The Bling Ring (5 page)

In 2009, Ames was arrested for D.U.I. and sentenced to community service. Making light of paying her debt to society, she'd posted on her Facebook page: “Cal trans”—the state agency responsible for road maintenance—“at 5 am you can all look for me on the side of the road ill be in that hot orange vest picking up [after] all you dirty motherfuckers.” She was arrested at home on October 22 in connection with the Bling Ring burglaries.

It wasn't clear yet how she knew the other suspects, but she knew Roy Lopez from a former job. In 2008, Ames worked as a waitress at a local Calabasas bar and restaurant, Sagebrush Cantina—a rowdy pizza-margaritas-and-burgers joint with live music and Harley-Davidsons parked out front. Lopez was a bouncer there. He was essentially homeless, my cop source said: “He lives on people's couches. He's the only person who ‘needed' to steal.” He had a minor juvenile arrest record, but had never been convicted of a crime. “A review of Lopez's criminal history reveals that he is a Pinnoy Boys gang member who uses the street name of ‘Bugsy,' ” said the LAPD's report on the Bling Ring case. (Lopez's lawyer, David Diamond, denied his client had any gang affiliation.)

“While this activity started as a twisted adventure for Prugo and his small group of friends fueled by celebrity worship,” the LAPD's report said, “it quickly mushroomed into an organized criminal enterprise and—inevitably—the introduction of hard-core criminals, such as Jonathan Ajar and Roy Lopez.” (Diamond called this characterization of his client “wrong.”)

Lopez was arrested on October 22, along with all the others in the Bling Ring sting, after being located sitting in a car at a stoplight by a police surveillance team. “Is this about the Paris Hilton thing?” he spontaneously inquired, according to LAPD Officer Brett Goodkin.

Finally, I drove by the home of Alexis Neiers in Thousand Oaks, about 20 minutes west of Calabasas. Thousand Oaks is another prosperous bedroom community that has basked in the light of many local stars, including Heather Locklear, Sophia Loren, and Wayne Gretzky. Neiers' home was on a rolling road with a cul-de-sac, flanked by camouflage-colored hills. It was a two-story, yellow stucco house with a tile roof and a lot of foliage around the front porch. Andrea Arlington Dunn, Neiers' mother, was a former
Playboy
model, sometime masseuse and holistic health care practitioner. She was married to Jerry Dunn, a television production designer who had worked on Disney shows, including
Hannah Montana
and
The Suite Life of Zack and Cody
.

Neiers had been homeschooled. She had a little sister, Gabrielle, then 15. Neiers' connection to the other burglary suspects was still unclear. On her MySpace page, she had described herself this way: “I am currently working as a full-time model and actress but in my spare time (when I have any haha) I am a Pilates, pole dance and hip-hop instructor.” Her father, Mikel Neiers, a director of photography on
Friends
between 1995 and 2000, told
People
, “[Alexis] was in the wrong place at the wrong time, associating with the wrong people. She got sucked into this. We're standing by her. I'm sure [the case against her] is going to be thrown out of court.”

She had no criminal record except for a misdemeanor warrant for “Driver in Possession of Marijuana.” On October 22, she was arrested at home after police found a black and white Chanel necklace allegedly belonging to Lindsay Lohan and a Marc Jacobs purse allegedly owned by former star of
The O.C.
Rachel Bilson in her little sister's bedroom.

5

I headed over to the Commons, the snazzy local mall, hoping to run in to some teenagers who knew the Bling Ring kids or could offer some speculation about why they did it—which is what everybody wanted to know. Why would a bunch of kids who had everything risk everything to steal a bunch of famous people's clothes?

But it was clear from driving by their homes that the kids weren't as rich as everyone seemed to want to believe. Everybody wanted them to be the like kids on
Gossip Girl
, but it seemed they lived more like typical teenagers. They were better off than many kids, at the dawning of the Great Recession; but they didn't appear to be wealthy in the way of the new elite class that had been engaging in the deregulated accumulation of capital for the better part of three decades. They weren't as rich as other people in Calabasas, or their victims, either. Which made them wannabes.

The first person I ran into at the Commons wasn't a teenager, however, but Kourtney Kardashian, sister of Kim. “Looking good, Kourtney,” said a paparazzo in tow. Being in Calabasas was like having a strange dream where celebrities popped out from every corner, like funhouse clowns. Kardashian was very pregnant (with her first child with her boyfriend, former teen model Scott Disick) and wearing what appeared to be a small fortune in tight-fitting maternity wear. She was carrying a bag that cost about the same as many Americans' monthly salaries. She was coming out of the mall entrance laden down with shopping bags. Her lip gloss glimmered in the sunlight.

Later, I would learn that Kardashian's Calabasas home had been robbed on October 18, 2009, and that the burglary bore all the marks of a Bling Ring job. Except for Prugo, none of the kids in the gang had been arrested at the time of the heist. One-hundred-eight-thousand dollars in diamond jewelry, Rolex and Cartier watches had been stolen. Cops were never able to put any of the Bling Ring kids at the scene, but they suspected a connection (and still do; the culprits in that burglary have never been apprehended).

“It's boring here,” said the girl in Starbucks. “There's nothing to do. A lot of people drink.” Now I was sipping sugary coffee drinks with three teenagers, two girls and a boy. They asked me not to use their real names; they said they could speak more freely that way. I'll call them Jenny, Justin, and Jill. They were recent graduates of Calabasas High School, all attractive and fit and sporting bright, sporty gear. They were enrolled in a local two-year college, Pierce, in nearby Woodland Hills.

“A lot of people around here get D.U.I.s,” Justin said.

They talked about knowing Courtney Ames and hearing about her recent D.U.I. “I heard her blood alcohol level was point-thirty,” said Jenny. “You can die from that—or at least go unconscious.”

Ames' Facebook page was full of partying bravado and references to drinking and getting high: “Beer pong, keg, the normal”. . . . “Wanna smoke a bluuunt.”

“I heard she was, like, a white supremacist,” said Jill. “People called her ‘White Power.' She had tattoos all over her and was always listening to hip-hop and acting like she was some big gangsta chick.”

One of the arresting officers at Ames' home on October 22 told me that in her bedroom he found notebook papers filled with numerous “generic white power kinda stuff. And the ‘n' word.” When he asked her what this was doing there, he said she told him, “I was into that in high school but I'm not into it anymore.” (Robert Schwartz, Ames' lawyer, had no comment.)

“She was always talking about going into Hollywood to party,” said Jenny.

“Most people don't
want
to go into Hollywood,” said Jill. “We're like in a bubble out here. We're in a bubble.”

“People hang out at the mall,” said Jenny. “Hang out at Starbucks.”

“Go to Malibu or Zuma Beach in the summer. Go to the Promenade in Westlake,” said Jill.

“Make bonfires,” Jenny said.

I asked them if it was strange growing up in a community surrounded by so many celebrities.

“It is strange,” Justin said. “There's a lot of people with money who think they're better than everyone else. It's the haves and have-nots.”

“They act like they're, like, the people on
The Hills
,” said Jill. “They wear, like, three-hundred-dollar jeans.”

I asked them what they thought motivated the Bling Ring kids.

“Kids are very influenced by the media,” said Justin, looking thoughtful. “They're constantly seeing movies and TV shows telling them a certain lifestyle is better, and if you don't live that lifestyle you can't be happy. You're like a loser. So people want what they don't have.”

“Everybody wants to be famous,” said Jenny.

“No,” said Jill. “Everybody thinks they
are
famous. I call it ‘FOF'—Famous on Facebook. It's like they think they can just put themselves out there and don't even have to work for it.”

I told them I'd just seen Kourtney Kardashian.

“We see them all the time,” said Jill. “They have really big butts.”

“I saw Britney at the gas station,” Jenny said. “Even though she's gained some weight I still think she's really cute.”

6

When I got back to my hotel in L.A. that night I thought about what it must be like growing up in an America where everybody wanted to be famous. An awards show was on, the American Music Awards. I watched the stars gliding up the red carpet, and thought of Nick Prugo and Rachel Lee watching it, somewhere, transfixed. Then Jennifer Lopez was singing her song “Louboutins” (2009): “
I'm throwing on my Louboutins. . . Watch this Benz/Exit that driveway. . . .
” I turned it off.

If the kids at the Calabasas Commons were right, then everybody not only wanted to be famous, but thought it was within their reach. It's telling that the most popular show on television between 2003 and 2011—in fact, the only show ever to be number one in the Nielsen ratings for eight consecutive seasons—was
American Idol
, a competition program celebrating the attainment of instant notoriety. “This is America,” said
Idol
co-host Ryan Seacrest in 2010, “where everyone has the right to life, love, and the pursuit of fame.” As proof of this, Seacrest is also the executive producer of
Keeping Up with the Kardashians
.

The narrative of fame runs deep in American culture, dating back to
A Star Is Born
(1937) and beyond (arguably to the spread of photography in the 1850s and 1868's
Little Women
—Jo wants to be a famous writer—which isn't quite the same as wanting to be on
The Real Housewives of Atlanta
). But it's safe to say there's never been more of an emphasis on the glory of fame in the history of American popular culture. There are the countless competition shows (
The X Factor, America's Got Talent, The Voice, America's Next Top Model, Project Runway
); awards shows; reality television, on which even “hoarders” and “American pickers” can become famous. There are Justin Bieber and Kate Upton, self-made sensations through the wonders of self-broadcasting. Explaining the success of YouTube in 2007, co-founder Chad Hurley said, “Everyone, in the back of his mind, wants to be a star.” There's the new 24/7 celebrity news industry exemplified by TMZ and gossip blogs. There's the way in which even legitimate news venues have become infused with celebrity reporting.

Unsurprisingly, the massive growth of the celebrity industrial complex hasn't failed to affect kids. To put it mildly, kids today are obsessed with fame. There's already a fair amount of research about this—it seems we're obsessed with how obsessed kids are with becoming famous. A 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 51 percent of 18-to-25-year-olds said their most or second-most important life goal—after becoming rich—was becoming famous. In a 2005 survey of American high school students, 31 percent said they “expect” to be famous one day. For his book
Fame Junkies
(2007), author Jake Halpern and a team of academics conducted a survey of 650 teenagers in the Rochester, New York area. Among their findings: Given the choice of becoming stronger, smarter, famous, or more beautiful, boys chose fame almost as often as they chose intelligence, and girls chose it more often. Forty-three percent of girls said they would like to grow up to become a “personal assistant to a very famous singer or movie star”—three times more than as chose “a United States Senator” and four times more than chose “chief of a major company like General Motors.” When asked whom they would most like to have dinner with, more kids chose Jennifer Lopez than Jesus. More girls with symptoms of low self-esteem said they would like to have dinner with Paris Hilton.

Interestingly, kids who read tabloids and watch celebrity news shows like
Entertainment Tonight
and
Access Hollywood
are more likely to feel that they, too, will one day become famous. Girls and boys who describe themselves as lonely are more likely to endorse the statement: “My favorite celebrity just helps me feel good and forget about all of my troubles.”

The fame bug is more prevalent in industrialized nations than in the developing world. A 2011 survey by the ChildFund Alliance, a network of 12 child development organizations operating in 58 countries, found that a majority of children in developing countries aspire to be doctors and teachers—when asked about their top priorities, they talked about improving their nations' schools and “[providing] more food”—while their counterparts in developed nations want to grow up to have the kind of jobs that will make them rich and famous—professional athlete, actor, singer, fashion designer.

Or for the less hardworking, there is burglar.

It occurred to me, while looking over the careers of the Bling Ring victims, that not only were they rich and famous, but nearly all of them had been in movies or on popular TV shows about people who were rich and famous or
wanted
to be rich and famous. They provided the burglars with an enticing image of fame within fame, imaginary wealth rewarded by actual wealth. There was a double mirroring with all their targets, as deliciously full of things that were bad for you as a double-stuffed Oreo.