The Bling Ring Read Online Free PDF

directions, I looked up and saw two funky-looking, middle-aged people hurrying past my car. A couple of photographers were chasing them, shouting, “Sharon!” “Ozzy!” It was the Osbournes. They’d moved to the Valley in 2007 after the success of their reality show, The Osbournes (2002–2005). I’d never seen paparazzi working in quite so mundane a setting before. The other people in the parking lot just strolled along with their carts as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening. Ozzy, wearing his signature-tinted granny glasses, looked a little rattled.
    It got me thinking about the Lady Gaga song “Paparazzi” (2008), which was still all over the radio at that time. It seemed like an anthem for our celebrity-obsessed age, or at least for this story I was working on. Gaga equates modern love with a love of fame—to be in love is to be a celebrity stalker, a paparazzi: “ I’m your biggest fan/I’ll follow you until you love me/Papa-paparazzi. . . . ” Now it was as if everybody had become their own fan. Everybody was broadcasting themselves on social media. Everyone was their own paparazzi.
    And I thought of Lady Gaga—born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, four to five years before the Bling Ring kids, in New York. She’d dropped out of college and hustled her way to superstardom. She often talked about how bad she’d wanted it. “In the book of Gaga,” she said in an interview, “fame is in your heart, fame is there to comfort you, to bring you self-confidence and worth whenever you need it.” In Gaga’s world, she was a prophet of fame and fame was a kind of god.
    I drove up into the hilly streets of Calabasas, which were lined with lavish homes, some so big they looked like hotels, resort hotels, with enormous driveways and burbling fountains. I gave myself a tour. There were faux Colonial McMansions and Tuscan McMansions, each one like a different theme park attraction. “Living out here is sort of like living at Disneyland,” said a kid in the teenager-produced video, Calabasas: Behind the Glamour , which I’d watched on YouTube. “It’s not like real life.” (In the same video, the kids try and trick Calabasas residents into being mean to a fake homeless person, but they only catch one trying to shove money at him.)
    And then there were streets with smaller homes—modest ranch-style ones and Spanish-style ones that looked like the humbler, distant cousins of the opulent spreads. I remembered a line from Double Indemnity (1944), one of my favorite films, where Fred MacMurray says in voice-over, “It was one of those California Spanish houses everyone was nuts about ten or fifteen years ago.” Prugo’s house, on a narrow canyon road, had a wistful look. The lawn was in need of attention. I parked across the street and stared at it awhile, waiting to see if anyone would come out of it. The Bling Ring kids had apparently done the same thing—sat and observed their targets’ homes, scoping for Intel on how to get in and rob, and maybe hoping to catch a glimpse of a star.
    On September 17, the LAPD had swarmed Prugo’s house and searched for items belonging to celebrities. They found “several pairs of designer sunglasses, luggage, and articles of clothing.” Prugo denied any involvement in the burglaries at that time. His mother, Melva-Lynn, watched as police led him away in handcuffs. Melva-Lynn ran a dogwalking service. She was from Idaho. Prugo’s father, Frank (or like his son, Nicholas Frank), who was originally from the East Coast, was a senior vice president at IM Global, a film and television sales and distribution company. Founded in 2007, IM Global had handled the international rights for Paranormal Activity —a “supernatural shockumentary” about a couple being haunted in their bedroom at night by a menacing presence. The film would go