Since the OJ Simpson civil trial, there have been no major breakthroughs in the case brought to the public’s attention. Every so often, a new book is written around a single “bombshell” disclosure that reinforces the general notion that Simpson was guilty. The books are published under contracts that come with multi-million dollar advances. This investigation was not undertaken to fatten anyone’s CD account, or pave a path to a Geraldo Rivera interview. A writer’s only obligation is to the truth. Hemingway said so from the moment he put a pencil to paper, and it was his mantra until the day he passed. Few, if any, books on the Brentwood murders meet that obligation.
Thirty years have passed since two insanely mutilated bodies were discovered on Bundy Drive. The coroner’s photos are unforgettable. Those responsible did not exist on the fringes of society, like the Manson Family or the LA Stalker. Some held positions of power and were by no means obscure. Like Sally Denton’s Company populating The Bluegrass Conspiracy, a network of well-connected drug traffickers in Lexington, some of them live in the spotlight, others choose to lay low.
Names have been dropped like bread crumbs in preceding sections, but not much was revealed about them. Jason Galanis ran an Ecstasy lab in Escondito. He went on to partner with Hunter Biden. Judah Hertz, Jacob Orgrad’s financier, owns many of the office buildings in downtown Los Angeles. The Jerusalem Group is found at the street level in Los Angeles and rises to the upper echelon of Israeli politics.
This is the Hollywood branch of The Company. In Lexington, the presiding officer of the organized crime collective was Democratic Governor John Y. Brown. Like any other CEO, he made policy decisions and others followed his orders. When a waitress at Trump’s disco in Cincinnati disappeared, Brown wasn’t a suspect. Company managers and flunkeys handled the details.
In Hollywood, Anthony Pellicano was much more than the celebrity gadfly he appeared to be. He was a manager of operations for the Milano branch of the Gambino organized crime family. In Los Angeles, the Peter and Carmen Milano oversaw all family operations. Denise Brown’s beau Anthony “The Animal” Fiato was a Milano hit man before he became an FBI informant. Joey Ippolito from Miami, and his bodyguard Al C0wlings, were Gambino drug distributors. During the Simpson criminal trial, Cowlings was called before a grand jury to give testimony concerning big-time sports gambling in Los Angeles, an operation controlled by the Milano brothers. Jacob “Cookie” Orgrad peddled cocaine and Ecstasy in Hollywood. Faye Resnick, Nicole’s best friend, bight drugs from him.
These were not isolated crimes. They were two in a long roster of homicides committed by the Hollywood division of The Company. They only seemed isolated because Simpson was a household name, and all attention was locked on him.
Of primary interest in this context is Pellicano, a Gambino lieutenant of operations. If the money was right, he could fix anything, even if it involved murder. From the New York Times, April 2, 2008:
“LOS ANGELES — A hedge fund manager and art collector from New York testified under immunity Tuesday that Anthony Pellicano, the Hollywood private detective accused of wiretapping and racketeering, had once offered to have a movie producer killed for him.
“Adam D. Sender, the owner of Exis Capital, a hedge fund that at one point had more than $1 billion in assets, said in Federal District Court here that he had paid Mr. Pellicano about $500,000 to investigate Aaron Russo, a producer and onetime talent manager whose film credits included ‘Trading Places’. …
“Mr. Pellicano said that “if I wanted to, I could basically authorize him to have Mr. Russo ‘murdered on the way back from Las Vegas.’ Mr. Sender testified. ‘He would have someone follow him back, drive him off the road and bury his body somewhere in the desert.’ Mr. Sender said he had declined.”
Pellicano was capable of ordering up a contract hit with a phone call. One nod of the head and Aaron Russo would have disappeared years ago in the Nevada desert.
Pellicano oversaw a small army of extortionists, drug dealers, pornographers, real estate swindlers, money launderers, enforcers and executioners at his command. It’s common knowledge that he had mob ties. This came with his public persona. The truth is far more complex.
He ran a criminal organization that included factions of the Milano family, the Jerusalem Group, a spin-off of the Israeli Mafia that included Jacob Orgrad, elements of the Bonanno crime sundicate, the Bell Gardens-based syndicate headed by Menachem “Mike” Klein (an intersection of American Jews and Israelis of Hungarian descent), the Red Mafiya or The Organization, and a cell of the Jewish Defense League (JDL).
All of these criminal organizations intersected under ellicano. His gadfly persona was an obfuscation.
Pellicano was the most dangerous man in Southern California.
ADDENDUM
THE JDL AND TUPAC SHAKUR
The presence of the Jewish Defense League among gangsters working for Anthony Pellicano may seem ia bit incongruent. But the extremist group served a purpose — guarding drugs in Mexico en route to Pellicano’s network in California.
In this period, the JDL was, oer FBI documents, also engaged in a conspiracy to extort money from prominent black actors and recording artists, among them seminal rapper Tupac Shakur.
The attached FBI document states that Tupac received death threats in 1996 from an unnamed terrorist organization. It was a classic Mafia protection racket scheme that Pellicano’s mobsters plied themselves on more than one occasion.
Subsequent reports identified the extortionists as members of the JDL. The timing of the extortion attempt coincided with Tupac’s murder in Las Vegas, though there was no direct evidence of a link. …
FBI: Tupac Extorted by Jewish Defense League
By Nathan Burstein
The Forward, April 15, 2011
Fifteen years after Tupac Shakur’s murder, the FBI has released documents showing that the rapper received death threats from the Jewish Defense League as part of an extortion scheme.
The papers reveal an FBI request for additional time to investigate the matter, with the organization interested in determining “whether the extortionate activities … are in furtherance of the social and/or political goals of the JDL.”
They show a scheme in which the League notified the rapper of alleged death threats, then provided “protection services” while working out a “deal” with the supposed threat maker. After receiving money from the musician, the JDL would announce an agreement with the would-be killer, allowing Shakur to return to normal life.
The papers don’t show any connection between the JDL and Shakur’s unsolved murder, which occurred in Las Vegas in 1996. Rumors since that time have focused on the so-called East Coast-West Coast rap rivalry of the 1990s, which claimed the life of Shakur rival the Notorious B.I.G. the following year.
The papers show that another rapper, Eazy-E, of hip-hop group N.W.A., had been contacted by the JDL before his 1995 death from AIDS.
While the JDL’s connection to the rap world comes as news, its involvement in criminal activity does not. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the group as “a radical organization” that “has orchestrated countless acts of terrorism in the U.S. and abroad.”
TO BE CONTINUED
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