Kit10Phish Explains It All: Yacht Crimes (1988-1997)

1988

Stories of Hart’s affairs had circulated long before his scandal broke in the spring of 1987. The rumors had trailed him the first time he campaigned to be the Democratic presidential candidate in 1984, and even stretched back to his time as the national campaign director for George McGovern’s 1972 presidential bid. “The wife of a very prominent Duke political scientist told me that he would just take every one of the college girls who volunteered [at the McGovern campaign] to bed,” Sheehy says. “And the next day, she would be hanging on her chance to talk to him, and he would walk right past her as if he’d never seen her before. He did that over and over and over again.”

But it was his own undoing when he uttered the famous last words: “Follow me around,”

The New York Times Magazine reported him saying just a few weeks after he declared his candidacy. “I don't care. I'm serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They'd be very bored.” Whether or not he was being sarcastic, as he later claimed, it was a bad move. “Why would a man who’s running for the presidency of the United States challenge a reporter to follow him to see if he was an adulterer, when he was an adulterer?” Sheehy asks. “He had to get caught.” And indeed, he did. Shortly after making the remark, Hart “canceled his plans for the weekend and he invited Donna Rice to fly up and stay with him at his house, where obviously he would be seen in Washington,” Sheehy says. Journalists from the Miami Herald were already staked out near his D.C. house thanks to a tip they’d received that he was sleeping with Rice.

After the Miami Herald reported on his affair, a picture surfaced showing Rice sitting on Hart’s lap while he wore a T-shirt reading “Monkey Business Crew,” referring to the name of the yacht they’d partied on. The ensuing scandal prompted Hart to drop out of the race. The next year, Michael Dukakis became the Democratic nominee and lost the general election to George H.W. Bush.

1991

Stanford University was involved in one of the biggest research fund scandals in the early 1990s. An investigation found that, among other irregular pieces of accounting, academic research funding had been used to cover luxury items (i.e. bottle of wine, flowers, silk sheets, fine silverware, $184,000 of depreciation on a yacht, and wedding ceremony). In 1991, government auditors found these extraneous items listed as “indirect and incidental research expenses” when, in fact, they were the personal expenses of Donald Kennedy, the President of Stanford.

Not the most educated decision.

Every university negotiates its indirect cost reimbursements with a single federal agency. In Stanford’s case, this was the Office of Naval Research (ONR).

After the investigation concluded, Stanford and the federal government settled and Stanford paid back $1.2 million of the alleged $800 million it overcharged and received a clean bill of ethical health from the ONR. Even after all the allegations and investigation, the ONR still supported Stanford and claimed they had done nothing wrong!

This “intimate relationship” between the ONR and Stanford was the main reason the scandal took place and shortly after, the Naval Investigative Service (NIS) launched an investigation into the Stanford-ONR relationship. Those documents are classified and have not been released to the public, and thus the outcome is unknown.

The scandal ultimately triggered the 1992 resignation of Kennedy and revealed similar behavior at other universities across the nation.

Feb 1995

Months later, when Mr. Lee and Mrs. Anderson’s sex tape was leaked to the public. Before he met Tommy Lee, Rand Gauthier was a porn star—of sorts. He had dated a porn actress in the 1980s and later joined her on camera using the name “Austin Moore.” Gauthier performed in over 70 adult videos into the '90s. He even married his costar, divorced, and then began dating more actresses.

Gauthier also worked as an electrician, and was hired to work on Lee’s home renovation. He worked for three months before he was fired. Lee owed Gauthier $20,000 for the work, but he was fed up with Lee and Anderson and just wanted out. When he and the general contractor came back to collect their tools, the Rolling Stone story says, Lee pointed a shotgun at Gauthier and said, “get the fuck off my property.”

Gauthier proceeded to scope out the Lee residence, waiting for revenge. He told reporter Amanda Chicago Lewis that he used a white fur rug to disguise himself as the couple’s dog, and so elude security cameras. Gauthier claims he went up to the couple’s bedroom before stealing the safe. He sawed it open after he left the property.

Gauthier was then working at a porn studio in North Hollywood. Recruiting Milton Ingley, a porn producer, he was able to uncover the honeymoon cassette, which included footage of the celebrity couple naked on a yacht and having sex. He took the tape there first where he and a partner made copies before destroying the original. Traditional distributors refused to touch it, but it was put on the early internet. After the couple’s lawyer points out that now millions of people are watching it, Pam and Tommy decide to ask for an injunction against the company distributing the tape, Internet Entertainment Group. A judge denied their request on the grounds that the website, since it isn’t charging people to view the tape, is commentary protected by the First Amendment.

Seth Warshavsky has come bearing a deal: He wants to buy the online rights to the tape so he can charge for watching it. Tommy, predictably, explodes at the suggestion. But Warshavsky calmly points out that if he doesn’t have the online rights, anyone can post the tape on the web, whereas if he has the chain of title, he will have the right to take down other sites showing the tape and put up a paywall on his own site, which will greatly reduce the number of viewers. Pam says to give Warshavsky the rights for free because she doesn’t want to profit from the tape, but Tommy doesn’t want to make a deal at all because he thinks if they sell the rights, people will think they consented to the tape’s release.

“Our lawyers and managers advised us that the best way to minimize the damages was to sign a contract saying that, since the company had us by the balls, we would reluctantly allow a one-time Webcast so long as they didn’t sell, copy, trade or rebroadcast it,” Lee said. “We thought we had won: hardly anyone would see the video on the Internet, and we could recover the tape and start over.” Instead, the tape went viral—a term that didn’t really exist yet because before it hit the internet, nothing had.

In 1996, as the tape began to go viral, Anderson and Lee filed a $10 million civil lawsuit against every party they believed had a copy, including Bob Guccione's Penthouse, among others. In real life, before the Penthouse lawsuit, the mainstream media were yet to acknowledge the tape, with many journalists apprehensive about touching such a lewd subject. The lawsuit, however, changed all of this, with the tape putting unwanted attention on the couple and news of the tape becoming one of the hottest topics in both celebrity and mainstream news cycles. Late-night talk shows would mock the contents of the tape, with Pamela in particular becoming a running gag for comedians everywhere. While Tommy was praised for his penis size, Pamela was reduced to being spoken about like a doll.

Later, when the couple saw the tape being sold and rented in video stores, they sued Warshavsky in federal court, saying the original agreement had duped them. This time, they won: In 2002, a judge ordered IEG to pay Anderson and Lee $740,000 each.

Several IEG employees testified to the allegations of overcharging, but the sworn statements were sealed when Warshavsky settled a lawsuit. Warshavsky then sued two former managers and the lawyer involved in the claim, alleging they violated a non-competition clause in their contracts and stole a company e-mail list. Now it appears that the Feds are investigating Warshavsky for possibly laundering money through foreign bank accounts to evade US income tax. Four potential witnesses have been interviewed by Assistant US Attorney Mark Bartlett and representatives from the Internal Revenue Service and the FBI.

So by the time Anderson and Lee won their meager share of profits from their illicit tape, the company didn’t exist. No lawyer turned up to argue its case, and Warshavsky was in Bangkok, where he had relocated in 2001 after the FBI and the Department of Justice investigated his businesses. Neither Anderson nor Lee ever saw any money from IEG. Ultimately, the Penthouse lawsuit and subsequent restraining order were both rejected, with both Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee ending up being exploited in a time before the term Revenge Porn was ever coined.

1997

Two different ladies on two different yachts were being romanced by the same billionaire’s son. The shrine to the eternal love of Diana and Dodi, on view at Harrods, doesn’t have quite the same impact once you hear about Kelly’s role in the story.

What is rarely mentioned, although it is well known, is the existence of a beautiful American model named Kelly Fisher, who wore on her left hand an enormous and very expensive engagement ring. She says her fiancé had bought her a mansion in Malibu, where they would live after their marriage. She had tentatively set the date of August 9, 1997, for the wedding, nearly a month off. Her fiancé was Dodi Al Fayed.

Dodi and Kelly were in Paris together on July 14, when Dodi was summoned by his father to join Princess Diana on the Jonikal, the yacht Mohamed Al Fayed had reportedly purchased for $20 million the day after the Princess accepted his invitation for a sailing trip with her sons, William and Harry.

Kelly was left behind in Paris, though a few days later she was flown to St. Tropez and transported to another Al Fayed yacht. There she languished during the day while waiting for evening visits from Dodi.

Diana had become too famous. Strangers gathered at the gates to get a glimpse of her. Helicopters hovered. She really had no place to go. The Jonikal invitations were perfect. A splendid yacht. A helicopter. A private plane. Guards to keep the paparazzi at bay. She probably knew that she was being used by a social climber for his and his son’s advancement in London society, but in high society it was a fair deal. Each benefited.

However, I think it is safe to say that Diana didn’t know that Kelly Fisher was on another family yacht, waiting for furtive visits from Dodi, with whom she had been in a relationship for nearly a year. Diana had already played that scene in her marriage to Prince Charles. The guards assigned to Dodi and Diana by Mohamed Al Fayed must have known about Kelly.

The shrine to the eternal love of Diana and Dodi, on view at Harrods, doesn’t have quite the same impact once you hear about Kelly’s role in the story. It’s still tacky, but it’s no longer touching. It’s calculated. What Al Fayed has created is a shrine to himself: “Look at how I have suffered” is the message.

Sources:

https://www.boatinternational.com/luxury-yacht-life/people-parties/biggest-scandals-at-sea--25615

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/prison-escapees-charged-murder-deaths-american-couple-presumed-dead-ya-rcna142414

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/grenada-fugitives-couple-murder-yacht-b2509554.html

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/08/24/italy-opens-murder-and-manslaughter-case-after-superyacht-sinking

https://www.yahoo.com/news/mike-lynch-drowned-sicily-superyacht-102730570.html

https://www.eonline.com/news/1406623/sicily-yacht-tragedy-hannah-lynchs-sister-breaks-silence-on-angel-teens-death

https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2024/08/19/who-is-mike-lynch-tech-entrepreneur-and-daughter-hannah-lynch-missing-after-yacht-sinks-near-sicily/

https://orangecoast.com/feature/should-california-taxpayers-pay-for-a-killers-sex-change

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Thomas_and_Jackie_Hawks

https://www.smh.com.au/national/gino-and-mark-stocco-like-modernday-bushrangers-20151029-gkm9jq.html

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/mar/31/fugitives-gino-and-mark-stocco-each-sentenced-to-40-years-jail