Murder in the Hollywood Hills - Ep. 4: A Bad Actor

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Speaker 4 Detective Virginia Obenchain had no idea what to expect. A police tip line can be a catch-all for every nut in town.
Gives them an excuse to rant on, and rant they will.

Speaker 4 And they certainly did call in, the public that is, more than 500 callers those first two weeks, all with something to say about the disappearance of Christy Johnson.

Speaker 4 And something like 200 of those callers were taken seriously enough that detectives followed up, particularly the women.

Speaker 5 We interviewed all the girls that called in.

Speaker 4 Some women said they too had been approached by the man pictured in news reports.

Speaker 6 This is the guy I met at the mall.

Speaker 4 Others said they too had gotten the movie pitch.

Speaker 6 Then he started in on the whole James Bodd thing.

Speaker 4 And one seemed to know when whatever happened to Christy Johnson actually happened.

Speaker 7 We were watching the news and her picture came up. We called the police to let them know that we had, you know, we had seen her.

Speaker 4 Yes, the pieces were beginning to fit. The man, the MO, the timeline, and more.

Speaker 4 In this episode, The Man Who Wanted a House.

Speaker 8 We also got a call from the realtor who had shown Mr. Palaeologus numerous houses.

Speaker 4 Just what was he looking for up there in the Hollywood Hills the week before Christy Johnson vanished? It seems like he's not looking at the house, like he's looking at the things in the house.

Speaker 4 You'll hear from a woman who narrowly escaped an encounter with Victor Palaeologus more than a decade earlier.

Speaker 6 One of the detectives called me and said, this guy, he's been consistently doing this to women after your case till right now.

Speaker 4 And you'll hear from the man at the very center of this mystery, Victor Palaeologus himself.

Speaker 9 I've never mistreated him. If anything, I've been over overly generous with him.
You're talking about some women had some hidden agendas.

Speaker 4 I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Murder in the Hollywood Hills, a podcast from Dateline, episode 4, A Bad Actor.

Speaker 4 It was late on a Friday, too late to be showing anyone houses.

Speaker 4 But when Paul Cady saw a tall, slender man push through the door at Regal Real Estate a little after six, he put on a welcoming smile and extended his hand.

Speaker 4 The date was February 7th, 2003, a week before Christy Johnson was last seen alive. Christy was, no doubt, happily planning to do whatever it is 21-year-olds do on Friday nights in the big city.

Speaker 4 The meeting in the real estate office might have been on some other planet, for all she knew. But there it was, like a path marked out in chalk.

Speaker 4 This was the start of the trail that ended down a soggy ravine in the Hollywood Hills. Paul Katie's office on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Speaker 4 The tall man told Katie his name was Palaeologus, Victor. Call me Victor, he said.
He had just moved from New York, he said, was moving his computer business to the West Coast.

Speaker 4 He said he wanted to look at something high-end in the Hollywood Hills.

Speaker 4 Katie liked the sound of that, so he gave Victor some forms to fill out and told him they could start the next day.

Speaker 4 Paul Katie told police that for the next week he took this Victor fellow all over the Hollywood Hills. They looked at dozens of homes, including one with killer views, high up on Skyline Drive.

Speaker 4 Victor seemed nice enough, but after three or four days of househunting, Katie began to feel something wasn't quite right about this guy. Like told my roommate at the time, I said,

Speaker 4 it seems like he's not looking at the house, like he's looking at the things in the house. Sometimes, Katie said, Victor would open desk drawers in the houses they visited.

Speaker 4 On occasion, he said Victor would ask him to step outside while he screamed. Victor said he wanted to see if sound inside the house could be heard outside.
You know, I'd driven eccentric people.

Speaker 4 I used to be a chauffeur and i'd driven people who were had oddities and things you know people who would take such steps to you know with both feet but screaming inside to test the home soundproofing

Speaker 4 well that was a new one on paul katie i told my boss and he goes oh i don't know you think he's legit i think he's legit There was only one day that Katie could recall not house hunting with Victor during that second week in February 2003, and that was Saturday, February 15th,

Speaker 4 the day Christy Johnson was last seen alive.

Speaker 4 On Sunday the 16th and Monday evening the 17th, they were at it again.

Speaker 4 That last time Katie told police, Victor said he was ready to make an offer on a house. But first, he said, he wanted to buy a car.

Speaker 4 He asked if Paul knew of a Mercedes or BMW dealership dealership near the Century Plaza. Well, yes, Katie said, there is.

Speaker 4 And then he dropped Victor off at a BMW dealership on Wilshire and told him, drop by the real estate office when he was done so they could write up an offer on the house. But Victor never showed up.

Speaker 4 Only later did Paul Katie learn that Victor had been arrested for stealing a BMW right off the lot that night.

Speaker 4 Apparently, he posed as a buyer and offered stolen identification and financial information. Information taken from one of the homes they'd been looking at.

Speaker 5 Victor burglarized a few of them, taking checks and business cards and things of that nature.

Speaker 4 That's Detective Virginia Obenshane. What can you tell me about stealing the BMW and how that played into it all?

Speaker 5 Well, he stole the BMW because he wanted to go to Mexico.

Speaker 5 And I don't remember now if it was during the test drive or if they hung the key to the BMW up and he went in to the showroom and took the key and took the car.

Speaker 4 Certainly a picture was emerging now. A theory, said Detective Obenchain.

Speaker 4 The houses, the burglaries, the stolen car, seemed like they all fit in.

Speaker 4 Victor Palaeologus had a plan all along. He was setting it up well in advance of what he intended to do.

Speaker 8 We can't prove it, but that's our theory.

Speaker 8 He had seen that house on Skyline Drive.

Speaker 4 Oh, yes. That house on Skyline.
The one with a killer view.

Speaker 8 That was several hundred yards away from where her body was found.

Speaker 4 Okay, so what happened?

Speaker 8 I think he lured her up there for the purposes of raping her. He assaulted her.
She fought back.

Speaker 6 He strangled her, went a little too far.

Speaker 8 She lost consciousness. He thought he had killed her, and he dumped her over the hill.

Speaker 4 A tidy little theory. Yes, but like she said, there was no evidence to support any of it.
Did you search that house?

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 4 Did you find anything useful in there? Nothing.

Speaker 4 No DNA. No fingerprints.
No DNA. No fingerprints.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 if he was in that house, he didn't leave anything behind at all.

Speaker 4 Correct. Are you pretty sure that that's where the murder went down?

Speaker 5 No, we're not.

Speaker 4 Investigators had spent days looking at store security videos from the Century City Mall for February the 15th, the day Christie was there.

Speaker 4 And sure enough, there she was, buying a mini skirt at Guess.

Speaker 4 But Paleologus? For all their searching through the tapes, they saw not a trace of him. Nada.

Speaker 4 Nor could they find a single person who saw Paley Logos and Christie together. So that tidy little theory of theirs might be all they'd ever get.

Speaker 5 We were all exhausted trying to find something from him. There were six of us working robbery-homicide at the time, and every single one of us was dedicated to this case.

Speaker 4 Had this lanky ex-con and clumsy car thief somehow managed to commit the perfect crime? Obenchain doubted that. No such thing in her book.

Speaker 4 But with no physical or scientific evidence to build her case on, she knew the investigation would have to take a new tack.

Speaker 5 This was one of the only cases that I handled that I had zero evidence. All I had were the witnesses and the same MO.

Speaker 4 So that is what she and her colleagues decided to go with.

Speaker 4 They researched Victor Palaeologus' criminal record, and they dug through court dockets and dusty criminal files, looking for cases that either named Paleologus or cold cases that seemed to match his M.O.

Speaker 4 You know, photographer, bond movie, audition.

Speaker 4 And what they found?

Speaker 4 A guy had been playing the law for a chump for more than a decade.

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Speaker 4 The man had a history, no doubt about that. When the police did a little digging, they discovered Victor's first recorded run-in with the law was 14 years earlier, back in the fall of 1989.

Speaker 4 It involved an aspiring actress named Christine Klujian.

Speaker 6 I was having drinks with a friend of mine after work.

Speaker 4 That's Christine.

Speaker 6 And as I was driving up to this location to have drinks, that there was some guy driving alongside of me, sort of making eye contact. And I thought, that's interesting.
Okay, well, you know.

Speaker 4 Christine was 21 tonight night she met her friend at a jazz lounge in Manhattan Beach. It was a hot spot for young singles at the time, about 10 miles down the coast from Santa Monica.

Speaker 4 They had barely settled in, said Christine, when she saw that guy again.

Speaker 6 And lo and behold, the same guy

Speaker 6 appeared in this

Speaker 6 lounge as well. And

Speaker 6 still making eye contact, yeah. So he introduced himself and the three of us talked.
And later,

Speaker 6 he said, listen, I'd like to get a hold of you. Give me your number.
Let me give you my card, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 4 But this sounded like a guy who just wanted to date.

Speaker 6 Yeah, he sounded very just interested. Very interested in dating and,

Speaker 6 you know,

Speaker 6 showing me the town. That's kind of the way that he put it.

Speaker 4 Do you remember how he seemed? Was he...

Speaker 6 He was very charming. He was very well spoken.
And he looked good. Yeah, he looked good.
He had a nice suit on and he was very well groomed, you know, attractive.

Speaker 4 The man said his name was John Marino, said he was an executive with Columbia Records. And a couple of weeks after that first meeting, they made a date for a Tuesday night.

Speaker 6 And he said, I'll pick you up in a limousine. We'll have dinner.
And we would go to some music.

Speaker 6 some music industry party and then and then meet some families and so forth and so on.

Speaker 6 He mentioned Madonna. He mentioned a couple of other people.

Speaker 6 So,

Speaker 6 well, that's fun. It's great.
Why not?

Speaker 4 Did he suggest that he might have something which you wanted to do there, like get apart or get

Speaker 4 never suggested that?

Speaker 6 No, no, he just said this might be good. For you, you could meet people, you can make some contacts.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 of course, that's how you make movement in this business is by who you know and meeting people. So why not?

Speaker 4 That Tuesday night, John Marino was as good as his word. He picked Christine up at her parents' house.

Speaker 6 He showed up on time, 6.30, white limousine, and we took off.

Speaker 4 White limousine.

Speaker 6 We took off.

Speaker 4 He really wanted to impress you.

Speaker 6 I guess so. We toured the local areas, Brentwood, Beverly Hills, and he had

Speaker 6 champagne and munchies and things like that. And so we had some of that.

Speaker 6 And finally, we went to the restaurant, La Dome.

Speaker 6 And I remember going to the bathroom at Ledome and calling my mother from the bathroom and telling her everything is fine. It's great.
The guy is fine.

Speaker 6 No worries, nothing, you know.

Speaker 4 Oh, yes, it was shaping up to be a dazzling evening. The wine flowed.
The conversation sparkled. From what Christine could tell, this John Marino must really be somebody.

Speaker 4 He spent money lavishly, paid with cash.

Speaker 6 He took me to a club near the Beverly Center or at the Beverly Center, and

Speaker 6 he flashed the guy either a card, his business card, and or

Speaker 6 a tip. And we bypassed the line and went into this

Speaker 6 club.

Speaker 4 Then around 11, they jumped back in the limo to head over to the Bonaventure Hotel for the party. It was raining by then.

Speaker 4 And with the exception of one awkward moment when her date tried to steal a kiss in the limo, said Christine, the evening so far had been a smashing success.

Speaker 6 We then arrived at the Bonaventure Hotel,

Speaker 6 and he said to the driver of the limousine, take Christine around the block a couple of times. I want to make sure we're at the right place

Speaker 6 and everything is set.

Speaker 4 Did that seem odd to you? A little bit odd.

Speaker 6 But at that time, I thought, it was raining. You can justify for anything.
It was raining. Why should we get out if the party had been moved or something like that?

Speaker 4 Or maybe

Speaker 6 whatever, whatever we can get.

Speaker 4 In other words, he had an answer for that.

Speaker 6 So, absolutely.

Speaker 4 Anyway, after the limo made a few laps around the block, John Marino reappeared at the curb and escorted her into the hotel.

Speaker 4 Christine didn't know what to expect, really.

Speaker 4 Maybe a glimpse of Madonna through a hedgerow of elegant tuxedos?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 4 Maybe casual groupings of hip-looking musician types.

Speaker 4 No, not that either. There was none of that.
The lobby looked, well,

Speaker 4 empty.

Speaker 4 John Marino muttered something to Christine about the party being up on the 20th floor, so she followed him to the elevator.

Speaker 4 And when the doors opened on the 20th floor, said Christine, she saw nothing but an empty hallway.

Speaker 6 I didn't hear noise. I didn't see security for a party.
I didn't see people milling about as you would.

Speaker 4 You're just in a hotel hallway.

Speaker 6 A hallway, right where the suites were. I had been to a couple of industry parties at the Bonaventure before.
So it wasn't surprising to me that this is where this party was going to be.

Speaker 4 So I thought, all right, fine.

Speaker 4 It wasn't until John Marino opened one of the suite doors with a key card that Christine started to have second thoughts.

Speaker 6 And in that moment that he pulled out the key card, I thought,

Speaker 6 this guy is definitely

Speaker 6 conning me right now.

Speaker 6 And he may not even be who he says he is. Why? Because he had a key card.

Speaker 6 If he was just attending a party, you wouldn't have a key card.

Speaker 6 You would have some sort of an invitation or you'd be on a a list, or you would be checking in, you know, somebody, knocking on the door, something like that.

Speaker 6 And then I thought, okay, so this guy just lured me here. He wants to have sex with me, and he's a creep.

Speaker 4 It only took a few seconds for that realization to take hold. But by then, John Marino had already guided her through the door.

Speaker 4 She tried to think of a graceful exit, some way out that wouldn't embarrass the guy.

Speaker 4 And then she heard the door softly click shut.

Speaker 6 Within a matter of five seconds of the keycard, the door, the realization he just wants me for sex, didn't think rape.

Speaker 6 I didn't think rape. I didn't think he was going to choke me.
I didn't think he was going to hurt me. I just thought, all right, guy just wants to get it on.

Speaker 6 And I thought, how do I get out of this? So from that, in that five seconds, I found myself in a fight.

Speaker 6 Ultimately, it was a fight for my life.

Speaker 4 What followed, said Christine, was nothing less than hand-to-hand combat.

Speaker 6 He threw me on the bed. He tried to rip my clothes off.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 in that moment, he pulled ropes from behind the bed. There were ropes attached to something

Speaker 6 behind

Speaker 6 by the headboard. I have no idea what he was doing.
You would have had to arrange those before.

Speaker 4 Exactly.

Speaker 6 So he pulled these ropes, this rope out, and he tried to tie my arms with this rope. And I had learned something in self-defense because I've been practicing martial arts and so forth.

Speaker 6 So I had learned a technique to get out of,

Speaker 6 amazingly, a rope,

Speaker 6 you know, tying. And I used that technique, got out, it threw him completely off guard.

Speaker 4 They struggled like that off and on for the next hour and a half, she said. Episodes of intense physical battle, interspersed with

Speaker 4 bizarre moments of contrition and calm.

Speaker 6 One moment he calmed down. He said, I'm so sorry.
This is terrible. I know this is not the way to get a woman.

Speaker 6 It's just things are going so badly at Columbia Records and my brother has just died and, you know, I'm just really, really stressed right now. And I'm really sorry this is not.

Speaker 6 And then he would come and attack me. So it was Dr.
Jekyll, Mr. Hyde.

Speaker 4 It was in one of those moments of calm that she almost escaped.

Speaker 4 She had thrown the jam lock, had her hand on the knob, was about to open the door when the man she knew as John Marino heard her and attacked attacked again.

Speaker 6 He grabbed me, pulled me by my hair, dragged me back to the bed, and I knew that this was it. He grabbed my neck with his arm and started to choke me.

Speaker 6 And in that moment, I thought, all right, I have to do something here. So I head-butted him.
I must have hit his nose because he let go just enough for me to release myself.

Speaker 6 scrambled across the bed. He got on top of me and he dug his arms and his knees into my body and I couldn't push him off.
Obviously, I'm 123 pounds and he's 190 or two. And so

Speaker 4 again,

Speaker 6 unbelievably, I moved my arms forward so that

Speaker 6 his own weight would fall on top of me. And then I bit him on his crotch, which was he was fully clothed.

Speaker 4 You bit him on his crotch.

Speaker 6 I bit him on his crotch. As hard as I possibly could.
It works. He rolled over.

Speaker 6 He rolled over. over.
He fell over. He's yelping and screaming.

Speaker 6 And then I thought, you know, victory. And now he's screaming because he's in pain.
I'm now screaming, help, help, rape, help, help, help, help. And he grabbed his jacket and he ran out the door.

Speaker 6 He ran out the door. He ran out the door.
And I'm standing there

Speaker 6 crying and screaming and in complete disbelief that I have fought this monster off.

Speaker 4 By the time hotel security arrived, John Marino had melted into the night. He might have gotten away with it, except for one thing.

Speaker 4 Christine's parents had smelled a rat when that big white limousine had come to pick up their daughter that night, so they had written down the license number.

Speaker 6 The next day, when we were talking to the police, we gave them the license plate. We told them all the information that I knew.

Speaker 4 And what do you know? The man who flashed cash used a credit card to reserve the limo.

Speaker 4 A few days later, the police found him 20 miles away at the computer company where he worked.

Speaker 6 He saw the detectives coming and ran out the back, and they ran around the back, and they caught him, and they inspected his

Speaker 6 parts.

Speaker 4 Had you caused him damage?

Speaker 6 Apparently, I did not cause him that much damage, but it was enough

Speaker 6 for him to run away and for me to be safe. Thank God.

Speaker 6 But then that's when we found out this guy is not at all who he says he is. He's Victor Palaeologos.

Speaker 6 And he's not Columbia Records executive, and he's not all of these things.

Speaker 4 Palaeologos was charged with attempted rape and false imprisonment.

Speaker 4 When the case went to trial, Palaeologos' attorney argued that Victor and Christine had a romantic relationship and that the Donnybrook in the hotel room had simply been a lover spat, not the dramatic life and death struggle Christine had described.

Speaker 6 The trial ended, and he was not found guilty of any of the things that he was charged with.

Speaker 6 He was charged with attempted rape, not guilty, assault with attempt to rape, not guilty, and false imprisonment.

Speaker 6 There was a hung jury.

Speaker 6 and and ultimately what happened was

Speaker 6 there was some sort of a plea with the false imprisonment charge, so he had to do community service and pay a fine.

Speaker 4 Christine Klujian was crestfallen after that, angry at the jury for not believing her, angry at the system for allowing a dangerous man to walk free.

Speaker 6 He probably, probably had done it before

Speaker 6 because

Speaker 6 the crime was too well thought out. You know, the trap was too well set.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 so I said it then to everyone involved in the case. The DA,

Speaker 6 the detectives, the police, everyone around me, my group. I said, this guy has done this before.
He'll do it again. And he will kill someone because he almost killed me.

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Speaker 4 Christine Klujan's story had been easy to track down. After all, there was a court record.

Speaker 4 But when detectives started combing through cold cases, cases in which an assault was reported, but a perpetrator never found,

Speaker 4 That was a gold mine.

Speaker 4 One of those cases turned out from back in 1991, 12 years before Christy Johnson was killed.

Speaker 4 It was a complaint from a 27-year-old actress who said she'd been approached at LAX by a man who offered her a chance to be in a bomb film.

Speaker 5 Well, she met him. He had said that, I forgot the name he used, but he was from Disney.

Speaker 4 That's Detective Obenchain again.

Speaker 5 He took her to dinner. They had dinner.
Then he went up and ordered drinks and brought her her drink. And she took a couple of sips and started feeling kind of weird.

Speaker 5 So she asked if Victor would try it, and he did not want to try it. And he walked out of the restaurant.

Speaker 4 Cops were called.

Speaker 4 The drink?

Speaker 4 Well, it could have been tossed, but it wasn't. Instead, the cops took it as evidence and put it in cold storage.

Speaker 4 The man was never found, and the case never went anywhere. That is, not until Detective Obenchain found the old incident report.

Speaker 5 The sample of the drink was kept. Ten years later, when I stumbled on this, we had the drink sent out for lab work, and it came back with the drama meme.

Speaker 4 Well, wait a minute.

Speaker 4 The drink is still hanging around in the police department after 10 years? Yes.

Speaker 4 That must be one heck of a storage site that the police departments have if they're keeping drinks for 10 years and then testing

Speaker 4 all that time later. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Our property people make the best packers in the world. They can fit a lot of stuff into a little space.

Speaker 4 Naturally, detectives tracked down the woman. They showed her a photo lineup and asked her if any of the men in that six-pack was the man who had spiked her drink way back then.

Speaker 4 And what do you know? She picked Victor Palaeologus.

Speaker 4 Clearly, he had some intentions for that woman. Did she feel as if she dodged a bullet?

Speaker 5 She did.

Speaker 4 In one particularly public 1996 case, seven years before Christie was killed, investigators learned he'd tried to strangle a woman after she broke up with him.

Speaker 4 In fact, he tried to strangle her twice, the first time in a vacant restaurant, the second time in her apartment.

Speaker 4 According to court records, Palaeologus had broken into the woman's apartment and hid in a spare bedroom.

Speaker 4 When she discovered him behind the bed, the reports say Palaeologus jumped up and chased her around the bedroom with a ligature in his hands.

Speaker 4 When he couldn't subdue her, he ran away, taking some jewelry and a gun with him. It took police a month to track him down.

Speaker 4 Peleologus was finally captured after he broke into a home in Malibu and barricaded himself with a young boy who'd simply been at home alone watching TV.

Speaker 4 He surrendered after a three-hour standoff with a SWAT team.

Speaker 15 He's coming out. Police say the suspect was not armed.

Speaker 4 That 1996 incident was even covered on the local news, a live report.

Speaker 15 Los Angeles police tell us that following his capture, felony suspect Victor Lawrence Palaeologus refused to walk out of the Lost Hill Sheriff Station, so they carried him to the waiting patrol car and his journey to jail.

Speaker 4 But the truly amazing bit was this.

Speaker 4 When it came to the law and L.A.'s judicial system, the man was as slippery as an eel.

Speaker 4 Every time Palaeologus seemed sure to wind up in a prison cell for some crime, his lawyers reached a plea deal with prosecutors.

Speaker 4 Charges were dropped or downgraded, and he would end up walking away with probation. The case with the ex-girlfriend, the one that resulted in the SWAT team standoff?

Speaker 4 In exchange for pleading guilty to a single count of burglary, he got a six-year suspended sentence. Probation, not prison.
Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 16 it was my impression that he was able to kind of skirt through somehow.

Speaker 4 That's former LA Times crime reporter Andrew Blankstein. As reporters,

Speaker 16 we talk about falling through the cracks.

Speaker 16 Other people are more cynical and say it's just, you know, this is plea bargaining. A quick look at the criminal record really bore out this idea that he was somebody that seemed to just kind of

Speaker 4 skirt the law, get a plea bargain.

Speaker 4 It wasn't until 1998 that Victor Palaeologus finally committed a crime he couldn't plea bargain away.

Speaker 4 In that case, Palaeologus lured a young woman to an empty restaurant on the promise that he would introduce her to a director who was allegedly making a bond film.

Speaker 4 Once there, Palaeologus tried to rape her. Fortunately, the woman got away and called the police, who arrested Palaeologos and charged him with assault, attempted rape, and false imprisonment.

Speaker 4 Though the attempted rape and false imprisonment charges were dropped before trial, he was convicted of felony assault.

Speaker 4 And it was while Palaeologos was out on bond in that case that he approached Kathy De Bono with the same old pitch. Photographer, Bond film, audition,

Speaker 4 etc.

Speaker 4 Oh, yes, those old files told quite a story. The story of an apparently incorrigible criminal.

Speaker 4 Alongside two reported cases of attempted sexual assault, there were financial crimes, false statements, and forgeries. On top of that were Paleologus' personal calamities.

Speaker 4 In the mid to late 90s, he opened a succession of restaurants. One in Marina del Rey, one at Brentwood, and then the last one in West Hollywood on La Cienega.

Speaker 4 All of them failed, as did a brief marriage.

Speaker 4 By May 2003, three months after the disappearance of Christy Johnson, Detective Obenchain still had no physical evidence implicating Victor Palaeologus.

Speaker 4 But she did have a pattern of past behavior. She figured that was as close to having a smoking gun as she would ever get.
So she took it to the DA.

Speaker 4 Did you get any pushback from the DA saying, come on, there's just not enough here?

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 5 No, we took it downtown

Speaker 5 to their unit and they filed it right away.

Speaker 4 They took a look at this, at what they

Speaker 4 suspected this guy had done and figured that was enough to go.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 5 With all the priors,

Speaker 5 with all the women that came forward with the exact same story, they decided not only would they file the case, but they filed it as

Speaker 5 a capital case.

Speaker 4 The death penalty. This time the stakes could not be higher for Victor Palaeologus.
Prosecutors felt they had a strong circumstantial case, but Palaeologus' court-appointed attorney, Andrew Flyer,

Speaker 4 disagreed.

Speaker 17 They just assume that because he has a past, he must have done the present, and I find that outrageous. I have to be quite frank with you.

Speaker 17 Based on my conversation with him and the way he speaks, I believe he's innocent.

Speaker 4 In fact, the lawyer felt so confident that he did something defense attorneys almost never do.

Speaker 4 He agreed to let Victor Palaeologus do a jailhouse interview with me,

Speaker 4 cameras and all.

Speaker 4 Are we all rolling? Yeah, we're going to come.

Speaker 4 Victor Palaeologus sat across from me, legs splayed apart in a chair that seemed too short short for him. Palaeologus' lawyer, Andrew Flyer, sat to his side.
Where did you grow up?

Speaker 9 In New York, in Pennsylvania area.

Speaker 4 Big family?

Speaker 9 Yeah, we got a big family.

Speaker 4 Paleologus came off as a gangly, soft-spoken man in our interview. His thick brown hair brushed straight back.

Speaker 4 He had a long, sad face, a dimpled chin, and pale blue eyes that seemed to droop at the corners. Hardly the kind of man you'd have imagined doing all the things he'd been accused of.

Speaker 4 We weren't long into our conversation before he told me he'd recently gotten some bad news.

Speaker 9 This is actually a hard time for me right now. My mother just passed away.
I just learned about her, and it's been tough. But

Speaker 9 we had a wonderful childhood together. I'm very thankful for

Speaker 9 both my mother and father being in my life. I don't believe for

Speaker 9 any

Speaker 9 instant that this is a reflection of their teaching or love or anything else.

Speaker 4 You know, parents always blame themselves for whatever may happen to their children, however caused.

Speaker 9 But this has no reflection on them whatsoever. My parents have been outstanding people.

Speaker 4 They're aware of everything that's happened to you, all the charges, all the allegations.

Speaker 9 My father's quite old, but he's aware of what's going on.

Speaker 4 At the time of this interview, Paleologos had been locked up in the men's central jail for more than a year.

Speaker 4 Largely because of the notoriety of his case, he told me that year had been hard.

Speaker 9 There's been fights.

Speaker 9 There's been a lot of name-calling. This has gained a lot of attention in the media.
I'm not asking for anybody to

Speaker 9 take pity on me in this situation, okay? But at least let the facts come out before you make judgments, okay?

Speaker 4 Is that why you're doing this interview? Let the facts come out?

Speaker 9 You know, I've had a lot of issues that have happened in my past. I'm not proud of.
Okay, they weren't the shining points in my life, and I can't go back and correct them.

Speaker 9 I take responsibility for anything that I've done, but I'm not going to sit back, okay, and let myself be steamrolled over on something that I haven't done.

Speaker 4 Just what it was Victor Peleologus was willing to take responsibility for seemed to be a moving target. He denied ever assaulting women.

Speaker 9 Let's clear up one thing. I never struggled with any woman or forced myself upon any woman whatsoever.

Speaker 4 But in the next breath, he admitted to assaulting the woman in the case that sent him to prison.

Speaker 9 To take responsibility for that, I did have some heavy influence in that whole issue.

Speaker 4 Palaeologus admitted to stealing IDs from the Hollywood Hills homes he toured with the real estate agent. But all that James Bond stuff, the showbiz come on so many women describe,

Speaker 4 well, he said

Speaker 4 none of that ever happened. Did you, for example, ever portray yourself to a woman as being in the entertainment industry? No.

Speaker 4 Never once. No.

Speaker 4 And yet, women look at your picture and say, yeah, he's the guy. That's a lie.

Speaker 4 They all lied?

Speaker 9 Yes.

Speaker 4 Let's get on to the heart of the matter, which is Christy Johnson.

Speaker 4 She met you in the mall.

Speaker 9 She met me in the mall.

Speaker 9 She did not meet me in the mall.

Speaker 4 You're never in the mall that day?

Speaker 9 I went to the mall later on that afternoon, yes.

Speaker 9 But I never met this young lady, no.

Speaker 4 Not that I had any expectation that Paleologus would blurt out some sort of pre-trial confessional miacopa. No, this was more about getting a sense of the guy.
Arrogant?

Speaker 4 Yes, maybe.

Speaker 4 Slippery? Perhaps.

Speaker 4 Like a man testing a brazen-it-out sort of defense.

Speaker 4 But what do I know?

Speaker 4 Anyway, two years would pass before a jury of 12 would hear several women say under oath that their encounters with Victor Palaeologus mirrored what investigators believed happened to Christy Johnson.

Speaker 4 Would those jurors believe it?

Speaker 4 Absent any other evidence, would a jury find that a man's past justifies a death sentence?

Speaker 4 Well,

Speaker 4 as I was about to leave that cramped little interview room inside the jail, I heard Palaeologus' defense attorney say this:

Speaker 17 We'll see what happens in this case, but I think I'm going to win this case

Speaker 4 next time on Murder Murder in the Hollywood Hills. It is a very sketchy case.

Speaker 9 There's nothing to tie anybody

Speaker 4 to her body. No evidence.

Speaker 18 I sort of had this visual of these women just surrounding him and sort of looking at him and like,

Speaker 18 no, you don't, you're not going anywhere. You're not doing this again.

Speaker 17 The only evidence they have on this case is that allegedly Miss Johnson tells her roommate that she might have some meeting with a gentleman who might put her in a movie role, i.e., a James Bond flick.

Speaker 17 That's it. And suddenly, from that one issue, Mr.
Pally Logos is the killer.

Speaker 9 It's part of the big

Speaker 9 cogwheel that just keeps on turning. I mean, there's no solemn vow and taking pleasure done all the time.
That's the way it works. I'm sorry to tell you, but that's the way it works.

Speaker 4 Murder in the Hollywood Hills is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Tim Beacham is a producer.
Brian Drew, Kelly Laudine, and Marshall Hausfeld are audio editors.

Speaker 4 Carson Cummins and Kiani Reed are associate producers. Adam Gorfain is co-executive producer.
Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer.

Speaker 4 From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Bob Mallory and Catherine Anderson. Bryson Barnes is head head of audio production.

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