The Other Hollywood (37 page)

But John caught ahold of me by my hair and yanked me down in front of the snack bar, jumped on me, and pummeled the hell out of me.

He just exploded. Everybody just watched, and they couldn’t believe that this was the same mild-mannered, really nice, courteous person they knew.

Then John just yanked me back up and dragged me back to the room, where he gave me another couple of blows. Then he flung me onto the bed and told me to shut up.

SHARON HOLMES
:
I don’t think John ever felt comfortable with who he was and what his background was. I think fame gave him a false sense of security, like, “Well, I must be good if all these people think I am.”

And yet he knew it wasn’t really what he wanted to do—it was what he felt he
had
to do. He felt there was nothing else he
could
do. It would involve too much time to educate himself or really get into something else. Pornography was fast fame and fortune, as far as John was concerned.

DAWN SCHILLER
:
John went to work the next morning, as usual, and there was a knock at the door right after he left. It was Big Rosie and a couple of other people who lived there. They said, “Pack your bags. Grab your dog; you’re out of here.”

I said, “Where am I going to go?”

This one chick, Louise, was a stripper, and she’d just got her house from a divorce settlement. She also had a little girl, Heather, about five years old. Big Rosie says, “You’re going to go with Louise and Heather, and you’re going to watch Heather while Louise is at work.”

SHARON HOLMES
:
I was John’s safe house—and the only person he could be himself with, could show his vulnerability and his low self-esteem. I don’t think anyone else was aware of it because John had developed a different persona. He was like, “This is JOHN HOLMES, who I have created.” That is the side people saw, but they didn’t know about his capabilities, you know, as far as what he could do artistically—other than what was artistically pornographic.

TOM LANGE
:
Frank Tomlinson, who’s another outstanding investigator, had a thought. Dawn is from the Portland, Oregon, area, and she’d disappeared with John. So Frank gets in touch with Dawn’s brother in Oregon to see if he’s heard anything—and uses the tactic that Dawn’s life is in jeopardy—she’s with John Holmes, and the cops are gonna kill him, or Nash is gonna kill him, or a hired killer is gonna kill him—so help your sister, that type of a thing. The brother ends up telling Frank that she’s down in Florida, and Frank and I go down there and hook up with Florida Metro-Dade cops.

DAWN SCHILLER
:
I stayed at Louise’s maybe a week. When I got there, I called my mother, and I said, “I’m finally away.” I told her I had the gun, and I gave her the number where I was at. It was such a relief finally being able to contact my family again; it was something I needed to do.

She said, “Are you okay? Don’t go back to him. Don’t go back to him no more!”

I said, “No, I won’t, and I love you, too. I’m just going to work here for a while. I don’t think John knows where I’m at.”

TOM LANGE
:
Dawn’s brother told us that her roommate, Louise, was dancing at an all-night strip club. I don’t drink anymore, but I used to. Frank never did; he’s a born-again Christian.

So we were staked out on a bar on Eighth Street and Le June where Louise worked as a stripper. The plan was to identify her, go outside where Metro-Dade was waiting, and follow her home—so we could find out where Dawn was staying. It sounded great.

We go in the bar—and we look like cops to begin with—so I told Frank, “You gotta order a beer or something or they’re gonna look at you funny.” So he does, and he just sat there and glared at it. Frank never took a sip. I ended up getting a 7-Up or something.

DAWN SCHILLER
:
A few days after that, I got a call, and it was John. I don’t know how he got that number, but he did. He was crying, and he said he was so sorry—you know, the same thing. He’s so sorry, he knows what he did was wrong, and he doesn’t blame me if I never forgive him.

He was giving me this ploy, which he had really never done before. He understands if I don’t want to be with him, but could he just see my face one more time?

I was crying, too. I said, “But you promised you would never hit me again. You broke your promise!”

He said, “Please, please just let me see your face one more time. That’s all I ask of you. I won’t ask you anything ever again.”

I just said, “No.” A really strong, very powerful “No.” I had never said no to him before—and I meant it, you know? I wasn’t going to give him that. I wasn’t going to give him any more parts of me. I think he said something like, “Well, please think about it. I’ll call you later.”

I said, “No, John. I won’t.”

TOM LANGE
:
We identify Louise, the stripper, but it’s now 2:05
A.M
. I realize, “This is an after-hours place—wait until the cops find out about this.” Then we find out bars in Miami don’t close; they’re open all night long. Finally, around 5:00 in the morning, Louise leaves, and we fol
low her, pat her down, one thing leads to another—and she gives us Dawn.

The brother met us down there.

DAWN SCHILLER
:
About a week after I talk to John, Louise let me know my brother was on the phone.

I got on the phone, and he goes, “Hey, what’s up?”

I said, “Hey, not much.” I was really happy to hear his voice. I go, “Where are you? Did Mom tell you that I left John, that I’m in Florida?”

He says, “Yeah. I’m in Florida, too.” We grew up in Florida, so this was not unusual. My brother was always running away. So he says, “Yeah, I’ve got a rental car.”

I said, “How did you get a rental car?”

He goes, “Oh, one of my friends had a credit card. Let’s have a beer, you know, and like, talk. I haven’t seen you in a couple of years. What’s been going on with John and stuff? I’m just around the corner from you. Tell me your address.”

I said, “Well, I’m not with John anymore, and I hope everybody leaves me alone. I took his gun, and I’m not with him, so there’s no reason for anybody to want to be after me anymore.”

I gave him the address, and he says, “I’ll be there to pick you up in a few minutes.”

So very quickly—he pulls up in this white rental car. He says, “Oh, I’ve got a six-pack. Come on, let’s go talk. I know this park over here.” Which is not suspicious to me because it used to be his stomping ground. So we go to pull into this park, and just as we’re pulling in, he says, “I’ve got something to tell you.”

I said, “What?”

He says, “Well, the cops are waiting for you here.”

I just about blew. I started screaming and crying and going, “WHAT THE FUCK! I’M NOT TALKING TO NO FUCKING COPS!” Because here I was still under the impression that they took away our protection, that they did us a dirty deed. I said, “But John gave them all the information, and they stabbed us in the back!”

TOM LANGE
:
The brother approaches Dawn on our behalf and says, “Listen, Tomlinson and Lange are here, and they need to talk to you.”

DAWN SCHILLER
:
My brother said, “No, no, no, you don’t understand, they just want to know where John is.”

I said, “Well, you know, that’s the last thing that I want to do—I’m not
going to rat on him. Let it be whatever—but I don’t want no hand in it. I won’t fucking do it. Do you know I have a gun in my purse?”

He said, “What the fuck?”

I said, “I don’t want to go to jail. I didn’t do anything. I’ve got this for my protection.”

While all this is being said, the car is stopped, and Detectives Tom Lange and Frank Tomlinson are standing there. There was even a local cop with them.

TOM LANGE
:
So we meet Dawn in the park and tell her she’s in jeopardy.

DAWN SCHILLER
:
We got out, and I was still crying, and I’m like, “I can’t believe you did this to me! I can’t believe you did this to me!”

My brother told them, “Just a minute,” and he came over, and he put his arm around me and walked me down to the water. He said, “Look, there’s a lot of bad people out there who still want you.”

I said, “But I’m not with John anymore!”

He said, “Yeah, but they’re real close to getting him, and the best thing you can do is turn him in because that will get the heat off.”

He said, “These people are here to protect you. They don’t want you; they just want to know where John is, and he’ll be safer in jail.”

And so I conceded to that because it made sense, you know?

TOM LANGE
:
Dawn was even younger than I thought.

DAWN SCHILLER
:
I said, “Yeah, I’ll tell them where he is. I’ve got the address in my purse.” I had the card for the Fountainhead Hotel in my purse, so I flopped down on the parking lot floor, and I was crying and stuff. The gun is, like, right on top of this hippie purse, and I go, “Oh yeah, by the way, I’ve got his gun.”

I just plopped it out and put it on the pavement, and they kind of took steps back, and reached their hands over their weapons—they didn’t know what the fuck.

But I’m oblivious to that shit. I was just unloading my purse. That was, like, one of my happiest memories: “Scared you—ha-ha!”

TOM LANGE
:
Dawn gives John up, and he’s at a flophouse—right over on the Ocean and Collins Avenue, in the North Beach area.

DAWN SCHILLER
:
I found the card, and I said, “He’s here. He’s not armed; I have his gun. He’s working at this place, and these are his hours. He’s pretty calm right now, from when I talked to him last. You know, he’ll probably offer you a cup of coffee. But you’ve got to promise me one thing….”

They asked, “What?”

I said, “After you have him, call me, and let me know if he’s all right, if you got him all right.” Because they were telling me that there were people that were really close to getting him, and I was nervous that he was going to be killed any second. So they promised me they would do that.

TOM LANGE
:
We went in there, and I grabbed Holmes and laid him out and cuffed him. He had dyed his hair and tried to alter his appearance. He didn’t fight us. He was cooperative; he kinda knew we were coming and said something to the effect of, “I’m glad it’s you—this is finally over.”

FRANK TOMLINSON (LAPD DETECTIVE)
:
Detective Lange and myself were present when Mr. Holmes was arrested. He was transported to a facility to await booking at the county jail in Miami, so at that facility we caught up with him and had a brief conversation.

After that, Mr. Holmes made the statement that he knew what had happened at the house on Wonderland Avenue. He then stated that he would have to think about what he wanted to do and that he would let us know whether or not he was going to tell us what happened.

TOM LANGE
:
We brought him back to Los Angeles to be prosecuted.

LOUISVILLE/MIAMI
1982

VICKIE LIVINGSTON
:
Pat had told me he didn’t want his parents to know he’d been arrested. He thought it would all be resolved, and they would never have to know.

He couldn’t even believe it himself. Pat was in shock. He was just out of it.

MIAMI HERALD
, FEBRUARY 20, 1982: FBI AGENT’S ARREST MAY HURT PORN CASES
:
“In a move that may jeopardize its case against several accused pornographers, the U.S. Justice Department has acknowledged that one of the FBI undercover agents who ran Operation MIPORN has been arrested for shoplifting.”

PAT LIVINGSTON
:
I’d spent the night at my girlfriend’s house. I was in North Miami, coming down the I-95, when I first heard it on the news. Did they mention my name? Damn right they did. So I got off at 103rd and picked up a newspaper at a 7-Eleven. I was hoping my dad wouldn’t read it.

MIAMI HERALD
, FEBRUARY 20, 1982: FBI AGENT’S ARREST MAY HURT PORN CASES
:
“The arrest of Agent Pat Livingston, after the investigation concluded, but before all the cases were tried, was disclosed in a letter sent to U.S. District Judge Eugene Spellman by Fred Schwartz, an attorney with the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Task Force.”

NANCY LIVINGSTON (PAT’S SISTER)
:
My father read it in the paper. He was just crushed. He said, “Nancy, sit down. I have something to tell you. It’s about your brother.”

I said, “I already know.”

MIAMI HERALD
, FEBRUARY 20, 1982: FBI AGENT’S ARREST MAY HURT PORN CASES
:
“According to the letter, Livingston was arrested on a felony shoplifting charge in November after he allegedly tried to remove more than a hundred dollars’ worth of clothing from a department store.”

NANCY LIVINGSTON
:
I told my father that Vickie had told me, but I also told him, “Pat was gonna kill Vickie if she told you.” I said, “Pat wanted to tell you himself, but he kept putting it off. It wasn’t that he wanted you to find out this way. He wanted to tell you himself—in person—but he couldn’t.”

VICKIE LIVINGSTON
:
Pat’s parents had no idea he was in Miami, and he didn’t want them to know.

PAT LIVINGSTON
:
After I read the newspaper, I went to Bill Kelly’s house. Kelly and Dick Phinney were there. There was a hearing going on. I didn’t know where I was going. God, I was scared. Scared and anxious, wondering should I call my father now, before he reads the article? Or should I take a chance that he hasn’t read the article?

NANCY LIVINGSTON
:
That night my father went to the hospital. He was perfectly awake and coherent; he was in pain, but he was talking as we were driving. But when they did their EKGs, we discovered that he had had a mild heart attack.

PAT LIVINGSTON
:
From Bill Kelly’s, I went to Bill Brown’s house in Coconut Grove. I jogged and ran down Old Cutler Road—ten miles, maybe—to Bill Brown’s house. Then I drove back to Louisville.

Nancy called me the next day. She said it was serious with Dad. I didn’t get back down to Miami until Monday.

VICKIE LIVINGSTON
:
Pat’s parents read the paper on a Saturday morning and on Sunday night his dad was already having chest pains. They took him to the hospital Sunday night, and he had a massive heart attack.

I came home from school at about nine o’clock—the kids were already in bed—and Pat was sitting on the side of the bed like he was in a trance or something.

I said, “What in the world is the matter with you?”

He said, “I just got a phone call.” I thought he said it was about
my
dad, and I started to get really upset. But then he said, “No, it’s not your dad, its mine.”

NANCY LIVINGSTON
:
Pat went alone to see my father. He told him exactly what was going on, but I don’t know what was said.

PAT LIVINGSTON
:
My dad couldn’t talk. God, that was devastating. I had so much I wanted to say. He had eye movement, his lips moved, he understood, but he couldn’t talk.

So I tried to say the things that would bring him back. I tried to assure him that everything was okay with me—that there was no problem, that things were going to work out fine.

NANCY LIVINGSTON
:
All Pat said when he came out is that Dad understood everything. From that time on, Dad got progressively worse.

VICKIE LIVINGSTON
:
He died about ten days later.

PAT LIVINGSTON
:
I was at the hospital when he died. He was on strictly life support, pacemaker, tubes. We could see he was dead already. It was a decision of shutting down or keeping him alive.

BILL BROWN
:
I went to the funeral. It was unbelievably sad. I mean, Pat was pretending; there was not one ounce of genuine emotion at that funeral. That was such a personal tragedy for Pat. I mean, there was just no way anything was going to get through to his insides at that point. He was acting like a host at a cocktail party.

PAT LIVINGSTON
:
I really tried to avoid thinking about whether I had caused my father’s death or not—but the reality was there. He had read about it in the paper on Saturday, had the brief heart attack Sunday and the serious heart attack Monday.

I kind of blocked it out. I just wasn’t ready for it.

BILL BROWN
:
Pat was like a piece of cast iron now. I mean, he didn’t tell the girl, who he was making love to, that his father died. When she found out, she said to Pat, “You mean your father died, and you didn’t tell me?”

Pat was like, “Yeah, he died last month.”

It was striking to me how a person could be so emotionless. Of course, the reality was he was dying inside.

ED HORNING
:
I read Pat had been caught shoplifting, but I didn’t give it a second thought until I got the phone call. Pat was already out of jail—the FBI had already provided a good lawyer to represent him. But then an FBI agent I had gone to college with called and said, “This phone call did not take place. Do you know about Pat Livingston? The agent that was arrested for shoplifting?”

I said, “Yeah.”

He said, “He needs a lawyer—a
real
lawyer—somebody who can take
care of him, who can defend him on this, because the bureau’s gonna push him in front of the bus.”

I said, “He’s got a lawyer.”

My friend said, “No, he’s gonna get fucked by the bureau. He’s gonna get
fucked
. Will you talk to him? Can you help him?”

ED SHARP (FBI SPECIAL AGENT)
:
I was the first one who decided to fire Pat from the bureau. Did I have any qualms? No. The deciding factors were his attitude at the time and the fact that he didn’t use good common sense; he had his son locked in the car while he was shoplifting. His judgment was poor; he got arrested for a crime. As an agent—not a support employee—he’d had better training than that.

That he lied initially—that didn’t help him.

ED HORNING
:
I scheduled an appointment to meet Pat. This guy pulls up in this Datsun 280Z in front of my office, and he looks like a pimp. He had on a sport coat and one of those gold chains with a medallion. He had a goatee. My impression of the FBI was the kind of agents you’d see on TV. So I thought, “This can’t be Pat.”

But it was.

Even after I got the charges dropped, Pat was still really stressed out, so I recommended he go see a doctor to get some help.

FRED SCHWARTZ
:
Yelvington and Blasingame in Louisville were both old-line J. Edgar Hoover types—who were only concerned that Pat lied to them—and didn’t want to look at the underlying reasons.

I think that philosophy eventually carried away the bureau. It got to the point, I was told, that there were two letters on the director’s desk—one that recommended keeping Pat—and helping him—and one that recommended firing him. And the director went with the old-line guy and fired him.

PAT LIVINGSTON
:
On May 12, 1982, Michael Griffin said, “Let’s go up and see Blasingame.”

Blasingame was sitting there like a little Cheshire cat stuffed into his three-piece suit. And Griffin says, “Sit down on the couch.”

Blasingame just handed me a letter. Being the bright agent I am, I read it and figured out I was fucking fired.

MIAMI HERALD
, MAY 15, 1982: FBI BOOTS OUT MIPORN UNDERCOVER AGENT
:
“Celebrated FBI agent Patrick Livingston, who says he was torn apart emotionally by his dual life as a high-rolling undercover pornographer, has been fired by the FBI.”

ED HORNING
:
Here’s a clean-cut, all-American guy who’s on a golf scholarship to the University of Florida and ends up in the FBI—and they turn his whole world upside down.

They put him in a pink Cadillac with a bunch of pimps, take him away from his wife and two kids, and make him hang around with sleazeballs who make porno movies.

And then when he gets jammed up in Louisville they fire him. It’s amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it.

BILL BROWN
:
When Pat was suspended by the FBI, I went to them and accused them of shooting their wounded. Pat was wounded, and they were terminating him—because he embarrassed them.

I mean, Pat was the lead person that was going to testify in the MIPORN cases. Now his credibility was on the line—and the FBI’s credibility was on the line.

ED SHARP
:
“Don’t Embarrass the Bureau” was a term that was talked about at the time. You’ll never see that in writing—no official documents—but you heard it all the time.

BILL BROWN
:
I mean, the FBI had acknowledged that there was a problem because they sent Pat to see a psychiatrist before anything happened. Even during the MIPORN investigation there were all kinds of problems.

So when Pat was arrested for shoplifting and terminated by the FBI, I felt it was unfair to Pat because he was wounded in the line of duty. Psychologically wounded, but no less wounded. And my accusation, frankly, resonated in the bureau, and they understood that at a certain level, it was true. But the bureau just wanted to get rid of him.

FRED SCHWARTZ
:
James Yelvington and James Blasingame were people to whom Pat had been a great pain in the ass. He was an agent on their books that they really couldn’t use very much. He hurt their travel budget. He was a smart-ass; a wise guy. They were just appalled that this could happen.

PAT LIVINGSTON
:
It had been a full six months since the shoplifting—that’s an inordinate amount of time for the bureau to let something like this hang. The criminal charges had been dropped, so I didn’t have to go through a trial. So the firing was unexpected; I didn’t know it was going to come.

ED HORNING
:
The FBI kind of set themselves up because they had suggested, in order to justify their position, that Pat was unstable—mentally, emotionally, whatever.

So I thought, “Fine. If you want to dismiss him, I’m gonna help get this guy on some kind of federal disability. I want a worker’s compensation claim.”

FRED SCHWARTZ
:
Had Pat still been in Miami with the people who he had worked with—who he had brought glory to and who understood the situation—I think it would have been different. I think the coming together of Louisville and his personality is what caused the bureau to react the way they did.

MARCELLA COHEN (U.S. ATTORNEY)
:
The arrest—combined with other information we received—led us to the conclusion that we could no longer use Pat Livingston as a witness. His credibility had become a source of great concern. So Judge Spellman, who was the trial judge, set up hearings to determine what should be done under the circumstances.

BILL KELLY
:
We had a four-day hearing before Judge Spellman about Livingston’s credibility—and Pat just couldn’t give that judge a straight answer. The judge would say, “When you went into that department store and were arrested—were you Pat Livingston or Pat Salamone?”

Pat says, “Gee, I don’t know, your Honor. I might’ve been this; I might’ve been that….”

I listened to this for four days. The judge finally gave up and said, “All of your credibility is gone.”

So we had to reindict all the MIPORN defendants based on the testimony of Bruce Ellavsky alone.

BRUCE ELLAVSKY
:
I was not real happy being the only witness in all these trials.

BILL KELLY
:
Out of fifty-five defendants we had to drop six—because only Pat had evidence on those ones—and one of those six was Reuben Sturman, the most important pornographer in the world. So it was a tragedy.

It is the all-time horror story of FBI undercover operations.

DAVE FRIEDMAN
:
I told Dick Phinney, “Boy, I’d hate to be in your outfit. In my outfit in the army, if some guy screwed up, we stood behind him. But you guys evidently don’t.”

Phinney just turned red and said, “Beat it.”

RUBY GOTTESMAN
:
Do I think Pat was crazy? Yeah. I think the undercover work got to him. I think what happened was, in some way, he wasn’t an FBI guy no more. Now he was a mob guy, a gangster. He thought he was a wiseguy, and he liked that better.