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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks to my editor Carrie Thornton for suggesting this book and for all her great questions and answers which helped me figure out how to make it work. Thanks too to Sofia Coppola for seeing something bigger in the story, which became her wonderful film. Thanks also go to my agent Sarah Burnes for taking me through the process of book writing for the first time, for her humor and unfailing support.

Much gratitude also goes to Graydon Carter for assigning the Bling Ring story and for his incredible kindness over the years, and to Dana Brown, my editor at
Vanity Fair,
for editing that story and for always encouraging me to be myself.

Thanks also to Jenny Allen, a talented writer whom I was lucky to have as a fact-checker and confidant. Thanks to Brittany Hamblin at HarperCollins for all her help with acquiring photos and generally making things happen.

Thanks to my sparkling daughter Zazie for putting up with many nights of take-out from Wild Ginger when I was busy working, and for keeping me laughing and dancing. And thanks to my darling Henry for saying “yes, you can,” when I was worried that I couldn't. Thanks to my mom Alice and my dad Ronny (may he rest in peace) for everything, especially teaching me how to work hard (and not burgle). Thanks to my dear friend Calvin Baker, a great writer, for all his good advice, and my late friend Donald Suggs for talking me through this story even on the night he died, making me laugh on the phone by saying, “This is upper-middle-class crackhead behavior.” I miss his wisdom and bon mots.

COPYRIGHT

Photographs on pages 6, 59, 88, 209, 236 courtesy of Splash News and Picture Agency; photographs on pages 66, 82, 172 courtesy of X17, Inc.; photograph on page 108 ©Warner Bros./Getty Images; photograph on page 129 ©AFP/Getty Images; photographs on pages 137 and 146 ©Susanna Howe/ Trunk Archive; photograph on page 161 ©WireImage/Getty Images.

THE
BLING
RING
. Copyright © 2013 by Nancy Jo Sales. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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FOOTNOTES

1.
     See Chrystia Freeland, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else (Penguin 2012).

2.
     A psychostimulant used for the treatment of ADHD.

3.
     An antidepressant.

4.
     In 1989, along with his older brother Lyle, in Beverly Hills.

5.
     The phrase appeared in Rosalind Wiseman's Queen Bees and Wannabes (Crown, 2002), largely the basis for the movie Mean Girls.

6.
     See Dr. Drew Pinsky and Dr. S. Mark Young, The Mirror Effect: How Celebrity Narcissism Is Seducing America (Harper, 2009).

7.
     In the 1920s, Holmes was a founder of the spiritual movement Religious Science, or “Science of Mind,” a precursor to New Age thought.

8.
     A detective at Malibu/Lost Hills Station, which covers Calabasas, told me that he couldn't discuss the alleged crimes Nick discusses here due to the alleged perpetrators' juvenile status at the time they were committed.

9.
     The “Bel Air Burglars” who robbed dozens of homes between 2005 and 2008 targeted the rich, but not the famous.

10.
   In the 2003 video, a Quebec high school student awkwardly brandishes a golf ball retriever as if it were a lightsaber from Star Wars. His friends put it on the Internet without his knowledge.

11.
   Winslet won, for The Reader.

12.
   See Grandmaster Flash “The Message” (1982), Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back (1988), KRS-One's Stop The Violence Movement (begun in 1989), and more.

13.
   “Meridian tapping” is a New Age holistic healing technique whereby people tap on their bodies in the hopes of undoing disturbances caused by negative emotions.

14.
   As the dancing troupe on the variety show, Solid Gold (1980–1988), they were once the gold standard for female jiggle—outside of Vegas showgirls or actual strippers—in American entertainment.

15.
   None of Nick's accomplices were charged in the Altuna burglary, and, due to legal complications, can't be named.