasons of actors. People have
supported the drug habits of actors, and other people have
(39:21):
built into budgets allowances for cocaine. Those are horrible things.
Prostitution is way down on my list. Liz Smith, gossip calumnist.
Heidi is well aware that her trial is a show trial.
The l a p D are trying to use it
as propaganda to show how tough they are on crime.
(39:45):
But Heidi is seen through experiences like the death of
her friend Wendy Tar, that the l a p D
are actually incompetent, ineffective fools when it comes to important
issues like domestic violence or serial rape. They did nothing
to solve the murder of her and Wendy Tar, or
find her murderer, James Edward Noel, who Heidi helped find
(40:05):
by going on a TV show. The police knew who
killed her, 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. She called the cops constantly to see how
the Wendy Tar case was progressing, which made her realize
(40:27):
that the cops didn't do anything. However, they put all
of their money and effort into rating her somebody conducting
a consensual business. 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
(40:48):
called out to search and destroy at virtually any cost.
I am not complaining about my arrest. What I did
was my choice, and I accept responsibility for it. But
how how many violent criminals are ignored because law enforcement
priorities are in the wrong order. Lynn Hershberg takes a
side trip to meet vonn Nag for herself. Van Nag
(41:12):
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 Lichtenstein's, and one Rauschenberg.
He meets her wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. He points
out the classiness of his place and says he's nothing
like the scumbag he's being portrayed as in the press.
(41:34):
The MC daddy 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. The question should
be how do they meet me. It's terrible for me
to say at this point, because you know, I can
(41:56):
be looked into this whole group. But Heidi has an
affinity for real slime balls. Yvan Nage has sold his
life rights for a TV movie for a hundred thousand dollars.
He wants to be played by the actor armand as
Sante and direct the project himself. The networks didn't really
(42:19):
like it. 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.
(42:39):
He saw her on Memorial Day that spring for the
last time. We spent the night together at the Matriott.
She was really emotional. She knows I'm the most decent
thing that has happened to her. I thought, a sleep
with him and I'll be free for six months. But
(43:00):
I started hitting him in the middle of the night.
I said, you're a freak, leave me alone, and I
ran out. I wanted to, but I can't be married
to a drug addict. Heidi has a problem viewing with reality,
so she has to be anesthesized. I'm riding the wave.
(43:24):
I don't really think I have a purpose. Back at Hyde'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 Ovans
gave her. I once told him I'd rather see Ben
(43:45):
Franklin then go to his house for a screening, and
he sent over that picture. 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. It's the only
time of the year that the entire Flies clan gets together,
(44:10):
but I just couldn't. She spent Thanksgiving with her chosen
family instead. Kelly Lang, the first female nighttime newscaster in
l A who married the director William Friedkin, Claudia Cornicella,
who sold a red Corvette to help Heidi pay her
legal bills, and Heidi's bff, Victoria Sellers. It was great,
(44:34):
except Victoria showed up two and a half hours late,
and she seemed really strung out. As a connoisseur of
money making, Heidi can't help but understand why some of
her most loyal girls are taking the money to appear
on camera. Brandy McClain is guesting on the show A
Current Affair, another nighttime tabloid show, and signed a contract
(44:56):
to be their correspondent on the Heidi Fly Scandal. They
shot enough of Brandy for a miniseries. I know Brandy's
a jabber jaw, 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
(45:17):
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. It's very
explicit that the phone taps and the video tapes and
Brandy on TV. There's not one secret left. I feel
like a circus event. A few days later, Heidi has
(45:42):
kicked Victoria's 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, a
heel of her father, being the famous British comedian Peter Seller's.
(46:06):
She was supposed to get a 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 mean now, I think I'll kill you. The
thing with Victoria is that we were never lovers, but
there was a lot of sex stuff. You don't share
(46:29):
that with everyone. I'm so upset. This bothered me more
than the arrest. The Lynn Hershberg profile for Vanity Fair
ends with an image of Heidi Flice alone, betrayed by
her best friends, left out to dry by rich clients
and the press, exiled from her family in the spotlight,
(46:52):
and totally isolated from everything and everyone she loves, pursued
day and night, but completely early alone. I never thought
it would end up this way, but this Victoria thing,
there's some things you don't do. You have to draw
the line somewhere people will do anything for money, and
I don't mean sex. They will do anything. That's what
(47:16):
I've learned. Next time on Heidi World, Heidi harnesses the
media frenzy around her trial to launch a cutting edge
(47:38):
line of sleepwear called Heidi Ware, while director Nick Broomfield
makes a documentary about Heidi Mania,
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