Was the Real Housewives Suicide Part of a Bizarre White Collar Suicide Pact?
The day after Russell Armstrong's suicide, his business associate also committed suicide. Matthew Fox's vagina-punch victim presses charges. Lady Gaga wears a prosthetic penis. Justin Bieber gets in a fender bender. Wednesday gossip is tawdry.
- Just when you thought the ghoulish tabloid frenzy surrounding the suicide of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills husband Russell Armstrong couldn't get more tawdry: Russell's business associate Alan Schram (inset) also committed suicide, shooting himself in the head the day after Russell was founding hanging from an electric cord noose in a friend's house. Schram was the managing partner of an L.A. hedge fund, and belonged to a "club" of "investors who critiqued each other's financial portfolios" with Armstrong. The coroner ruled both deaths suicides, and Radar reports that Russell's estranged reality star wife Taylor Armstrong "is going through Russell's things and paperwork and sorting through information, and putting aside things that she thinks are out of the norm. It's very likely she will be turning over that information to the FBI." Russell's past includes a felony conviction for tax evasion, several lawsuits alleging fraud, and claims that Taylor and Russell worked together as professional scam artists. [Radar, images via Bauer-Griffin and Seeking Alpha]
- Justin Bieber was in a "car crash," but it was so tiny they police didn't even bother taking a report. Some guy in a Honda "tapped" his Ferrari. And probably had a heart attack when he realized the value of the car he almost scratched. [TMZ]
- Robert Downey Jr. and his film producer wife are expecting their first child. [Radar]
- The female bus driver Matthew Fox punched in the boobs and crotch during a booze-soaked night in Cleveland filed an assault charge. "He was swinging at my legs and, ultimately, my chest and my crotch area." Is there something psychosexually wrong with this man, that his instinct upon meeting resistance from a woman (apparently the driver barred Fox's entry from a stranger's party bus) is to punch her in the pudenda? "He reeked of liquor. You could just smell it coming off of him. He had glassy eyes and a blank stare the whole time." Fox was in Cleveland filming I, Alex Cross, a movie about a serial rapist suspected of killing his pregnant wife, so maybe Matthew Fox is a method actor? "By the time I got home, I was in tears," said victim Heather Bormann, who ultimately felled the inebriated actor with a single self-defensive punch. "He really scared the crap out of me." [CNN, THR, E!]
- Are Lil' Wayne and Jay-Z having a "beef"? Something about the phrase "baby money." [P6]
Jennifer Aniston on that one bikini she always wears, and has been photographed in for (gasp) two years: "I'll wear it for as many years as the strings still tie! Bathing suits now have so much hardware on them that they singe your skin. When you take your bikini off, it looks like you've been branded with crop circles and lightning bolts and words like Gucci." Reasonable. [Glamour, image via Bauer-Griffin]
- Katy Perry partied without her husband on Sunday. Who let that woman out of the house unchaperoned? It's unseemly, and probably means divorce is nigh. [Gatecrasher]
- T.I. got out of prison for a drug-related probation violation a month early. [Radar]
- Diane Kruger was having lunch at Ralph Lauren's restaurant in Paris, and who should walk in but Huma Abedin and former Congressman Anthony Weiner, you know, the one with the penis? How anyone resists chuckling when that man walks into the room, I will never know. The babymooning duo was "really lovey-dovey." [P6]
- Kim Kardashian's most lavish wedding gifts: A $450,000 customized white Ferrari with a see-through glass engine compartment in the rear (always inviting eyes on the rear!) and a multimillion dollar offer on her sex tape. Apparently a "mystery buyer" wants to take it off the market forever. Vivid Entertainment says they'll start negotiations at $30 million. Uphill battle, since she basically released a new one yesterday, under the fig leaf of "music video." [Radar, TMZ]
Speaking of Kim, here's her "honeymoon album," sold exclusively to Us Weekly. "Our honeymoon was so perfect! We caught up on alone time." Just a husband and wife alone with their love, and a multimedia production team and a bunch of cameras. [Us]