old-school diner in Studio City with red Naugahyde booths and giant homemade donuts in the display case up front. âShe already confessed to being at Orlando Bloomâs house the night of the burglary,â he said. He gave a small belch. âDid she do the fake crying thing with you where she couldnât quite squeeze the tears out?â
He was a big guy wearing an ill-fitting suit. Iâd met him on the phone when I called the Hollywood Community Police Station, which covers Beverly Hills and was the seat of the Bling Ring investigation. (In person, the precinct isnât quite as glamorous as its name; it might as well be the set of Barney Miller .) I asked if I could use his real name but he said, âCall me Vince Vaughn.â He told me if I âsold him out,â heâd âplant drugsâ on me; but that was just his sense of humor.
He was eating scrambled eggs and a mountain of turkey hash and drinking continuous cups of black coffee.
âHow can Alexis be innocent if she was at the burglary?â I asked.
âAlexis submits that sheâ Well, I canât tell you that right now. But she did stuff,â he said, âbelieve it.â
âWhat about Tess?â I asked.
âTess is a Cybergirl, kind of hot. There are a bunch of pictures of her wearing clothing belonging to the victims.â One of those pictures was posted on TMZ; it showed Tess wearing a studded, light-blue leather vest allegedly belonging to Rachel Bilson. âRachel Bilson: Hey, Thatâs My Vest!â said the headline.
âThen why wasnât Tess arrested?â I asked.
âBecause her sisterââmeaning Alexisââdidnât rat her out,â said Vince. This was speculationâTaylor was never charged. âThe D.A.âs office only pursues the cases they think they can prove,â he said. âThey have to have enough evidence to make it stick.â
Nick Prugo didnât rat out Tess, either, although he had told on everyone else allegedly in the burglary ring. On October 6, 2009, three weeks after he was arrested, Nick met with the LAPD in the offices of his lawyer, Sean Erenstoft, and described in detail how he and his friends had been robbing the homes of celebrities. He named names, gave dates, and brought photographic evidenceâpictures of his friends wearing items allegedly belonging to the burglarized stars. In one shot, Rachel Lee wears an âRâ necklace that had allegedly been stolen from Rachel Bilson; in another, Leeâs wrist sports a blue-faced Rolex watch that had allegedly been taken from Lindsay Lohanâs house.
Nick told on himself more than anyone else, offering all of this information without first getting a deal. âWhich is weird ,â Vince said, shaking his head.
âWhy would he do that?â I asked.
âI donât know,â said Vince. âYouâll have to ask him that.â
But Nick didnât implicate Tessâat least, not yet. âThey had a date to go clubbing,â Vince said with a shrug.
On October 13, 2009âa week after Nick talked to the policeâhe was seen out clubbing with Tess and former Nickelodeon star Drake Bell, with whom she told the gossip blogs she had been âhanging out.â TMZ posted a video of the trio coming out of the Roosevelt Hotel in L.A. and walking down the street to Bellâs car. Nick smiles gleefully as the paparazzi cluster around them, calling Bellâs name: âDrake! Drake!â âWhoâs the beautiful young lady?â Bell, formerly the co-star of the tween comedy Drake & Josh (2004â2007), is an affable medium-level teen star; but suddenly the paparazzi were acting like he was James Dean. But the Bling Ring suspects were the ones really attracting the attention. Drake Bell-with-alleged-burglars was a story.
âDid you ever think youâd reach this point of fame?â one of the videorazzi
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