Ames had graduated from Calabasas High in 2008. That same year, she was arrested for allegedly fighting with a co-worker. She pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of disturbing the peace and was sentenced to 24 months probation. “She was always looking for trouble and always looking to fall into the wrong crowd,” one of her neighbors had told the Post. “People would make fun of her. She alienated herself on purpose.” She drove an Eclipse, a gift from her stepfather, who “bought her everything,” a source told The Daily Beast.
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.
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