EDITOR'S NOTE: Later his name was revealed as Howard Smith (see story below).
Resident Brandon Harrison said Harold described himself to other tenants as an ex-convict who served two stints in state prison, the most recent for firearms and drug convictions. Harold vowed that he would never go back to prison, according to Harrison.
"He told me several times, 'If it ever came back down to me going to prison, I would die first,' " Harrison said.
He said Harold told him that he was supposed to be getting $10,000, at one point saying it was for a job he did and on another occasion saying it was from a lawsuit.
Another neighbor, Terri Gilpin, told KTLA News the man bragged about having a gun and threatened to use it. " He would talk crazy stuff. He kept always bragging about having a gun," Gilpin said.
Sources, who spoke on the condition that they not be named, said that although the man is considered a suspect in Chasen's slaying last month, the investigation remains active. It's unclear whether they believe the man shot Chasen or was an accomplice.
The shooting occurred about 6 p.m. at the Harvey Apartments on Santa Monica Boulevard.
When police officers approached the man in the lobby of the apartment building, he backed up and refused their orders to raise his hands. He pulled out a pistol and shot himself in the head, the sources said. He died at the scene.
Ronni Chasen's slaying shocked Hollywood and sparked endless speculation.
The publicist was shot to death early Nov. 16 while driving her Mercedes-Benz near the intersection of Whittier Drive and Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills.
She was on her way home from a party after the premiere of the movie "Burlesque." Chasen is believed to have left the event about midnight and been traveling west on Sunset. Friends believe she planned to head south to her condominium on Wilshire Boulevard near the grounds of the Los Angeles Country Club.
Several residents dialed 911 at the time of the attack, saying they heard gunshots. Moments later, another resident called 911 to report hearing the car crash into a light pole.
People living on Whittier Drive who heard the crash ran to the scene and found Chasen slumped over the steering wheel, bleeding. The passenger-side window was shattered.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/12/ronni-chasen-slaying-suspect-worried-about-police
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EDITOR'S NOTE: Here's another related article:
Neighbors recall encounters with man involved in Chasen case
The man under surveillance in the publicist's death, who killed himself Wednesday, was described as 'strange' by one resident of his apartment building.
By Abby Sewell, Andrew Blankstein and Harriet Ryan
Los Angeles Times
December 3, 2010
A man who killed himself as he was confronted by detectives investigating the slaying of Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen talked about serving time in prison, expressed fear that police were looking for him and vowed to die rather than return to custody, according to neighbors.
Beverly Hills police declined to provide any details Thursday about the case, including what role the man might have played in Chasen's killing and what led detectives to execute a search warrant at the Hollywood apartment building where he was living.
Several law enforcement officials and a neighbor identified the man as Harold Smith.
John Walsh, host of the television show " America's Most Wanted," said he believed detectives started to focus on Smith after the show's staff passed along a tip from the public. At the request of Beverly Hills police and people in the entertainment industry, the show recently featured Chasen's slaying and asked viewers for information that would help the homicide investigation, Walsh said.
"We have been working closely with Beverly Hills," Walsh said in a brief interview Thursday. He said his staff passed along the tip and that he has been traveling and was unaware of its details.
Law enforcement sources, who did not have permission to discuss the case publicly, confirmed that Beverly Hills detectives were led to Smith through a tip from the show.
Smith killed himself Wednesday evening, pulling a pistol from his pocket and shooting himself in the lobby of the Harvey Apartments building on Santa Monica Boulevard as detectives attempted to serve a search warrant.
Several law enforcement sources said Beverly Hills detectives privately described Smith as a suspect in the case. However, the Police Department has publicly described him only as a "person of interest."
The suicide was captured on a security surveillance tape and was witnessed by several residents, according to law enforcement officials. They said Smith's apartment had been under surveillance for at least a few days.
Some residents of Harvey Apartments, a weathered four-story brick building, said Smith was a disconcerting presence who told conflicting stories and had a quick temper. He arrived at the apartment building about three months ago but was involved in a dispute over nonpayment of rent, they said. Nevertheless, he continued to live there.
Terri Gilpin, 46, said she had contacted the police about Smith in the past, not in relation to the Chasen slaying. She said Smith once entered her apartment without permission and had to be chased off by her husband, Brandon Harrison.
Harrison said Smith described himself to other tenants as an ex-convict who had served two stints in state prison, the most recent for firearms and drug-related convictions. After his eviction, Smith would ask other residents whether police had come looking for him, the neighbor said.
Smith said he owned a gun and vowed that he would never go back to prison, Harrison said.
"He told me several times, 'If it ever came back down to me going to prison, I would die first,'" Harrison said.
He said Smith told him that he was supposed to be getting $10,000, at one point saying it was for a job he did and on another occasion saying it was from a lawsuit.
Harrison said he had no way of corroborating Smith's claims. "I don't even know if he ever was in prison, or if anything he told me was true," Harrison said. "The man was very strange."
Gilpin told reporters Thursday that she'd overheard Smith brag to her husband that he had killed Chasen but ignored the comment because Smith often told inconsistent or questionable tales.
But neither Gilpin nor her husband had mentioned Smith making such a claim in previous interviews with The Times on Wednesday evening. Harrison could not be reached Thursday to confirm his wife's account.
Building resident Robin Lyle, 44, also recalled Smith talking about a coming windfall — supposedly from a lawsuit — and his plan to leave the state.
"He said, 'I'm working on this money, and then you're not going to see me anymore,'" Lyle said. Smith told him he finally got the money a couple of weeks ago, but it was far less than he'd expected.
Lyle said he frequently saw Smith carrying a tall can of malt liquor and described him as a loner who would occasionally drop by Lyle's apartment.
Chasen was shot to death early Nov. 16 while driving her Mercedes-Benz near the intersection of Whittier Drive and Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills.
She was on her way home from a party after the premiere of the movie "Burlesque." Chasen is believed to have left the event about midnight and been traveling west on Sunset. Friends believe she planned to head south to her condominium on Wilshire Boulevard.
Several residents dialed 911 at the time of the attack, saying they heard gunshots. Moments later, another resident called police to report hearing the car crash into a light pole.
People living on Whittier Drive who heard the crash ran to the scene and found Chasen slumped over the steering wheel, bleeding.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1203-ronni-chasen-20101203,0,149487,print.story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EDITOR'S NOTE: Here's another related article:
Man at center of Ronni Chasen investigation had long criminal record
Los Angeles Times
December 4, 2010
The man who killed himself when Beverly Hills detectives investigating the Ronni Chasen case confronted him on Wednesday has a long criminal record, according to court documents.
Harold Martin Smith, 43, had been arrested seven times for crimes ranging from misdemeanor drug possession to felony robbery. The records suggest that 13 years ago Smith had some animus toward police. A note in the minutes of a 1997 proceeding stemming from an arrest for misdemeanor disturbing the peace and possession of drug paraphernalia reads: "Public safety hold. Threaten to kill police officer."
Smith's most serious crime, according to the records, was a 1998 robbery in Beverly Hills in which he was accused of stealing a Sony Walkman and other items from two women. He pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 11 years in state prison. He was released in 2007. In August 2009, Manhattan Beach police found him loitering outside a woman's home and charged him with misdemeanor prowling and marijuana possession.
He was sentenced to three years' probation and a month in County Jail, but in September, after he failed to pay a $100 court fine, a judge in the Torrance courthouse revoked his probation and issued a bench warrant for his arrest.
Parole records obtained by The Times indicate that Smith had worked for a short time as a laborer after his release from prison but was unemployed earlier this year. He had recently been evicted from the Harvey Apartments. However, he spoke about an upcoming $10,000 windfall, one neighbor recalled.
Chasen was shot to death in her Mercedes-Benz on Nov. 16 as she drove home from a premiere party for the movie "Burlesque." Investigators initially described the case as wide open. They have served multiple search warrants in the case but have refused to discuss the status of their investigation.
On Friday the Beverly Hills Police Department, whose officers were seeking to question Smith when he shot himself, said it was possible there was no connection at all.
"At this time, it is unknown if this individual was involved in the Chasen homicide," department spokesman Lt. Tony Lee said in a statement.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/12/man-at-center-of-ronni-chasen-investigation-had-long-criminal-record.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EDITOR'S NOTE: Here's an article which refers to what Ronnie Chasen's lifestyle was like:
|
|
Killing Shows Truths of Life Spent at Edge of Limelight
by Michael CieplyI and Brooks Barnes
New York Times
December 5, 2010
LOS ANGELES — Ronni Chasen could be loud. And she pushed. |
At an event like the Governors Awards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, one of the last show business soirées she attended before her murder on Nov. 16, Ms. Chasen sent reporters skittering for shelter as she scanned the room for targets of opportunity — people to introduce to clients like the film composer Hans Zimmer and the soundtrack expert Diane Warren.
At 64, Ms. Chasen was fighting to keep her place in a Hollywood public relations game that had mostly gone to firms bigger than her boutique Chasen and Company, or to players who were younger.
Assumptions of a pampered Hollywood life have shifted since she was killed last month, shot repeatedly while driving home from a movie premiere. The unsolved killing is pulling back the veil on a person who, like many in the show business capital, focused on holding onto a steadily eroding modicum of glamour.
Dismissing impressions of privilege, her longtime friend Martha Smilgis said: “Ronni was not a Jewish princess. She was a Jewish businesswoman.”
The distinction was Ms. Smilgis's way of sorting through a bewildering thicket of facts that have begun to surface as both friends and investigators come to terms with the shooting of a woman who was hardly the most important in Hollywood but had become one of its best-known stock characters.
Ms. Chasen operated a modest public relations firm with the sort of clients who might be expected to pay fees of only a few thousand dollars a month — not much when measured against the need to pay salaries for her staff of four and the demands of a Hollywood life.
Yet she had become surprisingly wealthy. Documents posted Thursday on the celebrity news service TMZ.com show her to have been worth about $6 million when she wrote a will in 1994.
Ms. Chasen had become even richer since then, said Ms. Smilgis, an executor in her 2006 will. She inherited money from her mother, who for years had invested in high-dividend stocks, and increased its value through her own astute investments. As recently as September, according to Ms. Smilgis, Ms. Chasen said she was writing yet another will, but whether she did so remained unclear.
Ms. Chasen collected art. In the 1994 version of her will, she invited a few close friends — including the publicity baron Warren Cowan and the publisher Michael Viner, both now dead — to choose a painting from her collection.
Still, the art on the walls of her Westwood condominium was often on loan from one or another of her friends who owned galleries, including Jonathan Novak. Mr. Novak, a pallbearer at Ms. Chasen's funeral last month, owns Jonathan Novak Contemporary Art, a well-regarded gallery in Century City, not far from Ms. Chasen's home in a “condo canyon” that lines Wilshire Boulevard.
If not exactly in a fashionable neighborhood, her condominium had one perk that Ms. Chasen said was a must: a doorman. It made her feel safer as a single woman, she once told a reporter, but a doorman was a symbol of a certain social class — a belief that was a holdover from her childhood in the Washington Heights and Riverdale sections of New York.
On Wednesday evening, the puzzlement around Ms. Chasen's death deepened. Police officers investigating her murder tried to speak with a man in a Hollywood transient hotel who had told acquaintances he had shot Ms. Chasen for pay, but he committed suicide first.
The dead man, who is reported to have spent time in prison, has been identified as Harold Martin Smith. The episode instantly fueled a new round of speculation that Ms. Chasen had been killed in connection with a business deal gone bad, or perhaps for refusing to pay a debt for a friend or family member.
Ms. Smilgis, who spoke Thursday from her home in Santa Barbara, Calif., said Ms. Chasen had mentioned no such deal or debt. If pressed, “I could see her being tough about the money,” Ms. Smilgis said.
Ms. Chasen's brother, Larry Cohen, a well-known director and writer of B movies like “Captivity” and “Maniac Cop,” said he did not believe that the dead man had anything to do with his sister's murder.
“This guy was a deranged person who just made that up; no way he was involved,” Mr. Cohen said. “I still think this was most likely a case of road rage.”
Toughness had long been one of Ms. Chasen's trademarks. She was not married, had no children and lived almost wholly within the confines of a Hollywood circle that included other publicists of her era and old-line producers like Richard D. Zanuck, who won an Oscar for “Driving Miss Daisy.”
In March 1982, the real Ronni Chasen was hidden, just barely, behind a publicist called Trixi in an account by P. J. Corkery for Harper's Magazine of his stint at an unnamed publicity firm. “Trixi's life is her job,” Mr. Corkery wrote. “She is about 35 and has wrapped her entire existence in her work.”
He went on to describe Trixi's ferocity in pressing the phone company to give her a number she could “love” — it had to begin with the “27” that indicated a Beverly Hills number then, and be unlisted. At some length, he went on to describe how Trixi set herself up for a day around the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel by persuading a client that a press interview could be done only in a client-paid bungalow there.
Ms. Smilgis said, “She loved the portrait of herself,” noting that Ms. Chasen — a model and a soap opera actress when she was young — had been romantically involved with a number of well-heeled Hollywood men through the years.
Ms. Chasen was married briefly in her 20s, but she changed her last name while trying to land a soap opera role in New York in the 1970s, her brother said.
“Ronni Sue Cohen isn't exactly a stage name,” he said, adding that he did not know whether her adopted last name came from Chasen's, an entertainment industry hot spot in the early days of Hollywood.
In a publicity career that flourished during a stint at the agency Rogers & Cowan in the 1980s, Ms. Chasen became deeply embedded in the film industry. But she was never quite at the center of it. A member of the film academy, she did not join its inner councils.
While she worked her way through each awards season with undiminished grit, the real star power clustered around rising firms like 42 West and Slate.
The march of time bothered Ms. Chasen, who favored cream-colored Armani suits and drove a black Mercedes sedan. Sixteen years ago, she asked in her will that, in announcing her death, “Warren Cowan write the release to the trades, and that no mention be made of my age.”
She also asked that John Williams, famous for his “Star Wars” music and other movie themes, “write a piece of music” for her funeral service, if possible. The request was not honored, although it was unknown whether Mr. Williams was aware of it.
At the same time, Ms. Chasen could be remarkably old-fashioned. While pushing to get a reporter interested in a story pitch, she would often mail stacks of research instead of relying on e-mail attachments. She was perhaps the last person in Hollywood to send e-mails via an assistant, with “dbnr” — dictated but not read — appearing at the bottom of missives.
Ms. Chasen's 1994 will gave much of her estate to one niece while specifically shorting another. “I have intentionally and with full knowledge of the consequences omitted to provide for my niece,” the will reads, “except for the gift of ten dollars.”
Ms. Smilgis offered no theory for her friend's killing. But she talked freely about someone who had figured out how to live well, without really spending.
“If you looked at her, you'd say, ‘Wow, this is a tony babe,' ” Ms. Smilgis said. “But I'm sure she cut a deal with her hairdresser.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/us/05publicist.html?ref=us |
|
