Essay Online

Stolen Boy is billed as a work of fiction, however it actually explores a real event, and that event is still unfolding in the Southern California court system. Jessie James Hollywood faces the potential of the trip to lethal injection for his actions. So real is Michael Mehas’ book that he actually was subpoenaed twice as a witness in the trial, and forced to hand over his notes and tapes of interviews he had conducted.

With a background of Los Angeles, Stolen boy is about drugs, booze, fast cars, and young people. With that combination you will immediately think gangs. But gangs are not involved, the individuals are mostly from regular middle class, though, highly dysfunctional families.

Mickey Youngblood and Rick LeBlanc are young people that have set out on money making careers in the drug business, both have carved out lucrative existences, but a deal between them that went wrong has soured their relationship. So much so, that a $2000 outstanding debt, creates a verbal war, that in turn becomes a physical war of property damage, and threats towards families.

Mickey is to say the least a hot head, and when the windows of his house are smashed out in a late night raid, all rules of right and wrong exit through the empty frames. Revenge is a strong emotion and Mickey is hell bent on satisfying his hunger for it.

His first idea is to find Rick LeBlanc and have it out with him. $2000 after all is chump change in the drug world. In a sheer coincidence it is not Rick they see walking down the street, but his 15 year old younger brother Bobby. Once again though, Mickey lets his rage rule his brain, and persuades the kids with him to firstly beat the kid up “as a warning,” however second thoughts enter the sick and twisted mind, and instead they kidnap Bobby.

It is not the classic kidnap tale, in fact it is anything but classic. Bobby for the most part is free to leave at any time, but he prefers to ‘party’ with his captors, drugs and booze abound! Even stranger there is no attempt made to conceal the fact that Bobby is a hostage. In what has to have been the worst kept secret in the sieve that is the LA underbelly, the whole scheme starts to unravel as more and more people become involved.

Once again the demon Mickey makes poor choices, faced with the potential of exposure by Bobby he must now make a very hard decision. Does he believe Bobby when he says that there is no harm done, and that he will not talk to anyone about the kidnapping? Or is a different course of action needed?

This is a very powerful book, and one that deserves a spot on the coveted shelf space of your local bookstore. It has also cost author Michael Mehas a great deal to write this book, being so close to the factual case he finds himself in a ‘no win’ situation. The real Mickey faces the possibility of the death penalty. What Michael knows could spare him, or could seal his fate. In many ways, Michael has become Mickey, he holds the key to life or death. This is not a situation I would want to be in.

This is not your typical novel, even though the main characters are mere teenagers, they cover the entire gamut of today’s society, the good, the bad, and the very, very ugly!

Stolen Boy is available through Amazon, and Michael Mehas also has a very informative web site where you can learn more about this story that merges fact with fiction.

Yes folks, it’s the long awaited OJ Simpson confession book! Except that in OJ’s mind it was anything but, he claims it is a fictional account of how we would have done it, if he had done it! I have lots of problems with this book, not least of which is what was going through his sick and twisted mind to want to write the book in the first place. If you are innocent this book makes no sense. And if you are guilty, it makes even less sense, unless you are trying to confess and clear the air. But he plainly says, time and time again that it is fiction.

The good news is that through the intervention of Fred and Kim Goldman OJ Simpson will not see one dime of profits from its sale. The not so good news is that OJ did manage to get the almost $700,000 in advances before the project became public.

Really it is the story behind the book that makes better reading than the book itself. When the Goldman family heard that OJ Simpson was having a book written they moved into high gear to prevent its publication and his ability to profit from the misery. In the 13 years following the guilty verdict Simpson has paid exactly nothing of the money awarded to the Goldman’s. He relocated to Florida to avoid the pesky Californian judgment, and spends a happy life playing golf and who knows what else. The award was somewhere in the 18 million dollar range, with interest that now amount has more than doubled, one report puts it at 39 million dollars.

With ammunition like that the courts sided with the Goldman’s and gave them the rights to the book. Unfortunately there were strings attached, a bankruptcy was involved. And after much soul searching they realized that although they had won, the win came at the great price of now having to publish the book.

The end result, is a book that I am sure OJ hates! Yes his material is included in its unchanged entirety, however it it preceded by some commentary by Fred Goldman, and the actual Ghostwriter Pablo Fenjves. The book is ended by a chapter written by Dominick Dunne.

Let’s take these sections one by one. Fred Goldman explains at length the problems and frustrations his family felt when it became public knowledge that OJ Simpson was planning a tell all book. One article I read claimed that this section was ‘under edited,’ that might be true, but it is also written from the heart. And I will take that every time over the sterile grammatical style favored by many large publishing houses. It worked for me and set the scene well.

The most damning testimony to the guilt and obvious truth to the ‘hypothetical version of events’ comes from Ghostwriter Pablo Fenjves. In a matter of just 20 pages Pablo tells a very interesting side of OJ Simpson. Although I had no doubt of his guilt from the time of the actual 1993 events, Pablo makes a case that is so strong event Judge Ito and that half wit jury would have found OJ guilty.

Next up, is the OJ Simpson text. Pretty much it is a self serving and nauseating piece of garbage. He explains at great length what a nice guy he is, and what a bad person Nicole Brown was. The one chapter of interest is the one detailing the events of the fateful night. With the exception of the ’second man,’ it likely is one of the few factual parts of the entire manuscript.

The final chapter is written by Dominick Dunne. Dominick covered the original trial for Vanity Fair, and became a close friend of the Goldman’s as a result. His is an interesting story, he too lost a child at the hands of a murderer, his daughter was killed, and the killer walked free after only 2

I had no idea that my work on a motion picture would cause a high-profile death penalty case to end up with the California Supreme Court. Jesse James Hollywood had been gone for nearly three years by the time I became involved. He had totally disappeared. Vanished into thin air. And he seemed so completely removed from the writing project I was about to begin.

The FBI and other federal and local law enforcement authorities trails had all but dried up. That’s why the prosecutor assigned to the case, Santa Barbara County Senior Deputy District Attorney Ron Zonen, who had also prosecuted Hollywood’s four co-defendants &ndash and a guy named Michael Jackson &ndash agreed to work with us. Mr. Zonen had wanted to create a sort of global wanted poster to see if someone somewhere in the world might be able to ID Hollywood, pick up the phone, and help global law enforcement authorities nab him. Zonen had already worked with the producers from the television show America’s Most Wanted, who featured the fugitive on nine of its shows between 2000 and 2003, and he wanted his man, badly.

Hollywood’s name had become daily fodder for national headlines after word of the murder originally hit in early August of 2000. All the news pundits had named him as the ringleader of a band of middleclass, pot-selling social misfits, and the one responsible for orchestrating the fifteen-year-old’s kidnapping and murder. But no one apparently had a clue as to where he had disappeared to when I took the call from an old buddy who wanted to make a motion picture about the youngest man ever on the FBI’s Most Wanted List.

In April of 2003, writer/director Nick Cassavetes and I trekked up north to meet with Mr. Zonen at the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s office. Ronald J. Zonen had been Chief Trial Deputy for the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s office since 1991. He was an affable man with a smooth demeanor and when we were finished, he gave us several volumes of trial transcripts from Hollywood’s co-defendants, and we left. At the time, Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey McGuire were set to produce Alpha Dog, and I had no idea that I’d end up writing a highly controversial novel based on the tragic story, or that I’d end up being a crusader in the battle to save Mr. Hollywood’s life. I was also not prescient enough to envision DiCaprio or McGuire falling off the project, nor Justin Timberlake, Bruce Willis, Sharon Stone, Anton Yelchin, Emile Hirsch, or Ben Foster climbing on.

After reading through the transcripts that Mr. Zonen had provided, plus others from Hollywood’s co-defendants’ trials and appeals, I realized we did not have enough information to write a truthful story about what had actually taken place. I talked this over with Cassavetes, and we agreed that I should go back to Santa Barbara to get more information from Mr. Zonen. We needed more detail and deeper insight into character and motivation for story purposes. We needed police reports, photographs, witness interviews and much more. And amazingly, we got them. I got Mr. Zonen’s entire file from prosecuting Hollywood’s four co-defendants, including copies of all the videos and audiotapes, the defendants’ confessions, the prosecutor’s trial notebook, the defendants’ psychological records and probation reports, and more. I also arranged to have Mr. Zonen &ndash along with the lead detective working the case &ndash take us up to Lizard’s Mouth, a trailhead located atop the mountains separating Santa Barbara and the Santa Ynez Valley, to discuss the murder with us at the very spot where the victim’s body had been discovered in a shallow grave some three years earlier.

This combined with all the information accrued from the interviews Cassavetes and I had conducted enabled me to prepare a 239-page story chronology that I used to help Nick write his screenplay. He went on to direct Alpha Dog and I set out to write my book. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, in March of 2005, after one of the greatest international manhunts in history, Jesse James Hollywood was captured in a Brazilian jungle, and I was about to be thrust into the legal hot seat.

James Blatt is one of America’s most astute criminal defense attorneys. He dresses like a zillion bucks and wears the disarming smile of a ruthless professional. After Jesse Hollywood’s capture, his father, Jack, who was a consultant on Alpha Dog, told Mr. Blatt about all the information I had gathered for the film and book projects; how I had become the world’s leading authority on the case. He thought I might be able to aid Mr. Blatt in trying to save his son’s life. When we met, Blatt questioned me about all the information I had gathered. By the time the meeting ended, the defense attorney appeared quite impressed with what he had heard. Later that summer, he asked me to testify in his client’s death penalty case. He wanted to build a record of all informational exchanges between Mr. Zonen and myself. He wanted to recuse the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s office for prosecutorial misconduct for having turned over their file to me.

The only problem with this strategy was that my testimony was needed to do it. Since I was the only one to repeatedly meet with Mr. Zonen, I was the only one who could testify as to what he had given me. I found myself caught in a “Sophie’s Choice” type situation. If I testified, I could help save Jesse James Hollywood from death row. But at the same time, my testimony could be used as the cornerstone for criminal prosecution against Mr. Zonen and his office for what Mr. Blatt termed “illegal misconduct.” Since I’m totally against bringing death to any living being, I wanted to help Mr. Blatt save his client’s life. But on the other hand, Mr. Zonen had been very good to me. He had been totally cooperative in providing us with material for the movie and book. As conflicted as I felt, as much as I wanted to help save Jack Hollywood’s son’s life, I could not be responsible for bringing criminal charges against a man I considered a good friend. So I refused to testify. Ultimately, the California Attorney General agreed not to pursue criminal charges against Mr. Zonen or the DA’s office, and I reversed my position and agreed to testify.

In September 2005, Hollywood’s attorney filed a motion to recuse the entire District Attorney’s office. In support of the motion, Mr. Blatt declared that he had attended “the first and only public screening to date” of Alpha Dog, and that the film portrayed his client “in an extremely inflammatory manner, as extremely manipulative, vicious, selfish, and without any redeeming character traits whatsoever.” He further stated that several of the public movie viewers had described his client as being nothing short of a “monster,” and that at the conclusion of the film, special thanks were given to the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department and to Ron Zonen.

The trial court denied Hollywood’s motion, but ended up ordering me to turn over the notes and tapes from all the interviews I conducted. The defense then appealed the case. In its wisdom, the California Court of Appeal agreed with the defense and, after an evidentiary hearing by the trial court, recused Zonen (but not his entire office) from the case. In his concurring opinion, Justice Gilbert succinctly noted: “However appalling the crime for which defendant was charged, he, like anyone charged with a criminal offense, is entitled to a fair trial with all its attendant constitutional and statutory safeguards.” In this case, the prosecution had fallen short of this requirement.

Every high-profile case carries with it the risk of the prosecutor falling into the trap of cozying up too much with the media. Prosecutors, as well as other law enforcement agencies, often find themselves playing up to the media as if there are two trials to win &ndash the one in the courtroom as well as the one with the court of public opinion. When handling high-profile cases, prosecutors must take to heart the conflict of interest they create when buddying up to the media. They can easily become lost in the quest for personal glory or profit. This appeared to be what happened with the case involving the Duke lacrosse team, where the DA’s pretrial contacts with the media raised questions about his ability to handle the matter fairly, resulting in his recusal. There were similar complaints regarding the prosecution of the Jenna 6 case out of Louisiana.

Prosecutors do not represent clients. Rather, all decisions made in their cases are supposed to center around the best interests of the public. And part of these considerations must be to act responsibly when interacting with the media. There are certain guidelines they must follow to make sure their statements (and actions) do not materially prejudice a legal proceeding. According to the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, prosecutors must make sure their comments do not have a “substantial likelihood of heightened public condemnation of the accused.” They must also be sure to prevent “investigators, law enforcement personnel” and other employees or persons assisting from making such statements to the media.

Prosecutors do, in the alternative, have certain First Amendment rights. However, again, those rights do not go unlimited when dealing with the media in a high-profile case. The prosecutor must still be responsible for pursuing a just result. He or she must act in a manner that puts the public’s interest above that of the individual prosecutor. Thus, their goal must be to make sure that justice is done in all instances, not that they win the case.

In the Hollywood matter, I was afraid that the Santa Barbara District Attorney’s office had lost sight of their responsibilities. They had continuously misrepresented the true facts and the motivations involved in the case to the media, and they seemed totally bent upon demonizing Hollywood and his co-defendants. For all intents and purposes, Hollywood, during his nearly five years of being at large, had been convicted in absentia. I believed there to be no way for him to receive a fair trial. Public sentiment wanted him dead for what they believed he had done. And this was due to the way the prosecutor and associated law enforcement agencies had dealt with the media. They acted as though their only goals were to assure that Jesse James Hollywood was not only captured, but that the public was set up to convict him and sentence him to death. True justice did not seem to be a part of their plan. I felt it my moral responsibility as a fellow human being to do what I could to make sure this did not happen.

(Transcript of live interview, December 2008)

Juanita Watson, host: … today, I have on the program, Fred and Kim Goldman, the father and sister of Ron Goldman who was tragically murdered along with Nicole Brown Simpson in Brentwood CA in June of 1994.

In 2006, HarperCollins announced the publication of a book in which O.J. Simpson told how he hypothetically would have committed the murders. In response to public outrage that Simpson stood to profit from these crimes, HarperCollins canceled the book. A Florida bankruptcy court awarded the rights to the Goldmans in August 2007 to partially satisfy the unpaid civil judgment, which has risen, with interest, to over $38 million.

Amidst much controversy and criticism, The Goldman family has recently published “If I Did It; Confessions of the Killer,” which they view as O.J.’s confession, and has worked hard to ensure that the public will read this book and learn the truth. This book is the original manuscript approved by O.J. Simpson, with up to 14,000 words of key additional commentary.

I’m very happy to have the Goldman’s on the show today, to talk about the journey they have been on to get the rights to this book, the confusion that has been created in the media around their story, and recent events that have OJ back in the spotlight.

Juanita: … So walk us through that; how you ended up with the rights to this book.

Fred: Well, first of all if we had it to again today, we would do the exact same thing. We spoke out against the book for several reasons. One, we wanted to stop him from making money on the murders of Ron and Nicole, and two, we were concerned as to what the contents of the book were, fearful that it might be the equivalent of a how to manual. Ultimately, we learned that he had already been paid close to $700,000 and was expecting more. He had another $300,000 coming as an advance. So unfortunately, he had already been paid. Additionally, once we were able to acquire a copy of the manuscript, we discovered that no, it wasn’t a manual on how to commit murder, but it’s a read that once you go through it, you have very little reason to believe that it was an admission of guilt, a confession. And we levied down the right on the book in order to prevent him from ever gaining any additional money, and in doing so, we ultimately because he and his kids who had formed a fraudulent company, formed a company to move the money from Harper Collins to the killer to avoid the judgment. And in doing so, they ultimately filed bankruptcy of that company in order to avoid, to stop us from getting the rights to the book. And it is through bankruptcy that the rights were awarded to us because the asset, the rights, had to be turned into money according to the bankruptcy court. And the bankruptcy court gave us the option to be involved in that. We chose to do that because we knew that there was a very good chance that the rights could ultimately have gone back to the killer, and we would have right back to square one. So we got involved and promised the court that we would do everything we could to monetize that asset.

Juanita: I’d like to know both of your reactions upon reading the book for the first time and going through, especially where he is talking that confrontation in the courtyard with Nicole and Ron. What were your reactions to reading this for the first time?

Fred: Well, for me if I can, I started it several times and had a hard time getting into it, but finally, I found it very disturbing, very disturbing because I realized that I was reading the words of the monster that murdered my son. And needless to say by the time we got to the specific chapter in which he talks about murdering Ron and Nicole, that was a real struggle for me and very painful. It was painful for the obvious reasons and it was additionally painful for me to listen to him review if you would how he taunted Ron and how he made fun of Ron. This man is a monster, a piece of trash, calling him a murderer isn’t enough.

Kim: I don’t know. I don’t know that I have much more to add. I think the first time I read it or I skimmed it, I was looking to see if there was anything descriptive in there. Because all the criticism was that we were publishing a murder manual. And then when I finally sat down in the quiet of my own state, I was incredibly moved by that paragraph, I mean by that chapter. For me, it didn’t deviate from the criminal case. I already knew the information, but hearing the killer sort of recount all of the emotion from that night and all of the excitement and I don’t mean that in a positive way, obviously, but like all of the energy that was happening, that was difficult for me because I’ve always wondered about those last couple of minutes of Ron’s life.

Juanita: How close to the truth do you feel that that text and that recollection is? Do you believe that that is pretty close to the truth?

Kim: I do. You know the only thing that was new information for me was the dog that was wagging his tail. You know, I guess it comes down to this for me at the end of the day. An innocent person wouldn’t write a book like this. An innocent person wouldn’t sit down and write a hypothetical about how he would have killed the mother of his children, an innocent person. So I walked into it believing that he was confessing, so everything that I read, I came from the mindset that it was pretty damn close to what happened that night. But for me I’m reading it from a place that this is his confession and I’m going to take what he is saying is the truth.

Fred: And additionally, I think it’s important to recognize that he does not contradict virtually any evidence at all. As a matter of fact, he in some ways explains things that were unknown. He makes a point of commenting on the route that he took back to his home from Nicole’s. And that’s how some thought it was one way. He’s going to clarify. He told you exactly how he drove home. Additionally, I think for me his commentary about being covered in blood and that at some point, he took off his clothes before getting into his car. He took off his outerwear and bundled it all together, which for me would explain why in fact, there wasn’t even more blood in the car. He is so arrogant that he ultimately ends of telling you virtually everything because quote un quote “he knows better than anyone” and he wants to be sure that you know that.

Juanita: … Did you have any other hopes for having this book on the shelves?

Kim: I think I know that my father and I feel very strongly about this is, you know most of the book is written about how his relationship was with Nicole and how abusive that relationship is, and so if there is an opportunity for a woman to read it and identify herself with Nicole and then someway have the courage and strength to get out of that relationship, then you know we’ve done a good thing. And I think I hope that people walk away with some hope in that regard if in fact they are in that situation. My father and I also added a victim’s resource section to this book, and we also are donating a portion of the proceeds to the Ron Goldman Foundation of Justice so we can help other victims of crimes sort of navigate themselves through this horrific process.

Juanita: So, how can listeners find out more about the Ron Goldman Foundation? Do you have a website?

Kim: RonGoldmanFoundation dot org … it’s in two stages … my father and I over the last 13 years have been volunteering our time to speak out on behalf of victim’’ rights and this is the first time from a financial position to try to contribute and help in some ways. So we have some ideas of how we want to further assist and I think it’s more partnering with the other organizations that are doing such amazing work on behalf of victims’ rights.

Juanita: What are the families that you have talked to that have read this book that you know have had family members in domestic abuse situations. What are their comments on this story and the point of view of an abuser?

Kim: We’ve had an enormous amount of email coming into the website. Again, once people understood our reasoning for doing it, people were very supportive. I had one woman in particular tell me that she appreciated that we were courageous enough to do this because it takes courage to fight your assailant no matter what if you’re in an abusive relationship or if you’re in this kind of situation, the courage it takes to do that, and she appreciated it because it reminded her of the courage it took her to leave her abusive husband … I think that unless you have walked in our shoes, you can’t completely embrace the struggle, and I don’t fault anybody for that, but that’s just, you know this is a commitment that we have made and this is a necessary thing that we for us to be doing to ensure that he’s held accountable.

Juanita: … I just wanted to let you both share any final thoughts that you would like to before we end today.

Fred: I think the only thing that’s important to always remember is that we would like to see a justice system that cares more about the victims in this country than it does about the criminals and the accused. And unfortunately right now, the term criminal justice system seems to very clearly define the system. Perhaps if it was called the victims’ justice system and clearly was more concerned about victims, we’d all be in a better as a country. Victims in this country account for enormous toll, enormous toll on our society, both physically and financially, and a system that works hard to ensure that violent people are put back out on the street is not the kind of system that I think most people in this country would like. So, as people get involved in the pain or reading about the kind of trauma that occurs from violent crime, hopefully they will begin to speak out as do victims already in this country to ultimately end up with a system that’s there for the vast majority of us instead of the few that commit all the crimes.

Kim: I also want to add specifically as it relates to this specific book that I hope that the next time someone goes to shake his hand or get an autograph from him that they are reminded that those are the hands that killed two people. And I hope that our efforts and the efforts of this country to ensure that justice prevails that he is pushed into a state of exile and you know and that he just sort of falls by the wayside. That would be fantastic for us.

Juanita: Wonderful, final thoughts. Thank you so much for talking to us today. Much sympathy for your loss and we certainly support you and your endeavors for victims of crimes. Thank you so much for your time today Fred and Kim.