The Bling Ring: How a Gang of Fame-obsessed Teens Ripped off Hollywood and Shocked the World. Nancy Sales Jo

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СКАЧАТЬ The show, which ran from 1998 to 2004, and could be credited with mainstreaming a familiarity with designer brands, became very popular among tween and teenage girls, who took to showing off their hauls from shopping expeditions in online “haul vlogs.” Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? (1999–2013) another popular show asked. Well, who didn’t? “Everyone wants to be rich,” said David Siegel, the private timeshare mogul profiled in the documentary The Queen of Versailles (2012). “If they can’t be rich, the next best thing is to feel rich.”

      By the 1980s, there weren’t songs on the radio anymore about loving your fellow human beings. “Come on, people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another right now,” sang the Youngbloods in 1967. “People all over the world, join hands, start a love train,” crooned the O’Jays in 1973. Now there were songs about loving yourself—and stuff. There was Madonna singing about being “a material girl,” “living in the material world.” There was Puff Daddy, in the 1990s, rapping, “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby.” In 2008, the R&B group Little Jackie proclaimed, “The world should revolve around me.” Jay-Z goes by the nickname “Hova”—as in Jehovah—and calls himself “the eighth wonder of the world.” The shift in values could be seen on television, too. There weren’t shows about poor families anymore, like Good Times (1974–1979) or The Waltons (1972–1981)—there were shows about rich people, Dynasty (1981–1989) and Dallas (1978–1991) and, of course, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

      Lifestyles had a long run, from 1984 to 1995, and its impact was enormous. Now regular people could see what it was like to be rich from the inside—and they wanted it. “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” (1996) by rappers Kool G Rap and DJ Polo, trumpeted the delights of having a “yacht that makes the Love Boat look like a life raft.” Quite a change from the Intruders’ 1974 anthem, “Be Thankful for What You Got.”

      When I got a chance to talk to Nick Prugo and asked him why he thought Rachel Lee was so obsessed with their famous victims that she would steal their clothes, he said, “I think she just wanted to be part of the lifestyle. Like, the lifestyle that everybody kind of wants.”

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

      

      When you drive up to the address of Indian Hills, the first thing you see is another school, Agoura High; the two schools share a campus. Agoura is a bustling, idyllic sort of American high school, very proud of its Chargers football team. It sits in a large tan brick building with a parking lot full of luxury cars, shiny BMWs, Audis, and SUVs.

      Indian Hills, which has less than 100 students, resides at the back, in several prefab buildings, like the ones used as offices at construction sites. It has as its logo the uncomfortable image of an Indianhead, and, hidden at the back of the compound as it is, it has the feeling of being stuck on a reservation.

      The two girls I met in the parking lot were seniors at the school. They said they’d rather not use their real names, as they “didn’t want to get involved.” They chose the names “Monica” and “Ashley.” They were wearing low-slung jeans, tight long-sleeved Ts and a lot of dark eye makeup. Monica was smoking.

      We went and sat on the bleachers of the playing field, which was empty except for a couple boys running around the track. Monica said she was sent to Indian Hills for “drugs”; Ashley because “I have trouble learning.”

      “She was toootally into herself,” said Monica.

      “Oh, I liked Rachel,” said Ashley. “She could be sweet.”

      Monica raised an eyebrow. “Sweet? You mean mean,” she said.

      They said they knew Rachel Lee, Nick Prugo, and Diana Tamayo, having gone to school with the older kids before they graduated in 2008. “Everybody knew what they were doing”—that is, burglarizing the homes of celebrities, said Monica.

      “They bragged about it. At parties and stuff,” said Ashley.

      “Most people didn’t believe it,” Monica said. “People thought they were just talking shit.”

      I asked them why no one ever reported it to the police.

      Monica made a face. “You don’t do that. They would wear like, Paris Hilton’s stuff, and say they were wearing it. I would have sold that shit.”

      TMZ would post a picture of Nick wearing a “P” necklace allegedly belonging to Hilton; across the picture Nick had scrawled, Perez Hilton–style, “Hey Paris, look familiar?”

      “Rachel had really nice clothes,” said Ashley. “Everyone else would be dressed, like, casually, in jeans and shorts, and she would be wearing like some designer top and heels. She looked like a celebrity. She looked like someone in a magazine.”

      “Yeah, Burglars’ Magazine,” said Monica.

      “Prugo stated that Lee was the driving force of the burglary crew and that her motivation was based in her desire to own the designer wardrobes of the Hollywood celebrities that she admired,” said the LAPD’s report.

      I asked the girls if they knew how Rachel afforded her stylish wardrobe. “A lot of people in this area have money,” Monica said, shrugging.

      “She acted kind of spoiled,” said Ashley. “I heard she didn’t get along with her mom but then she would have all this really nice stuff so I thought maybe her mom was trying to win her daughter by giving her stuff—I don’t know. I heard she didn’t like her stepfather. She had a really nice car, an Audi A4.”

      “Rachel’s a mean girl,” Monica said with a click of her tongue. “She was backstabby. When people say Nick was the ringleader, I don’t believe it, ’cause he could never do that by himself. He was too nervous.”

      I asked them about Diana Tamayo. “Always getting into fights,” Monica said. “She used to, like, yell at the Agoura Hills kids ’cause they act like we don’t exist.”

      The boys running around the track ran by.

      “It’s not all bad here,” said Ashley after a moment. “Heather Graham,” the actress, “went to Agoura.”

      “And Brad Delson, the guitarist from Linkin Park,” Monica said. They seemed almost proud of it.

      “We’re a very small group,” said Ashley said, “but Rachel and Diana definitely ruled.”

      “They thought they were The Plastics”—the popular clique in the movie Mean Girls (2004), said Monica.

      “Once Rachel told me she liked my shoes—they were just some flip-flops but they had a bow—and, I don’t know, it made me feel good that someone with that much style liked what I was wearing,” said Ashley.

      

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