INTERVIEW: Nancy Jo Sales, Expert on Bling Ring Burglaries

Summary

Scams, Money & Murder: Interview with Nancy Jo Sales on the Bling Ring Burglaries

Episode Release Date: May 8, 2025

In this riveting episode of Scams, Money & Murder, host Nicole Lapin delves deep into the infamous Bling Ring burglaries with esteemed journalist Nancy Jo Sales. Sales, renowned for her in-depth coverage of teenage crime and celebrity culture, offers a comprehensive exploration of the factors that fueled this unique wave of celebrity home invasions.

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1. Introduction to the Bling Ring

Starting at [00:06], Nancy Jo Sales sets the stage by recounting initial reactions to the Bling Ring’s activities. She highlights public fascination and the peculiar blend of youth and high-stakes burglary:

Nancy Jo Sales: "People would actually tweet at me saying things like, good for them. Bring me a Birkin bag. There's four kids walking up a hill to Orlando Bloom's house and going inside at night when he's not there. Sure looks like burglary to me." ([00:06])

Nicole Lapin introduces the episode by contextualizing the Bling Ring within broader themes of greed, celebrity culture, and the impact of social media on youth behavior.

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2. The Genesis of the Story

At [04:58], Sales provides a succinct overview of the Bling Ring’s activities between 2008 and 2009:

Nancy Jo Sales: "Between 2008 and 2009, a group of teens in predominantly Calabasas, California, robbed the homes of celebrities including Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Orlando Bloom, Rachel Bilson, dot, dot dot, many more. And they stole in excess of $3 million in mostly luxury brands, everything from jewelry to clothing to shoes. To bags, to Rolex watches. They also stole somebody's gun. They were a burglary ring." ([04:58])

She elucidates the scale and audacity of the crimes, emphasizing the targeted luxury items and the high-profile nature of the victims.

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3. Attractiveness of Calabasas and Youth Involvement

Starting at [05:35], the conversation shifts to why Calabasas—a wealthy suburb of Los Angeles—became the epicenter for such burglaries:

Nancy Jo Sales: "It was not just a mashup of all of these things going on in culture and pop culture, but also things I had actually written about. So it seemed like a kind of a no brainer for me to check it out." ([05:58])

Sales explains that Calabasas, known for its affluent residents like the Kardashians, presented a stark contrast for the aspiring teenagers involved. This environment fostered feelings of envy and desire for the luxurious lifestyles often portrayed in media.

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4. The Role of Media and Celebrity Culture

At [08:01], Sales delves into how media representations influenced the teenagers’ actions:

Nancy Jo Sales: "We did it for the lifestyle. The lifestyle that everybody kind of wants. And what he meant by that was the lifestyle that was promoted by so many different shows, from the OC to Gossip Girl and all these different shows that were promoting this sort of Los lifestyle that was being shown to teens." ([08:01])

She highlights the powerful impact of television shows and celebrity culture in shaping the aspirations and actions of young individuals, leading them to emulate the lifestyles they saw on-screen.

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5. Socioeconomic Factors and Class Resentment

At [09:50], the discussion pivots to the socioeconomic underpinnings that may have contributed to the Bling Ring’s activities:

Nancy Jo Sales: "There was a divide between the haves and the have nots. Kids were just watching a lot of TV and a lot of movies about rich people and rich teens... Kids who were not really the poorest ones but the ones who were like, sort of in the middle or the upper middle were always the most kind of wannabe." ([09:50])

Sales emphasizes that while the teenagers were not impoverished, their middle or upper-middle-class status created a sense of longing and resentment toward the overt displays of wealth they observed, fueling their criminal endeavors.

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6. Technological Advancements and Criminal Operations

From [16:32], the interview explores how emerging technologies at the time facilitated both the crimes and their eventual detection:

Nancy Jo Sales: "They knew about celebrity aerial address... They could go and Google Earth and see like where all the doors are and all the windows and where the shrubbery has maybe a hole in it to crawl through... They were the first adapters." ([19:32])

Sales discusses how the advent of smartphones and social media platforms like Facebook enabled the Bling Ring members to meticulously plan their robberies and inadvertently leave digital footprints that would aid law enforcement in their capture.

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7. The Impact of Social Media and Oversharing

At [19:57], the conversation turns to the consequences of the Bling Ring’s online behavior:

Nancy Jo Sales: "They were going on Facebook and posting a picture of themselves... wearing Lindsay Lohan's necklace with a caption that said something like missing something Lindsay. It was that sort of brazen kind of, I guess you could call it oversharing..." ([19:57])

Sales highlights how the burglars’ flaunting of their ill-gotten gains on social media not only showcased their crimes but also provided critical leads for investigators, illustrating the double-edged sword of online visibility.

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8. Group Dynamics and Peer Influence

From [21:08], the discussion delves into the psychological and social dynamics that propelled the group’s actions:

Nancy Jo Sales: "In a group dynamic like that... there's usually someone or maybe a couple who kind of instigate things. And there was definitely a group dynamic going on." ([21:26])

Sales underscores the role of peer pressure and collective mindset in driving the group to commit these high-profile burglaries, suggesting that individual actions were heavily influenced by the group’s collective goals and behaviors.

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9. Reporting Challenges and Ethical Considerations

At [22:14], Sales reflects on the intricacies of reporting such high-profile cases:

Nancy Jo Sales: "You don't have to believe one or the other. You don't have to know for sure what happened... Security cameras kind of don't lie." ([26:56])

She discusses the difficulties in navigating conflicting narratives from the perpetrators and the media, ultimately relying on concrete evidence and official reports to piece together the true sequence of events.

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10. Legal Implications and Societal Reflections

Starting at [37:50], Sales touches upon the broader legal and societal issues highlighted by the case:

Nancy Jo Sales: "I think we need to recalibrate the criminal justice system so that it's fair and equal, and it certainly isn't at this point... They were being treated like celebrities themselves because they were mostly white." ([39:26])

She critiques the disparities in the criminal justice system, noting that the predominantly white composition of the group influenced the leniency of their sentences, a reflection of deeper systemic inequalities.

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11. Legacy and Enduring Fascination

From [40:15], the discussion moves to the lasting impact of the Bling Ring story on popular culture and societal perceptions:

Nancy Jo Sales: "What it was all about... the Vanity Fair story... I wouldn't have gotten a book, she wouldn't have gotten the movie. And I think that is why we're talking about it now." ([40:35])

Sales attributes the enduring fascination to the comprehensive media coverage and subsequent adaptations, which have cemented the Bling Ring’s place in true crime lore.

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12. Concluding Thoughts

In wrapping up the interview, Sales reflects on her continued empathy for teenagers and the societal influences that shape their actions:

Nancy Jo Sales: "They are victims of our society... there's a lot of pathos in this story." ([37:50])

She emphasizes the need for societal introspection regarding the pressures and influences exerted on youth, advocating for a more equitable and supportive environment to prevent such crimes.

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Final Reflections

This episode offers a multifaceted examination of the Bling Ring burglaries, intertwining elements of celebrity culture, socioeconomic disparities, technological advancements, and media influence. Nancy Jo Sales provides invaluable insights into the motivations and societal factors that enabled a group of teenagers to orchestrate and execute some of Hollywood’s most audacious home invasions. Her nuanced perspective sheds light on the complexities of youth crime in a media-saturated environment, prompting listeners to reflect on the broader implications for society and the justice system.

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Notable Quotes:

• Nancy Jo Sales ([00:06]): "Sure looks like burglary to me."
• Nancy Jo Sales ([08:01]): "We did it for the lifestyle that everybody kind of wants."
• Nancy Jo Sales ([19:57]): "It was that sort of brazen kind of, I guess you could call it oversharing..."
• Nancy Jo Sales ([21:26]): "There was definitely a group dynamic going on."
• Nancy Jo Sales ([37:50]): "They are victims of our society."
• Nancy Jo Sales ([39:26]): "They were being treated like celebrities themselves because they were mostly white."

This comprehensive discussion not only unpacks the Bling Ring’s operations but also encourages a deeper understanding of the societal currents that can lead to such extraordinary acts of crime.

Transcript

[Nancy Jo Sales]

This is Crime House. There was a lot of money involved in this. People would actually tweet at me saying things like, good for them. Bring me a Birkin bag. There's four kids walking up a hill to Orlando Bloom's house and going inside at night when he's not there. Sure looks like burglary to me.

[Nicole Lapin]

As they say, money makes the world go round. What many don't talk about is the time it made people's worlds come to a screeching halt. Whether it's greed, desperation, or a thirst for power, money can make even the most unassuming people do unthinkable things. And sometimes those acts can be deadly. This is Scams, Money and Murder A Crime House Original. I'm your host Nicole Lapin. Every Thursday we alternate between covering infamous money motivated crimes and gripping interviews with the experts or those who are directly involved themselves. Crime House exists because of you. Please rate, review and follow Scams, Money and Murder wherever you get your podcasts and for early ad, free access and bonus content, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. Hey there, it's Nicole. If you love Scams, Money and Murder, where we look at some of the world's wildest money crimes, then you Definitely have to check out Clues with Kaelyn Moore and Morgan Abshur Every Wednesday, Morgan and Kaelyn take you deep into the world of the most notorious crimes ever. Clue by clue. From serial killers to shocking murders, Clues dives into all the forensic details and brilliant sleuthing of the world's most infamous cases. So if you're looking for a show that has compelling storytelling, crime scene analysis, and a new perspective through some of the world's most puzzling true crime cases, you definitely have to check out Clues. Clues is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Just search Cluz Wherever you listen to podcasts, are you looking for the perfect blend of style, durability and function in the kitchen? Well, Headley and Bennett has you covered with everything from aprons to super sharp Japanese knives. Trusted by your favorite restaurants and some of the best chefs in the world as well as on tv. Like in your favorite cooking show competitions, each piece is crafted using the highest quality materials and they come with a lifetime guarantee so you know that your gear is going to last. If you need a gift, their collabs with the NFL, Star Wars, Disney and a ton of other iconic brands make the perfect gift for any cook out there. So if you're ready to upgrade your kitchen, head over to Hedley and Bennett.com and use code PODCAST15 at checkout for 15% off your order. That is podcast 15 for 15. Elevate your cooking experience with Hedley and Bennett today.

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[Nicole Lapin]

Welcome to Scams, Money and Murder. Today we have Nancy Jo Sales, the journalist behind the famous Vanity Fair article the suspects Wore Louboutins which exposed the real life Hollywood burglary ring known as the Bling Ring. We covered the story in an episode back in January and in case you haven't heard that already, we'll drop a link to it in the show notes for this episode. But the tldr is that the Bling Ring was a group of kids from the LA suburb of Calabasas who between 2008 and 2009 stole of the world's biggest celebrities at the time. Think Paris Hilton, Orlando Bloom and Lindsay Lewin. And my guest today, Nancy Jo Sales wrote the definitive story on it for Vanity Fair. Nancy Jo, thank you so much for joining us today. We have so so much to talk about from celebrity culture to social media to following the money trail, the mindset of these teens. I mean this is such a wild, wild story that unraveled. If somebody is new to this story, you'll forget more than we will all ever know about the Bling Ring. How would you summ summarize the whole thing in a couple sentences?

[Nancy Jo Sales]

Between 2008 and 2009, a group of teens in predominantly in Calabasas, California, Southern California, robbed the homes of celebrities including Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Orlando Bloom, Rachel Bilson, dot, dot dot, many more. And they stole in excess of $3 million in mostly luxury brands, everything from jewelry to clothing to shoes. To bags, to Rolex watches. They also stole somebody's gun. They were a burglary ring.

[Nicole Lapin]

And Calabasas is not the hood. It's not Compton. I mean, Calabasas is a very nice part of Los Angeles. Is that what drew you to this story? That the Bling Ring was such a crazy mashup of true crime, Hollywood glamour, and these kids? I mean, the suspects were just kids. Is that how it landed on your radar? That you were like, I have to investigate this mishmash of all of these components?

[Nancy Jo Sales]

I first heard about it from a friend, a fellow journalist, who emailed me or called me or something and said, you gotta check out this story in the New York Post. It was not like the COVID It was, you know, page 10 or something. You gotta check out this story. And I think the way he put it was it's almost like somebody made up a parody of a Nancy Jo Sales story. And I think what he meant by that was, at that point, I was known for covering teenagers also. I'd done stories on teenagers and crime. I'd done crime stories. And yes, I'd done a lot of celebrity stories. I actually interviewed some of the people that they robbed, including Paris and Lindsay. So, yeah, I mean, I think it was. It was not just a mashup of all of these things going on in culture and pop culture, but also things I had actually written about. So it seemed like a kind of a no brainer for me to check it out. It was like everybody wanted to get this story. Everybody wanted to get the kids. There were court dates where every single news outlet would be there standing outside the courtroom, trying to get in because there was limited space. And I was just kind of shocked by the whole thing. Like why everybody was so obsessed with this. And that was part of what was interesting about it too, was that the media was so obsessed with it. But then, you know, for one reason or another, I wound up sort of getting the inside with the kids and the kids lawyers and everything. But what drew me to it was what you said, this mashup of all of these interesting elements of pop culture that I happen to have been a reporter who covered on a regular basis.

[Nicole Lapin]

Yeah, but you did get the inside scoop. How do you think you got the inside scoop? How did you get people to trust you? And of course, there was fascination, right? It had all the elements of something that everybody would be upset. It had celebrity culture, it had crime. You know, it felt like these kids almost worshiped the Hollywood lifestyle enough to steal it.

[Nancy Jo Sales]

There's a Kind of famous line in my story that made it into Sofia Coppola's film. Because she took a lot of actual dialogue that the kids said to me, both in the story and then in my transcripts. Because when you write a story, it's just like a sliver of your transcripts. You might talk to them for two hours, then the story represents at most like 10 minutes of dialogue, whereas you spoke to them for hours and hours. So she took all those long form transcripts and used them in writing her script. And I thought that was so interesting that she did that. I think it gave the film a lot of kind of authenticity too. Getting back to your question of the lifestyle, that is a quote from Nick Prugo, and that is what he said when I asked him, why did you all do this? I'm paraphrasing him, cause I can't remember the exact words. But he said something like, we did it for the lifestyle. The lifestyle that everybody kind of wants. And what he meant by that was the lifestyle that was promoted by so many different shows, from the OC To Gossip Girl and all these different shows that were promoting this sort of looks lifestyle that was being shown to teens. And so my story and then my book became this point at which we all started talking about, hey, is this healthy for kids to have this shoved down their throat as like, this is the greatest life to lead, the celebrity life? And also it's interesting because it was at a time when people were also starting to first talk about the income inequality and the incredible divergence between rich and poor in this country. So it was all taking place and sort of gathering interest culturally on a number of levels.

[Nicole Lapin]

But were these kids an example of the divergence of rich and poor? I wouldn't say that they were poor, they just weren't as rich. Is that part of the draw and the fascination here?

[Nancy Jo Sales]

Well, no, they weren't that rich. They weren't poor, that's for sure. There was this sort of cultural fascination with rich people. I mean, that's something that's been part of American culture since the beginning. Kids were just watching a lot of TV and a lot of movies about rich people and rich teens. And whether or not that is healthy for them became a subject of conversation. So even in Calabasas, there was a divide between the haves and the have nots. Like I've been covering teens for a long time and kids in crime for a long time. And it's always seemed to me that the kids who were not really the poorest ones but the ones who were like, sort of in the middle or the upper middle were always the most kind of wannabe. It was just kind of like right out of their reach. They went to the same mall as the Kardashians. In fact, one of the first times I ever went to Calabasas to sort of check it out, when I was doing the story, I saw Khloe Kardashian, like, coming out of the Calabasas mall, followed by paparazzi.

[Nicole Lapin]

Yeah. I mean, that's what Calabasas is known for, the Kardashians.

[Nancy Jo Sales]

Right. But then you have these kids who are not living in a Kardashian level house, like, they live amongst that kind of person, but they're living in, like, the condo by the grocery store with a single mom. You know what I mean? So they're seeing this, they're surrounded by this, but they're not of it. I think it creates class resentment and also envy and the desire to have what these other people have. Teenagers are very aware of fairness. Children in general are. Why does she get that? They would say things to me like, they have enough. Why do they get all that and I don't? And when the story came out, people would actually tweet at me saying things like, good for them. Bring me a Birkin bag. We're surrounded by this culture that says, look at this and look at what this person has and look at what that person has. And you don't have it, do you? So it creates this kind of resentment. That's why I think for a while there, people were sort of almost identifying with them a little bit and sort of celebrating them, which I thought was kind of crazy because they were thieves.

[Nicole Lapin]

Yeah.

[Nancy Jo Sales]

And they weren't exactly like, giving to the poor. They were just doing it for themselves.

[Nicole Lapin]

Right. They weren't Robin Hood. And class envy and warfare doesn't always lead to crime. How did it get that bad? I mean, because, you know, I grew up very envious of the rich kids. And I'll never forget, like, the little Tiffany bracelet with the dangling thing, the sterling silver one that I could never get. And I think that we all kind of feel that way at one point or another, but not all of us go and break into the houses.

[Nancy Jo Sales]

You're asking a question that's like sort of beyond this story. The conditions for someone to do something illegal or criminal or harmful or hurtful, that's a very case by case situation. But that doesn't mean that these things don't play into what was happening with them. Like you mentioned being a little girl and seeing somebody having something you didn't have. I remember that somebody, maybe Alexis Nyers herself, told me that when she was little she had been at school in Calabasas or wherever they were living, Southern California, rich neighborhood, and she went to school and all of the little girls had fancy designer backpacks. So she goes into Orlando Bloom's house to rob it with her burglar friends and one of the first things she took was a Louis Vuitton backpack. And so you're right, not everybody who has a thought, I want that. Why do you have it? Not me steals. That doesn't mean that the conditions in the society didn't add to it. That's sort of the story of America in, in a certain way is how we're all supposed to be equal. It's we're supposed to have a democratic society, but we're not all equal. You know, some people are much less equal than others and income inequality is and was a growing problem.

[Nicole Lapin]

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[Nicole Lapin]

See for [e-mail] hey there, it's Nicole. If you are loving Scams, Money and Murder, where we look at some of the world's wildest crimes, you definitely have to check out Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaylan Moore. Every Wednesday, Kailyn and Morgan take you deep into the world of the most notorious crimes ever, clue by clue. And I really love the way that they're breaking down the evidence. So you can really see how even the smallest things have helped crack some of the most intricate cases wide open. From serial killers to shocking murders, Clues dives into all the forensic details and brilliant sleuthing of the world's most infamous cases. So if you're looking for a show that has compelling storytelling, crime scene analysis, and a new perspective through some of the world's most puzzling true crime cases, you definitely have to check out Clues. Clues is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Just search Clues wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Morgan Abshur]

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[Nicole Lapin]

Of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full [e-mail] in your reporting you found they use tools like Google Maps and sites like TMZ to pinpoint when the stars were out of town. They were scouring social media, which was in its nascent stages back then. It felt pretty novel, right? In 2008 and 2009, how critical was this technological coming of age and online information component to their operation? And the story, it was a huge.

[Nancy Jo Sales]

Part of the story. It seems so obvious now. Like, it's just so obvious that screens are with us all the time. I never thought I would be that person who looks at their phone every five minutes. But we've all been roped in. We've all been made addicts by these social media companies. But then it was still very nascent, right? I remember actually sitting with Sofia Coppola in some restaurant like downtown when we were talking about the story and we were talking about the film and I was consulting on the film and everything and we were talking about kids and this aspect of social media. And she just had little kids at the time. She didn't have teenagers yet. Her kids were like 4 or 5 years old or something, if that. And my daughter was a little older. She was 12. But I interviewed kids and I was around kids because of the stories that I was writing. And I saw them being more and more screen attached and screen dependent. And I remember telling Sophia at this meeting that we had, there's never not a screen on there's like a screen all the time now, whether it's the TV screen or the video screen. IPhones had just come out. IPhones came out in 2007, Androids came out in 2008. So they were just breaking through. I think that if you look at the data, I'm not exactly sure, but I think by 2012 we're seeing most kids having phones. But it was very, very beginning, you understand?

[Nicole Lapin]

Yeah, I was there. I mean also Facebook was just coming out of college campuses, right?

[Nancy Jo Sales]

Exactly. So I remember telling her this and her just sort of shaking her head and saying, like, really? And she understood and incorporated it into the film. I think the Bling Ring was actually one of the first movies to depict that shift because kids are with the digital natives, right? So they knew about things like celebrity aerial address. I don't know if it still exists, but I remember it was a site where you could find the celebrities address. There's so many sites where you can find these things now. But at the time it seemed like, whoa, they can not only find their address, they can go and Google Earth and see like where all the doors are and all the windows and where the shrubbery has maybe a hole in it to crawl through. And yeah, that was all very, very new at the time. And they knew about it and they knew how to utilize it because they were kids and kids just know these things about technology. The first adapters.

[Nicole Lapin]

Well, it's kind of crazy too that it was used in both ways because eventually the same tools helped catch them. Right. Some of the security footage that was posted online, the cops even used Facebook. Did you see the Bling waring as an early harbinger about oversharing on social media or a cautionary tale about how our digital footprints can empower criminals?

[Nancy Jo Sales]

Absolutely. Because you know, there's a whole genre of like crime stories in the, for want of a better word, stupid crooks. Like the stupid. The things stupid crooks do, you know, you'll see in the New York Post or tabloids or whatever, criminal went and robbed the home and fell asleep on the bed. There was sort of a stupid crooks element to this story too, which is that they were going on Facebook and posting a picture of themselves. I think this literally happened wearing Lindsay Lohan's necklace with a caption that said something like missing something Lindsay. It was that sort of brazen kind of, I guess you could call it oversharing that was so striking at the time. And so the cops, they got tips from different people about what was going On. And there's. I wasn't able to definitively report this out, but there is a lot of suggestion in the story that one of them told the cops on another one, and that led to that person being caught, too, because it was another stupid, correct thing to do. You know, he did it. Well, you did it, too. They were teenagers. They were kids. They were stupid crooks. They had the Internet. They were advertising their crimes on the Internet.

[Nicole Lapin]

Sounds like group dynamics played a big role in this. And. And part of why we're still so fascinated by this story. You know, there was a group of friends. Do you think any of these teenagers would have broken into celebrity homes on their own? Or was it a product of group mentality or peer pressure?

[Nancy Jo Sales]

In a group dynamic like that, especially if it's like a little band of thieves or a gang or whatever, yeah. There's usually someone or maybe a couple who kind of instigate things. And there was definitely a group dynamic going on, for sure. But this thing is happening on different levels. Right. You have the societal level, which we talked about, and then you have the personal level. And I think both things were happening at the same time time, as they always are.

[Nicole Lapin]

A lot of these dynamics were interesting because, you know, while you were reporting on teen and celebrity culture, it's hard to get teens to open up to you. Can you take us behind some of your reporting and researching and piecing together this complicated story? How did you gain their trust to convince them or their parents or their lawyers to talk?

[Nancy Jo Sales]

People always ask me this. I've even had other reporters ask me this. I wish I knew the answer. I don't know. Like, every reporter does what they do the way that they do it. You use your own set of experiences and your own personality. There's no one way to report and get people to open up to you. I wish I could tell you the answer. You're a reporter, you're an interviewer. How do you get people to open up? How are you getting me to open up right now? Like, you just do what you do based on your instinct. So I don't know how I did it, but all I know is that I saw a bunch of people outside this courtroom, right? NBC and abc, and they're all fighting with the lady who had the ability to let you into the courtroom. And I'm like, well, that looks ridiculous. That doesn't look like the way to go about this. And then I look down the hall and I see this camera crew, and I see this young girl who I recognized as Alexis Snyders from the photographs that had been taken. I was like, oh, there's one of them right there. Look, there's all these reporters fighting to get into the courtroom, but actually there is one of the burglars right there. They're just not paying attention. And she was, like, having makeup put on, and she had this camera crew around her.

[Nicole Lapin]

She have a reality show?

[Nancy Jo Sales]

Yes, that was the reality crew for Pretty Wild. And I was like, okay, that is so much more interesting than what's going on over there. So I just went down there, and she was sitting on this bench, and I just sat next to her and just started talking to her and said, what are you doing? And she just started talking to me and telling me stuff, and we just took it from there.

[Nicole Lapin]

So whatever magical form of connection, you developed a bond with them, for sure. You inspired them to open up to you. To be fair, they. They weren't shy. They. They definitely relished in this sort of moment. But they also told conflicting stories, right? Yeah. In your article, you say that Alexis's story of the Orlando Bloom burglary was different than Nick's story of her role in it. So as a journalist, how did you decide who or what to believe?

[Nancy Jo Sales]

There were two main conflicting stories. Alexis and Nick. And so I just sort of, like, put one against the other as I wrote the story. Well, she said this. He says that, you know, that's sort of how the story begins. And he says that's not what happened. I mean, criminals often tell different. It's not the first time they would have told different things. Also, another thing that was going on is that the lawyers for these kids wanted publicity, and they did them real disservice in encouraging them to talk to me. Once I got to know them and started finding out who their lawyers even were, they just wanted to be known. And also Alexis's lawyer encouraged her to talk to me. And that is in my book. The guy is quoted as saying, like, I think it would be in her best interest to dispel all of this bad press that she's getting. Well, was it really in her best interest? I don't know. But I'm just reporting whatever I can report, Right? Like, you have to get the story. So if they want to tell their client to talk to me, of course I'm going to talk to them. It's not my job to protect them. It's my job to find out what happened. Who do I believe? You don't have to believe one or the other. You don't have to know for sure what happened. She says this, he says that. Let's see what the surveillance tape says. You know, that's another thing. I was talking to police. I had a police source very close in the case, and he showed me the surveillance footage. And let's see what the police reports say. Let's see what happened when the police went to the house and searched the house. Oh, look, here's Lindsay Lohan's handbag under her bed. It's not rocket science. It was a pretty straightforward investigation, and there was so much evidence. And there was Facebook posts of them posing with the items. That's why whenever people say, like, oh, it wasn't clear that they did it. I don't know. Security cameras kind of don't lie. You know, like, there's four kids walking up a hill to Orlando Bloom's house and going inside at night when he's not there. Sure looks like burglary to me. Or here's two other kids, like, coming to Lindsay Lohan's house and ringing the bell, and she's not there, and then suddenly there's a broken window and all her stuff is gone.

[Nicole Lapin]

Yeah, it doesn't take a forensic expert to piece that together.

[Nancy Jo Sales]

Exactly. That's why it's so funny to me when I hear, like, well, we don't know what really happened. Well, they did plead guilty to burglary and went to jail. So do we really not know what happened? Yeah.

[Nicole Lapin]

I don't know if there's so much a question about what happened. It's more of the color that's surrounding it. Your Vanity Fair article, the suspects wore Louboutins, you know, really went into all that was around this story because the crime was pretty cut and dried, but it was all of the color and the texture and the contours of the story that made it really interesting and juicy.

[Nancy Jo Sales]

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[Nicole Lapin]

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[Nancy Jo Sales]

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[Nicole Lapin]

Try Greenlight risk free [e-mail] Spotify this episode is brought to you by Pluto TV. Are you looking for your next case? Pluto TV has all your favorite crime dramas streaming for free, which means suspicion is free with countless cases to crack. Watch csi, Criminal Minds, ncis, Blue Bloods Tracker, FBI and swat. All for free from all your favorite devices. Feel the free Pluto TV stream Now pay. Never did you ever get a sense that the kids or the parents, it might not be in their best interest to talk to me. They did anyway. Do you feel like they were playing to the cameras or were they concerned with their image because there was so much press watching?

[Nancy Jo Sales]

I mean, Alexis had a reality show which probably would have never gotten on the air if she hadn't been in Vanity Fair. A million shows get shot every day. How many of them actually make it onto a platform? Very few. And how do they get there? Well, things like the star is arrested for burglary on the first day of filming. They were going to do this reality show about two party girls in la. Alexis and her fake sister, Tess. Amber. Tess has gone off and she's just like, happily has a whole other life. And I don't really want to talk about her because she doesn't really like to be part of this at all. But I had to say her just to identify. It was supposed to be about Alexis and Tess and their party girl life. They were not famous. There was no reason to have this be a thing at all. But then they come to film them on the first day. Alexis gets arrested. Boom, the cops show up. Now they've got a story. Then this Vanity Fair reporter shows up talking to her, and they're filming her, like, at her court date. And they're. They say to me that, what are you doing? What are you talking to her? I said, well, I would like to interview her. Who do you work for? Vanity Fair? He's like, you can interview her if you'll appear on camera interviewing her. And I was like, oh, let me go ask my boss. So I called my editor at Vanity Fair, a guy named Dana Brown, and told him about this situation. And he said, oh, yeah, do it. That show will never get picked up. Who's going to watch that? So I go and interview her, like, on camera. But they said there were certain things I couldn't ask her. I couldn't ask her about the case. All right? They say, you can't ask her about the case. I'm like, oh, goodness, what am I gonna. How am I gonna do this? So if you watch the interview, I ask her all these questions sort of around the case. I say, like, you like handbags, right? Exactly. And I think we started talking about shoes. And she goes, oh, I have such a big shoe collection. I have all these shoes. And she Starts listing all the names of the Louboutins.

[Nicole Lapin]

Where'd you get those?

[Nancy Jo Sales]

Yeah, right. Louboutins are one. I swear to God. I said, how did you afford those? And she says, I afforded them from working at Jamba Juice.

[Nicole Lapin]

Yeah, those highly paid Jamba juice employees.

[Nancy Jo Sales]

Those 1500 $2000 shoes, those Louboutins she paid for with Jamba Juice. She started talking about how, you know, she follows the secret, which is a.

[Nicole Lapin]

Kind of a law of attraction.

[Nancy Jo Sales]

Yeah. She says, I have this great karma cause I'm such a good person. Something like that. And I was like, okay, what does that mean, karma wise, if you get arrested for burglary? You know, like, I was trying to, like, have the conversation with her without asking her about the case, which I wasn't allowed to do.

[Nicole Lapin]

Yeah, it's like, tell me you're a criminal without telling me you're a criminal.

[Nancy Jo Sales]

Right, exactly. But one thing I do remember in that interview, which is in the book, and it goes back to what we started this conversation about, she talked about how she and her friends, like, really looked up to Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, and all of these young women who were getting arrested all the time.

[Nicole Lapin]

Oh, I remember I was on CNN Live when Paris Hilton was leaving jail. And we were reporting on that. It was glorified, right?

[Nancy Jo Sales]

Exactly. It was, you know, talk about layers. There's all these layers of like, misogyny baked into how these young women were being portrayed and how they were being covered and all this stuff. They're trying to get attention through doing stuff like that because that puts them back in the public eye. And I actually talked to Lindsay about that and she was talking about how, yeah, it was weird, like at a certain point, and I'm paraphrasing, we were just trying to get in tabloids. So then you have little Alexis, Lindsay's like maybe 20 something at that time. You have little Alexis who's like 16, 17 at that time, watching Lindsay trying to get into tabloids for breaking the law. And it's a kind of a weird vicious cycle of misogyny and all kinds of crazy stuff that, like, somebody should write a book about. In fact, I think there is a book about this coming out about early 2000s, mid 2000s media treatment of starlets and young women. I remember Alexis talking about that, about how that was all like sort of informing their desire to kind of be bad, you know?

[Nicole Lapin]

Yeah, of course. Of course it impacted them. They were looked at as, you know, so called role models to them.

[Nancy Jo Sales]

And it's very Much a part of American culture. The sort of fascination with gangsterism and being an outlaw.

[Nicole Lapin]

Well, not only that, but there was, you know, the fascination of reality TV and reality shows was on the rise as well. Alexis was really young when she had this reality show. Do you know if she got paid for it or did any of these kids get paid for the movie adaptation?

[Nancy Jo Sales]

Not every single one of them, but some of them, including Alexis, did get paid for life rights. I don't know what they got paid for. Pretty wild. I imagine a lot less because I don't think reality TV pays a lot.

[Nicole Lapin]

You mentioned Sofia Coppola a few times in this conversation. Just casually, if we just step back for a second, open the aperture, that's pretty cool.

[Nancy Jo Sales]

She's a genius. So to even like have a conversation with her is pretty cool. But yeah, we worked together on the movie and met a whole bunch of times. And she's great. The Blink Ring is a brilliant movie. It is a perfect iteration of the mid-2000s. If an alien came to Earth and said, well, what were the 2000 teens like? Show them the Bling Ring.

[Nicole Lapin]

Yeah, it was the rise of tmz. It was the rise of reality tv. It was Facebook just becoming big. It was all the screens that you talked about. I think this whole story, whether it's the culture or the actual characters themselves, still fascinates people today. There was even a Netflix documentary recently.

[Nancy Jo Sales]

And there was one on HBO too.

[Nicole Lapin]

So many documentaries.

[Nancy Jo Sales]

Well, they both asked me to be in them, the HBO one and the Netflix one, and I refused. I rarely talk about the Bling Ring just because I just feel like it's lame to talk about stuff he already did. Like, I'd rather talk to you about what I'm doing now and I hope some day I can talk to you about that. It's not come out yet, but I just like to move forward and do the next thing. And I think that people who keep showing up and talking about something they did 10 years ago, I just think it's kind of lame.

[Nicole Lapin]

Well, you could probably reframe that too and say a decade later, people still are talking about this and that's a cool legacy. It's not every day that your work gets turned into a Sofia Coppola movie. It's not every day that you have such a big impact on such a story that grips people 10 years later. What about that instead?

[Nancy Jo Sales]

Well, yes, thank you. I can use that self esteem boost.

[Nicole Lapin]

I got you next.

[Nancy Jo Sales]

No, it is cool. Of course it's cool. That's Why I didn't do those documentaries. I love Sophia's movie. And the article is, you know, whatever. I actually think I've written way better articles for Vanity Fair and other places. I had very little time to do it. The reporting was, I think, you know, I was out ahead of the other reporters. That's true. Graydon Carter, my boss at Vanity Fair, did not want to do that story. He was like, eh, it's just a bunch of kids and the celebrities are like, B list. So why do we want to do that? And I said, well, because it's all these things. It's, you know, what we were talking about in the beginning of this, what you've so aptly characterized as all the different elements and layers going on in this story. So I said that, and he said he wasn't gonna do it. So I said, well, okay, so I will go do it for Rolling Stone.

[Nicole Lapin]

Ooh.

[Nancy Jo Sales]

And then he said, okay, you can do it. It felt like the zeitgeist in that sense. It is kind of cool because it was a moment in time and you're.

[Nicole Lapin]

The combination of all of these stories that came before and of course, all of the stories that will come. But do you think that Bling Ring makes you more cynical about the price of fame, more sympathetic to teenagers and how they're feeling in this celebrity saturated world? What do the takeaway was from this time in your life and this coverage to how you approach stories now and how you will in the future?

[Nancy Jo Sales]

Well, I have so much sympathy for teenagers. And, you know, after the Bling Ring came out, I did a book called American Girls Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers. I was really the first person to write about how social media was really hurting girls. Years before the Facebook whistleblower released all of those internal studies where Facebook knew that Facebook and Instagram were hurting girls. Years before that, I put out this book. Five years before that, I put out this book. So I am absolutely always on the side of kids and I never am anything but sympathetic to them. They are victims of our society. Even though even the Bling Ring kids, if you read the story, yes, it has them saying some kind of outrageous stuff, but at the same time, there's a lot of pathos in this story, I think.

[Nicole Lapin]

Do you think something like this could happen again?

[Nancy Jo Sales]

I think it has. I think there've been like, a few other gangs of kids. I had a really good friend named Donald Suggs who sadly passed away. He's my friend since college. He was a black man, brilliant man. Gay rights Advocate and activist. And I remember driving around in LA one night when I was out there doing the Bling Ring and I called Donald to talk and told him what I was doing, and he said, yeah, you know, if those kids had been black, it would be a whole different story. Which was so true. And what he meant by that was that they are being treated like celebrities themselves because they were mostly white. Like Rachel Lee, who was allegedly one of the instigators, the ringleaders. She was an Asian teenager, but Alexis was white, Nick was white. It was seen as a story about white kids. Right. They weren't the richest kids, as we've said, but they were not poor either. And I think what Donald was trying to point out was this would be a whole different story if these were kids from Compton and robbed Orlando Bloom's Rolexes. Who knows if they would still be in jail today because our criminal justice system is unequal. Meanwhile, Alexis spent 30 days in jail on a 180 day sentence. And I think Nick spent a little more time than that. And Rachel maybe a little more time than that. But they were not given the sentence that they would have been had they been of a different demographic. I think that that also speaks to the inequality in our society.

[Nicole Lapin]

Do you think they should have gotten more.

[Nancy Jo Sales]

I think we need to recalibrate the criminal justice system so that it's fair and equal, and it certainly isn't at this point. You know, it's funny, your podcast is called Scams Money Murder.

[Nicole Lapin]

Yes.

[Nancy Jo Sales]

Okay, well, there was no murder involved in this one. And there was a lot of money. Actually, over $3 million is a significant haul, you know, for a burglary ring, especially a bunch of kids. There was a lot of money involved in this. But then the money keeps on spiraling out into other things, which is so interesting because the way the money kept flowing is a reality show, a movie, a Netflix documentary, an HBO documentary, which I'm sure they were paid for also.

[Nicole Lapin]

Yeah, influencer work that they're doing.

[Nancy Jo Sales]

Right, Exactly. So I think what's so interesting is how they did profit off of this.

[Nicole Lapin]

I'll leave our listeners with this. If we could step back more than a decade later, what do you think the legacy of the Bling Ring is? And why do you think this story has had such a lasting grip on us?

[Nancy Jo Sales]

Well, you know, a lot of people did this story. Sophia had many choices of people who wrote this story to choose from, and she picked the Vanity Fair one. And I'm not really sure we would even be talking about it right now. If that Vanity Fair story hadn't come out, because I wouldn't have gotten a book, she wouldn't have gotten the movie. And I think that is why we're talking about it now.

[Nicole Lapin]

There are so many stories in the news cycle and even back then that your story did make this lasting impact in the world of celebrity, money and crime. But Nancy Jo, thank you so much for taking the time.

[Nancy Jo Sales]

Thank you. I appreciate you.

[Nicole Lapin]

Thank you so much for listening. I'm your host, Nicole West. Happen Scams, Money and Murder Is a Crime House Original Join me every Thursday for a brand new episode here at Crime House. We want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard here today, reach out on social media Rimehouse don't forget to rate, review and follow Scams, Money and Murder wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference. And for ad free listening plus early access and bonus content, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. Scams, Money and Murder is hosted by me, Nicole Lapin and is a Crime House original. Powered by Pave Studios, this episode was brought to life by the Scams, Money and Murder team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Stacy Warrenker, Sarah Kam, Paul Libeskin, and Victoria Ascher. Thank you so much for listening.

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