Celebrity Private Eye Gets 2 1/2 Years in Prison on Weapons Charge (Pellicano)

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Celebrity private eye Anthony Pellicano, whose clients once included Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson, was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in federal prison Friday for possessing firearms and explosives.

Pellicano, who was also fined $6,000, remains the subject of a grand jury investigation into whether he may have conducted illegal wiretaps of celebrities. Federal officials have declined to provide details of the investigation, and Pellicano has said he is refusing to cooperate.

His career collapsed last year after investigators raided his office, seeking evidence to link him to threats made against a Los Angeles Times reporter. Two practice hand grenades, altered and filled with flash powder, were found in a safe along with military explosive and detonators.

Pellicano, 59, pleaded guilty in October to a felony count of possessing unregistered firearms and a felony charge of possessing C-4 explosive. He agreed to begin serving his prison term in November, although he had not yet been sentenced.

Last month, he sought to withdraw his plea on the firearms count, citing a recent U.S. appellate court ruling that Congress lacked authority to regulate homemade weapons - such as the modified grenades.

"He will be sentenced on an offense that does not exist," Pellicano's lawyer, Donald Re, argued Friday.

U.S. District Court Judge Dickran Tevrizian rejected the request, ruling that Congress had the authority to regulate weapons under its taxing power.

In pronouncing sentence, the judge refused to consider an alleged plot to threaten Los Angeles Times reporter Anita Busch.

She was researching a possible link between actor Steven Seagal and a reputed Mafia associate in 2002 when she found her car's windshield punctured by an apparent bullet hole. A dead fish, with a rose in its mouth, and a sign saying "STOP" were left on the car.

In court documents filed earlier this month, prosecutors argued that evidence showed Pellicano hired a man named Alex Proctor to intimidate Busch. Pellicano and Seagal and have not been charged and have denied involvement.

Proctor, 60, is serving a 10-year sentence after pleading guilty last September to an unrelated heroin trafficking charge.

even though Pellicano's tapes and letters offered smoking-gun proof of the Clinton campaign's heavy-handed attempts to silence the future president's ex-girlfriends, then-President Bush refused to use the damaging info to save his re-election bid.

In 1969, he set up his own business as a private detective. He found several publicized missing persons and became a celebrity in Chicago. He worked for the government. He loved publicity. He "drove a huge Lincoln Continental, hung Samurai swords in his office, and sealed his letters with monogrammed wax." (Dish, pg. 276)

In 1974, Pellicano declared bankruptcy. His filing revealed he'd borrowed $30,000 from Paul "The Waiter" de Lucia, the son of a reputed mobster. "Paul de Lucia is my daughter's godfather," Pellicano said. "He's just like any other guy in the neighborhood." (Dish)

Pellicano had to resign his position on the Illinois Law Enforcement Commission.

In 1977, Pellicano gained fame in what his detractors called dishonest. He purported to have found the body of Elizabeth Taylor's third husband, Mike Todd. It had been stolen from a Chicago cemetary.

Before the deaths of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman, O.J. Simpson hired Pellicano to silence a secretary who accused the football star of abusive behavior. Pellicano dug up embarrassing info about the secretary. "Anthony is one of those people who is, shall we say, a lion at the gate," said Simpson after the case was dismissed. "He is not a man to be on the wrong side of." (Dish, pg. 277-78)

Pellicano is believed to be the one who dug up information about Patricia Bowman, the woman who accused William Kennedy Smith of raping her. (Dish, pg. 278)

When a former receptionist sued Don Simpson for $5 million, Pellicano dug up embarrassing information about her, ruining her life and her case.

"I can't do everything by the book," says Pellicano. "I bend the law to death in gaining information." Pellicano tells people he carries an aluminum baseball bat in the trunk of his black Nexus. "Guys who fuck with me get to meet my buddy over there," he told a reporter, pointing towards the bat.

Pellicano tells people that he is an expert with a knife. "I can shred your face." He has a blackbelt in karate. "If I use martial arts, I might really maim somebody. I have, and I don't want to. I only use intimidation and fear when I absolutely have to." (Dish, pg. 278)

"Reporter John Connolly also experienced Pellicano's hardball P.R. when he wrote an article on [Steven] Seagal. Connolly claimed that he had evidence that Seagal was linked to the mob, had lied about his CIA experience, and had paid to have someone killed. Seagal turned Pellicano loose on Connolly. The reporter, a former cop, didn't back down, but the experience was harrowing. "Most journalism schools don't teach reporters how to respond to a Lousville Slugger," said Connolly. His tactics have a real chilling effect." (Dish, pg. 290)

9/8/94: LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A private eye with a celebrity clientele denied he was shadowing O.J. Simpson's ex-wife when she was slashed to death.

Pellicano, who has worked for Michael Jackson and Roseanne, said he has been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury because he was wrongly fingered as a potential witness by John Dunton.

Dunton, a convicted forger, was jailed for contempt on Wednesday for refusing to appear before the grand jury investigating Simpson's friend, Al ``A.C.'' Cowlings. According to Pellicano, Dunton told police he saw the sleuth in a car outside Ms. Simpson's Brentwood home on June 12, the night she and Ronald Goldman were killed.

Much of what Pellicano calls "help" can safely be described as ethically questionable.

A secretary sues a movie producer [Don Simpson] for $5-million for subjecting her to cocaine and porn movies. Pellicano steps in, and the case goes away. Sometimes he bypasses the source and hits the messenger. Several entertainment reporters have accused him of trying to intimidate them into killing stories about his clients.

A typical case, as Pellicano told GQ: Drug dealers are preying on a rich kid's addiction. The father hires Pellicano, who talks to the drug dealers . . . with a baseball bat. The dealers don't come around anymore.

Jane Galbraith writes about Pellicano in the 9/1/93 issue of Newsday:

In recent weeks, Pellicano also was hired by a Columbia Pictures executive to find out who'd been spreading rumors linking the executive to Heidi Fleiss...

In the not-so-distant past, Pellicano's name could be found in newspaper stories about how Roseanne Arnold found the daughter she gave up for adoption - she became enraged with him later, believing he sold the story to the National Enquirer - and again in stories disputing the legitimacy of taped conversations between Gennifer Flowers and then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton.

Who is this guy? His business cards say that he does either "private investigation," "electronic surveillance" and / or "negotiations" - he's had three versions printed. His purported expertise in any combination of the above has brought him clients ranging from Kevin Costner to the National Enquirer - and a high-profile status achieved by no other private "dick" working the Tinseltown beat. He's also been dubbed "The Big Sleazy" by GQ magazine - a moniker some say couldn't be more accurate.

"He turns up really spectacular kinds of evidence," said one avowed fan, entertainment lawyer Bertram Fields, who represents not only pop star Jackson but other big names as well. Fields, who hired Pellicano in the Jackson case, credited him with getting the emotional distress suit dismissed against "Beverly Hills Cop" and "Top Gun" producer Don Simpson, whose secretary had claimed he made her schedule appointments with prostitutes and other alleged transgressions.

On the foe side is Jeffrey Wells, a freelance writer covering Hollywood who believes Pellicano tapped his phones when he was doing some investigative reporting on Columbia Pictures executive Michael Nathanson earlier this year.

The Chicago native first made a name for himself in Los Angeles by casting doubt on government tapes as an expert witness for John DeLorean in the former auto maker's 1983 cocaine trial. DeLorean was acquitted - and later claimed Pellicano intimidated government witnesses.

Washington Weekly: "The Clinton White House has its agents scouring the country digging up dirt on the 24-year-old girl who made claims of a sexual involvement with Bill Clinton. The old Bimbo Eruption Swat Team has gone into overdrive, recruiting private investigator Anthony Pellicano, whose last claim to Clinton damage control fame was his "scientific determination" that the Gennifer Flowers tapes had been edited. (An independent laboratory analysis later confirmed their unedited authenticity) Now Pellicano has resurrected Monica Lewinsky's old drama coach, who did his own Gennifer Flowers number on her just minutes before Clinton's State of the Union Address."

In February, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton was alleged to have hired Pellicano in 1992 in an attempt to discredit Gennifer Flowers' claims of a twelve year affair with Mr. Clinton.

The episode bears an eerie resemblance to the account of Clinton sex-accuser Sally Perdue, who told the London Telegraph in 1994 that after she was threatened with physical violence, her car windshield was broken and spent shotgun shell was left on the seat. Perdue abruptly relocated to China a few months after talking to the Telegraph, shortly after Paula Jones sued Mr. Clinton for sexual harassment.

Four days after the Lewinsky story broke in Jan. 1998, ex-Lewinsky boyfriend Andy Bleiler came forward with the claim that she had stalked him. The Washington state school teacher also contended that Lewinsky wanted to become a White House intern so she could perform oral sex on then-President Clinton. "I'm going to Washington to get my presidential knee pads," Bleiler's lawyer, Terry Giles, quoted Lewinsky as saying.

"Anthony Pellicano, the L.A.-based private investigator and O.J. defense team veteran [was] responsible for digging up Andy Bleiler," the New York Post's Andrea Peyser reported days later.

Sexgate provocatuer Lucianne Goldberg told Peyser that Pellicano's services were bought and paid for by the Clinton White House. When Peyser confronted the Los Angeles private detective with Goldberg's claim, he didn't deny it. "You're a smart girl. No comment," Pellicano told the Post reporter.

Digging up Bleiler's "presidential kneepads" story wasn't the first time Pellicano had gone to bat for the Clintons. According to Ron Kessler's 1995 best-seller, "Inside the White House," Clinton's first presidential campaign relied on Pellicano's expertise in the field of audio analysis to discredit Gennifer Flowers' smoking gun tapes. "The Clinton camp made much of the fact that Anthony J. Pellicano, an expert on audio recording analysis, had told the press that a twelve-minute portion of the tape of conversations between Flowers and Clinton had been 'selectively edited' at two points," Kessler reported.

To counter Pellicano's claims, Flowers submitted her recordings to Truth Verification Labs, which found them to be 100 percent authentic. In 1999 Flowers filed a defamation suit against Clinton campaign officials James Carville and George Stephanopoulos - along with then-first lady Hillary Clinton - based on their attempts to use Pellicano's analysis to discredit her.

The Clinton-Gore campaign had two more on retainer to smash ''bimbo eruptions.'' One was Anthony Pellicano of Los Angeles and the other was Jack Palladino of San Francisco.

More than likely, bringing Lenzner into the White House fold was also Hillary's idea.

She and Lenzner go way back. They worked on the Watergate hearings. They also served on the board of Legal Services Corp. and have a mutual friend in Mickey Kantor, another Legal Services veteran.

Willey claims that, on the eve of her January 1998 deposition in the Jones sexual harassment case, a strange jogger approached her near her home and asked her about her punctured car tires and her kids and lost cat - by name. ''Get the message?'' he said. She's since picked the man out of a photo with Clinton.

Despite the threat, Willey went on to testify - though without much candor - that Clinton forced himself on her in the Oval Office. Starr later gave her a lie detector test, which she passed. Clinton denied her charges before a grand jury.

Appearing last week on CNBC's ''Hardball,'' Willey would not name the jogger, saying Starr is still investigating the case. But the next night, host Chris Matthews identified him as Brooke Shearer's twin brother.

Cody Shearer worked as a subcontractor for IGI on at least one case, Milton says. In 1992, he was charged with digging up dirt on President Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle. (Shearer is reportedly close to Vice President Al Gore's fund-raiser pal, Peter Knight.)

On CNBC's ''Rivera Live'' last week, Lenzner denied Shearer ever worked for him.

But under oath during his May 1998 Judicial Watch deposition, Lenzner admitted Shearer ''was a subcontractor on one job for us.''

(Mary)Matalin said she first noticed something was amiss when the Clinton campaign announced publicly that there were 19 women who would likely claim some sort of relationship with the Democratic candidate.

"I controlled the money in the [1992 Bush] campaign," Matalin explained. "And [Clinton damage controller] Betsy Wright announced that she was putting $28,000 on the 'bimbo' patrol and on Jack Palladino and Pellicano, the other guy.

"And $28,000 to me, the political director, was four states in the Rocky Mountains. You had a limited budget. I said, how could they spend this much money? How could they basically give up four states to track down 'bimbos'?

"That's why it was kind of shocking to me that it must have been a bigger priority than putting money into states for the purpose of winning and that's why I flagged it at the time. I don't even remember how many or what kind of women."

However, even though Pellicano's tapes and letters offered smoking-gun proof of the Clinton campaign's heavy-handed attempts to silence the future president's ex-girlfriends, then-President Bush refused to use the damaging info to save his re-election bid.

Matalin explained: "When I went to my boss in the campaign with this information and then they went to Bush, Bush himself called me up and said, 'I don't want to hear it. Don't even tell me what you have. Throw it all out,'" she told her radio audience.

Luckily for Mr. Pellicano - not to mention Bill and Hillary Clinton - Mary Matalin did as she was told.

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