18
THE MAN FROM BRAZIL
“Michael Costa Giroux” was living quietly in Saquarema, Brazil, on its Atlantic coast, along with his girlfriend, Marcia. Not a native Brazilian, Giroux spoke English and made money by teaching that language, and taking care of people’s dogs. He was handsome, tanned and had a certain confident air about him. The city was a lovely beachside resort that catered to many people from Rio de Janeiro who came to the coast for relaxation and to escape city life.
Giroux and his seven months pregnant girlfriend lived in a yellow house with a high fence around it, and they mostly kept to themselves. Neighbor Walma Lindberg da Silva said that Giroux “always had his head down, and wore caps, even inside his house. I told my husband I thought there was something wrong with him.” Giroux could often be seen jogging along the beach with his two pet pit bulls. He never seemed to work very much, rather he jogged around with his pit bull dogs, and could be seen lifting weights and generally taking it easy.
Even though Giroux tried keeping a low profile, he seemed to have an explosive temper, and he would sometimes argue with bar owners over his bar tab. He just couldn’t seem to let even insignificant things go, if he felt slighted or taken advantage of. Giroux went from bar to bar, and at a bar near his house, he seemed to be the most talkative and expansive. One patron later said, “We kidded him. Are you Mike, like in Mike Tyson?”
Giroux responded, “No, Mike Tyson uses his fists to defeat his opponents. I use a baseball bat to defeat mine.”
Mike seemed to like hanging out in bars a lot. In fact, Mike had met his girlfriend, Marcia Reis, at a singles bar in Rio de Janeiro. She was more than ten years older, but he seemed to be attracted to her from the start. She recalled, “When I met him, I thought he was very young. I thought he was a little lost. He had a lot to drink.” When she asked him why he had come to Brazil, he answered that he’d come there to study. Mike had apparently come to Brazil from Canada.
March 8, 2005, was just like any other day in Saquarema—soft breezes blew off the Atlantic, and the surf boomed on the shoreline. Giroux and his girlfriend, Marcia, were sitting at an outdoor table at a shopping mall in the city, enjoying a quiet morning. A woman walked toward them, smiling, and called out Giroux’s name. As he stood to greet her, the woman unexpectedly told him that she was an undercover policewoman.
Suddenly, without any warning, men in sunglasses and suits walked up and, without any preamble, told Giroux that he was under arrest. As they led him away in handcuffs, the woman shouted, “My son! My son! I have a son with him!” But, in fact, there was no Michael Costa Giroux—that was only an alias for Jesse James Hollywood, who had been hiding out in Saquarema for years.
Marcia Reis later told Dateline NBC, “With me, he was wonderful. He was very sweet and tender. He was very caring, attentive. Everything I wanted, he would get. He was always with me, kissing my feet, my hands.”
At the moment, however, there was no hand kissing. Jesse James Hollywood was escorted in a police vehicle to Rio de Janeiro, where it was obvious he only had a limited speaking ability of Portuguese. Even though he still tried to claim that he was Michael Giroux, the detectives confirmed that his identification card was a fake. After about two hours of interrogation, he finally admitted that he was, indeed, Jesse James Hollywood.
Just how the authorities knew that Jesse Hollywood was there was its own lengthy and byzantine tale. The FBI had been monitoring phone calls from Jesse’s parents for years, and by the middle of 2002, they were fairly sure that Jesse was in Brazil, due to a fluky incident that had occurred concerning one of Jesse’s relatives who had just happened to pick Brazil as a vacation spot, not knowing that Jesse was hiding out there. The FBI sent photos and video images of Jesse to Brazilian authorities, and these authorities started keeping an eye out for him. As luck would have it, they did discover Jesse James Hollywood in Brazil.
As time went on, according to law enforcement reports, there were more phone calls from Hollywood’s family to Jesse, which were monitored. It was also learned that Jack Hollywood was sending his son $1,200 a month. That was an ironic amount to say the least, since it had been a $1,200 debt by Ryan Hoyt that had turned him into a killer. A sting operation was set up with Brazilian authorities wherein Jesse’s cousin was supposed to meet him at an outdoor mall in Saquarema. Marcia Reis said later that Jesse got a phone call from a female cousin he hadn’t seen in years, and she would be visiting Brazil and “Mike” decided to meet her at the small seaside café. In fact, there would be no meeting of cousins, only a team of law enforcement ready to nab him.
Brazilian agent Kelly Bernardo, the woman decoy, later told Dateline NBC, “At first, when I approached him, he got up as if he knew me. He was surprised as I approached him, and as authorities told him he was under arrest. He kept saying he was someone else. Michael Giroux.”
Jesse Hollywood might have thought he was safe in Brazil, because they had no extradition treaty with the United States, but he was not quite as clever as he thought. The thing that tripped him up was that he was in Brazil using false identification, and since he was in the country illegally, that was grounds for extradition. He’d even supposedly been told (source not revealed) to follow in the footsteps of train robber Ronnie Biggs and have a child by a Brazilian woman. That way he couldn’t be deported, if caught. At least that’s what Jesse Hollywood thought. But even this ploy did not work. Deported to the United States, Jesse Hollywood was immediately arrested at the Los Angeles International Airport on the warrant that had been written in August 2000.
On the same day that Jesse Hollywood was arrested, his father was also arrested on suspicion of possessing an illegal substance. Not only was Jack Hollywood in trouble in Los Angeles County, but in Arizona as well, and that incident was going to be a lot more troublesome for Jack in the days to come than the California problem.
Within a very short time period, Jesse Hollywood had obtained the services of defense lawyer James Blatt. The same James Blatt who had been Jack Hollywood’s lawyer when Jack spoke to the grand jury in 2000. In Jesse Hollywood’s arraignment at Santa Barbara Superior Court—where Hoyt, Rugge, Skidmore and Pressley had been before him at their arraignments—Jesse Hollywood wore an orange jail jumpsuit. Two of the people in court to see him were Jeff and Susan Markowitz. Susan told reporters, “I would like to have gotten a closer look at him. You would hope by looking at our faces, there would be some pain in his heart and some stirring of emotions, but I doubt it.”
James Blatt also made a short statement to reporters: “Like any other criminal defendant facing the possibility of a death penalty, he’s very concerned. I’m not saying anything at this time in reference to the case, except that perceptions could be misleading. It’s clear that Mr. Hollywood was not the shooter. He was not present at the scene. So the key determination is whether he gave the instructions for this unfortunate murder.”
Jesse James Hollywood for his part pled “not guilty” at his arraignment. He maintained his innocence in the whole affair and put out the perception that Ryan Hoyt was a loose cannon who had instigated the murder on his own behalf in a misguided attempt to please Hollywood and gain status.
Just where Jesse had been living for years was soon portrayed in a Santa Barbara News-Press article by Hildy Medina. She noted that Saquarema was a city of fifty thousand people on the coast, about fifty miles from Rio de Janeiro—blessed with exotic beaches, and popular with surfers who held major surfing competitions there each year. A prime getaway spot for Rio de Janeiro citizens, tour guide Rafael Torres Lopes described it as “a very beautiful and wild locale. You can compare it to the beaches in Sydney, Australia. It’s very European and modern. It’s a perfect getaway from the hassles of city living.”
Many Rio residents had second homes in Saquarema, and real estate was very affordable. A modern three-bedroom home near the beach with a swimming pool could be had for $400 to $500 a month. Since Jack Hollywood was allegedly sending Jesse $1,200 a month, he could have lived very well off that amount. Jesse was teaching English in Saquarema, and he had a usable amount of Portuguese. Torres said that with the amount of money Jesse had, “he could have lived like a millionaire in Saquarema.”
Jack Hollywood’s own problems mushroomed by the spring of 2005. LAPD officers, state drug enforcement agents and a fugitive warrant team barged their way into his Sherman Oaks residence and arrested him that spring, and he was booked into the Los Angeles County Jail for intent to manufacture methamphetamine. However, charges weren’t strong enough at that time, so prosecutors did not charge him.
There were other things in the works against him, however, and Jack was facing an indictment from Arizona that alleged he was into drug smuggling. During the grand jury hearing of 2000, Ron Zonen had called Jack Hollywood a “mobster” and “big-time San Fernando Valley drug dealer.” According to newspaper accounts the indictment in Arizona concerned the allegation that Jack Hollywood had tried shipping several pounds of marijuana to that state via FedEx. Richard Wintory, an assistant Pima County attorney, said, “It’s not a huge amount of pot, but it’s enough to trigger mandatory prison time.” All of this came about because an Arizona narcotics enforcement task force, nicknamed the “Box Squad,” found two FedEx boxes stuffed with marijuana allegedly sent by Jack Hollywood to someone in that state. When Jack was arrested, agents discovered that he had packing slips connected to those two boxes.
By 2005, Jack Hollywood said that he was an automobile wholesaler, as well as someone who ran a baseball card shop and restaurant. He had recently been divorced from Laurie, and said that he presently had no income. Jack was not in custody at Jesse’s arraignment, so he went to court with his ex-wife, Laurie. Across the aisle Jeff and Susan Markowitz sat with Nick’s half sister, Leah. As they waited for Jesse Hollywood to appear and enter a plea, Jeff Markowitz leaned across the aisle and whispered to Jack, “I thought you were in jail!” Jack Hollywood did not respond.
An interesting article about Jack Hollywood also came out in the Santa Barbara News-Press by journalist Scott Hadley, who had been reporting on all the main characters of the Jesse James Hollywood saga for years. Hadley spoke of Jack playing a “cat and mouse” game with detectives ever since August 2000. According to Hadley, law enforcement and drug agents had tailed Jack Hollywood, monitored his e-mails and tapped his phones. But Jack would go out one door of a building, circle around and go another way before getting in his car. At other times he would go into a covered parking garage, slip into another vehicle than the one he had driven into the garage, then drive away undetected.
Jack was tracked to an overlook of the San Fernando Valley on one occasion, but he had a dozen prepaid digital phones in his car, making calls difficult to track. According to a law enforcement source, Jack would make calls to arrange shipments of marijuana from British Columbia to airports around the Los Angeles region.
When Hadley spoke with Jack Hollywood about Jesse, Jack told him, “He’s generous and a good person. He did not kill that kid.”
Defense lawyer James Blatt was Jesse Hollywood’s one big hope to evade Ryan Hoyt’s fate in a first-degree murder trial—in other words, the death penalty. Blatt had received his B.A. degree from UCLA in 1970, and a Juris Doctor degree from Loyola University in 1973. He was named “Lawyer of the Year for Southern California,” and his Web site was named Raising the Standard in Criminal Defense.
If the previous trials had gone fairly smoothly for the prosecution, that would not be the case with anything concerning the trial of Jesse James Hollywood. For one thing, the FBI and the Santa Barbara Regional Narcotics Enforcement Team (SBRNET) were refusing to give up key documents to the prosecution about individuals who were involved in the surveillance of and arrest of Jesse Hollywood in Brazil. The FBI and SBRNET claimed that to do so would endanger their sources.
Ron Zonen, on the other hand, said that it was vital to have this information before a jury to show how and why Jesse had been collared in Brazil, and how he had been supported there illegally by his father, Jack. Zonen noted that when Jesse was arrested in Brazil, he’d answered to a different name, had Brazilian identification in that name, along with a photo, and spoke Portuguese. Zonen stated, “The people intend to introduce evidence of defendant Hollywood’s flight to Brazil and the extraordinary efforts made by him to reinvent himself as a Brazilian, including his acquisition of a new identity and a facility in a new language.”
Zonen said that SBRNET could redact portions of documents that concerned confidential sources. Zonen added that SBRNET detective Mark Valencia had taken photos of the identification card that Jesse had while in Brazil, and Zonen was worried that Brazilian authorities may have destroyed the original identifications since the arrest. Zonen once again said that the source who had helped supply information on Jesse Hollywood would not be revealed, but “the People seek to introduce into evidence the photos of the identification documents. Therefore, the circumstances of his arrest will be relevant to the issue of the admissibility of the photographs.”
One thing hurting Ron Zonen’s cause by this point, however, was the fact that Mike Mehas and Nick Cassavetes, in their quest to gather information about the upcoming film Alpha Dog, received some documents from Ron Zonen that should have remained sealed, and not been turned over to individuals who were not in law enforcement. Perhaps already knowing of this aspect, Detective Mark Valencia, who was a member of SBRNET, was totally against any information from his team being handed over to Ron Zonen.
Detective Valencia did note that in May 2004, he had been assigned to assist in the Jesse Hollywood investigation, particularly on his whereabouts at the time. Valencia related to a judge that “as a result of my investigation, information was obtained which relates to ongoing investigations into criminal conduct which are continuing to be pursued by various law enforcement agencies. There are outstanding suspects in those cases, and to disclose any information would allow those cases to be compromised, and suspects may seek to evade apprehension.”
Detective Valencia added that confidential witnesses could be placed in danger if the information that Zonen requested was granted. One informant had already been the subject of a death threat. Detective Valencia said that all the information concerning Jesse James Hollywood in the documents was “intertwined” with other cases, and those familiar with those cases could piece together information and deduce “identities of informants and suspects.”
The county counsel for SBRNET got involved in this matter and wrote up a document requesting that the judge not grant Zonen’s request. This document stated: The identity of informants are privileged from disclosure and neither party is entitled to records of an un-related on-going investigation. It also stated, The prosecution had made an inadequate showing for the requested information.
While all this played out, there were problems with the film Alpha Dog, and those problems were coming back to haunt DDA Ron Zonen. Alpha Dog was heading for the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, and in its progress the New York Times noted that Mr. Cassavetes tossed several days and about $500,000 worth of film, and added some more, to tailor his thinly veiled story—about a tough-talking marijuana dealer named Johnny Truelove, played by Emile Hirsch—to the newly changing facts. A big problem had been that Jesse James Hollywood was no longer in hiding, he was in jail awaiting trial and had a defense lawyer. The ending of the film Alpha Dog had to be revised.
Because of all the publicity surrounding the making of Alpha Dog, and DDA Zonen’s cooperation with the filmmakers, there now began a war of words between James Blatt and Ron Zonen, with profound legal implications on the case concerning Jesse James Hollywood. Blatt declared before Judge Brian Hill, who was handling Jesse Hollywood’s case, that an investigation was in progress against his client, and that it was necessary for him to have discovery rights of all that material. Blatt got to the heart of the matter by saying that he’d recently had a telephone conversation with Nick Cassavetes, on June 15, 2005, and Cassavetes told him that he was a screenwriter and director of the movie and that filming had been completed and postproduction was done as well. Cassavetes hoped for the movie to be released in theaters by December 2005 or January 2006.
Cassavetes then told Blatt that he’d talked with Jesse Rugge, William Skidmore and Graham Pressley, and had received letters from Ryan Hoyt. Cassavetes had also met with numerous witnesses in the case and spoken with them. Cassavetes said that back in April 2003 he’d met with Ron Zonen and asked him for material concerning the case. Zonen and certain law enforcement officers had even gone with Cassavetes up to Lizard’s Mouth to view the killing and burial site of Nick Markowitz. Cassavetes then gave Blatt seventeen audiotapes that had been turned over by Zonen to coscreenwriter Michael Mehas.
Wanting to know exactly what Mehas’s role was in all of this, Blatt met with him, and Mehas said that he’d talked in person to Ron Zonen in April 2003. At that meeting Zonen handed over trial transcripts, all of which were public record. From June 2003 through February 2005, a month before Jesse James Hollywood’s arrest, Mehas had met with Zonen on a regular basis.
Blatt told Judge Hill, “The researcher (Mehas) advised me that during the time referenced, the researcher obtained access to the entire Santa Barbara Deputy District Attorney’s Office file in this prosecution, and further stated he had been informed by Mr. Zonen that this access was made with Santa Barbara County district attorney Tom Sneddon’s knowledge. The researcher (Mehas) described his access, with permission, to the Santa Barbara District Attorney’s Office file room, where all the case materials were located. The researcher stated he was provided access to computer disks, photographs, audio recordings, video recordings, still photographs, law enforcement reports, psychological evaluations, probation reports and criminal history reports. The researcher stated these items of evidence were stored in boxes, which he was permitted to remove without supervision from the Santa Barbara District Attorney’s Office.”
According to Blatt, it wasn’t until February 2005 that Ron Zonen requested that Mehas return all the material. Among the material Mehas had were law enforcement investigative reports, photos of the removal of Nick Markowitz’s body and videos of “strip searches” of Hoyt, Rugge and Skidmore. This kind of material was not usually granted to journalists. Mehas also had a copy of Ron Zonen’s trial notebook, which was another item not usually granted to the view of journalists. Blatt stated, “The researcher advised me that in addition to his access to prosecution files, there occurred numerous discussions between the researcher and Mr. Zonen regarding witness and codefendant character, motivation and demeanor.”
Blatt declared that he was going to serve Nick Cassavetes and Michael Mehas with subpoenas for them to appear in a court hearing to tell of these serious matters. Blatt also let it be known that he wanted Ron Zonen removed from the case for what he deemed as overstepping the bounds of what a DDA could do.
Ron Zonen argued back to Judge Hill that he had initially been approached by Nick Cassavetes, who was making a film based on the Jesse James Hollywood case, and that Cassavetes wanted material that would help in making the film. Zonen said he met in person with Cassavetes three times and spoke with him on the phone a half-dozen times. Zonen also stated that Detective Mike West took Cassavetes and Mehas up to Lizard’s Mouth, but according to Zonen, he did not do a crime reenactment, as Blatt claimed they had done. Then Zonen said, “Unlike the defendant’s father, Jack Hollywood, who consulted on the same film for money, I did not request, accept or receive any compensation for my consultation. I asked only that Jesse Hollywood’s picture be shown at the conclusion of the film, along with a phone number to call with information as to his whereabouts. I asked that the audience be told that Hollywood remained a fugitive and that there was a reward for his arrest.”
The news media picked up on this new angle in the Jesse James Hollywood story, and the Santa Barbara News-Press reported James Blatt as saying: “We’re very concerned about what happened. We don’t feel it is appropriate for the District Attorney’s Office to be involved in creating a major motion picture on a pending capital murder case. I’m not aware of this ever happening before.”
Prior to a hearing on these matters, Jack Hollywood pled guilty on drug charges in Tucson, Arizona. Pima County Superior Court judge Howard Hantman asked Jack Hollywood if he understood what he was admitting to, and he said that he did. The judge then asked him to describe what it was that he had done. Jack said he’d driven to Tucson in July 2003 to meet a man, whose name he didn’t know; the man took his car and later returned with marijuana in the car. Jack paid the man for the marijuana and planned to sell and distribute it later. Judge Hantman agreed to delay the start of Jack’s prison term so that he could spend Thanksgiving with his family and attend a hearing in Jesse James Hollywood’s case in Santa Barbara.
Looking tired and dejected, Jack Hollywood told reporters outside the courtroom in Tucson, “I guess I’m going to be here for a while.” Looking further into the charges against Jack, a reporter discovered that the indictment stated that Jack Hollywood had tried to smuggle fifty pounds of marijuana and had been stopped by the California Highway Patrol (CHP) right after he crossed the Arizona/California state line. The CHP officers had responded to a request by California narcotics officers who had placed a tracking device on Jack Hollywood’s car.
Before the upcoming hearings about the film Alpha Dog, Nick Cassavetes and Mike Mehas quit their collaboration with James Blatt. Mehas related later that he didn’t want Ron Zonen to get into trouble because of the research he had been doing. Cassavetes told a reporter, “Mr. Mehas indicated to me he is reluctant to continue to cooperate with Jesse James Hollywood’s attorney, James Blatt, due to his fear that such cooperation may lead to criminal charges filed against Mr. Zonen.” This noncooperation with James Blatt, however, was about to cause its own set of problems for the filmmakers and Ron Zonen.
By this point Zonen conceded that he may have inadvertently shared information that he shouldn’t have, including rap sheets, witnesses’ phone numbers and probation reports. Zonen said he didn’t know that material was in the boxes that contained files and documents that were not okay for Mehas and Cassavetes to review. Zonen admitted to possibly an error in judgment, but nothing criminal to the extent that he should be recused from the case.
Whether they liked it or not, however, both Cassavetes and Mehas were now a part of the legal process in a case that they were depicting on film. Both had to cite their involvement with Ron Zonen, and Cassavetes made a lengthy declaration before the court. He stated how he, Michael Mehas and Kevin Connolly, the film’s original director, had met with Zonen to discuss making a movie about the events surrounding Nick Markowitz’s death. Cassavetes said he asked Zonen for information about the homicide, and that Zonen would provide them with transcripts from the trials and other material they could use in researching the case for the film.
Once the project got under way, Zonen took Mehas, Kevin Connolly, Heather Wahlquist, Chuck Pacheco and Nick Cassavetes up to the Lizard’s Mouth area and showed them the location of where the events had taken place. Cassavetes and the others started to videotape the area, but halfway through the process, the camera’s batteries no longer worked. Cassavetes explained that Zonen described the killing while at Lizard’s Mouth, but it was not a reenactment. Cassavetes talked to Zonen there, while Mehas spoke with Detective West. As far as the district attorney’s files went, Cassavetes said that Mehas was excited about the amount and quality of the materials they had received.
Cassavetes related that he did remember seeing photos of Nick Markowitz’s body and some people who had no clothes on, and these may have been “strip search photos” of Hoyt, Skidmore and Rugge. Zonen had discussed with Cassavetes about Ryan Hoyt’s family life. Cassavetes asked Zonen about his feelings for the case in general, and according to Cassavetes, Zonen told him, “These were a bunch of stoned, dumb guys.”
Nick Cassavetes did say that he was never aware whether Ron Zonen had told District Attorney Sneddon about the material he was giving to Mehas and himself. And Cassavetes added that even though he tried talking to sheriff’s deputies about the case, they were much more closemouthed about the events of the murder. Cassavetes acknowledged that Zonen’s cooperation was what he would describe as “enthusiastic.”
Nick Cassavetes admitted that the movie Alpha Dog could have been made without Zonen’s help, but that it “would have been worse.” It would have taken a lot more time to dig up the information, and the final cut would have been very different. Cassavetes said he was comfortable with bringing the film to Santa Barbara and showing it to whoever needed to see it.
One of the more interesting comments Nick Cassavetes made to the court was when he said that Mehas had spoken to Zonen, who had expressed concern that his involvement in the movie might get him prosecuted. Mehas said he didn’t want to deal with Hollywood’s attorneys if it was going to cause that kind of trouble for anyone.
This last statement generated a whole new problem for the court, Ron Zonen and James Blatt—Michael Mehas legally could not withhold information that was relevant to Blatt’s defense of Jesse James Hollywood. To put up a defense for Hollywood, Blatt needed to know just how far the situation had gone between Zonen and Mehas, and exactly what material had been handed over to Mehas.
James Blatt was less than pleased with this new revelation and stated that on October 13, 2005, he received a digital video disc from Heather Wahlquist, who was an assistant in the creation of Alpha Dog. Wahlquist had made this video while accompanying Zonen, Detective West, Nick Cassavetes, Michael Mehas and Chuck Pacheco in Santa Barbara. The initial scenes on the video disc were of these people up at and around Lizard’s Mouth. Zonen could be seen on the video discussing his theories about how Nick Markowitz was brought up there, the position of Nick’s body, how he was hit with a shovel and how he was shot. Zonen spoke of Hoyt having an IQ in the 70s.
On the video Zonen also discussed his trial and retrial strategy for Graham Pressley’s trials, aspects of various witnesses, his opinion of lawyer Stephen Hogg and speculation about how the feud between Ben Markowitz and Jesse James Hollywood had incited the kidnapping. Zonen also discussed aspects of Jack Hollywood and efforts to apprehend Jesse James Hollywood. At the very end of the video were images of Cassavetes and Mehas taking material from the district attorney’s office, and they seemed to be very pleased. In fact, Cassavetes can be heard saying on the disc, “The guy (Zonen) said anything we needed.... Boy, I shouldn’t be saying this on tape . . . anything we needed he would give us, but we have to say, ‘We had to talk to the Markowitz woman first,’ and if anything came out, I just have to say, ‘The Markowitz woman told me.’”
This was a very important point—one way of interpreting this was to think that Ron Zonen had told Cassavetes to lie if ever asked how he had obtained so much information. The other way of looking at it was that Zonen had said this was a way of giving credit to Susan Markowitz, and not himself, and nothing illegal had taken place in this exchange.
Within days Blatt put forward a motion with Judge Hill to recuse Ron Zonen from prosecuting the case against Jesse James Hollywood, but Zonen wasn’t taking it lying down. Zonen stated why he had initially been so enthusiastic about a film being produced on the case, and added that Jack Hollywood had been vital in helping Jesse escape and had been under intense surveillance in that regard. In fact, Zonen said, Jack’s activities had helped Jesse stay underground for years, making it very hard to apprehend him. Jack often engaged in countersurveillance tactics, such as driving forward and backward, going around the block a few times and making frequent turns. According to Zonen, detectives spent countless hours contacting various people, checking phone numbers and driving around certain areas when rumors surfaced that Jesse Hollywood was back in town. Jack’s phones were tapped, but he bought disposable cell phones with prepaid minutes to get around this. The FBI had to employ special equipment to identify just what phones Jack was using. In fact, on one given day, Jack used three separate phones. Wiretaps did give useful information about Jack’s drug dealing, according to Zonen, but not to the whereabouts of Jesse Hollywood. Zonen said, “I saw this as the last opportunity to get the kind of widespread publicity necessary to locate defendant Hollywood and bring him to justice.”
Zonen brought up another interesting point. He said that after September 11, 2001, much of the FBI’s surveillance turned to counterterrorist operations, and he could no longer count on the amount of time spent by the FBI in helping him on the Jesse Hollywood matter. Zonen added that DA Sneddon did not know about his dealings with Cassavetes and Mehas.
When Ron Zonen actually attended a viewing of Alpha Dog, he said, “The film opens with a deluge of profanity, alcohol, drugs and rap music, and follows that format until the end. They affect the type of dialogue one would expect from stoned, uneducated, unemployable losers. The movie will have no appeal to the forty-and-over audience who make up the majority of our venue (for prospective jurors).”
Zonen added that the movie followed events of the actual case in only the most general way, and everyone’s name had been changed, as well as locations. Most of the events in the film took place in and around Palm Springs, substituting it for the real locations in Santa Barbara. When the Jesse Hollywood–type character runs from the area, he goes to see a friend in New Mexico, not Colorado. Zonen also noted the fictional aspects in the film of the Nick Markowitz character having sex in a pool with two young women, and the Ben character beating up a whole room of thugs. These events had never occurred in real life. Zonen said that from what he saw in the movie, all the facts could have been gained from public documents that were down at the courthouse. Nothing in the film, according to Zonen, was either prejudicial or gathered from material that was off-limits. At the end of the film was a disclaimer: For the purpose of dramatization, names, locations and the circumstances of the events have been changed, modified and created and dialogue invented.
As far as Pressley and Rugge being caught on videotape in what Cassavetes termed a “strip search,” that is not what occurred, according to Zonen. He said at the end of their interviews, these two changed from street clothing into jail clothing. Supposedly, both Rugge and Pressley kept their underwear on during this process, and it was not a strip search at all.
Zonen added that no original exhibits or actual evidence items were ever given to the filmmakers, and they received only copies of reports, transcripts, photos and tapes. Zonen noted that James Blatt had also seen a version of Alpha Dog, and knew that no names of the participants, including Jesse James Hollywood, were mentioned in the film. Nothing new was revealed that hadn’t already been in the area newspapers and on television. And as far as Zonen perhaps writing a book about the case one day, that was not prejudicial, he said. He also said he thought about writing a book about the David Anderson case—the murder of a Montecito millionaire whose skeleton was found in the mountains near Ojai, and he even thought of writing a book about his experiences in the Michael Jackson trial.
Judge Hill eventually heard testimony by Nick Cassavetes and Mike Mehas in a hearing on the matter, and ruled that Ron Zonen had not overstepped his bounds as a prosecutor, and that Jesse James Hollywood could still get a fair trial in Santa Barbara County. Judge Hill added that he couldn’t find any evidence that Ron Zonen had done anything that amounted to a conflict of interest. Judge Hill stated, “I do not find a scintilla of evidence that he (Zonen) had a financial stake or improperly utilized a criminal proceeding.”
After this hearing, however, it was plain that both James Blatt, and cocounsel Alex Kessel were not giving up on this issue. Blatt told reporters, “Sometimes it’s not the crime, but the cover-up.” Blatt said that all of this was more than just Mehas not wanting to talk to him. According to Blatt, it was that Mehas had quit talking to him because that’s what Ron Zonen wanted. At least this was Blatt’s take on matters.
And now things wandered into First Amendment rights versus rights to a fair trial. Michael Mehas was ordered to testify on the stand and possibly give up his notes on what had occurred. He vigorously objected to this, saying that everything he had gathered was a part of his “work product” and guaranteed privacy.
Since Ron Zonen was under a cloud at this point, Senior Deputy District Attorney Joyce Dudley was handling the prosecution’s side of this argument. The defense kept insisting there was wrongdoing by Zonen, who they claimed forced Mehas to quit cooperating with the defense as far as discovery material was concerned. Jesse James Hollywood’s defense team was about to seek higher authority on the rulings, and they went to an appellate court. If need be, they were determined to go all the way to the state supreme court or even to the United States Supreme Court.