Victor Paleologus Has 25 To Life To Work On His Pitching Skills
Just in time for The Black Dahlia's opening weekend, a verdict and sentence was finally handed down in our own, shocking murder of an aspiring starlet—against Victor Paleologus, the man who lured Kristi Johnson to her death after he approached her at the Century City mall with promises of a part in a James Bond movie:
Victor Paleologus, the Tinseltown predator who posed as a "James Bond" producer to lure pretty women to fake photo shoots, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison Friday for the 2003 murder of aspiring actress Kristi Johnson.
But not before he made a last-ditch pitch — or what some called a final con — for his own life. [...]
"The events that follow are the result of a dissembled 'pitch' to me by my lawyer, and is the kind of 'grist' that is skillfully disarming — especially in the moments of severe duress and sleep deprivation," Paleologus [stated in an]...11-page letter, written in pencil and marked by the defendant's peculiar punctuation, quotations and florid writing...
While Paleologus' statement has all the demented flourishes of a calculating killer, we were nevertheless fascinated by his use of the word "pitch" to describe any alleged railroading by his counsel. Clearly, this is a man who until the very last moment was still living in an elaborately constructed Hollywood fantasyland of his own making, a theme he can continue to "develop" in prison, where he'll quickly find himself "signed on" as his cellmate's latest "acquisition," and it won't be long before it's firmly "in the can."
