Sex Scandel Rocks Jonesy's Jukebox
Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 12:55 pm
Here, this is a great story, If you havent been listening to Jonesy he has been talking about this on his show.
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Published: 28 February 2007
Heidi Fleiss always kept the names of her celebrity clients a secret. But Jody Gibson, the Hollywood madam who picked up much of Fleiss's business after she was jailed, is about to tell all - naming two dozen figures from the worlds of entertainment, politics, business and sport she claims were clients of the worldwide prostitution service she called California Dreamin'.
Gibson, known as Babydol or Sasha, is about to publish an autobiography entitled Secrets of a Hollywood SuperMadam in which she opens her "trick book" wide open. The same information has emerged through recently unsealed files from her 2000 trial, in which she was convicted of running a prostitution racket. She served 22 months of a three-year sentence.
Already, the denials and threats of libel suits have started flying. "The story is a complete fabrication," said Marty Singer, one of Hollywood's toughest legal sharks speaking on behalf of his client Bruce Willis.
"I have never heard of this woman and don't know why she would accuse me something like this," said a lawyer for Tommy Lasorda, a legendary, teddy-bear like figure in baseball and the former manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Chuck Philips, a veteran Los Angeles Times reporter who discovered the unsealed file in the records of the Los Angeles Superior Court, talked to several of the high-profile names and heard a variety of denials, expressions of bafflement and at least one teasingly vague semi-admission.
"It's possible," Steve Jones, the Sex Pistol turned DJ, told him. "I crossed paths with her back then. She was a madam, but if I remember right she wanted to be a singer in a band."
Ben Barnes, a former lieutenant governor of Texas, said he had no idea how his mobile phone number, which still works, ended up in Gibson's files, and claimed he had never met her. Steve Roth, a producer responsible for the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Last Action Hero, also had his mobile phone number in the trick book. Told by Mr Philips that he was listed as a client of Gibson, he responded, "Is that right?", and hung up.
Roth is one of two men named in the file who contributed to the Los Angeles district attorney's re-election fund in 2000, a fact that Gibson's lawyers tried to use at trial as a way to dismiss the entire thing. The judge, however, kept proceedings on a very tight lead. He withheld the "trick book" evidence from public view and refused to allow Gibson to tell the court that she had had an affair with a Beverly Hills policeman who, according to her, had shielded her from prosecution for years. And the judge also disallowed evidence from the undercover policeman who caught her in a sting operation and had perhaps just a little too much fun doing it.
As laid out in the court papers at the time, the undercover officer hired two of Gibson's girls on taxpayers' money, stripped naked on both occasions and accepted back rubs and other physical favours before making his arrests.
Gibson ran California Dreamin' from a hotel in the San Fernando Valley, the suburban sprawl north of the Hollywood Hills which is also home to America's biggest porn film industry. She charged clients as much as $1,000 a night, keeping 40 per cent of the proceeds for herself, according to the court testimony.
Gibson had ambitions to be a singer, as Jones correctly recalled, releasing a single entitled "Good Girls Go To Heaven, Bad Girls Go Anywhere". It was not a success, despite heavy promotion on Los Angeles advertising boards. The trial judge, listening to her story of trying to break into the music business, called her "tragic and pathetic". She also tried to set up a deal with a music producer called Joseph Isgro, who subsequently pleaded guilty to charges of extortion in a music business kick-back scandal involving the Gambino mafia family.
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Published: 28 February 2007
Heidi Fleiss always kept the names of her celebrity clients a secret. But Jody Gibson, the Hollywood madam who picked up much of Fleiss's business after she was jailed, is about to tell all - naming two dozen figures from the worlds of entertainment, politics, business and sport she claims were clients of the worldwide prostitution service she called California Dreamin'.
Gibson, known as Babydol or Sasha, is about to publish an autobiography entitled Secrets of a Hollywood SuperMadam in which she opens her "trick book" wide open. The same information has emerged through recently unsealed files from her 2000 trial, in which she was convicted of running a prostitution racket. She served 22 months of a three-year sentence.
Already, the denials and threats of libel suits have started flying. "The story is a complete fabrication," said Marty Singer, one of Hollywood's toughest legal sharks speaking on behalf of his client Bruce Willis.
"I have never heard of this woman and don't know why she would accuse me something like this," said a lawyer for Tommy Lasorda, a legendary, teddy-bear like figure in baseball and the former manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Chuck Philips, a veteran Los Angeles Times reporter who discovered the unsealed file in the records of the Los Angeles Superior Court, talked to several of the high-profile names and heard a variety of denials, expressions of bafflement and at least one teasingly vague semi-admission.
"It's possible," Steve Jones, the Sex Pistol turned DJ, told him. "I crossed paths with her back then. She was a madam, but if I remember right she wanted to be a singer in a band."
Ben Barnes, a former lieutenant governor of Texas, said he had no idea how his mobile phone number, which still works, ended up in Gibson's files, and claimed he had never met her. Steve Roth, a producer responsible for the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Last Action Hero, also had his mobile phone number in the trick book. Told by Mr Philips that he was listed as a client of Gibson, he responded, "Is that right?", and hung up.
Roth is one of two men named in the file who contributed to the Los Angeles district attorney's re-election fund in 2000, a fact that Gibson's lawyers tried to use at trial as a way to dismiss the entire thing. The judge, however, kept proceedings on a very tight lead. He withheld the "trick book" evidence from public view and refused to allow Gibson to tell the court that she had had an affair with a Beverly Hills policeman who, according to her, had shielded her from prosecution for years. And the judge also disallowed evidence from the undercover policeman who caught her in a sting operation and had perhaps just a little too much fun doing it.
As laid out in the court papers at the time, the undercover officer hired two of Gibson's girls on taxpayers' money, stripped naked on both occasions and accepted back rubs and other physical favours before making his arrests.
Gibson ran California Dreamin' from a hotel in the San Fernando Valley, the suburban sprawl north of the Hollywood Hills which is also home to America's biggest porn film industry. She charged clients as much as $1,000 a night, keeping 40 per cent of the proceeds for herself, according to the court testimony.
Gibson had ambitions to be a singer, as Jones correctly recalled, releasing a single entitled "Good Girls Go To Heaven, Bad Girls Go Anywhere". It was not a success, despite heavy promotion on Los Angeles advertising boards. The trial judge, listening to her story of trying to break into the music business, called her "tragic and pathetic". She also tried to set up a deal with a music producer called Joseph Isgro, who subsequently pleaded guilty to charges of extortion in a music business kick-back scandal involving the Gambino mafia family.