Dismissed in the Interests of Justice: The incredible(and I mean incredible) true story of how a comedian, Tig Notaro, saved her brand by destroying lives - Starring Nick Kroll, Jules Kroll, Marty Singer, the LAPD, Prosecutors, Judges (Seriously)

From Google:

 Dismissal in the interest of justice allows a court to dismiss a procedurally proper, but unjust or unjustifiable, cause of action. Thus, dismissing cases in the interest of justice can provide a check where few exist for overzealous prosecutions, race-based patrolling, and overuse of “three strikes” laws.

"Holy shit. This is... insane..."

Yes, it was. Yes, it is. Stone cold crazy. Batshit. Baying at the moon. Singing a loony tune. Straight up straight jacket stuff.

"...And, yet..." he said, "it's kind of... sexy."

Sexy?

Only in Los Angeles, would a lawyer, perusing reams of legalese -- chronicling a then two-year journey into hell -- think, 'hey this is hot.'

On the surface, he was looking at a case involving a restraining order obtained by perjury and fraud, used by an infamous L.A law firm - as a retaliatory weapon to, at first, stop first amendment protected internet postings and then as a way to sabotage a defamation lawsuit against its client.

In other words, you diss or sue our client we have systems in place to set it up so they stay unscathed while you get destroyed. A vicious business but hardly exciting. The tactic doesn't even have a snazzy Latin name, just a boring American one - extrajudicial strategy.

Big Whoop. People lie. Lawyers suck. Water's wet. But, unbutton one more button, and you'll see that she or he, has the goods.

We are talking a non-violent misdemeanor pursued like a triple homicide, where a then broke comic hired the high powered fixer law firm Lavely and Singer-Cosby's lawyers (other clients include: Jeff Bezos, Tony Robbins, Casey Affleck, Brett Ratner, Charlie Sheen, Danny Masterson, Harry Reid, Bryan Singer, Stallone, Prince Andrew, Brett Ratner, Schwarzenegger, George Soros, Travolta, Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Anniston ETC.)

Search Results

Web results

Hollywood Lawyer Marty Singer Can Make Any Problem Go AWay.. - Vanity Fair

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/02/marty-singer-hollywood-lawyer

will swear there's no one in Hollywood like Marty Singer. David Margolick reports on the mega-lawyer's mojo, and his involvement in the Bill Cosby case.

Said law firm and a group called Kroll (Weinstein's fixers, according to a recent article in the New Yorker) then used the elite LAPD Threat Management Unit (TMU)to help bring sham criminal charges, hide witnesses, doctor police reports, set up illegal searches and fake arrests, and much more.

From New Yorker Magazine : httSinps://www.Ba.comkc/news/news-desk/harvey-weinsteins-semy cret-settlements#:~:text=After%20Gutierrez%20contacted,a%20young%20contestant

After Gutierrez contacted the police, Weinstein drew upon a network of high-powered defense lawyers, former law-enforcement officials, and private investigators who help the wealthy try to thwart criminal investigations. Unbeknownst to her, Weinstein’s attorneys hired K2 Intelligence, a firm founded by the corporate-intelligence magnate Jules Kroll, and tasked its agents with insuring that the Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, did not press charges against Weinstein.

In my case, I allege that these same agents were tasked with bringing criminal charges to thwart a civil suit and also to please the best friend of the son's owner.

We are talking secret missives and phone calls from lawyers to cops, from judges to other judges. We are talking doctors doctoring reports. We are talking seven search warrants (four being special or exigent circumstances), an eighteen man SWAT-style raid, 31 days in jail - with no underlying charges to justify the jailing or arrest. We are talking about extraordinary measures such as having bail denied for a nonviolent misdemeanor case. We are talking me and my family being forced to face the specter of me being forcibly medicated, and committed to Patton State Hospital for the criminally insane.

Two excruciating years, culminating in a trial. Though there would be seven charges added over the two years, three charges went to trial because four were dismissed by the prosecutors a week before trial. Those were charges added two months before trial just to terrorize me into a plea. They were based on the long disproven allegations of Notaro. The statutes of limitations were long expired on those four for heaven's sake but that didn't stop Judge Mary Lou Villar(Anthony Villargrossa's sister btw) from letting the prosecutors add such baseless and lawless charges. Even more amazingly, no defense attorney, witnessing lawlessness obvious to even the most unsavvy layperson, dared step in or up. Very oddly, I was happy to see them add those four charges, for reasons that you will understand if you keep reading.

So three went to trial. Two of those were acquitted by the judge, in the middle of trial, before the jury could deliberate. After a cursory oral motion to dismiss by the public defender. A very rare and telling disposition - 

 

https://www.ketv.com/article/its-extremely-rare-judge-issues-direct-ruling-in-mcgreevy-jury-trial-not-guilty/38216380

A Douglas County judge ruled there wasn't enough evidence to convict McGreevy, before a jury could deliberate.

"It’s very rare, its extremely rare, I don’t remember the last time this happened in a case,” said Don Kleine, the Douglas County Attorney.

The last remaining count was dismissed by the judge after a hung jury (where the prosecutor practically begged for a "reset" ) in the almost unheard of ruling of - dismissal in the interests of justice.

A court's discretionary power to dismiss "may be exercised only in that rare and unusual case where it cries out for fundamental justice beyond the confines of conventional considerations" ( People v Khan, 15 Misc 3d 1131[A], 2007 NY Slip Op 50947[U], *1 [Crim Ct, NY County 2007], quoting People v Harmon, 181 AD2d 34, 36 [1st Dept 1992] [citations and internal quotation marks omitted]). Although the People maintain that the relief requested is inappropriate, the court is of the opinion that the present case is precisely that rare circumstance where fundamental justice will only occur upon dismissal.

Secret missives? Doctors doctoring reports? Special search warrants? Even special dismissals?Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! I can hear you thinking. She sounded kinda normal there for a while. Paranoid? Grandiose? Schizophrenic? Paranoid Schizophrenia? - a crackpot with a conspiracy theory and a thesaurus?

If that's not bad enough, I've been struck, then stuck, with the sickening slander that I'm a celebrity stalker. The word stalker alone evokes the saddest of sadsacks. That word gets thrown around a lot in the last few decades, very often as a joke, but it's a serious and scary crime where the real stalker has a distinct psychological profile, and real victims suffer greatly. Celebrity stalker is even worse, the loser of losers. The creepiest of all creeps. Byron and Shelley, collaborating on an ode to say, Kim Kardashian, couldn't make it anything less than pathetic. To make it all even worse, I was apparently hounding a public figure that almost no one in the public had heard of.

It must seem like a steep climb out of a deep hole. And, and it was and still is, but it shouldn't have been steep at all, because the "victim," said I spooked my prey in public.

Therefore, I had witnesses. Lots of witnesses. As good as it gets unbiased witnesses: A coffee shop manager, a club manager,  a talent agent, a parole officer( moonlighting as a bouncer it would turn out,) and two policewomen. And those were just the ones I'd been able to track down. There were potentially plenty more: two bartenders (one whose name I would find out- Ellen Tunney- but never was able to find her), and a limitless amount of patrons.

And not just them, but the "victim." herself. You see, she would end up having to give six statements for every allegation, and she'd change it up in ways that left no doubt to anyone paying the slightest attention that she was lying about everything, every time. 

But, before I get to the witnesses, let me give you a smidgen of context. Who was this high-profile person? Who was this, "celebrity"? ... 

Wait for it... Wait for it. Wait for it... Ladies, and gentlemen, it's Tig Notaro.

Despite herculean efforts on her part to get famous, I think most of you might still ask, who?

Notaro is a comedian, who recently raised her profile exponentially by bombarding the public with a long list of woes: mother dying in a freak accident, getting dumped by her girlfriend, catching a rare belly bug called C -Diff, and last, but not least - stage two breast cancer in both breasts. 

The narrative constructed in the press was of a brave survivor able to extract comedy from even the most tragic of circumstances. What a crock! Notaro even made it her business to tell a New York Times reporter that she doesn't believe that what happened to her had anything to do with karma. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/magazine/tig-notaro-has-cancer-go-ahead-laugh.html

Do you see this as the universe being cruel?
No, I don’t believe it’s karma, I don’t think the universe is turning on me, I don’t think it’s God, I don’t think it’s any of that.

 Also, there is a very curious omission in her list of miseries. She fails to mention that at the time of her widely announced cancer, she was being sued by me for malicious prosecution and defamation. She fails to mention that the judge, in that case, Richard Fruin, was saying things that must have terrified her. Fruin said, on the record, on April 25th, 2012, that he finally understood that a serious injustice took place here and that there are big big damages. He then said I'll be able to tell it all to a jury. We'll get to that later.

As she buried me, she rose Phoenix-like from the ashes - with a full head of hair, no side effects of any treatments, a couple of specials, and a book deal. But this happened in 2008, four years before Louis CK handed her the semblance of fame. Back then, she was just an obscure comedian trying to build her brand.

And who was I? I was and am a little green alien who's covertly working for the CIA - to protect our great nation from a species of nefarious lizard... Kidding! Kidding! See what they've reduced me to.

But seriously, that's a long story. For the purposes of this case, I was a college-degreed law-abiding highly un-stalkerish(Never wrote a fan letter in my life. Never followed celebrities in any way. Never was obsessive or fixated on anything or anyone) former real estate agent, writer, and editor, just a few months new to L.A. I'd had some success in comedy. I did Improv, character work, and stand up, and was counseled by teachers and many others to "keep doing it you have tons of talent and presence," but I never really followed through enough, but was now dead set on following through. I hate to toot the old horn so let's leave it at, I coulda been a contenda.

 

For the purposes of this story - since part of the conspiracy was to call it into serious question -  I feel as if I must also discuss my mental health. I often have had people comment to me that I am particularly sane; In that in this crazy world thank god for you way.  Until I met Stef Willen, no one has ever called me crazy except in that you so crazy I want to have your baby way. Until I had the grave misfortune of meeting a truly crazy person by the name Stef Willen, no one has ever questioned my sanity. 

I am told that when I was four years old I saw a non-existent rat during an episode of very high fever. That is the entirety of my history of having any delusions. Thirty-four years later I'd see lots of rats in and out of the courts of Los Angeles County, but as I will set out to prove- they were all real. 

 

I have suffered from depression, on and off since I was twelve. So I have seen many mental health professionals during my life. At the time of the case, the depression was mostly in remission. I was too busy fighting for my freedom and my name and even my life to notice it if it was there. Now I suffer from depression, crippling anxiety and PTSD. I consider myself non-paranoid to a fault. Even now, I am entirely too trusting and I only think anyone is out to get me when my sane brain deduces there can be no other explanation.

Sitting here revising this piece nearly twelve years after the criminal case ended in those rare dismissals, it also seems significant to the story to discuss the fact that my mother is a holocaust survivor. You see my mother survived three death trains, one labor/starvation camp and six months in Bergen Belsen by the time she was six years old. My grandmother had it much worse, as she was the spoiled child of privilege, forced to endure all THAT with an adult mind and the mind-bending pressures of trying to keep her children, and parents alive throughout. 

Growing up, I remember lying in bad many nights with a singular and pressing thought, "How could those Nazis live with themselves. How could they feed their dogs and just ... exist knowing what they were doing to fellow human beings?" When I learned that the nazis didn't take the jews of Hungary till 1944, I remember obsessing over the fact that the world had five years, Five YEARS, to save my grandfather(who died immediately after liberation) Five years to spare my mother and the rest of such evil and such indignities. The cavalry just wouldn't and wouldn't and wouldn't come.

As I got older and began asking questions my mother tried to oblige me but she just never brought it up otherwise. I asked her why she was such a talker but never wanted to tell me about the Holocaust. She said simply,"because I am ashamed that we went like sheep to the slaughter."

( I found this in my files today- it goes into a bit about the Train from Magdeburg mystery (a book and soon to be documentary) http://alisablogq.blogspot.com/2019/05/mumsy.html

But really enough about me and my heavy history, let's get back to 2008:

I had no illusions about L.A. For now, I knew I was relegated to open mics - a dismal stomping ground. But, as the saying goes, you have to start somewhere. The plan was to get a good tape and send it to agents. Being new to L.A, I knew only a few people; One being a girl named Stephanie Willen...

(I fear that you're going to run to the proverbial bus driver and ask him to be let off the proverbial bus. Please stay put.  We are getting to the good stuff, if you can call coming this close to being committed to a prison hospital for the criminally insane, forcibly medicated while there, and jaw-dropping illegal legal shenanigans, the "good stuff.")

But, first I have to have you see that there was no validity to the original restraining order and at the same time prove to you that the police were in on it-a set up from the start.

This is not a case of she said versus she said. It's a case of she said versus what she'd later say and how her stories would change in ways that showed from the start that it was all an absolute series of malicious lies. Strings were being pulled so it's also a case of whatever she says is to be regarded as the gospel truth no matter what evidence comes to light. It's a case where the she that is me could present all the evidence in the world to show my innocence and the she that is not me's guilt and no one would act as expected- time and time and time again. Most compellingly, it should have been a case of  - She said versus what many unbiased witnesses, with no horse in the race, would say.

As Carl Sagan so sagely said, "Extraordinary claims call for extraordinary evidence." And, I have the evidence.

Note on the presentation: I can show you all of Notaro's six different versions (what she swore to in an affidavit, then told police, then under oath in court, then to an investigator, then to the prosecutors, and then in the civil suits) of her allegations, and how rife with ridiculous and increasingly malicious inconsistencies they would become. I can also show how her versions clashed with the versions of her alleged witnesses. I can also who you how every witness of hers was lying  But I don't want to overwhelm you. So except for two instances, I will present her many versions by supplying a link, and supplying just the final version- the one in the appeal - the one I'm still stuck with due to painfully unjust circumstances, I'll get to a little later on.

Note on what the appeals court concluded cause not everyone knows how the appeals court works: Everything in that appeal relied solely on the fraud on the court that went down in Judge Gerald Rosenberg's courtroom. It is based solely on the perjury Notaro and her "witnesses" were able to tell under the unwatchful eye of a corrupt judge- Judge Gerald Rosenberg. I had an oral hearing scheduled for November 16th, 2009. As you will see they managed to get me jailed on that date. I don't think that was a coincidence.

To see much more documentation and evidence, please see http://henypire.blogspot.com/2016/03/case-8ca10541-misdemeanor-of-century.html

also here: this was done in the midst of the case and receipts aplenty https://www.dropbox.com/s/9l6xa0zmrgk67h7/wholecasedot%20%281%29.pdf?dl=0


First "incident" August 29th, 2007


Setting: Tsunami coffee shop

tsu·na·mi

/(t)so͞oˈnämē/

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noun

1. 

   

   

   

   • an arrival or occurrence of something in overwhelming quantities or amounts.

     "a tsunami of data pours into the CNBC newsroom every minute of every trading day"

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Description from Metromix magazine online.


Neighborhood: Silver Lake
4019 Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90029
323-661-7771

For this music, comedy, and poetry night follow these instructions: Walk through the door, sign up, wait nervously, get called onto the stage, do your thing, try not to feel awkward

Be warned, crossing back through the stage to duck out early will get you a chorus of raised eyebrows and a few remarks like, "Where are you going?"

I said:

At Tsunami, I saw ex-friend Stef Willen with Notaro - who I'd never met before. I chatted with Willen - the awkward small talk you make with people you don't like anymore hence the ex. I hung around and listened to some poor to middling poetry and some bad to so-so jokes. The night ended as they say, without incident. For nine months, I never saw or heard from either of them and they never saw or heard from me.


What appeals court said:

In August 2007, Notaro and Willen were in a cafe having coffee when Spitzberg approached their table and began to yell insults at them, including fucking dyke, ugly, cunt, and bitch. They ignored Spitzberg, who followed them outside, became more belligerent, and shoved/pushed Notaro. Spitzberg denied pushing Notaro


What witness Sam Consuegra (succinctly) said: There was no activity or fight at all.



Later an investigator for the public defender would go talk to him. Sam seems to have gotten spooked by someone, but he still maintained that no violence occurred






"I didn't see any violence that night."

 What Stef Willen would say:

To the court of Judge Gerald Rosenberg, she would not say anything about any push but would invent a narrative of verbal displays of jealousy and abuse towards the two. Later, she'd evade the investigator but would show up again to lie some more to prosecutors. Again, she'd try to create a narrative of jealousy and verbal abuse where none existed, and to the prosecutors, she'd go along with the lie that I'd pushed Notaro on that night. And now she was even adding that I chased their car at one point, even though she'd say before they'd come in two cars. In many other statements, she left out the chased the care lie altogether.

Stef Willen's motivations? To pretend she was in peril so Tig could come back into her life to save her? To get me back for perceived slights? Did she then poison Notaro's mind to the extent that Notaro felt justified in just creating such a decimating string of lies?

Most people want to know what the motivation was- to lie in such a ruthless way.  I can guess that maybe for her own devious reasons, Willen, poisoned Notaro so sufficiently that Notaro thought what she was doing was justified.  But that's just me surmising. I can't tell you the exact reasons. I can't understand it or make any good sense of it. After pondering it for over a decade now I think it can be summed up best with three words, "they are sociopaths."


 I can only be left guessing as to what possessed Tig Notaro to set in motion the series of liberty stealing and life-ruining lies she'd tell, but over time, I did find motivation for Willen on her Myspace and elsewhere.

Note the dates: One entry is the day after the restraining order hearing(where Willen could not get herself to lie about any push but would make up other lies.) The other predates the filing of the criminal charge but postdates the discussion with Martha Kelly, where I told Kelly I'd have to sue Notaro for defamation if she didn't cut it out.

tig notaro

Aug 4 2008 8:21 PM  do you know you are in kjell's top friends? things are really looking up for you! congrats on that AND the new horse.

tig notaro

May 29 2008 4:05 PM  80 degrees, sunny, mariposa st., sushi dinner, swim in the hot springs tomorrow on our drive up to aspen, comedy festival dinner party friday night, hike saturday morning in the mountains, tell jokes for 15 minutes saturday night and make monthly income for june, take sunday off to hang out in aspen with friends, fly home to LA to shoot 2 more episodes. thankfully a couple of vacations are coming up after this hectic schedule.

Now top friends with Tig Notaro's friends, a trip to Aspen and a horse for starters. Interestingly, when I knew Stef Willen she told me that the thing she missed most when Tig Notaro cut her out of her life was all the friends she lost in the process. She told me little about Notaro but she did tell me two other things.  She told me Notaro was "cruel" and that she only read one book in her entire life, a book about narcissism since she was convinced that her mother was one. She also told me that Notaro hated her family. 

During the case, Willen would get more rewards: A Funny or Die Video with Nick Kroll and a few more famous celebrities, winning a writer's contest where Notaro and Kroll had ins with those who ran the contest (John Hodgman at Mcsweeneys}, A spot on NPR's This American Life (Where Kroll is a big donor) an LA press award though Willen had nothing to do with writing any press piece and where the piece was found to be full of obvious lies. She would piggyback on all those ill-gotten gains to get a book deal with Simon and Shuster. Her memoir(with the insanely ironic title: Total loss. An Inventory of Disaster. Yours and Mine) was scheduled to come out in late 2016, but would be canceled after I compiled for the publisher a virtual dossier of her severe dishonesty issues. Read that karmically crazy story here: https://medium.com/@laurenspitzberg/the-case-of-stef-willens-missing-memoir-revenge-served-ice-cold-738c89480b52
  



"Incident" Two - Largo Comedy / Night club April 7th, 2008

What I say happened:

From Tsunami to Largo nine months have passed. Nine months: The time it takes a baby to gestate and drop into this cold cruel world. I go to a show at a club called Largo.I saw online that the comedy duo I wanted to see was a show MCed by Notaro, but since I had nothing against her and thought she had nothing of any significance against me, I didn't think twice about it. I paid my five bucks, sat by the bar, had a beer, and enjoyed the show.

I had no intention whatsoever of approaching Notaro, but Notaro approached me after the show. Seeing her standing over me at the bar, I instinctively said, "good show." She said, "thanks." Then, with the weirdest look (a mixture of glee and spite if I had to give it a description,) she said, "You pushed me... you pushed me the last time I saw you." She walked away to talk to a brunette woman. I walked over and asked, "Did you just say I pushed you?"

Notaro did the "ready for my check" wave and called out a man's name. A man appeared, and she told him, "Get her out of here. She's being aggressive with me." I sputtered a few times, and the little guy, I assumed was some sort of security, said, "I don't know what this is about but you've got to go. The artist gets what the artist wants."

Since the appeals court decision doesn't mention the brunette woman( Heidi Feigin - Tig Notaro's talent agent at the time,) standing there part, I'll insert the statements made by Notaro about that:


Most significantly, take a look what Notaro said under oath, under penalty of perjury, at the hearing to get a permanent restraining order.

I WAS SPEAKING TO MY AGENT, ALISA INTERRUPTED ME AND SAID:"YOU DON'T REMEMBER ME. DO YOU REMEMBER ME?" I SAID, "I DO," AND THEN TURNED BACK TO MY AGENT. THEN SHE INTERRUPTED ME AGAIN. SHE SAID "I DON'T THINK YOU REMEMBER ME.

I SAID, "I DO REMEMBER YOU. TIME I MET YOU YOU WERE AGGRESSIVE. YOU PUSHED ME, AND I DON'T WANT TO TALK TO YOU AT ALL." THEN SHE GOT IN MY FACE AND -- IF YOU WILL EXCUSE ME, I WILL TELL YOU WHAT SHE SAID.

THE COURT: TELL ME WHAT SHE SAID

MS. NOTARO: SHE CALLED ME A CRAZY DIKE AND CUNT GOT IN THE MY FACE. AND AT THAT POINT I HAD THE SECURITY REMOVE HER

What appeals court said:

On the evening of April 7, 2008, after Notaro performed at Largo, Spitzberg approached her and asked Notaro if she remembered her. Notaro said that she remembered meeting her and that Spitzberg had been aggressive and had pushed her. Notaro then said she did not want to talk to Spitzberg and told Spitzberg to leave her alone. Spitzberg became enraged. Notaro was fearful that the situation would escalate and had Michael Griffee, the doorman at Largo, escort Spitzberg out of the club.

What witness Heidi Feigin said:

(Heidi Feigin- was Notaro’s agent and went to see her that night. Notaro claimed she stood right there and witnessed a barrage of vile verbal abuse. )


Investigator’s report for the public defender:


When asked if this female subject caused any trouble at the show at Largo at this night in question, Feigin said no she had caused no problems on that particular evening. She stated she had just sat at the back of this club and next to the bar while watching the show. When asked if she had seen this unknown female subject ever make contact with Notaro on that night in question, Feigin said no. When asked if she knew the unknown subject’s name, Feigin once again stated no.

What this agent, Heidi Feigin, told my public defender in March of 2010 during the criminal trial stemming from these lies - written in Alissa Malzman Sterling's (the public defender who took the case to trial a year and a month after this report was made) handwriting. 

"Tig had her manager call me to say "Why are you testifying for the other side" Didn't cause a disturbance at all. Didn't see any disturbance Tig's account of story"

Witness tampering, anyone? Obstruction of justice? Case close after Heidi refuted everything Notaro alleged in such a spectacular way? Not by a long shot.

Why then would Notaro then list Heidi Feigin as such an important eye and ear witness?  Two reasons I can think of. One, she's so twisted that she had to brag about this new fancy big time agent. She had to have the cops and judges think she's an important person. Two, she was so cynical as to believe that everyone, especially Hollywood people, would lie for her and she was almost completely right about that as I would come to learn.


"Incident" Three - April 12th, 2008 Largo

I had no intention of being labeled a violent lunatic in the comedy world. Over the next three days, I tried to contact Notaro. I tried to contact Willen. I tried to contact the club. Anything to clear it up. No luck.


If Largo was a pizza joint, I'd get my slices elsewhere. But, I didn't want to be blacklisted from comedy. This had to be some terrible misunderstanding. I went back with my sister to try and straighten things out.

The owner, Mark Flanagan, was standing outside with the little guy who threw me out just three days before. I told Flanagan what had happened and asked if I could talk to Notaro. I was treated to the, "Whatever the artist wants," spiel again, and some added obnoxiousness thrown in. My sister and I responded with some defensive nastiness of our own. After about five minutes it was clear that it was hopeless and so we headed to our car.

A few feet away stood a handsome African American man. He'd watched the entire exchange, told us he sympathized with us, was the bouncer for the Dime, and invited us in for a drink on the house. We were too depressed by the lies and insults and just the general cruelty that Notaro had been subjecting us to so we politely declined this lovely guy's offer and went home.

What Notaro said:  

Me and my sister lunging at her. She escaping in the nick of time. Club on lockdown for one or two or five hours and me and sister screamed homophobic obscenities and banged on windows and doors. Police called by management since... of course. Who wouldn't - a packed club on lockdown, with two madwomen outside.



Appeals court said:


Notaro performed again at Largo on April 12, 2008. When Notaro was standing outside the club talking to the owner, she saw Spitzberg and her sister running toward her. Notaro ran inside before they could make physical contact with her.

The owner did not let Spitzberg inside the club and called the police. Spitzberg and her sister went to the club's back door, where they verbally abused the owner and the doorman and yelled, "We're going to get that fucking dyke.

Spitzberg left the club before the police officers arrived. According to Spitzberg, Largo's owner and another man at the back door were abusive to her and her sister, and they returned their insults. Spitzberg denied screaming or using obscenities.

We read the handsome bouncer( Julius) what Notaro had sworn to in the affidavit. and he was pissed before he wrote this for us.






"I am the door guy at the dime which is no more than 16 feet away from where Largo once was. I remember the day in question and remember nothing happen(ing) I even talked to the ladies for a minute or two and invited them inside the dime for a drink. These ladies are good people to be around and everything that this woman said is a lie."

Julius to my Public defender and to Katie Ford, city attorney (Who was the prosecutor at trial):

"Nothing Happened. Anyone saying anything different is a liar."

Okay so so far three people, Sam, Heidi, and Julius, are saying that Notaro is seeing, feeling(the shove) and hearing things that did not remotely occur. She is alleging verbal and physical mayhem and so far we have three unbiased bystanders saying that absolutely nothing of any note took place.

Remember though how I told you I can prove that cops from the Threat Management Unit were involved and engaging in a frame-up?  Documents that would come to exist from this alleged incident contain that smoking-gun evidence:

On September 14th, 2009, a year and a half after this all started, to prepare for trial a prosecutor, Martin Boags, sent out for the police records that had to exist if the allegations of police being called, and coming were true.


His request:

 Please note that it says date of crime and time of crime and it contains a long incident number. Please also note date of trial. That will become significant later and it is chilling. 

The appeals court got the police coming story from Notaro's affidavit and court testimony. As well as from witnesses Michael Griffee and Keven Seccia's sworn testimony where they attested that yes they saw the police.


Here's Notaro's version and how Gregozek would present it in a police report: Note: He'd say the same exact thing for seven search warrants that would be executed in this case. In that instance, he'd again not just write it as fact but also swear to it under oath.

(Imagine a club full of people out for a night of laughs, being stuck in lock-down for an hour( or five hours according to another account by Notaro) with two maniacs trying to break down doors and break in windows, and not one person using their cell phones to save themselves. Maybe they counted on management for that, except a year and a half later, a prosecutor sends away for the 911 call and finds out that not one single phone call to police was made. Ergo no police came only to be foiled by the wily absconding Spitzberg sisters.)

But Notaro said they came. Her under oath witnesses said the same. Gregozek would submit it to prosecutors and then judges, as verified fact, to get seven search warrants. Julius Quinn Roberts, working as a bouncer but whose day job is as a parole officer stood six feet away and saw none of it but let's completely ignore that.

 Let's look at that again. This would turn out to be Notaro's first account, a police report to John Gregozek.

Please note that Mark Flanagan refused to talk to the investigator or anyone during this case. 


When Martin Boags ordered those records, a year and a half later, he learned that no such call was made and so no police arrived.



The response to his official request: "There is no record of any kind based on the information provided in the formal request."










What the minutes would say to influence judges that I was ever arrested in this case. There was never an arrest by Hollywood LAPD. In fact, I was only arrested by John Gregozek and his cronies at the TMU because I left court during a sinister conspiracy. This had to be put there to get those judges to see me as a criminal. Oddly, this made Martin Boags order the records of alleged arrest. Odd, because it means that Gregozek was lying to him too.

So what does that mean to the prosecutor, Martin Boags and to this case?

It means that Notaro and two of the "witnesses" she brought to the restraining order hearing (Kevin Seccia and Michael Griffee), lied about this under oath. It means the restraining order was granted due to fraud on the court. It means that John Gregozek has not only included it in his police reports as fact, but swore to it being true under oath in now six search warrants dating all the way to the time Boags ordered these records. It means that John Gregoek invented an incident number out of thin air.


 It means something is very wrong with the case against me and since you cannot prosecute a violation of a restraining order, if the order was obtained by perjury and fraud on the court, it means the case must be dismissed and Notaro and those "witnesses" should be prosecuted: Notaro for lying to the police and perjury and the others for perjury.

 It means that Gregozek also committed perjury by swearing to this under oath in all those warrants. It's not as if he didn't know. I send him all the witness statements the minute I got them. I sent it to any prosecutor on the case too. I was sure maybe they didn't know better till then but it turned out that they did and could care less, because they were not working for "the people" but for certain masters. It means that Gregozek is a criminal(obstruction, falsifying police reports, conspiracy, and more crimes related to this incident alone) who is doing his very best to railroad me into a conviction. Please note that he didn't mix it up with some other number there were no incident numbers in this case!

 It means I have been defamed and maliciously prosecuted at the restraining order hearing and now in the criminal courts and have cause to sue for a lot of damages.  But I only knew that no police were 

called or came after trial- a year and a half after this started- when I found these documents in a pile of discovery that no one saw fit to tell me about.

Why lie about something so easily verifiable? If Gregozek wasn't just an errand boy for Lavely and Singer and Kroll, he would have checked and in a just universe, Notaro and the witnesses associated with this "incident" would be in big trouble. Lying to the police is a crime after all. At one point, I'd found out that Gregozek had tried to file a stalking charge against me. I called him yelling at him, "how could you do that when you know the truth" and to my amazement, he whined, "She made me do it." 

Why did Gregozek think he'd get away with something so egregious? Well, he did get away with it but my theory is that the system here was so arrogant and just so positive that I'd take a plea at that second hearing and none of this would come to light.

You see no one called the police that night because Notaro knew that I was there solely to make sense of why she was going around making up such destructive lies. She knew I posed no threat. To satisfy the stalking statute though you have to show up without a reason more than two times. I'm not an expert when it comes to abnormal psychology but I know that Notaro was THIRSTY to have a stalker. I believe she both craved the role of victim and felt that the idea of having a stalker imparted her with a sense of the fame that thus far eluded her. In short, she is an evil and very sick puppy.

Back to April 2008

From April 12-29th, 2008

At this stage, all I knew was that my name was being smeared as a violent person, who shoved strangers for no reason. This lie was being perpetuated by a well-connected comedian, and at a place (Largo) where I'd intended to pursue my goals and dreams.

And try as I did, Notaro and Willen seemed dead set on not clearing this up. The only thing I felt left to do was to bemoan my fate online. Basically, I went on a message board called datalounge and did a little virtual fist-shaking; asking if anyone ever heard of this Tig, and why this annoyingly named person was such an asshole. It turned out that a few people, who followed alternative comedy, had heard of her but most didn't. But it was agreed by all that indeed she was behaving like a true blue false accusing asshole. I'm sure it wasn't pleasant for her but she deserved it and much worse, comeuppance wise.

I have to make it very clear that nothing I have posted then or since has ever resembled a threat. To make it clearer, nothing in that thread, or anything I ever wrote online, was useable in any of the legal proceedings that were to follow. Everything written by me was strictly protected by the First Amendment. Nothing was even untrue and therefore though I would sue for defamation, no one ever sued me or even counter-sued me for defamation, after they were sued for defamation.

(Later I would find out that during the duration of those threads, Notaro's lawyer, Allison Hart Sievers of Lavely and Singer, had sent a series of cease and desist letters to datalounge. The other side would refuse to produce those so I don't know what they said but I do know that Lavely and Singer's cease and desist/threat letters are legendary. And they worked. Thread after thread was deleted to the mystification of all who participated in them.

Last "incident" - April 29th, 2009. Please remain seated.

Seventeen days later, I went to the Improv for an open mic.

In the foyer was a poster of Notaro. She was going to be there later that night.
I must have looked like a hitchhiker, who just noticed that the passenger's side door handle had been removed. I called my sister. "Tig is coming here. Tig is coming here. What do I do!!!"

"Oh for god's sake, chill the fuck out," said my sister."Even if you are still there when she comes, she won't do anything. Who knows, maybe she'll even feel sorry. If you're still there when she comes, she wouldn't do anything."

"Do you think?"

"Could be. She's human, isn't she?"

Having been talked down, I signed up for the open mic. At some point, I went outside to smoke a cigarette. A comedian (Brian Whitaker) came out to have a smoke too. We talked for a bit when suddenly his eyes widened. It was Brian's turn to look at me like the doomed hitchhiker whose stop had come and gone. "Hey I recognize you. You're Alisa. Your picture and your sister's picture have been faxed to the club. I'm sorry but you can't come back in."


Oh my god. What is wrong with this crazy bitch?


I called my sister, this time crying. She came over.

O.K. I think you know where this is headed - (the artist wants what the artist wants blah blah blah). We were by the car when the cops showed up. She had actually called the fucking police!

Officers Badar and Montalvo acted all coplike at first, with the 'stay there no funny moves' routine. Badar stood guard as Montalvo went inside to talk to Notaro and who knows who else.

Montalvo reemerged after a few minutes and went into a huddle with Badar. They both looked confused. Montalvo wore a particularly obvious expression of bemusement. Then their miens seemed to change - they became friendly. Badar smiled warmly at us and said, "Go home, ladies. There has been no crime here."

And then Badar said something that made little sense at the time, "If I were you. I'd get a lawyer."

"Why would we need a lawyer?"

"I just would, if I were you."

I guess even where's there no crime, cops don't go in for conversation. We went home but didn't call a lawyer. What would I need a lawyer for?

Appeals said:


On April 29, 2008, Notaro was driving to perform a show at the Hollywood Improv club when the promoter called her to inform her that Spitzberg had been removed from the club. When Notaro arrived, she saw Spitzberg outside the club, talking to people. Notaro entered the club through a side door. The security guard for the Improv club, Brian Whitaker, told Notaro that Spitzberg said that she knew where Notaro lived, the color and make of Notaro's car, and the car's license plate number. Spitzberg, her mother, and her sister remained outside the front of the club and verbally attacked other performers, patrons and security guards for over two hours. Notaro attempted to leave the club, but because she felt unsafe, she remained in the club. The police were called, but they were unable to take any action because Notaro's life had not been directly threatened. After the Spitzbergs left, Notaro went home.


TMU said:

please note there was never an incident number in this case .Note how Gregozek calls me violent. Note the presence now of Nick Kroll. Note too that Gregozek does not name the officers.

No evidence of any kind. No witness statements are attached. Only Gregozek's promise to testify.

Please note that Gregozek did not say there was an arrest (though the minutes of the court would say so for the duration of the criminal case and so Martin Boags would send away for arrest records), but he did include an incident number. See the last line of the first paragraph.



Neither Montalvo or Badar filled out any reports that night - no police report or incident report. Since the police weren't called that last time too, or the time where Notaro says she was verbally assaulted and violently shoved, there are no police or incident reports by anyone other than Gregozek, in this whole case.

Why then would Gregozek invent an incident report number for the occasion? If he was on the up and up he'd contact Montalvo and Badar and include their finding in his report. Instead, he doesn't do that but rather inserts a number that he knows doesn't exist. Or maybe he did contact Montalvo and Badar and what they had to say only hurt the narrative Lavely and Singer and Kroll were deadset on concocting for this client, the great friend of Nick Kroll. 

The only thing I'm absolutely sure of and that much evidence supports is that, Gregozek, was trying to make me look as bad as possible so I'd be prosecuted and ultimately convicted. In other words, he was framing me.

First, he had to have known that no police were called or came the night of the 12th. But, he'd written it as verified fact. Now he had to have known that Montalvo and Badar had concluded that no crime occurred and so they did not see fit to make any record whatsoever. This time he'd go as far as to invent a number so any future prosecutor or judge would think there was all sorts of police involvement in this case.

Since I was repeatedly refused the names of those two female officers until deep into the malicious prosecution, I did not get affidavits from them. But when this case was scheduled for trial, the public defender, Alissa Malzman, would contact Montalvo (no one seemed to be able to get ahold of Badar- whose father was a famed cop.) Alissa told me Montalvo told her that she concluded that no crime occurred and so did not see any good reason to fill out any reports. She also told Malzman she'd be a witness for my defense.

Officer Montalvo is ordered to be on call for the defense

( Interestingly, before that day, Montalvo would be put on the prosecution's witness list without her permission. There was just the assumption that she'd play along.)







That witness list alone is a portrait of insanity that should prompt taxpayers to take to the streets against Boags and Gregozek and the whole lot of them. Remember Hoffman's words,"We're not going to go to Silverlake to talk to witnesses for THIS," None of those people, but Badar and Montalvo, had anything to add and none showed up at the trial but Jackie Kashian and Jeff Klinger. Martin Boags just put that there to scare me.

Back to my unsung hero, Jaqueline Montalvo.Wow. A cop ready to go against other cops. A cop who could not only testify that Notaro and Nick Kroll's accounts were false and malicious but would make it clear that Gregozek contacted her (or didn't contact her) and saw fit to invent an incident number, to assist in a malicious prosecution against me. Gregozek even swore to it in his search warrants. 

Had she testified to all that who knows what kind of Pandora's box could open? It would surely ruin Nick Kroll and Tig Notaro's career. By this point, Nick Kroll had submitted a witness statement to the prosecution that was the most malicious and false of any to date. Who would tolerate such cruel false accusers as comedians? Montalvo clearly deduced that Notaro was up to no good just by talking to her that time a the Improv. Notaro could easily have been prosecuted for multiple instances of perjury. It could shed light on the Threat Management's complicity with fixer firms like Lavely and Singer and Kroll? Would it have shed light on the arrangements detailed in this blog that I found long after  my case was over https://losangeleslessconfidential.wordpress.com/

Basically, that blog asserts that some very fishy very high stakes arrangements were transpiring between the TMU and Marty Singer(The mastermind behind Lavely and Singer: )


Only the good die young. Jacqueline Montalvo came to court on February 22nd, 2010 to tell Alissa Malzman Sterling that she never filled out any report of any kind cause there was no crime and that she would be my witness. On February 25th, 2010 -- three days later - she was dead. A car accident. Though there was no smell of alcohol at the scene according to a team of investigators, a few weeks later a medical examiner would conclude that she was extremely drunk at the time of the accident. 



Off duty LAPD officer killed in diamond bar car accident

More on that here: http://alisablogq.blogspot.com/2022/01/did-unsung-hero-lapd-officer-jaqueline.html

From Ronan Farrow's, Catch and Kill

Documents and sources illuminated Weinstein’s long relationship with Kroll and Dan Karson, the firm’s chairman of Investigations and Disputes for America. One former Weinstein staffer remembered a call in the early 2010s during which Karson said, of a chauffeur who was involved in a dispute with Weinstein, “You know we can put this guy at the bottom of a lake.” The staffer assumed it was a figure of speech but was uncomfortable enough to note it down. 

 

Richard Chang - Suspicious Deaths

..

Apr 4, 2010 — Richard Chang, senior business analyst died after a fall of over 80 foot after an interrogation by Kroll Associates relating to an anonymous ...

MOVING ON

In her affidavit, Notaro had also sworn that a sheriff snuck her into a side door during the mayhem. Sheriff at the side door? A sheriff sneaking her into the side door? Was he wearing a Stetson and a big brass badge? Later we investigated and found out there was no side door at the Improv, and obviously no sheriff because he would have shown up in this case. So... no side door and no Sheriff. No shit.


Remember Brian Whitaker? The comedian who lied for Notaro at the restraining order "hearing."?

Well, later on we'd learn that a few months after the hearing,  he was opening for her at the Improv ( when before this he only did open mics-poorly.) He even went to thank her on her Myspace:

Brian Whitaker

Nov 2 2008 5:03 AM  great workin' with ya tig - thanks again, nice riff with "sparkles

A week after the Improv- May 5th, 2008

I was at home; trying and failing to get any peace of mind. Two hard knocks on the door. Two giants to my 5' 6" inch eyes stand in the doorway. They introduced themselves as Detective Gregozek (cue Jaws music) and Detective Hoffman LAPD. I immediately knew it was about Notaro, since I didn't have a beef with anyone else and no one I knew had been recently murdered. I was so happy to see them. I know how they say you should never talk to the police but back then I trusted the police, wasn't hiding any crimes, and so I gabbed away. Maybe they could talk some sense into her and I could continue my life pre-slander.

"Did you write about Tig on the internet?" asked Gregozek

"There were no threats. Is it illegal now to make fun of someone on the internet?"

The easy admission seemed to deflate him. "No... it's not illegal, but it is illegal to push someone."

"She's still sticking to that lie?"

"Well, Stephanie is saying it too."

Oh my god. What is wrong with these crazy bitches????!!!!! All attempted levity aside what Stephanie was doing felt like a very painful betrayal. We'd had a bad falling out but to lie to the police like this... it came as a terrible shock.

Gregozek filled me in on what I'd been doing, behind my very own back, for the last few weeks. Basically, behaving in a grossly undignified manner - pushing, ranting, raving at people and stationary objects. Someone was creating a narrative for me, whether one bit true or not.

Between my, "oh my god she's lying, oh my god they're lying, oh dear god why are they lying like this," I remembered all the people who had to have shared Notaro's and Willens' traumas - the witnesses. I then told them about the witnesses.

As of May 2008, I only knew them by their generic identities - the barista, the bouncer, the brunette that was standing near Notaro at Largo, the coffee shop people, the club-goers, and those two female cops.

Holy Cow - CCTV. Holy double cow - the cops. An embarrassment of riches- witnesswise.

I almost felt sorry for Notaro. She really fucked herself over. You can mess with me but not with the mighty LAPD. Gregozek and Hoffman did not appear to care about my Perry Mason moment or any possible witnesses. They didn't write anything down. At one point, I kept asking them if they were really police cause they sure didn't seem like any detectives I'd ever seen on TV. They seemed like actors playing cops.

We'd later find out they'd just come from the offices of Lavely and Singer, where they'd picked up a temporary restraining order(that was given Notaro ex parte - no hearing, no notice. No way for me to contest it. To get it ex parte, and to have the fee waived, she'd swear that she was too terrified and this was an emergency situation based on stalking,) and a small stack of internet postings from the message board, datalounge

"We're not Stupid. We see what's going on," said Hoffman, in what appeared to be a supportive manner.

Of course, they did! They were actual detectives. 

They got off the sofa and Gregozek presented me with a sheaf of papers that turned out to be a temporary R.O. 

"But... But... But... "

" You can tell all that to a judge."

"But I didn't commit a crime, why would I have to tell it to a judge?"

Just stay off the internet," Gregozek said, "and you'll be fine. From what I can tell she won't even show up."

"But how would you know that?"

"Just stay off the internet and you'll be fine."

(Later I'd call him and he'd change it up with, "Just stay off the internet and your legal troubles are over.")

"But how is it illegal to tell people she's lying about me when she is?"

"It's only a problem when you have a permanent hearing coming up," he said in no more questions you bore me baritone.

Gregozek and Hoffman left. I wouldn't see them again 'til a year and a half later, November 4th 2009, when they came back with 16 friends in riot gear - One with a battering ram.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKWmLM048bE

A few still shots from the tape:

Ex Parte Temporary Restraining order

After the detectives left I read what was handed me. I was assaulted by lie after lie. But, these same papers held the first clue as to who the brunette lady was at Largo. (It was Tig's talent agent, Heidi Feigin. Notaro made it her business to tell anyone reading about how her agent from William Morris was at the center of all the action. ) And, a new name, a name I'd never heard of, someone named Nick Kroll. But Kroll's name wouldn't seem significant till years later. Then, he just seemed like just another liar. I did not google him at any time during the case and as you will see that made all the difference.

Notaro's official affidavit embellished new horrors: Me and my sister acting like B movie gangsters mixed with rednecks - watch your back see, gay bashing, hate criming through the streets of West Hollywood, casing the joint see, pushing club owners now, dodging the coppers on the night of April 12th. Notaro was supplying me with all kinds of dialogue - providing me with words and expressions I'd never use.

The first version of the perversion was signed by Notaro, and though it had a handwritten name of a law firm, Lavely and Singer, on top, there was no bar number and no lawyer's signature. The whole thing was very sloppy. Not as if a law firm prepared it at all.

I Googled Lavely and Singer. It said they were a boutique law firm. That conjured up images of small stylish storefronts selling dresses, hats, gloves, and all manner of lovely little things. Not too alarming.

I googled Notaro, to get some insight into her and to find anything that could be used against her. She had a MySpace page. I saw her write all sorts of fishy things on her blog. For instance, she admitted to falsely accusing someone of being on drugs and spoke of how people were trying to murder her as she went on the road. She admitted even to being a liar. 

 “ I make things up as I go along. I make things up as I want them to be. Repeat it till it’s true. I get away with it cause I’m adorable .”
                                                         Tig Notaro on her MySpace Blog(2007)

I saw too that Gregozek was right about her not showing up - she would be appearing in Denver on the day of the hearing. Aha!

I looked up Gregozek and Hoffman. Nothing about them then. If I had gone a little deeper - searched a little more, I would have found out about Lavely and Singer and Marty Singer, and I would have known that John Gregozek and James Hoffman were not regular LAPD. They worked for the LAPD's Threat Management Unit - a unit that only dealt with the city's more serious stalking cases. Stalking the stalkers was their catchphrase. I'd later learn (through their affidavits to get search warrants) that they also protected prosecutors and judges if they were in any way threatened.

I would have also found out that their former head, Robert Martin, had recently been represented by Lavely and Singer in a defamation claim against an author and Penguin Publishing. The gist was that a David Waddell wrote a book(Among The Mansions of Eden) about shady dealing with celebrity stalking and security cases and had written things critical about the Threat Management Unit.

Later, I'd see that this unit had been featured in L.A. magazine and years later they even got their own show (unimaginatively titled Stalker and thankfully canceled quickly), but before the hearing, and for a few months after, I thought they were just regular LAPD Detectives. Even without knowing their true identity, it begged the question, was it normal practice for two big strapping detectives to act as process servers who advise "suspects," to stay off the internet.  Was it normal to show zero interest when told about witnesses? And, why did they feel the need to disguise their identity?


My dying words will be," If I knew then what I know now." My  epitaph, "Shoulda, coulda, woulda."

I shoulda taken out a billboard on Sunset Boulevard, with these words:


My dearest Tig,

I know you love the sound of your own name. Don't get me wrong, I love it too. And yet what does it stand for? Terrific Incredible Genius. Get it? TIG. Madonna, Oprah, Cher, Charo, even Jesus are yesterday's news. The world needs a new one-namer and Tig is that name. Please please please stop trying to destroy my life.

Your most humblest admirer,

Alisa Spitzberg.


We shoulda and coulda hauled ass to find witnesses before the hearing; taken out an ad in the Los Angeles Times, "If you've been at this place at this time and saw nothing unusual please call Alisa Spitzberg at this number."

At the time, and now, I don't like to haul ass. Most of all, I wouldn't have listened to the oddly honest lawyer I spoke to - who told me that though he charged five thousand dollars he wouldn't take my money because no judge would grant such an order with no evidence(no affidavits from anyone but Notaro, no police reports, etc.) and based on a push, real or imagined, that happened nine months ago, especially since no one even called the cops. I would have listened to Badar and gotten the best lawyer in town.

Instead of doing any of that, on the day of the hearing, I drove down to the Santa Monica Courthouse, in a stupid state of calm. Yeah, the two cops were somewhat sketchy, but really bad apples only existed in movies or down in Compton. While Gregozek and Hoffman weren't exactly in season Honeycrisp, they couldn't have worms at their center.

As for judges: I thought they were the ultimate adults of the universe. If that Burbank attorney thought he couldn't take our money, no judge could see it differently. Again, I felt twisted pity for this Tig person. If she, in fact, did show up, she'd be shamed in open court, fined, or even jailed for false statements.

Well, that didn't happen.

I cannot emphasize how I didn't get what I was getting into. Notaro showed up with Stephanie Willen, Largo's door guy, and two comedians. However, the Lavely and Singer lawyer, Allison Hart Sievers, listed as the lawyer for this proceeding did not show up. No police showed up either, which I'd learn later was unusual.
 

If the lawyer of note is not present, the proceeding cannot continue. For Notaro to proceed without a lawyer, she'd have to file a substitution of attorney. Meaning, they'd have to postpone the hearing.

The judge had to say,"Where's your lawyer, Ms. Notaro? I don't know if you know, but Ms. Sievers knows that if she's not here we can't proceed. Where are these cops you list as just LAPD? And who are all these people who you've brought to court? None of them are mentioned in your affidavit? And they sure didn't fill out any affidavits. It's terribly unfair that Ms. Spitzberg cannot have a way to properly cross-examine them, and you just made major inconsistent statements without even cross-examination so... And, one more thing Ms. Notaro, who the hell are these three roommates you list here? Are these the men you've brought with you? No? None are here today? None wrote out an affidavit? None are mentioned in your affidavit? So you're telling me you want to restrain her from three men who are not even present. Ms. Notaro, I think you are a very shady lady. You've got some splaining to do."

Well, that didn't happen.

I'll just offer you the low-lights. Rosenberg never mentioned the missing attorney.  Instead, he acted like her attorney. He helped Notaro when she couldn't remember dates, when she couldn't remember locations, helped refresh her memory to what she or her witness's already said. He didn't force them to sit outside when the others testified as required by law. He didn't notice that the information she spouted in court did not match up one bit to what she'd written in her affidavit. (Just one example of many: Now I didn't go to Largo to stalk Tig I'd come to stalk Stephanie. After nine months of no contact, I'd somehow took an insane guess that Stephanie followed Tig around to all locations. HUH?) He didn't notice that one witness, Micheal Griffee, completely changed his story from moment to moment, right in front of him. A bailiff even came and told my sister to leave while I talked. When she tried to come back to testify he told her she could not. It was a nightmare.

The clincher for Judge Rosenberg was that I had checked her schedule on MySpace. When I saw I was being railroaded, I asked for a continuance because of how I read she would be in Denver at the time of the hearing. Saying I saw ts on her MySpace to him was an admission so damning, that he almost said, BUSTED!

Her witnesses babbled on unabated, with no way for me to prove they were lying cause they'd never supplied any previous statements. When it came to my turn to speak Rosenberg played a little game that a judge Jessner would play later on where the minute you start they say "one minute left..."

A three-year CLETS order was granted her and  three roommates (who'd I'd never seen or even heard of. Later I'd find out that two of them, Thomas Sharpe and Chris Fairbanks, never lived with her at any time, much less at the time of that hearing.)

Avoiding Notaro would be relatively easy, but keeping a non-jailable distance from all men of roommate age was no way to live. I'd only feel safe around women who were not Tig, which again was no way to live.

Would people actually come into court and lie under oath? I have to believe most people would never do that. But if you spent five minutes in the L.A. comedy scene, then you wouldn't be as surprised. For instance, Stephanie Willen went from being a secretary to a gossip columnist to thanking Tig for getting her a job as her camerawoman, trips to Aspen, a horse(for Pete's sake!), and actually getting a Funny or Die video( With Notaro and Nick Kroll)credits, and even a small spot on NPR's this American Life(We'd later learn how that went down.)


 Open Mic-er Brian Whitaker who never had a paying gig was suddenly on his MySpace talking about opening at the Improv for Notaro.

As for the little guy I'd thought was the bouncer... His name was Michael Griffee and he was the assistant manager at Largo. We'd later learn that Largo was being funded by one of the other "witnesses" in the case, but I want to keep that a mystery, dear reader, for a short while longer. Suffice it to say Griffee can be shown to have motive to lie.

A month later, on June 29th, 2008, I began my unpaid legal career by filing a notice of appeal. I planned also to file an abuse of process and defamation claim the minute I could get that together.

July 14th 2008

During the two months that followed the granting of the order, my mother urged me not to give up on doing comedy and so I went out a few times to make her happy. I kept to the more fringe venues - places where I hoped my wanted poster wasn't posted by the bar. One night, I was at a place called El Cid. I ended up talking to a girl named Martha Kelly (who I knew from Tig's MySpace was a friend of hers.)


(Note: I could have no idea she would be there since she was not performing that night. This fact would become slightly significant much later.)

One side effect of all this fuckery was, that apropos of almost anything, I'd start babbling about the THING. The THING being that for no godly reason Notaro had set about trying to ruin my name and life and was abusing the system to reach those ends. I was recently run over and the tracks were still fresh. Tig's name was too easy an invitation to refuse.

Somewhere in the recounting of the THING, I said to Kelly, "She needs to stop doing this, she's killing my mother."

Besides being the most limp wristed strong-arm tactic in the history of provocation, it was also true. My mother is a refined little Hungarian, from a generation, where restraining orders are strictly given to drunk men in wife beaters. The fact of her ex-yeshiva girl getting one was too much to bear. She also saw what went down in the restraining order hearing and could not believe that this could happen in America. Plus, it really broke her heart that I was stopped from doing comedy.

Not only would Tig not stop this, this got worse. Why Notaro was so cruel will never make sense. She shouldn't have won but she won, but she seemed to want more. After filing the appeal, my name popped up all over the internet. Grade school scarlet letter stuff. The ugliest stuff imaginable. So ugly I have a really hard time repeating it.

A Harris Wittels told the world via a comedy message board that I stalked not just Notaro but many female comedians. He continued with how  "creeped out" so many comedians were by me. An abject stranger named Jazz Ponce backed him up on this. A Scott Boxenbaum referred to me many times as a stalker, the town weirdo and more. He urged anyone "running a show" to "shun and ban me." When I tried to respond in any way, I was either attacked or blocked from the site. Later I'd find out that the people who were either saying such vicious lies or were making sure I couldn't protect myself against the viciousness were all connected to Nick Kroll. At the time though it just made no sense and it felt like hell. I'd also find out that Notaro had notified every comedy club in L.A to be on the lookout for me and when she performed she requested special green rooms to be safe from her, "crazy stalker."

Stalking is a crime and being wrongfully accused of it is defamation, and that is actionable. In other words, you can sue. If it's a lie, the person saying or spreading the defamation on the internet is liable for libel. So I continued my uncompensated legal career by writing a defamation suit (I couldn't get a lawyer without paying a lot of money, I didn't have, upfront.)


I filed the suit on August 11th, 2008. A few days later, on August 20th, 2008, things went from the miserable to the horrible.

I got a letter in the mail from the office of the city attorney 

- it said that they were pursuing a charge of a violation of a restraining order, but what for? The letter didn't tell me what I'd allegedly done to violate any order. And since I didn't do anything, I couldn't even guess. What happened next sounds too crazy to be believed, but it happened and I'm going to tell you. In the last few weeks (but months after I first posted this,)Marty Singer and Kroll have been in the news so I'm hoping it now might be more readily believed.


So, I had no idea why I was being charged. I was told by a lawyer ( I'd hired for some off-the-record help with the defamation case) that I had a right to call the city attorney and find out. I did so and gave the case number to the person on the phone. Soon after a man's voice got on and said in the nastiest possible tone, "I'm handing your case and I can't wait to get you," and then the man hung up but not before I got his name... Ed Gauthier.

At the time I just couldn't believe what I'd just heard but now I know that considering who was pulling the strings, in my case, Ed Gauthier's, insane proclamation makes a twisted sense.

(I never did hear from or see Gauthier again but it would become clear early o that this was not going to be a regular prosecution..)

My mother saw my terror and called Gregozek, asking how they could criminally charge me for anything, when he and Hoffman knew Notaro was a liar. She got off the phone looking a mix of confused and scared.

"Is suing someone for defamation illegal?"

"Of course not. What did he say?"

He said, "What could I do. You sued her, didn't you?"

Even without Detective blabbermouth admitting it, it wasn't hard to figure out what was going on. But it was hard to figure out the how.

As a lawyer would say in the near future, "These people are obviously commandeering the system and it needs to stop.

In a message dated 4/13/2009, 4:20:17 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, howard@lieberlaw.com writes:

Hi Alisa,

I understand your frustration, I really do. These people are obviously commandeering the justice system for their own petty purposes and it needs to stop. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that the system knows it's being commandeered, and it comes down to your word against hers and the DA and cop who inexplicably believe her.I will walk in on the 16th a motion, probably the Pitchess and the discovery motion. I will bring the motion to dismiss once we complete those motions, as we will perhaps have more information to support the dismissal at that point. In fact, I foresee bringing the motion to dismiss on multiple occasions before and during trial. As far as depositions are concerned, we're going to have to wait on that. We are not entitled to a deposition in a criminal proceeding, only to have her on the stand to confront and cross-examine at the trial. The deposition is for the civil suit, which must necessarily happen after the criminal case is over.

Note on this email: At this point, we had seven or more highly favorable witness reports from the investigator for the public defender so it is clear that Howard Williams is not remotely doing the job I paid him 4K for. It was not at all a case of she said she said at this point and he'd had over a month to figure that out.

 How the hell is Notaro commandeering the system- so powerful that judges, cops, and now prosecutors are not following any known law. So powerful that she gets the TMU to try and sabotage a defamation suit and now a prosecutor is telling me, "I can't wait to get you"? Not to mention how in the hell is she paying for those Lavely and Singer lawyers, who we since found out were as high powered, and expensive as it gets. (Averaging 500 bucks an hour.) Marty Singer, according to a recent article, now gets $ 1,050 bucks an hour.

I'm going to tell you my theory in a minute. Please pay attention cause this is the most important part of everything. Remember, Notaro and her lawyer knew she was being sued on August 11th. Let's look at Gregozek's version of what happened.

July 14th

That night Martha Kelly makes an urgent call to Notaro, immediately. She tells her that not only was I worried about my mother's health but that I want firearms.


August 1st (18 days later- 2 weeks and four days)

Notaro suddenly feels the need to call Gregozek and tell him what Kelly has told her. Gregozek dates a report  August 1, with scant detail and with no witness statements attached.

August 8th

He, and a Martha Defoe ride from their office in Downtown L.A to Hermosa Beach to show Kelly one photo (me). While there they take no witness statements. They will make no further investigation whatsoever.



August 11th

Lawsuit  against Notaro filed

August 19th

Letter dated August 19th is sent to me informing me that I've been charged with a misdemeanor by a Phyllis Henderson (Whom I'd never hear from or see again.)

August 22nd

Gregozek attempts to get a stalking charge filed, but a City Attorney named Webster rejects it. I only found this out when I went to the Hollywood police station to find out the names of the two policewomen who came to the Improv. The cop on duty told me that but refused to tell me the name of the two officers.

August 25th

According to the file, I am officially charged with one count misdemeanor, which is strange considering the August 19th letter from the Office of the City Attorney. Why send a letter about a charge that hasn't even been filed yet?

So we're supposed to believe that Notaro gets an urgent call that a restrained person is talking about guns. She sits around for two weeks and four days, and then apropos of nothing special happening, she decides to call her cop, Gregozek, to report it. Then, for seven days, Gregozek and the TMU sit on their asses and then on the eighth day, the TMU lets  Elite Detectives, Gregozek and Defoe, take a day trip to Hermosa Beach - to show a... photo to Martha Kelly? They take no statements? They don't follow up one bit with Jackie Kashiana and Jeff Klinger?

So the day after I sue Notaro, Gregozek goes in for an arrest warrant according to the documents we have. Now the law is that when it comes to misdemeanors an officer must witness the crime to get such a warrant so that is very suspicious to begin with. But whoever called the shots that day rejects his application.

What had to have happened: 

Martha Kelly tells Notaro about the conversation. I talked of suing Notaro to Kelly so Notaro likely was nervous about that but not one bit afraid in any physical sense. End of story. More than three weeks later, on the 11th of August or after, Allison Sievers gets the heads up that Notaro has been sued, and Gregozek gets a call from Sievers, telling him what she wants him to do. She wants me arrested and she wants them to do anything so my civil suit against Notaro will fail. She also wants me to stop writing about the case and Notaro on the internet, which I have been doing pretty steadily all along. In other words, everything I'm doing is legal but Seivers knows that John Gregozek is willing and able to make it look otherwise.

 That day he goes to submit his police report to get an arrest warrant and is rebuffed. He gives up on the warrant business but shops around for a prosecutor to sign off on a misdemeanor (Violation of a court order.)

A letter is sent to me on August 19th telling me of some charge. He's done his duty, but Notaro wants more, so Allison directs Gregozek to bring him a prized charge of stalking. A City Attorney by the name of Webster rejects it, we'd find out. So we can guess that some prosecutors are in on it and some just aren't.

Gregozek presents no signed witness statements, no evidence of any kind and not even the restraining order (we'd also soon find out) so they have no triable case and they know it. As you will see soon, the first plea I am offered is ten days in jail- an outrageous offer that no defendant would consider. And for the next court appearance, the plea will become informal diversion- a few hours of anger management and stay out of trouble for a year and you'll have no record.

Why thank you, good sirs, ten days and now practically nothing. Forbidden to ever write about Tig Notaro's actions on the internet as a condition? Of course, good sirs.


But, I didn't. I didn't do the one thing they bet on from the start - I wouldn't plea when not guilty. I didn't take even a plea for "informal diversion." And, if I didn't take that there was nothing better they could offer. If they dismissed it I could proceed with the defamation suit and have a case for malicious prosecution too. And if that happened, what could be discovered in discovery?

Why was no one putting the breaks on this mess? They knew about the witnesses by now. They knew about all those ridiculously inconsistent statements. Maybe she had family in the Mafia? Notaro did sound Italian. Maybe her father is some powerful millionaire. I looked a little into it, and her father might be Italian, but he definitely wasn't a powerful millionaire. She did claim to be Sarah Silverman's best friend but was Silverman so powerful? I don't think so. Sorry, Sarah.

So here's the theory as to how little Tig could have the TMU and the prosecutors and judges do her bidding.

We'd learn much later, she did have a friend- a friend who said he'd go to Greenland for her cause he'd do anything for her. And he also said she was his oldest and best comedy friend. And this friend's father is very very powerful and not just a millionaire, but a multi-billionaire with connections. Not just connections but very specific connections to the players in my case.

His name is Nick Kroll.

Who is Nick Kroll?:

At the time, Nick Kroll, was a struggling comedian, without the struggle, and yes that Nick Kroll - the one who lied about the car being full of beer cans the cops failed to see, and who we surely never saw on the scene. I am really good with faces and I know for a fact he was never present at any these alleged incidents. He is the one who submitted that disgusting series of lies that all seemed to want to not only to paint me as a deranged stalker but also aimed to dispute Jaqueline Montalvo's potential testimony.  The one who was supposed to be Tig's most important witness, but didn't show up to the R.O hearing. Using Jules Kroll's son's name served its purpose we can guess. 

Also, the one whose mother can be seen at a function with Scott Boxenbaums' mother, Kharlene.  Basically, Nick Kroll sent Boxenbuam(and many others we'd learn over time) to destroy any chance I had of performing comedy anywhere ever. Boxenbaum reveled in calling me a stalker and the "town weirdo" on comedy message boards. Offline, he directed those running shows to "shun and ban me."

Lynn Kroll with Scott Boxenbaum's mother Kharlene! Nick Kroll sends Chuck Boxenbaum's son, Scott Boxenbaum, on very unwholesome missions

Generally, I have no use for conspiracy theories or the people who believe in them. My default position is that many people don't get together to do very bad things, cause many people makes it way too complicated. I'm also a person who is stupidly trusting and I have a hard time believing people do bad things, period. I feel sorry for but also annoyed at the lost souls who get stuck on them; Doomed to sit in darkened rooms, chain-smoking and scribbling on the walls. Black sharpied circles and arrows, spiderwebbing into red sharpied, AHAs, to be shared in dark web chatrooms with other oddballs.

So the conspiracy kept growing in this case. If you harass a waiter and find a toenail in your soup, your suspicions could be taken seriously. If you accuse the water-boy, who you've also been rude to, with supplying the nail clipper eh not so much. If you insist that the chef set the whole thing up, it will make your fellow dining companions try to secretly catch each other's eyes. If you accuse the management of the entire chain of malfeasance, you will make your parents cry. The saying, "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you," should be more specific in the suspect numbers.


So what do you do if you're me - drowning in a forest of fallen trees of actual evidence of innocence?  We were confused about the why but really stymied on the how and the exact who.


Nah. No way. Couldn't be. And, yet it couldn't be anything else. Cognitive dissonance can make you feel mad - angry that you have to write long disclaimers on how you are angry mad not mad as a hatter mad. How could a little thing calling itself Tig have the power of 500 dollars an hour famed fixer lawyers, elite police squads, prosecutors, and judges?  The lawyers I hired and then the public defenders also didn't seem to be doing anything one would expect. The suspect numbers were just too much.

KROLL

In late 2013, three years after the criminal trial, the who and how became clear. I was reading some unrelated to my case article when I saw the words Kroll Securities. I remembered the last name of that particularly vicious false witness. I googled Kroll Securities, and soon enough came upon a Wikipedia for a powerful billionaire named Jules Kroll, and indeed Nick Kroll was his youngest son. With a bit more digging, I came upon an article about an Ian Puddick- who had a website devoted to how he was screwed by Kroll and an elite police unit. It eerily mimicked my tale.


Basically, in England lived a guy named Ian Puddick. Ian's wife had an affair with her boss. Ian found out and did some understandable things a spurned husband might tend to do - He called the wife of his wife's boss. He called the boss. He got angrier and called clients of the boss and told them secrets of what his wife told him about the boss. And, finally, he did what I did, took to the internet...started a ... gasp... blog. The blog was basically about how Mr. Tim Haynes is a very bad man. Just as in my case, he'd committed no crime just pissed off the wrong person. Just as in my case, the pissed-off person had tried to get the regular police involved and the regular police told them to buzz off.

The only things unusual thing in this scenario of the aggrieved spouse causing a ruckus is who the boss had on retainer to fight said ruckus - Kroll Inc/ Kroll Ltd/ Kroll Risk/ Kroll securities/Kroll Government Services etc.

Kroll sounds like what would happen if Tom Clancy and Kafka had a baby - a Dr. Evil by way of James Bond, in a business suit. Kroll has got their dirty little fingers in all the spooky arts imaginable - litigation support/ reputational management, Private investigations,Forensics,Defense Contracting/ CIA contractors and on and on.

For our purposes, we'll stick with reputation management and risk mitigation. In short, if someone has a reputation problem, or as the kids today call it,"brand issues." Kroll will assess the risk to the reputation and take measures to contain the risk and then restore the reputation. Please look it up.

See! They don't even hide it. What they do hide is how they go about it. I'd later read that Kroll operatives(that is how the article referred to them) make a thousand dollars a day, not including expenses.

Then more articles -about how Jules Kroll scouts lawyers, prosecutors, journalists, and even judges and offers lucrative jobs in the private sector. One article talked of a Kroll operative named Thomas Cash. During discovery in a case against Kroll, they found an email from Cash to a client saying " if worse comes to worst I'll talk to the judge." Then there is this huge story that never became a story https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/08/a-spy-in-the-jungle/60770/

Oh looky here, Bill Bratton, the chief of police at the time of my prosecution-


 


also moonlights as a Chairman for Kroll in Los Angeles. https://www.crunchbase.com/person/bill-bratton#/entity

I have it somewhere where Bill Bratton signs off to the two Internal affairs complaints I made during the case. Of course, he found nothing untoward. I also went to the FBI twice and how strangely one of the agents acted is too hard to believe and I have no documentation so I'll just leave that out.

Nick Kroll has claimed repeatedly that he considers  Notaro to be his best friend. A friend he would do anything for...
http://www.washingtonian.com/blogs/afterhours/comedy/comedian-nick-kroll-on-his-washington-homecoming.php

First and foremost, Tig Notaro asked me to do it, and she’s one of my oldest and best friends in comedy. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/meet-tig-notaro-belle-of-the-bentzen-ball-comedy-festival/2013/10/09/394ad200-2b71-11e3-8ade-a1f23cda135e_story.html“

“I love D.C. and always relish the chance to come back and perform, but if Tig had asked me to go to Greenland, I would have gone.”

In this podcast, Notaro mentions that Nick Kroll has a list of comedians he maintains.  At one point Notaro fears she's offended Kroll by revealing that he writes big checks("oh those checks you write, Nick") and corrects him to say he is not indeed "upper middle class," as he just claimed, but," 1 %." Kroll assures her she is still, "top of my list."

https://www.earwolf.com/episode/fate/

Fate, episode #10 of Private - Earwolf

Jul 5, 2011 — Nick Kroll is one of the most prolific Earwolf guests, so he was destined to show up on Professor Blastoff! That is, if destiny exists.

Ka-ching. Jesus Christ. No fucking way. Oh looky here the former head of the TMU was a Robert Martin, who was represented by Lavely and Singer when a David Waddle wrote a book seeking to expose the alliance between crooked cops trying to get in good with lawyers etc so they could get high paying jobs in private and celebrity security.

Well, Robert Martin now works for Kroll. And another former head of the TMU, Gregory Boles, now works for Kroll in Africa. Big money in badges if Jules Kroll thinks you have what it takes. There was even more links between Kroll and law enforcement of all kind, in cities all over the world. They even owned the forensic labs that did the drug testing for law enforcement and they did security for courthouses throughout the land. An article in Business Week week spoke of how FBI, Mossad, CIA, prosecutors of all kinds, and cops of all kinds could count on a second very lucrative second career if Kroll scouted them. Implicit in those articles in my estimation is that Jules Kroll scouts you if he sees you are willing to play dirty.

To sum it up, Ian Puddick is someone I can cry in my beer with. I had a little blog. He had a little blog. He was annoying his wife's boss and I was annoying Nick Kroll's friend. In both cases, they used the services of particular lawyers, who contacted special branches of the police. In both cases, they criminalized a civil case. The missing link is that in my case, the brand I was annoying was someone who was MCing shows for five dollars a ticket. In Puddick's case, he was pestering a director of a multi-million dollar insurance agency. And, the big thing we have in common is Kroll.

September 25th 2008( We were told to appear on Oct 1 but it was Rosh Hashanah and so we were allowed to come in early.)

Clara Folz Courthouse - Arraignment.


All courthouses, especially big city ones, have a lot of history. Rosenberg's Santa Monica court had Roman Polanski in the vicinity before Polanski decided to pop out and off to Switzerland.Rosenberg was also the judge on the O.J Simpson  civil case- somethign to do with souvenirs.  Ms. Folz's beat all that. The marble benches where I spent countless butt breaking hours were haunted by infamous phantom asses i.e Manson and his disciples, O.J and his family, Robert Blake and his family (or maybe nobody came for him. I don't know) I am not putting myself in such vaunted company but I was treated a lot more seriously than the average non-violent misdemeanor defendant. Again with Carl Sagan, "extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence."

Public defender, Anan Desai, was a young princely sort. I liked him and he seemed to like me back. He treated me like a good friend. He told me it was curious to bring charges on so crappy a case. He wondered aloud, "what is going on with comedians in Los Angeles," and passionately said twice that he'd be happy to take it to trial. He told me that their plea offer was ten days in jail. Anan commented on how bizarrely harsh that was. I asked him if Ed "I can't wait to get you" Gauthier was the prosecutor and he assured me that though he knew who that was he was not the prosecutor on this case.

Anan directed me to sit with him in the hall. He didn't even have the restraining order in his possession. No one had given it to him. It would turn out that the prosecutor, Phyllis Henderson, who agreed to charge me did not have it in her possession when she charged me, but Anan did have one page - a police report dated April 30th. I had no idea such a report existed since no reports were included in any restraining order process, temporary or permanent.

He read me the police report. It made me giddy. Notaro had seriously changed her story again. So now she had changed her story from April 30th to May 5th, and then again on May 28th. Now we had the push inside, not outside and all the words I used on her and her agent were changed to now say that they'd been used on her and Stef Willen. There were many more glaring inconsistencies that would have convinced anyone that Notaro (and Willen and any witness she brought to the hearing)were lying their asses off.

Oh Tig. Tig. Tig! You are way past perjury, now you are deep into even more felonious misconduct.  You've now engaged the criminal justice system to fight your vendetta. Forget about fines or probation, honey, you're going to the big house.

Anan and I stood in front of Judge Dennis Landin. I heard Landin make a garbled comment about granting something. I had no idea what he possibly could have been granting. I figured he was talking about the order that was already granted. Did Anan know? I don't know. It turned out to be a Domestic Violence criminal restraining order.

When presented with the prosecutor's strange request did Dennis Landin, say, "Domestic Violence? There is no dispute that there is no relationship between these two. Are Ms. Notaro and Ms. Spitzberg married, shacking up, or even related? And even if they were, there's this quaint little thing called due process, where we are required to give notice to Ms. Spitzberg. There must be a hearing before I could sign this serious piece of paper that will restrict all kinds of civil rights. Not to mention she already has an order against her. Now, this is harassment. What has possessed you, Mr. Prosecutor, you gotta lotta splaining to do!"

That didn't happen.

Instead, Judge Dennis Landin discarded every ounce of that due process nonsense and signed the order.




 (Says I was served with this? Never hapepend.Only much later would I even know such an order existed and only much later would prosecutors try to use it at trial. Note too the handwriting.)

Landin let me go home on my "own recognizance" and scheduled a hearing for some time in October. On the way out Anan approached my mother and said, "I just want you to know, I'd be happy to take your daughter's case to trial."

October 16th, 2008


Of course, I didn't plead guilty or take any plea, so I had to go back for more. Anan was missing from the second hearing. In his place was the Anti Anan - A ferocious ferret named Nicky Meehan. Meehan was strictly concerned with pleasing the powers that be - scraping the dry peas off the court's plate. Meehan was not at all interested in taking my case to trial. Instead, she presented a new plea as if it was some prize. The plea was called "informal diversion." She spoke of a few hours of anger management and how if I stayed out of trouble for a year, it won't even be on my record. How did it go from ten days in jail to some rageaholic get-togethers?

 I asked her this. She looked annoyed before saying,"cause it's a bullshit case." But, I didn't mismanage my anger in any way that would get me into any legal trouble, and I told her this. She like every cynical lawyer in every cynical lawyer movie said, "look around. Most of these people are innocent too. It doesn't matter. You got the best plea in the criminal justice system."

I looked around. Surely most of them must have done something. You don't get charged with crimes, willy nilly. I didn't get the irony back then. Was it because I was white, and though financially compromised, at the time, was still living in the not so distant past, where I had, "Call my lawyer," cache.


When you are, "in it," you are not thinking about class systems and socioeconomic studies, you're only thinking that this has got to end soon. They'll drop it once they understand it's a sham and that I have all these witnesses. Worse comes to worst we'll go to trial - a day or two tops. Ill get someone like Anana.I'll be vindicated. Then back to normal life - normal life seemed so grand compared to this.

" So no, absent dismissal, I want to take it to trial," I told her.

Nicky Meehan walked off in a caricature of a huff.

I saw Anan in court a little later on. He told me he'd be transferred to another court soon and was sorry but he couldn't represent me. It didn't look like anyone was eager to help. But I tried again, I wrote Detective Hoffman these emails. One on the day after this hearing. 

  


At this stage, I still trusted the system to a large degree. I still had trust that judges, prosecutors, and detectives would do the right thing if they grasped what was really going on. God, I was stupid. A few months after these emails, I'd called Hoffman and begged him to talk to Sam Consuegra at Tsunami in Silverlake, a short distance away from the TMU's downtown L.A office. By then, December of 08, I knew his name and had gotten his statement "no fight or activity at all." Hoffman actually chuckled and said, "I'm not going to talk to witnesses for THIS." 

 I'd called the TMU headquarters on another occasion and Martha Defoe answered. I told her my name and she in an unmistakenly warm tone of voice said,' You need to get an R.O on her." She said " her"  with great disdain.

By December of 08, it was becoming clear that we had to do what we should have done at the beginning( Not that that would have probably made a difference in Rosenberg's court since the fix was in .) We researched the protocols of witness statements. A lawyer we spoke to sent us proper affidavit forms. Of course, there was the same problems as before, who were these people and how hard would it be to find them? And if we did find them what could they recall? The alleged push's date was August 29th, 2007 and we were now in December of 2008.

Light-bulb over head - the bouncer at the Dime. Bouncers usually stayed in the same spot. Please please still have the same job.

Mr. Handsome was still guarding the Dime's door. Approaching strangers and asking them to get involved in your mess is a recipe for rejection. But, he remembered us immediately and was as kind as can be. We showed him what Notaro had sworn to under oath, relating to that night, and he got angry. He told us he's a parole officer by day, so for him to miss all that was extra insulting. He wrote out that affidavit(see above.)

 Another light bulb moment: Baristas. Coffee shops have baristas. Please please please let there not be a high employee turnover( cause it's over a year now.)

The Tsunami coffee shop was about to close. One guy remained behind the counter. I asked him if he remembered me. He didn't. I asked him if by any chance he was there on August 29th 2007- A Wednesday. An open mic. Turned out, he wasn't a barista but the manager, and as manager he hadn't missed a comedy/poetry night for the last six years. Surely, he would remember his quiet cafe transforming into a gunfight at the OK Corral.

He remembered that nothing happened at any open mic. I showed him what Notaro had sworn to at the restraining order hearing. He looked disgusted and said none of that ever happened. I asked him to write out an affidavit. His reaction was more expected than Julius's. He didn't really want to get involved. As the kids say, "He didn't want no drama." But, he wrote it up(see above.)


According to this document, the prosecution ordered the restraining order more than two months after they filed the charge, based on its alleged violation.




That and the fact that Anan Desai told me he did not have the order (and can I bring it to him?) says to me that they were so sure I'd cave as early as October 16th they didn't even bother to order the order, before filing a charge. When I turned down their offer of informal diversion, they had at least give it a look.


November 6th 2008 

Next up was the pornly named Franica Tawn- another youngin. All the public defenders were pretty young. She did a few things you'd expect, prepared an extensive discovery motion to get CCTV and anything relevant to my case. After much begging and pleading, she also agreed to get me the public defender's investigator to talk to the witnesses I told her about. (And that's how we found out what talent agent, Heidi Feigin, and Tobin Shea( Manager of El Cid) and a few others would say. 

I had a theory that with so much deception going on it was  best to tell Franica to tell the Investigator to talk to anyone involved- even the ones who had lied at the hearing. Even the ones that Notaro had listed as her witnees on arssorted police reports that we now had a chance to see, Heidi Feigin and Nick Kroll in particular. People thought I was wrong about this theory, and that it wouldnt' pan out wow did it. It seems like overkill to present you with how badly her restraining order witnesses revealed themselves as perjurers. This theory landed us  Heidi Feigin's statement.

Franica like them all, except Nicki Meehan, seemed to start out with good intentions until inexplicably it screeched to a stop. The problem with her was that even though she did the right things she kept us in the dark about everything including the discovery motion. I only knew it even existed until after trial, when I found it in a file. Though she'd set it for hearing that hearing came and went and appears to have been canceled and yet she never saw fit to tell me any of it. I still have no answers as to why or how that hearing disappeared but I have my theories now that I know so much more. 

As for the investigator reports, they turned out to be amazingly great, but she wouldn't tell me what they said. She wouldn't hand them over. I only found out when they had no choice but to give them to me after I was forced to be my own lawyer. Me and my sister remember that day so vividly. It was in March of 2009. We read the investigator reports going down the elevator from the nineteenth floor, where we'd picked them up from the public defender's office. Heidi Feigin's in particular filled us with supernatural levels of relief. By the time we reached the first floor we were sure it was over. It had to be. I would beg Franica to just show all the evidence to the prosecutors. These were educated people like me surely they'd do the right thing. Franica looked weary and said, "It doesn't work that way."

Franica let few things slip from her lips, but one day she did wonder out loud why Allison Sievers of Lavely and Singer was calling the prosecutors and the court all the time(Once the case is in the criminal court a civil attorney should have nothing more to do with it.) Franica also wondered out loud how Tig got out of the city attorney's November 5th subpoena( A subpoena is when the court compels the plaintiff to testify about their accusations.) The fact that Notaro was called in to testify by the city attorney tells me again that not everyone in that office knew what was going on. The fact that she got out of it by merely having the Lavely and Singer lawyer write an email tells me that they were playing it by ear and calls were being made. 

After five months of  Franica keeping me in the dark, and just filing continuance after continuance, I had no choice but to be my own lawyer. Yeah Yeah a fool for a client but I didn't stay a fool for long. When I got my hands on the discovery that Franica never told me about, I saw something else that Franica never told me about - four special circumstance/exigent circumstance search warrants. 

You can thank George W. Bush for these special warrants. After 9/11, they became too easy to get. Usually, they have to give you the heads-up before they search your property. But, exigent means the crime is so serious, so pressing, the perp so dangerous, that it's in society's best interest that these searches be conducted in secret.

 Such warrants are mostly used on terrorists or pedophiles. In case the would be bomber has time to dismantle or detonate his bomb, or the kiddie lover deletes his pervy pictures and browser history. We also saw in this discovery that Allison Sievers had sent two letters to Gregozek and the prosecution, wanting them to add more criminal charges. See she and Tig "believed" and according to these documents, their belief was good enough for Gregozek and a Kelly Boyer.  Absolutely no evidence required, as will be proven later on. 

The very weird thing is that I got these documents in late March of 2009 and it says four charges were added by a Kelly Boyer on January 27th, 2009  and no one told me that I was facing four new charges in all that time. The even weirder thing is that I wasn't facing those charges. Kelly Boyer would not add one single charge in the course of this case. How two did come to be added is very confusing and even insane but I'll try to explain it.

 I'd come to court on March 23rd, 2009 to re-sign a Farreta motion. I was told by the clerk that they had lost the one I'd signed about a month before.  A Farreta motion is something you have to sign before you can go pro per- be your own lawyer. On this date, I'd seen the search warrants and the report that said that a Kelly Boyer added four charges. On this Farretta form, I had to initial all parts. One part I had to initial was that I understood what charges I was facing. And I couldn't do that cause of the fact that I did not understand why it was saying I was facing five charges instead of one but no one told me this. I told this to Judge Mary Lou Villar. 

Saying this prompted prosecutors, Jennifer Waxler and Felise Cohen Kalpakian, to start scrambling around looking for something. They finally came upon some dogeared-looking pieces of paper and said, "yes your honor we want to add two charges." Villar said sure and sent us up to the empty courtroom of judge Terry Bork. And there, Waxler and Kalpakian added two charges that made no sense. Two charges were based solely on hunches. I kid you not.

 Notaro got mesages on her facebook page and "beleived" I had witten them. According to reams of pages in discovery of what they found in  secret search warratns, no evidence linking me to those messages was found. It can be inferred that this is why Kelly Boyer was pressured yet had the good sense to not succumb to such pressures. Waxler on the other hand did. That assessment - that these charges made no sense- would be borne out at trial. Saying they made no sense would also be used against me in astounding ways.

Then we saw THIS:

Shakespeare will show up later but those documents above are the definition of sound and fury signifying nothing. Well, it signified an increasingly unhinged malicious prosecution where Notaro not only has no remorse but is deadset on using the cirminal justice system to destroy me. But, when it came to adding charges there is nothing in those documents that would lead any prosecutor, acting in good faith, to add a criminal charge. And as we know, Kelly Boyer, acted in good faith and did not add a single charge, despite what Gegozek kept writing up in reports. I hope anyone reading this can see how strange and scary are these communications. I hope they read what Sievers (Marty Singer's favorite henchwoman according to articles online).characterizes as "frightening and disturbing." And for any record, everything she alleges is a lie. Never wrote the things she claims I wrote. Never put up pictures of Tig and her freinds much less wrote anything defamatory or threatining in my life. Never deleted any blogs or acounts etc.

From Ronan Farrow's book, Catch and Kill

Current and former K2(Kroll) employees, all of whom had previously worked at the district attorney’s office, relayed the information about Gutierrez in calls to prosecutors. Lawyers working for Weinstein also presented a dossier of the private investigators’ findings to prosecutors in a face-to-face meeting. Two K2 employees said that those contacts were part of a “revolving door” culture between the DA and high-priced private investigation firms. A spokesperson for Vance’s office later said that such interactions with defense attorneys were standard procedure—and for the wealthy and connected, they were.

Law enforcement officials began to whisper that the DA’s office had behaved strangely. Vance’s staff had been receiving new information about Gutierrez’s past on a regular basis, and hadn’t been disclosing where it was coming from. It was, one official told me, as if Weinstein had infiltrated Vance’s office personally. 

All these perversions of law and invasions of privacy were beyond frustrating and disturbing but I was in a state of calm. They would dismiss when they saw what the witnesses had to say. And if they were as corrupt as I was starting to suspect, I could count on a trial and if the witnesses just showed up, I was golden. Had Notaro just left it at the illegal R.O, I'd never get the chance to open it all up. I just had to be patient. The first thing I'd done during the short time I'd gone Pro Per is email the newly assigned prosecutor, Jennifer Waxler, all the witness statements and inconsistent statements. I then waited for the profusion of apologies on top of dismissals. Nothing. No response at all.

 As of March 23rd, 2009, those special circumstance search warrants,the addition of charges that made no sense,and Waxlers non response to my evidence spooked me enough to think I'd better start ponying up money for real lawyers. The public defender's nickname of public pretenders seemed very well earned.

Paying lawyers ( Signeda retainer in early April of 2009)

The first paid lawyer, Howard L. Williams. Howard( a very Howard looking person,) seemed excited to take it to trial. He loved my witnesses. He thought something was very wrong with Gregozek. He thought there was something very wrong with the search warrants. He saw how suspicious the timing was - the 18-day gap between her call to police and the timing of the lawsuit. He said if he could get Notaro or Gregozek on the stand, they were toast. As for these two new Facebook charges, he saw no link to me. If someone else did it, it was legal. Either way, a collateral attack on the order would render all the charges meaningless, as it was not a valid order and you can't criminally charge someone on an order obtained by fraud on the court or perjury.

And as for the posts, only a toddler getting caught red-handed with a cookie would cry about it. Boo hoo I stabbed you and you bled on my shoe. Shame on you! You better buy me a new shoe! He told me what I already knew -- once you file charges you better be sure they are good charges cause if the prosecution loses and you can prove they prosecuted you without basis, hello malicious prosecution! He told me he intended to quote-unquote paper the prosecution. He promised to file a motion to traverse the warrants, a motion to attack the validity of the restraining order, a few motions to dismiss, and intriguingly something called a Piches motion.

Once upon a time, there was a man called Piches, who had a smart idea. He thought to himself, Hey if a cop is setting me up can I see if this guy has a history of being crooked. Is the pig dirty, or basically clean?

One of the luxuries of having a private attorney is being able to pace nervously in the comfort of your own home during the hearings. Howard filed a motion to traverse.  It was four months late but that's another story. During a court date, where it turned out there would be no hearing because the prosecutors said they weren't ready, Howard mentioned how he planned to file a Piches and to get Gregozek on the stand. The newest prosecutor, Jennifer Waxler( who had actually bought a second chair prosecutor, Felise Kalpakian, to help her. (Highly unusual for a non-violent misdemeanor case,) somehow knows without texting, calling, sleeping with(as far as I know,) that Gregozek is going to be on vacation on the day that Howard wants to get him on the stand. And, when the judge tried to set a date for when Gregozek got back from cough cough Cancun, Waxler made a brazen move. Waxler implored the judge, Mary Lou Villar, to have me remanded and put in jail till trial(according to Howard's email later that night.)


Lauren D- July 9th, 2009


How could they do this - attempt to get me jailed until trial? Blame Lauren D. Lauren Joy Spitzberg is my sister. She has no order against her so she could have written anything she wanted, on the internet. Apparently, this Lauren D. wrote her horrifying(sarcasm as you will see) comment on a message board about stat counters in 2005. HUH!??? Notaro admitted herself that we did not become aware of each other till 2007.

What did the horrifying comment, written on a message board about computers in 2005, say according to Jennifer Waxler and the printout she'd provide. It said: "me and my sister saw you on comedy central and I also have etc..." Those ellipses and that etc, are not mine. They are supposedly written by a mystery person going by Lauren D. Who is this elliptical comment by Lauren D directed at? I've looked and looked but this document (presented as evidence in support of stealing my liberty) offers no clue.

Villar should have said,

"Ellipses? Ellipses? Are you kidding me? I saw your show and  ...  what? What does this Lauren D on an AOL computer message board say after the I saw your show bit? Does it possibly say I want my money back? Does it say I saw your show in 2005 and now I'm going to kill you? who is this comment directed at? I sure don't see a Tig on this page. In any case, is her sister married to someone whose last name begins with a D? And even if she kept her maiden name, she has no orders against her so what is your point?  Her sister, and the defendant, had no orders against them in 2005 either, but let me humor you. Have you traced this elliptical comment from 2005 to her home IP? No? Something's real real weird here, Waxler. Her lawyer says he wants to put the detective on the stand and you know without contacting him he's on vacation, and now suddenly you want the girl in jail. You've got some splaining to do? Hey, why is Miss Kalpakian here? She has some splaining to do too.


That didn't happen.



Howard should have argued all that. He had the case for over four months now. He should have known that they couldn't have tracked that to me or even my home cause neither my sister nor I knew that Notaro existed in 2005. He should have argued that I never went on a AOL computer uh chat room in my life and this all was senseless, insane, and even sinister. All a way to win a case that could not be won if a jury of my peers was to be empaneled. He should have pointed out the madness that were those ellipses;The madness that was this whole Lauren D shenanigan and this whole reeking prosecution, in general.He should have made the judge pay attention to the malice- the request to have me jailed came only after he made his intention of calling Gregozek to testify, known. But, Howard wasn't even there. He'd sent the son of his partner, Stanley Leiber, in his place without telling me. And, Stanley's son didn't know one thing about my case and was struck dumb.


Judge Mary Lou Villar is notoriously biased for the prosecution, but thank goodness, even she demanded more for an arrest. She forgot all about Gregozek coming in and focused on linking Lauren D to me, or my sister, or someone else? She set a date, August 8th, 2009, for a hearing to link a aol chat room comment from 2005 to Lauren D? Or to me or my sister? To Santa Claus himself? Whaaaaaaaaaa.

Remember while all this was going on, I was at home thinking that Howard was kicking so much legal ass. If he just did the most basic work this would all be over and the civil remedies part could finally begin.

I didn't know until late that night that his partner's son, according to him( though it wasn't true) had narrowly saved me from a long stint in jail. He'd tell me that if not for his partner's work I'd be jailed till trial. That didn't show up in the transcript I later ordered. The clueless son did not do any work and did not save me from anything. In this case, the judge just didn't do the wrong thing.

Me and my sister both read Howard's email. If I can use my hitchhiker analogy one last tortured time - we probably looked like, two chicks sitting in the back, who just spotted rope and duct tape under the seats. It took a few whimpering minutes to realize that neither of us is Lauren D, with all that implied. We also realized that Howard didn't know almost anything about the case, possibly not even our names. It got worse. Howard admonished me to stop contacting Notaro- as a way to cover up his own now undeniable incompetence: Not one motion heard in four months. An email trail that shows him repeatedly lying to me about filing motions. Not one real effort to help an innocent and drowning client, basically. Four thousand dollars and four months down the drain. 

Anyone who keeps yammering about that old saw, "Fool for a client," never had so many FECKLESS fools for lawyers. Or, worse than fools? With what I now know about Singer and Kroll...

( If I knew what was going to happen next, I would risk getting another idiot as I'd have to do in a few long months.)

I had already written an appeal and a lawsuit(which I had to dismiss without prejudice due to this ONSLAUGHT)what's a little Piches motion. I wrote it up and planned to file it before the Lauren D hearing. As I've said before if you have a lawyer and want to be your own lawyer you have to file a substitution of attorney  - In the criminal courts, it's called a motion to withdraw. I told Howard to write one up. On his way out of court, after withdrawing, he approached me and told me that Waxler is offering me a new plea. Instead of informal diversion, it's now formal diversion. I told him to stick it up his ass and to tell Waxler to stick it up her ass. 4K and more than four months and Howard did absolutely nothing.

I went to file the Piches on August 12th, 2009, four days after the Lauren D link hearing. By the way, that hearing was dropped without any fanfare. Of course, they couldn't provide any link to me or my sister. I was disappointed. That would have been one humdinger of a hearing. Had I been dealing with courts that respected the law and the rights of defendants, Jennifer Waxler, would be in a world of trouble. 

I'd later learn that Jennifer Waxler and Felise Cohen Kalpakian had a reputaton for being dirty -win at all costs - city attorneys. Waxler, in particular, has an affinity for trying to jail innocent defendants as a strategy.

https://theantimedia.org/the-la-city-attorney-tried-to-throw-me-in-jail-for-blogging/amp/

Ms. Waxler asked Judge Sztraicher to review everything in the Facebook and blog posts. She asked that the defendant — me — be remanded. At the time, I didn’t know remanded meant to be put in jail. Waxler said my blogging of my trial notes was “interfering with the sanctity of these proceedings.” Of course, accusing me of a doing something that’s not against the law was what was actually “interfering with the sanctity of these proceedings.”

I was ordered by Judge Sztraicher to return to court the next morning, Friday, December 18, 2015, at 9:00 AM. That morning, Waxler demanded I be remanded into custody and ordered to cease and desist from blogging about the trial. She referred to Subdivision Six of the California Rules of Court and mentioned “prohibited coverage.” Her voice, scratching on the chalkboard of justice, went on to spew more vile implications as she referred to her copies of “her trial notes and face page from her blog,” as well as the printout from my Facebook page. Speaking with a tone that implied I had committed a violent, criminal act.

August 8th 2009

Hearing on Lauren D linkage never entered in the minutes and just never mentioned again. Throughout the case the minutes were not listing any motions either by me or any lawyer in my case.

August 11th 2009

On thsi date, I had gotten rid of Howard. I was told to come in on the 8th but since that was canceled I was not aware of any upcoming court date. I called the court to find out. Very strangely, the clerk Susan Rios, tells me I must come in on, August 12th, for what she calls a "scheduling conference for my motions."

August 12th, 2009

 When I get to court, there are not one not two, but three prosecutors. The gruesome twosome of Jennifer Waxler and Felise Cohen Kalpakian is now a threesome. A small beady-eyed man named Martin Boags is huddling with them. I give the clerk my motion. On the way back, Waxler, asks me what I just filed. A Piches, I say slyly. 

Piches, Bitches!

Waxler gave me the stink eye and scurried to confer with Boags and Kalpakian. She is no doubt sick of me and my motions( I'd filed a few more and all were motions that had to be filed and were completely "meritorious") She is no doubt sick of all my evidence that shows how malicious her case is and how much misconduct she can be implicated in. I have called her a shanda to her face. Yiddish for shameful person. Good. I want her to be sick of me, my Yiddish insults, and my motions. I want them to stop this wicked wasteful bullshit.


 ( They would stop the criminal proceedings, but not in the way I expected. OMG!)


I take note of judges name -- Jessner. I'd never seen her before but she did sign a few of those illegal search warrants. She was fed a host of ugly lies by Gregozek. No hard feelings ... yet. Judge Jessner sends me up to the empty court of a Judge Martinez so he can "rule" on my motions. I protest that no such motions have been set for any hearing and I'm completely not prepared but to no avail. Once again, no law is being followed here. Martinez would rule against me based on no law and without any chance for me to argue. Then I was ordered back down to see Jessner again. For what, I couldn't know.


Judge Samantha Jessner




Kalpakian and Waxler got in front of their lectern. I got in front of mine. Before the judge could say anything, Waxler said, "May we approach, your honor."

Your honor nods and we all started heading towards her. But, before I can make any headway, a bailiff puts his hand on my shoulder and shakes his head,"no," A sweet-looking public defender tells me "Get up there they can't do that."A ratty-looking prosecutor I'd never seen before approached him menacingly and told him to, "shut up." The bailiff kept standing by me in a way that made me feel I should not move. There were audible gasps coming from quite a few public defenders.

I had to just stand there and watch their backs - Waxler stood like a stone but Kalkpakian's backfat wiggled wildly as she frantically whispered to Judge Jessner.

 When they decided their little ex parte was over, they returned to their lecterns. Who knows what lies they told her. Back on the record: I whose middle name at this juncture should be, Alisa "I want to put it on the record," Spitzberg, say, "I'd like to put it on the record that there was an illegal exparte. For the lucky, who never had to deal with courts, an exparte is Latin for you judges cannot talk in private with either side. Basically, one party can't talk to the judge without the other party being present. It's not only rude and unfair, it's illegal.

I can't go into to every detail of the hearing but I'll give you the low-lights. Kalpakian told Jessner that I'd been threatening Waxler and the TMU was involved. A total lie, of course. Then they said that since I had told them my charges didn't make sense they thought I was incompetent to stand trial, possibly a danger to myself and others and needed a psych evaluation. I told the judge that I saw a doctor in Beverly Hills and she could attest that I was perfectly competent etc.

I'm not the type to announce where my shrink( who I was actually going to cause of all this) hangs her shingle. But, when you are treated like a marginalized cockroach for so long ( a year now) you want to make it clear that you have some white privilege left too. We're in L.A after-all.

Jessner would say that it would help my case this visit to 95- they'd even explain my charges. As discussed here, I was very perplexed that they'd added two charges with absolutely no evidence to back them up. They knew perfectly well that those charges made no sense and that it had nothing to do with competency to stand trial. In fact, I was too competent for them. If my witnesses showed up they could not win.

Jessner, without any basis or rational reason, gave these ruthless win at all cost cretins what they wanted- to sabotage the trial.



Here's the (terrifying) transcript:

On the way to the elevator a few public defenders who witnessed this .... this...obscene display, followed me and my sister to the elevator. The sweet-faced one who told me to get up there and was so scarily told to shut up, told me, "you have to file a 1983. You have to file 1983." I had lost all faith in the pubic defenders at this point but it did feel that at least there were witnesses.

What's Department 95?


It sounds like Jessner is sending me off to a judicial spa- someplace they'll assist me on my case, and give me a massage while they are at it. Sounds pretty good. But just to show I still have some agency over my fate, I said, " I happen to be busy that day, I'll need another date." She gave me another date.


Back home, I googled competency. It seemed that Jessner was really sugarcoating something much more sinister. The prosecution never asks for mental evaluations. It's something the defense does when they think it's a better outcome than jail. Secondly, to be declared incompetent you have to be a cliche of crazy.

Example: Joe Wayne Shmo has killed his stepmother. He has chopped off her head, and taken it to school in a knapsack. The prosecution wants capital murder. The defense knows that Joe Wayne Shmo is guilty- cause he streamed the murder on Facebook Live. Either Joe Wayne Shmo is feigning insanity AKA malingering, or he is really nuts and according to our system, you can't punish him for being genuinely batshit.

In short, you will never see a prosecutor, who is up to any good, say, "Sure Dahmer ate a bunch of people, but he's clearly off. We'd like to postpone the trial so he has a chance to get himself together. IT JUST DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY.


Now, for the judge to declare it on their own, you have to be the kind of crazy you simply can't disguise: Drooling, twitching, stammering, screaming to Jesus or for the devil. They have to be in such a forsaken state that the judge themselves has to sound the alarm.

I never stood in front of Jessner before. What could Jessner have seen in a few minutes, that no other judge, lawyer, prosecutor had seen in eleven months? Now, the good news, I thought, they'd finally overplayed their hands. The judge in 95 specializes in these matters.  At worst, they'll send me back. At best, there will be the chance to look closer, and for somebody (anybody?!!) to start asking questions. In retrospect, considering all I'd seen just until this point, I can't believe I still had such expectations but I did.

https://unicourt.com/case/ca-la2-melvin-glapion-vs-kroll-associates-inc-et-al-1053018

MELVIN GLAPION VS KROLL ASSOCIATES INC ET AL

Case Summary

On 08/31/2016 MELVIN GLAPION filed a Labor - Wrongful Termination lawsuit against KROLL ASSOCIATES INC. This case was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Courts, Stanley Mosk Courthouse located in Los Angeles, California. The Judge overseeing this case is SAMANTHA P. JESSNER. The case status is Disposed - Dismissed.

What is 1983? It's a Federal Civil Rights complaint. But, let's get to that later since then and there, there were more pressing concerns. 

Department 95

Department 95 was a squat stucco building on the border of Glendale and the San Fernando Valley. The drill was a little different than a regular court. Put your keys, phone and purse on the little treadmill. After they pass inspection, pick it all up, and walk into the one and only dreary doctor's office-like waiting room. The judge I stood before was confused. Did the judge say where is your lawyer, as the law requires, cause you're so crazy you certainly can't represent yourself? Did the Judge tell us that Jessner's got some splaining to do. Well, he didn't do the latter but he did do the former! Finally, a judge who follows the law. How quaint.

Back to Division 40- the trial will commence!


A few days later I had to shlep back to Division 40. Jessner and/or Villar weren't there. Instead, Karla Kerlin, former showgirl, former corrupt prosecutor, and now judge, presided(Although I did not know all that about Karla Kerlin back then.)

 Waxler and Kalpakian had evaporated. Now it's just the beady eyed guy who was there for the August 12th whatever you want to call that.  He's the prosecutor now, I am told. Waxler quit or was taken off, I don't know.

In an 'oh never mind that move,' Kerlin tells me(At an unrecorded sidebar no less,) and Boags that the competency thing is over on order from Jessner's Courtroom- Division 52.  Luckily, Kerlin would also make that clear in open court. Kerlin asked anxiously, "is there the possibility of a plea." I told her there wasn't. She told me in a tight voice that the trial would last at most, a few hours to a day, before setting it tentatively for trial.

There was a hitch, Boags was going on vacation. City workers sure get a lot of downtime. Kerlin advised me that it was best I gave him some time to get up to speed, "Cause Marty is a good guy."

Later, I found out if indeed it was a vacation, it was a working vacation, cause Marty was requesting documents related to my case. 

He would be the first and only prosecutor (or defense attorney for that matter HARRUMPH) in the last year and two months who would order any documents related to this case. What will he find? He will find out that the allegations that the police were called on April 12th, 2008, was a lie. There would be no record of a 911 call or any police participation( aside of TMU )whatsoever.

He will find that the arrest that is mentioned on the first page of the minutes, at the Improv, never took place. (Throughout the case the minutes omitted filing of motions, hearings, etc. Why it kept saying I was arrested at the Improv is a mystery but I have my theories. I believe this was done to make judges have preconcieved notions of me and I believe it worked masterfully.)

 Boags will also find out that Gregozek's incident number was a complete and utter fabrication. He will likely find out many more exculpatory things. I send him tons of stuff too but though he requested it and gave me his email address he never mentioned it. But what I sent him( the investigator reports, all the contradictions in Notaro's statements and more) would have more than convinced any intelligent human, acting in good faith, that this case had to be dropped and I had to be vindicated and compensated for my pain and SUFFERING.

What will he do with all these discoveries? Will he do what he must do - dismiss the charges, call his vacationing compatriot and say,"are you completely insane, Gregozek? What on earth are you up to? You have you wasted all this time, money, and why? You and your so called "victim" have committed serious felonies at this point. This Alisa Spitzberg person should sue us for all we are worth.Jennifer Waxler must get disbarred at the very least. I wont' even get into the judges.John, I want you to arrest this Tig Notaro monster posthaste. I want you to arrest your damned self. You've got some splaining to do, young fella."

That didn't happen at all. Instead, Boags, would write a motion to reinstate the competency nightmare and send it to me the night before, he'd somehow managed to set it for a hearing. Again, completely against the laws.

Picture of Martin Baogs with his wife,Tina(now decesased) 

It wasn't really that shocking that he would go there. A quick google search would reveal Marty's unsavory past. Some good guy, Kerlin.

Once upon a time, little Martin went to Beverly Hills High. There he wracked up a lot of unpaid parking tickets, and told rich his buddies they could do the same. On one occasion, Marty got three tickets in one day. Luckily for him, and them, Martin Boag's father was judge Charles Boags. And, Judge Boags made hundreds of tickets go poof. Unbelievably, to me, Judge Boags, was caught, prosecuted, and ultimately - unbenched - in spite of the efforts of Johnnie Cochran. Yes, that Johnny Cochran. Little Martin would have to face the fact that his father's disgrace lay solely in his own hands. Very unfortunately, for me, he would still be free to go to law school and end up as my prosecutor.

Later when it got to the civil remedy part, I would have a sit down with Christopher Darden. Yes that Christopher Darden. It's a small world, six degrees of separation, and all that jazz. But, back to the present.

In this instance, all rules of the court were completely discarded as Marty would file the motion a day before the court set him a hearing. Even laymen probably understand how against the rules that is.

The next day in court what does Kerlin do? Does she glare at Marty and say, "For Christ's sake counselor we resolved that disaster last time. Jessner saw the error of her ways or the public defenders made her see it. Whatever the case, this chick seems totally sane so you need to stop this Stalin Era insanity. And, you know very well that it's against every rule to file a motion the night before the hearing. Marty, I told the lady you are a good guy and you are not acting like a good guy, you got some splaining to do."

Do I really have to tell you that that didn't happen?


Instead, Karla Kerlin(pictured here) glared at and me like this

before ordering me to the courtroom of, Robert Vanderet, so he could hear the baseless, malicious, and untimely motion.  Why couldn't Kerlin rule on the motion herself? It had to be that the only reason to send me up to an an empty courtroom was so that the public defenders milling around in her court, didn't get another show. That conclusion would be proven correct a few months later when I found a particularly chilling post-it note in a packet of discovery. Things had gone from the miserable to the horrible to the unbearably sinister.

My first impulse was to do as I'm told. But in the elevator, I had a holy shit nothing is making sense moment, and I pressed the button to go back down. I forgot to tell you about Robin Ginsburg. Robin Ginsburg is the supervisor of the public defenders. She approached me sometime after August 12th, to tell me she saw Jessner's ex parte and the competency scheme. She told me she was not only willing to supply an affidavit but she'd try to score me affidavits from all present. 

She told me she'd get a  high level public defender, Alissa Malzman, to accompany me.

In Vanderet's court, Malzman put up a bit of a fight. She had literally a minute to prepare so it was impressive. She cited a law that stated that if a defense attorney claims that his client is competent then this can't happen or at least must be considered before any evaluation could take place. Alissa then stated that she'd seen me many times in court, and she found me competent.

Who knew anyone was actually watching me?

Sorry about another splaining but it's really the best way to explain.

Did Vanderet say, "Ms. Malzman is absolutely correct. It's a defense attorney who calls the shots on whether she's fit for trial, they have to work with her after all. So unless I see Spitzberg under the table, biting her fists, you've got some splaining to do, Charles Boag's failson."


That so didn't happen. Please note the filing date and then date of "hearing"


Later we'd find this post it attached to the motion:

Order her to appear October 16 in Dept 95. Written by Karla Kerlin.

Which went a long way in explaining why, Vanderet, was then saying, "My hands are tied. That is what Vanderet would say when it came to his ordering me to 95, " My hands are tied." Explaining but not excusing- he absolutely had the authority to stop this, then and there.

So against law but on Kerlin's order, he ordered me back to Division 95 on October 14th 2009. I pretended again that I had more pressing matters to attend to on that date. This time it doesn't work. Vanderet made it clear it has to be that exact date, that exact time and he even spoke of an exact judge, though there was a few judges in that court. Or as he puts it, "That's Maria Stratton's bellyache."


Alissa says she'll be there to accompany me, but later she told me outside that she won't be there since they have public defenders in that court. I asked her to please do anything to give the heads up to whatever public defenders were in that court. She promised me she would and it turned out she did.



I crossed out albeit eccentric because it was a nasty cover your ass move. I would own it if I was but no one who knows me would describe me that way.

Before I left, I ran into Robin Ginsburg, who told me to call her that night. Of course, I did. On the phone, Robin was very friendly. Very concerned. She told me that the prosecution was "dicking me around", and her theory was that they were trying to get around speedy trial rights. I told her I think it goes much deeper than that. She wasn't convinced but told me if anything seemed fishy in that court, just leave and call her.


Division 95 -October 14th, 2009


Remember, at this point, I don't know anything about secret post-it notes with nefarious instructions. I still know very about the laws governing competency to stand trial. All I can guess is that a real doctor and a judge, specifically trained to spot craziness is going to talk to me. The only thing that is delusional about me, at this point, is that I keep believing that there are real doctors and real judges.

I enter the court's waiting room again. A heavy-set African American woman is imploring her keeper(A guard) if she can get a soda from the vending machine. He tells her he'll take her to the water fountain. 

" I don't want water. I want a Coke." He refuses and not because he's worried about her calorie intake, cause he won't get her a diet Coke either. My mother can't stand it anymore, "Get her a soda," she tells the guard, "I'll pay for it." We are all getting worked up. When I get home I plan to write a blog post about the plight of this thirsty woman. The guard explains that it's not the money it's that, "caffeine riles these people up." Well, she's not asking for a Red Bull, but I guess he knows something that we don't.

So, it's back to feeling ineffectually sad for her in silence. A woman(hard sixty, polyester green pantsuit) walked towards us. She doesn't want change for refreshments, she's here to introduce herself as Bernadette Everman - my lawyer for today's shenanigans. I asked her if she got Alissa's memo and she seemed to have no idea what I was talking about. She tells me she just got the case a few minutes ago.

All she knows is that I'm supposed to talk to a Dr. Velarde and after that, a judge will see me. She directs me to a back room. I ask her, "Don't you have to come with me?" "No," she says, "Not necessary. Just go talk to the doctor. You'll be fine."


Dr. FranciscoVelarde

Dr. Velarde's office was a cheap desk and chair. I'd later learn that at that time, Velarde was not certified to conduct competency evaluations. He was a jail doctor when he was expected to "evaluate," me.  The exam resembled a pop quiz of the judicial system for dummies.

Him: " What is a judge."

Me: He is a former lawyer who is elected to make rulings on cases.

Him: What does the judge do?

Me: He makes rulings

Him: What does the prosecutor do?

Me: He brings charges if someone commits a crime. He has to prove his case without a reasonable doubt.

And so forth and so on. If I may so myself, I was scoring an A+.

Then he asked me one more question, "Do you understand your charges."

Me: That's the problem. No, I don't. Two of them don't make sense. They are saying I posted something to Facebook, but they have no evidence that it was me or anyone from what I can tell.

Note: At trial, Judge Moore, would take it upon himself to acquit those two charges mid-trial. In essence saying, they make no sense. So there!

Velarde closed his little notepad and said, "I'm concerned. This has been going on for too long. Let me just talk to the judge."

He sent me out to wait and disappeared behind the court's heavy doors. Since the "evaluation" took all of five minutes I was sure he'd come back to finish it.

Bernadette Everman came out after about fifteen minutes. We smiled at her. She was supposedly on our side, so why not smile? Something about my dumb innocent face must have annoyed her because the next thing she did was vomit out what would turn out to be my saving grace - "The doctor declared you incompetent."

"You mean competent?"

" No. Incompetent."

" Did you say in before competent?"

"Yes, I did. The opposite of competent."






I remembered my research and my motion - I get to have two doctors for my side.

She said, "let me just check in with the judge. You stay there."

Everman got the door open with a grunt, and was gone. We sat there for a few moments. Then my sister said, "Let's get out of here right now." It took me a second to remember Robin Ginsburg's words of warning. A whole bottle of perfume poured over a year old flounder, left out in the desert, could not mask the smell of such rancid seafood. Things were indeed fishy.

With the soundtrack of midnight express playing in my mind, the three of us began walking as calmly as possible towards the exit. It took real restraint to not break out into a trot. The two guards at the exit smiled sweetly and said, "Have a great day, ladies." I will always love those two guards.

When I got home I called Ginsburg. She nearly screeched... WHAT?? But then she seemed the think for a moment and she said, "I was kidding about leaving. You have to go back." Dun de Dun Dun Dun. Wow.

Then I called Alissa Malzman. She screeched even worse but told me if Robin said so, I had to go back.


Two days later an urgent message from Everman - a letter- came in the mail, telling me to come back, offering me candies in the shape of two more doctors. The child catcher of  Division 95 was wasting her fucking time. I planned to stay under the bed forever.

Had I really started to lose it? Could it be that Everman did plan to secure two doctors? Could it be Robin Ginsburg was just a big old jokester? Had my family been infected with my madness? Could we be experiencing the three-person version of folie a deux?

It turns out that none of us were nuts. Later I would learn that Stratton had it all set up beforehand. The minute I would have walked into that courtroom,( and I would have if Everman had kept her mouth shut, and if Ginsburg hadn't told me to leave...) a few bailiffs would have been at the ready, to shackle and cuff me. Then they would hustle me into a prison van or some mental hospital van, and driven me to Patton State Hospital in San Bernadino, California. I'd be stuck with a needle full of Thorazine, until I was forty pounds fatter, fifty IQ points lower, and a million times sadder.


This can't really happen in America. If it did, everyone would know about it. C'mon really now.

What Judge Maria "expressed the intent" Stratton had prepared on October 14, 2009

Commitment papers 





but I had to wait till much after December 1st, 2009 to see what she'd prepared exactly. I'd only be allowed to see this file, months after the trial was over.

From October 14th until November 4th, 2009 --Good old Cliches

When you write out a tale like this, you realize how helpful and true cliches are. In the following days, everything seemed eerily silent. The eerie silence was only interrupted by calls to lawyers. One lawyer downright told me he wouldn't make waves with judges. One told me this is way too complicated for his skill set. I can't remember what the third and fourth and fifth said. But, basically, all the lawyers thought I sounded awfully competent to stand trial and all told me not to worry about them coming to the house to arrest me. Just drive cautiously, they cautioned. Because you see on a non-violent misdemeanor case that just doesn't happen. And, they seemed to be right. Wouldn't they have come calling right away?

The days passed with no knocks, except for the pizza guy who was peered at through the peephole, for far too long. No one seemed to be coming. We waited for the next apt cliche - the other shoe ready to drop. During that time I only drove like an eighty-year-old woman, to lawyers and back.

On the eighteenth day, I was googling ' attorneys malicious prosecution,' when I came across the name, Peter Knecht.

Peter Knecht

Peter Knecht sold himself online as the king of fighting malicious prosecutions. He also sold himself as a hotshot celebrity lawyer who hated injustice. After, an encoruageing phone conversation, he told me to come in.The building he worked out of was a Jetsonesque high rise on the Sunset Strip. His office however resembled a dusty Versailles- lots of uncomfortable but impressive looking furniture, sprinkled with gray dandruff, hence the dusty part.

He didn't look like a brilliant legal eagle. He was about 5'3, seventyish, and wore a wig that screamed from the tops of its lungs, "I am a wig!" But Knecht seemed to absorb the gist of the situation immediately. He'd seen it all before. He told us that back in the day the cops had the power to stick a feisty defendant in the asylum without the need for subterfuge. And, then he basically reiterated what Howard said but he knew the most unimpeachable forensic psychiatrist experts. I wondered why he'd even validate that fraud by bringing in doctors but he assured me that was the best strategy. I told him that Robin Ginsburg had promised me affidavits and that she could get others to supply them. He assured me that getting those two psychiatrists was the way to go. I told him about my bench warrant worry. He told me not to worry. There was no law on the books that one can't leave a fraud proceeding. But, again he counseled me to drive carefully. He spoke of the civil rights suits he could foresee, when all this was resolved.

Finally, the cavalry. It was like a pleasant dream at the tail end of a nightmare. Then, the dream died. His fee would be thirty thousand dollars. When he saw my dream dashed eyes, he said that I might still be in luck; There was a lawyer who was in the same office suite who would do it for a lot less. Knecht described him as a go-getter, a hungry up and comer - a real tiger, who reminded himself of himself when he was young. He handed me this superlative laden lawyers' card and told me to call him ASAP, as he was not in his office, at the moment

Before I left, I picked up a brochure off his desk. "That's my wife," he said, pointing to a miniature lady in rolled-up white shorts. The picture was of him, his wig, and his wife frolicking on a beach. The text stated that Ava Caddel was a loveologist. I guess the brochure was to stir up some loveologist business for his wife. Why not spice up your sex life while being maliciously prosecuted?

It was all so strange, and yet by this time the strangeness was familiar.

When logic and proportion
Has fallen sloppy dead
And the white knight is talking backwards and
the red Queen's off her head,
Remember what the dormouse said,
Feed your head. Feed your head.

I like keep your head, keep your head better, but those are the lyrics.

If it seems I'm being assaulted by a non-stop stream of grotesquery, I mostly was and it would get even worse. All I can say is get yourself falsely accused and see what characters come your way. The Los Angeles legal system is not littered with pretty souls.


James E. Silverstein

If entering Knecht's office was like being transported to the 17th century, entering James's office was like walking straight into the 1980's. Framed pictures of Reagan and his ruddy cheeks, stared from three different walls. James, a thirty-four-year-old redhead, former frat boy, and of course - a Reagan Republican. James was a salesman of the Saul Goodman variety. He heartily agreed with Knecht's assessment of himself and added some more superlatives - he was a go-getter, a self-starter, a tiger, and a badass who took no prisoners. He only had to hear the barest bones of the situation to know what this was all about and he was sickened. It made him sick.

He handed me his Bic, as he told me his Mont Blanc was out of commission for the moment. It's ten thousand, a lot for a misdemeanor but remember this is real complicated and I'm the man to pursue them in civil court when I kick their asses. The sooner you retain me the sooner I can get this leash off, and the sooner we can win big in civil court together. 10,000? .... still I hesitated, he was wearing a pocket hanky for god's sake. He saw my hesitation and said that if things got even more out of hand with the prosecution, he'd bring in the press. Knecht would hook us up.

As I hem and hawed, he went in for the kill:" You do understand that the prosecution is wet for you." Did he just say what I think he said? "These guys have a massive hard-on for you," he continued.

 Yes, he did just say that. Yes, he did just say that in front of my mother.  But I thought, he did come from another era, an era when men swaggered and swung their dicks - PC culture be damned. Maybe that's exactly what I needed - someone who doesn't pull any punches.

Just then the clincher walked in - Peter Knecht said "you are obviously innocent and you are obviously competent," before launching into strategy. In short, he would be a silent partner, a firm but in his ear presence. So family and friends helped me get the 10K together in a day. God bless em. James told me to go home and write him a timeline and whatever else I could think of. He finished with, "I love this case. It's rare that I can win so easily."


The Raid- November 4th, 2009


I was up early the next morning writing the timeline for my new lawyer. The phone rang. Either a family member had passed or a telemarketer was starting early(depending on what time zone he was in.) The caller ID said, anonymous. I picked it up. SPITZBERG OPEN THE DOOR. POLICE. I expected to see Gregozek and Hoffman. I would say hello Newman(Seinfeld reference) and Hoffman and Gregozek/ Newman would blurt something like "I'm only doing this cause Marty Singer made me. God save my soul."

The door opened onto what looked like fifty cops, wearing black bulletproof vests, and pointy Plexiglas helmets ( it turned out that there were only eighteen of them.) One cop limply held a battering ram. But, in my new definition of luck, there were no guns pointed, no get on the grounds, not even a show us your hands.

We had no idea how Gregozek would justify being there much less bringing along a virtual army. Out in the hallway, I was cuffed, uncuffed, cuffed, uncuffed and cuffed again. Everyone stood around uncertainly like shy singles at a single mingle. A sense of urgency, a sense of purpose was so comically lacking. It was all so over the top. So awkward. So absurd, that instead of the terror they were clearly trying to inspire by show of force alone, they got a state of you've got to be fucking kidding me insouciance. We even said "you've got be fucking kidding me"out loud a few times. My mother left out the fucking part but you get the idea. It wasn't completely due to our amazing badassery, the blase even amused attitude was helped mightily by the fact that we had just the day before retained lawyers.

I can't remember most of all that happened next. Luckily some of it was videotaped, but we'd get that much later. I remember asking why they were arresting me. And Jeffrey Dunn( Head of the TMU) smirked and said, "I read your blog." Then I remember me screaming, "He just said he reads my blog. call the lawyer now." I had(awkwardly and sporadically) been chronicling what was going on in a blog. I had written a bit about their connection to Mary Singer. In one blog post, I'd said that Jennifer Waxler resembled a shark and that Gregozek resembled a kielbasa. But, an 18 man team in riot gear for an apt sausage analogy? Please.

John Gregozek
 Vs

I was ferried past neighbors on lock down --looky loo eyes peering from door slits, down the elevator, and into an unmarked police car. The tape ends there for me. But the tape continues for my sister and my mother. They were made to sit in the hall for approximately two hours as they ask repeatedly to see the search warrant. The tape has my sister realizing that not only was Hoffman there in riot gear but the entire TMU unit had shown up for this strange strange display.

My mother was saying stuff like, "Shame on you California. Shame on you Hoffman. You're all a bunch of bandits."

Much more interesting in a Hungarian accent. Bizarrely, a TMU cop, Martha Defoe, somehow knew that my mother was a Holocaust survivor. Her daughter had become interested since going to the Holocaust Museum in L.A. She suddenly wanted a history lesson. My mother tried to accommodate her so she told her and an officer Smith how in 1944 the Germans came to her door, screaming "Schnell. Schnell!"The parallels to this current situation weren't lost on Defoe and Smith. The two of them began to very visibly cry. Gregozek appeared in his little riot gear - pale and blotchy as always. No sign of that vacation tan Waxler spoke of just a mere few weeks before. Indeed he looked very much like a  kielbasa... in riot gear casing.

They all looked so obviously miserable that, Gregozek, stepped forward to take responsibility for whatever the hell this spectacle was."It's my investigation," he said apropos of nothing. They ended up taking things that were in the warrant like computers, phones, cameras, even a library card. They had no right to take anything but the fact that they took emails to lawyer Howard Williams showed that law just didn't matter anymore.

To add insult to injury to injury they took our modem -which cut off the phone, the TV, and the internet. My sister brought a cheap radio that only got country. Even worse, when I was jailed it made it impossible for me to reach them for a long time.

They kept everything for five months and found nothing. I don't think they thought they would. They just wanted me to fall to the floor, and scream, "I'll plea. I'll plea. Just leave me alone already." That and they needed a reason to come and arrest me. See, their story was that they came to search and saw a bench warrant and had a right to arrest me.

Please note that in the report below Gregozek makes it seem as if this was just some normal bench warrant or search warrant situation. Just him, a Detective Jaime, and a Photographer named Raives. No mention of the fifteen others he dragged along.

 Later on, we'd read an article where, Jeffrey Dunn, would go on about how when "the suspect" feels the cuffs on their wrists they always break. Ah, that's what all the cuffing and uncuffing was about.

Van Nuys Jail - First Cell- November 4th 2009.

I was put alone in a freezing cell. No one to talk shit about the po-po with.  I remember just one thing from this less than a day-long stay cause it struck me as funny and it struck me as funny that anything could still strike me as funny. A woman in an adjoining cell was not pleased at being there either and she apparently could also prove her innocence. The funny part, to me at least, was that she directed this all to a jail guard named Stella(who we can guess had been sympathetic to her in the recent past.) This Stella was now ignoring her from what I could tell inside my cell, and so all night I heard "Stella Stella, Stella", ala Stanley Kowalski.

All of this happened in West Hollywood. I lived in West Hollywood. So, why Van Nuys? In this case, your guess is as good as mine.

November 5th, 2009

The next morning, I was bussed to a holding cell in the twin towers jail. I waited to see a judge. As I stewed, very uncomfortably, in what felt like injustice juice, I imagined James Silverstein drafting up a Habeus motion or getting in touch with Robin Ginsburg to get those affidavits I told him about. I prayed that Peter Knecht was sufficiently outraged to contact the press. I prayed that Robin Ginsburg and Alissa Malzman or any public defender who witnessed the ex parte would find out and do something. Something. Anything. I prayed that my mother would not die of fear and pain. I waited and waited, prayed and prayed. I totally got how people found religion in prison. In total. I waited for twelve hours (from 5.30 a.m to 6 P.M)  on those backless benches. No one ever called my name, cause as I was told, before being put on a bus to who knows where, "they messed up your papers."

That night I was bussed to the Lynwood correctional facility, where I was strip-searched then processed late into the night. 

In the 31 days, I'd be strip-searched nine times due to mix-ups with the papers. Had that not happened it would only uh happen six times. It's as degrading as it sounds. A few female guards stand behind your naked self. One guard makes sure you haven't smuggled anything in any place that your body has a hiding place. Hair. Mouth. Under the tongue. Under the breasts. And, of course, lower down. Or, in prison guard parlance - "spread your cooch." It's so so awful but I could take it cause I had a lawyer. And, if James had seen a lawsuit then, now he was looking at early retirement. Despite this, I kept getting a sinking feeling about Silverstein. I hadn't liked him at all but hired him due to Knecht's promised participation and in large part due to sheer desperation. I kept remembering his, "this is so easy to win," exclamation. I kept feeling that if they made him work, even a little bit, he'd abandon ship. I kept these thoughts to myself but they were increasing intense with every passing hour.

November 6th 2009

The next day, I got to see Silverstein for a few minutes before court.  He assured me I'd be granted reasonable bail. I politely expressed that I didn't do anything to deserve any bail. He didn't seem to know anything about my case or have any ideas how to help me in mind, but I thought that was fair. He just got it about 3 days ago and this raid and arrest were not business as usual.

Next up, judge bellyache AKA Maria Stratton. 

The Oz-like Stratton turned out to be a mousy past middle-age woman with stringy salt and pepper hair and glasses. D.A Vagnossi (a name familiar to me from the Vanderet/ Boags "hearing.") surprised everyone but Stratton by requesting that I be denied bail, using the pretense that leaving the court was reason enough for such a request.

Silverstein ticked a few reasons this made no sense: Had been to hearing without fail for over a year and a half, no criminal record. I lived in the area and no evidence of being a flight risk. Though Verlarde put a check that I be forcibly medicated for whatever reason, he also deemed that I am not a danger to myself or others. Silverstein brought that up. Most compellingly, I had just spent a small fortune on a lawyer.  

Stratton denied bail with the pretense that I was deemed incompetent by one doctor and had the nerve to leave when in the midst of a Stalin Era fraud. She didn't say the latter but that was the gist of her reasoning to give a former own recognizance informal diversion plea offer not a danger to herself or others defendant the kind of denial of bail reserved for serial killers et al. Though this was supposed to be a "compassionate court" Stratton treated me and my mother(who tried to speak to her on several occasions) with only cruelty and contempt throughout.

 Hearing over.

I thought about my 70-year-old in poor health mother and how her heart couldn't take this. I began crying hysterically. Something about me crying loudly like that must have tugged at Silverstein's heartstrings. Not enough to go and write up a bail motion, a habeas motion, request a formal bail hearing or call the press and expose the whole horror that was going on here, it would turn out, but he requested and got permission to get a doctor then and there.

He got on his cell and told me that a doctor Ronald Markman was coming down very soon to do an evaluation. Markman wasn't a jail doctor or even just a mental health court qualified drone. He was a famed forensic psychiatrist and even a lawyer.


So back to the holding cell for a few more hours till Markman showed up.  Divison 95 holding cells I stayed in over and over again were always empty due to the rarity of competency to stand trial matters in the system.

Markman gave me a bunch of very particular tests and announced, "You are as competent as me." He then said, what is going here? You are being gaslighted."  He seemed overly impressed that I knew the movie and who starred in it.






Stratton isn't pleased."Get me Sharma" she says. She says it in a way that struck terror in the hearts of the three of us. My mother and sister and me. We'd figure out later - she wants a qualified for them. Checkmate. Why is she so openly working for them? How many ex partes has she been a part of here? What are they telling her to make her hate me this way?  I'm not going home tonight or possibly ever.

It turns out that ten thousand dollars didn't pay for phone calls or jail visits, or even to come in and sit with me for the Sharma, "evaluation." James Silverstein just said, "No way that guy is going to find you incompetent, don't worry about it." Another apt cliche- he was feeding me to the wolves.

Dr. Kuashal Sharma- The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune continue

November 9th, 2009

A little man of Indian descent with a perma smirk got me from my mental health holding cell and took me to a small office in the building. His first words to me were, " Ah the famous Ms. Spitzberg." That terrified me.

Then: "I hear you are paranoid about the situation. You believe that everyone is out to get you, right?"

I denied it and I wasn't lying. Things didn't look good but everyone against me? No. I didn't think that everyone was against me, but it was clear some were.

" I understand you deny your charges. Do you know the expression, The lady protests too much."

"Yes. I do."

He looked doubtful.

"Do you know who said it?"

Uh... Stephen King? Shakespeare you MORON

I just said, "Shakespeare."

I have no idea if he was chastened or not. He smirked and left the room. The psych evaluation and the English test were over. He didn't twirl his mustache but he should have. Oh, how one can smile and smile and be a villain. Shakespeare again.

Anyway, I think we all know where this is going.




James never even came to court. And I wasn't allowed into court. James was put on speakerphone. He said, "Really???," Like Robin Ginsburg before him. "Your honor we request another doctor."

Back to spreading my cooch at the Lynwood Correctional Facility. After I was gone, my sister told me that James had signed off on speakerphone by saying," I hope your husband gets better soon, your honor."

Turned out that Stratton and her husband were quite the power couple in legal circles.

My sister called James from her cell phone, screaming a one-word question, " Tiger? Tiger? Tiger!?"

My god, clever cliches seem to abound, James answered, "You get more flies with honey than vinegar." The tiger wasn't drafting any bail motions and the Tiger decided that my one last doctor would be, Mary Leventhal, my shrink from Beverly Hills.


Jail

I could write a book about the 31 days I spent in jail. Not because I have any horror stories, except for the horror of being in jail for no good reason. But, I'm not going to write a book cause I want to get to the end of this. So, I'll just give you a little taste.

After all the cold eyes and mercenariness of the courts, the clink was almost cuddly. My first bunky(cellmate) was a morbidly obese six foot tall twenty four year old carjacker named, Alicia. Except for her schooling me on how to prepare for anal porn(pro tip- Irish Spring works well) and introducing me to bible verses, "I was the whore of Babylon, Bunky, the whore of Babylon -” Revelation 17:5, I pretended that she was just some college roommate, until she stole my Raisinets. I confronted her and realized I wasn't in S.U.N.Y Albany anymore. A guard heard her threatening to "kick my ass," and threatened us both with the hole. This was unfair and more terrifying than it sounds because had I been put in the "hole" I would not be able to reach my mother and sister and in a case like mine they could easily fall into a state of terror. Luckily, this guard was further apprised that Alicia pulled food-stealing stunts before so I was spared the hole.

 I saw it as a blessing in disguise when I was told I'd have to move rooms. You see, Alicia had another annoying habit. She seemed obsessed with giving me cornrows. She'd pester and prod. Hourly. One day, I gave in. OUCH, it hurt... a lot. On cornrow number two, I squealed, "STOP." I'd gone through enough pain by now to last a few lifetimes, I wasn't going to let a very large carjacker give me anymore. Alicia was very disappointed. She told me that she found me beautiful and planned on using me to model her cornrow skills. A consummate(and now food-deprived) hustler by nature she planned to get commissary in exchange for cornrows. I remember being so taken with her compliment on my looks because the mirror in our room was clouded with something and I had not seen myself one bit, for now, two weeks. I was sure I looked as hideous as it gets. I gave her a bag of chips but still said no. A few days later I had a hearing and wore my two cornrows to court. Till today my sister talks about those two rows with such tenderness and amusement.  

Next up was Dawanna - who bore a striking resemblance to Jimmy Walker. Dawanna was a forty-two-year-old heavily tattooed Crip, with four kids, and one on the way. (It seemed that I was the only one in jail who was child and ink free) Dawanna had told me that she'd given a Blood a colostomy bag. I was so intrigued that I was actually sharing my cell with a Crip, that at first, I didn't consider what her capacity to give a colostomy bag implied. And even after I realized what that implied, I wasn't as scared as I should have been. The only thing that scared me was leaving toothpaste in the communal sink. Dawanna HATED that.

I kept myself busy by writing letters and detailing the antics of my endlessly fascinating fellow inmates and prison guards. There was Jazzy( Who looked like a biracial John Gotti in drag) And officer Ramirez AKA the raccoon. She literally had a genetic condition that made it look like she had two black eyes and she had the head shape and hairline of a raccoon!

 Then there was the meth head, that assured me apropos of nothing that she never burned her baby's toes. Then there was Magic who told me about her twin(Named Tragic. I swear to god.) The older convict who talked about being at the big house with Patricia Krenwinkle(Of Manson fame,) whom she simply called, Krennie. Krennie, according to her, was, "Good people." 

There was officer G(Gonzalez) who treated our pitiful little pod as her fiefdom. She was in charge of doling out the commissary, and instead of handing it to us she'd first put it on the floor, and then she'd kick it at us. There were perfectly nice guards too. One very memorable one was Officer Dusky. One day she asked to see me. I sat down across from her and she said, " Why are you here?" You see my "papers" were very strange. They didn't say a charge. They just said misdemeanor and it was empty where the bail price should have been. I knew she was a busy person so I said, "Long long story but I'll tell you this. I am as law-abiding as you. When all is said and done I will have just as much a criminal record as you." 

There were boyfriends, baby daddies, and pimps with names like Dolla Bill, Rite Aid, and Grey Goose. I kept my spirits up by pretending I was some Christiane Amanpour on assignment to this most exotic and esoteric locale. I thought a lot of my grandmother and how if she could make it out of Bergen Belsen I could make it out of here. Say what you will about Lynnwood it was paradise according to where my grandmother and mother and family spent that historical year.  

Mostly, I waited and waited. I worried and worried, mostly about my mother. I processed and processed. I suffered and suffered. I prayed and prayed. I prepared for a trial they were so deviously trying to derail. I pictured Patton as a bedlam from the bowels of hell but it still was better than taking a plea when innocent. I sought a lot of solace in snacks. Throughout my stay, I was getting reports from my sister about Silverstein's incessant douchery: Showed no interest in the case. Kept flirting with her. Was always on the phone trying to make new deals while in court for my case.

What was taking so long - to get Leventhal? It would turn out that Leventhal's lawyer brother had told her he didn't think she was qualified. It turned out it would have been catastrophic if she had come. She would have sealed the deal for the prosecution, considering the laws of competency to stand trial. It would have been two more qualified Vs. one qualified and one unqualified. Checkmate.

We learned later that Markman was so disturbed at what he was seeing that he contacted one of his colleagues to do the second exam - A highly qualified, Dr. Suzzanne Duppee.

December 1st, 2009

Duppee did her job. I got the full competency to stand trial screening.






 Unlike Markman, after she finished, she stayed in court. Dupee sat there and stared down Stratton. No other way to put it. And, Stratton with a mighty exhalation of defeat crossed out what was on the page before her. Later, I found out what she'd crossed out and what had been prepared:

See that should you have any questions... number? I sure had a lot of questions. Of course, James Silverstein never called it. We'd later ask him for a copy of the file from this court and he sheepishly admitted he'd never ordered it. In fact, much evidence supports the brutal fact that he never so much as glanced at that file or the one from the criminal court.

Stratton set bail at ten thousand dollars which made absolutely no sense. From own recognizance informal diversion plea to- so damned dangerous that no amount should allow me to be on the loose- to ten thousand dollars. Since I had no record, the bondsman agreed that 800 dollars was enough. Stratton ordered me back to the criminal court the next day despite Silverstiens protestations that he had to be in another court that day. Back to that interminable bus ride and another strip search.

December 2nd, 2009 -The famous glass box - Back to Division 40

We got the bond together right away but the "papers got messed up" again and so I had to sit in the famous glass box we've all seen in the movies. Throughout my case, in Divison 40, I'd seen so many sit in that horrible box and thought' therefore but the grace of God go I.' Silverstein had to have tried to recuse Kerlin but he didn't. She was there. James made a feeble effort to get me back on my own recognizance but Kerlin not only wouldn't agree and intimated that if it was her the bail would be set higher.

At one point a cute-looking bald bailiff knocked on the glass window. My sister saw it all and she told me I gave him a dirty look. Makes sense since I was sure he'd come to pester me. Then my sister says she saw me smile a beaming kind of smile. The bailiff said to me with great joy in his face and conspiratorial tone, "You are getting out today. You are getting out today."

The bond went through two days later( Something went wrong with those damned papers again.) At 12.30 A.M, on December 4th, 2009, I had my last jail brand snack (A bag of chips- Granny Goose hot jalapeno.) There was nothing left for them to do but dismiss or go to trial.

During the next month, I licked my (now gaping) wounds and did what I could to prepare for trial. My mother, sister, and I had little to no faith in Silverstein and had given all hope in Knecht. Two thieving bastards, basically.  Of course, Silverstein was not returning my calls.

January 11th 2010

Silverstein calls and sounds very serious. He wants me to come into the office immediately. James met us by his door and led us down to Knecht's office where both men now sat. Me and my sister sat down on the little kingly chairs in front of a big mahogany desk. James started with, "I talked to Boags. He's amenable to another plea. Plea to trespass and go to a psychiatrist of your choosing."

"Now it's trespass. After all this, a psychiatrist and trespass. Are you serious?!"

Knecht chimed in with some hard truths, "Listen you don't have a chance. When the government is out to get you, you never win."

(So why good sirs didn't you tell me this before I signed a check for ten thousand dollars?)

"Look," I pleaded, "Why don't you just talk to the witnesses."

James stared at a candy dish on Knecht's desk, with unfocused and uncomprehending eyes. 

"You did talk to the witnesses, didn't you?"

"I'm not going to play that game," He said.

" There are witnesses, James?" Knecht asked with unfeigned incredulity.

James looked at him like a little boy who soiled his shorts.

"If there are witnesses, James, at least do a hall interview."

He nodded weakly and said nothing.

I left knowing that my 10k had got me those doctors and nothing else, except maybe a jolly rancher from Knecht's candy dish. At some point, I begged James to give me back just five thousand so I can get another lawyer. He sent me an obscene accounting that professed that he was charging 500 dollars an hour and not only would not return the money but he thought I owed him more money for all his work.

Later, Alissa Malzman would say about Silverstein, "He raped you.  He raped you. I hate to say it but he raped you. I can't believe he didn't talk to any of the witnesses in all that time."

Without Silverstein, though I would have been disappeared in a hospital for the criminally insane, so if rape has an upside I guess that's it. I think the fact that he was a Republican worked against me tremendously. I think he looked up to cops, prosecutors and judges -law and order. I think the simple fact that I was accused made him see me as guilty. He said and did many things thing that led me to believe that, by this time.

And, still I kept James. A lousy lawyer was better than no lawyer since I'd heard that they could start another competency scheme if they wanted to.

The next day we appeared before Kerlin again. Kerlin again floated the any plea, please. James should have responded with, "No pleas. My client has been tortured. She's clearly being railroaded and you are playing a part. What happened to a speedy trial. Where is justice? This is an outrage! I am outraged! You and this whole criminal justice system have so much splainin to do.

That did not happen.


The Tiger was annoyed but not at her. "Your honor," he whined, I informed my client that if she doesn't plea that the consequences would be even more harsh."


Now if you are well versed in the law or even if you are not, you know that a defense attorney simply doesn't make that kind of statement in front of the prosecutors and a judge. The dried peas were stuck to the plate. Don't hold it against me, I tried to scrape it off.  If he's turning on me now and not even hiding it, what's he going to do at trial? I had to get rid of him. But first that pesky substitution of attorney/ motion to withdraw again.

January 21st 2010

Villar again

At the motion to withdraw hearing, James goes up to the sidebar to talk to Villar. Again, no one invites me and again against all laws, it is not recorded. Back out in the hall, he tells me, "Oh by the way, they've added four more charges. two for stalking. two for criminal threats." It would turn out they were all based on the same accusations made by Notaro to get the restraining order back in April of 2008. Those accusations are now 21 months old. The statute of limitations are up.

All those allegations have now long been shown to be fabricated. If things go terribly wrong, I am facing seven years in jail. But, I'm happy. Am I actually insane?

No. No. You see all this time I'm talking about how the order was void and there can be no prosecution of a void order and aside of Howard knowing about this motion to attack the validity of the restraining order, I've been getting blank stares. Most haven't heard of it.

But opening the restraining order will guarantee that all my beautiful witnesses can come in. So many hot showdowns. Martha Kelly vs Tobin Shea. Notaro vs all her statements and more, Nick Kroll vs. Jacqueline Montalvo, Heidi Feigin Vs Notaro. Sam Vs Willen and Notaro.Total vindication. The whole house of cards exposed before coming crumbling down.How sweet it would be.

In the hall a public defender comes at me - his face furious. "I saw you in that cage. I saw you in that cage. You are being so so screwed." I almost grabbed both his hands and said, "My hero. Will you help me?" But, I kept my paws to myself, and calmly said, " So, you'll help me?"

Eric, that was his first name I think, said, "Yes. Give me a few minutes." On the way back I see Alissa Malzman hanging out in the hallway. I don't feel too friendly after she left me hanging in 95 and did nothing to sound the alarm. But, something makes me say, "You know what Eric said, he said he saw me in that cage and that I'm being screwed." Alissa took a deep breath and said, " I want to help you. I want to be your lawyer. I'm Eric's supervisor." And then she got all kismetty on me. "Didn't you notice our names are almost the same? Alisa. Alissa. Together again."  I'm terrible at even holding necessary grudges, so we practically laced fingers, swung hands, and skipped into court.

In a movie, this would be a swelling of the soundtrack moment. In real life, it sort of was too. When Alissa states her intentions, Villar is visibly confounded. Here is a person who can't seem to keep a lawyer, who was a hair's breath from being declared incompetent just a month ago, and now here's a public defender looking all blissed out to get a chance to represent her.

Alissa asked me if I wanted to go to trial immediately. I said yes and she informed the court that we wanted trial immediately. However, immediately, in court terms means who knows how long. A few days later we met in her office. She tells me her mother is outraged by my case. I tell her maybe her mother should be my lawyer. She says, " No. No. I'm outraged too."

 I didn't walk around with a recorder, but if you got this far I trust you won't think anything is improbable anymore. Alissa says, "Boags wants to make his name on this case, but then so do I." Then she stopped herself, "But that's wrong. This is not about me. It's about you. You're being maliciously prosecuted." She then was kind enough to tell me that "everyone knows,'" about how bad Jennifer Waxler and Felise Kalpakian are. She says too, "Marty is not an adept lawyer." I say, "What do you mean," meaning I want details. She starts explaining to me what adept means." I am mortified. I tell her the truth, "Oh no I know what adept means since I'm probably about ten years old."  I didn't tell her that I have a B.A in English from a decent University and I scored an 800 on my verbal SATS. But, I wanted to. She also tells me that Marty Boags keeps emailing her imploring her to have me consider a plea. She tells me this is "unusual."

 Making your name on a tiny misdemeanor? Jesus Christ. If I'd learned anything about human nature during this, Alissa wanting to make her name was the best guarantee she'd try to win. I'd known about something called a void order for a few months now. Basically, if you can prove that the order was obtained by fraudulent means you cannot criminally prosecute on it. She never heard of it but she promised to look it up. But, that was a last I heard about her looking into void orders until a few days into trial.

She started officially trying to contact witnesses to sign them into the defense.  Julius is happy to come in. He comes in and Alissa says about him, "I love him and he's gorgeous too." Sam, she tells me is " a good kid" and he's no longer reluctant and can't believe this is still going on." Heidi Feigin, she tells me is pissed. Not only is Tig lying but she is getting phone calls from Tig's manager saying, "Why are you testifying for the other side." (Witness intimidation anyone?) Alissa had even found Officer Jaqueline Montalvo and had spoken to her on the phone. She'd told Alissa that she'd seen no crime that night and so just left without filing either an incident or a police report. Alissa whispers to me conspiratorially about what plans she has for Gregozek. She plans to call him as a defense witness. I don't get then(or even now) what that entails but it sounded good.

 Alissa told me then and throughout how little time she had to prepare, how many other cases she had. Public defenders are famously underfunded and overworked so I understood. For now, I was just so thrilled she was actually reading the witness statements, that had been in existence for now for over a year. I left her office in a state of exaltation.

February 22,2010- Judge Villar sill presiding.

I was in court on some pretrial matter when Alissa nudged me and pointed at a familiar-looking woman.  Jaqueline Montalvo had come in to sign up for the defense.

Later, I'd learn that before Montalvo had signed up for my defense, the prosecution had written Montalvo's name as a witness for the prosecution. In other words, they were sure she'd just play along. . Montalvo never looked my way or smiled. Just sat there stone-faced. (I'm glad she wasn't friendly. No I got your back winks. No pats on the arm. That would have haunted me even more.)

Two weeks later - March 4th, 2010

Alissa had gone to a hearing on my case and calls with four bullet points.:

• 1- They dropped the four charges
• 2- Boags is off the case(we later learned he was demoted to civil court.)
• 3- Montalvo is dead.
• 4- The prosecution asked that nothing pre granting of the May 28th, 2008 restraining order be admitted at trial and the judge agreed.

Her full name was Jacqueline Montalvo, and googling confirmed that she had died three days after I'd seen her in court.  More googling said that A TEAM OF INVESTIGATORS detected no smell of alcohol at the scene of the crash. A month or so later though, the coroner said Montalvo was very very drunk.

Dropping the charges should have been good news but my gut kept telling me it was bad news because it meant that they would try to keep out the validity of the restraining order. Against Supreme Court law, the judge agreed, citing "judicial economy." Malzman let that stand without a fight. Mid trial, she did try to bring it up but she didn't put up the fight she should have and the judge said he didn't want to, "open up that pandora's box."

 It struck me as particularly galling this sudden interest in economy of any kind when they'd literally stole so much money, peace of mind, and life from me and my family. This was a devastating blow to my defense. Deadly, devastating, and against Supreme court law. But, I wasn't devastated. I figured Malzman would find a way to open it up somehow. I'd seen them doing it in the movies.

Onwards to Trial

The only suggestion Alissa gave me was to dress down.- the old look like a librarian tactic. I thought my case was too strong and it was better to just look my regular clean-cut but not librarianish self.


Voir Dire- March 9th 2010

A jury is going to be picked or as it's called, Voir Dire. Oh my god, they are seriously going to pick a jury. Twelve actual people and even alternates for my fake three count case? Taxpayers, woohooo!! A jury of my precious precious peers. No prosecutors whispering to them ex parte. Regular people like me who would be able to take a whiff of the stench that was my case  It all went by in a blur. I don't remember the questions posed them but I do remember the prosecution's favorite question, "Do you have faith and trust in the police?" No African Americans made the cut. But, we did have an African American judge and I think that made all the difference. 

March 12th, 2010 -Trial

Before trial is set to commence, the newly minted malicious prosecutor, Katie Ford, offers me another plea. Not even through my attorney this time. She walks directly toward me and says, "Just leave Tig and Stephanie alone is the only condition and you're free." Without blinking, I responded,"  No. NO. You don't understand it's them who won't leave me alone." She scurried away. She was a scurrier.

Judge Randolph Moore

The first thing Judge Randolph H. Moore said was, "I see a very calm defendant in front of me." Which begged the question, what was he expecting? What had they told him ex parte? 

 Judge Moore was an adorable looking man, but then again Hamlet's pernicious villains probably had their cute moments too.

When you are seated in a real courtroom as a real defendant, with a real judge, and a real jury, your mind is filled with numb horror. Add the fact that the system so far has been uh... anything but kind and a state of terror results. FYI terror renders you stupid and slightly deaf.

But, I do remember certain moments. Like when the prosecution, now in the form of a Katie Ford, asked to add two more charges based on the same two facebook charges. This was her argument: Remember Judge Landin - the judge who signed that domestic violence criminal order? It seemed like they just found out about it and now wanted to use it against me two or three days in. The argument continued that I not only broke the civil order but the criminal order. In other words, they are insane.

The problem for Moore was that Landin had signed the order without benefit of due process - without notice or hearing. Upon hearing their request to add the two more charges, Judge Moore looked at something in front of him and said, "I don't see any hearing here and I don't see any notice here."  Katie Ford who I nicknamed, "Freulien Ford," piped up, " But it happens all the time." Moore said, "Just because it happens doesn't make it right."

This is completely off-script. A Judge was doing the right thing? A judge was following the law? He was stopping them? I started bawling in front of everyone. Judge Moore saw my tears and asked me if I wanted to take a break but I declined. 

(At this point(and until today) I don't have the money to order any more transcripts. I only could spare enough for the final day. So, I'll just go according to memory and not by day of trial)

After a meeting with the judge and prosecutor in the judge's chambers, Alissa comes at me seeming hysteric  "They got you. They got you on the Facebook charges. I can get you a disorderly conduct plea. Please, Alisa." My mind reeled: I didn't write those posts so how could they get me. Oh my god, they planted evidence. Am I being a complete idiot not to take a plea with such forces aligned against me? But something made me say, " I didn't write those posts so keep going, Alissa."

I remember how then there was a lunch break. When Alissa returned to our table she looked very pleased with herself, before scribbling to me, "mumbo jumbo." Of course, I was intrigued but court was in session. 

First up the first two Facebook Charges. Gregozek makes his grand entrance. He looks at me like I've kidnapped and killed his only child(The psychotic chutzpah of this guy!) He testifies how he's a big-time expert on stalkers and all kinds of horrible to hear nonsense since a good argument can be made that he is acting like a stalker. Ironically, no good argument can be made that I am by any definition some kind of stalker. If you saw the final file and the page after page - hundreds of pages of his "investigation" you'd agree that Gregozek behaved like a fixated madman in my case. Yes, he started and continued to get in good with Marty Singer or Jules Kroll but somewhere along the way he lost his tiny little mind.

His direct testimony and then Alissa's cross-examination of him sounds to my ears like confusing gobbledegook. I feel as if I just am not smart enough or tech-savvy enough to get what he is getting at when it comes to these two faceboook charges.


Maybe this next witness will clear it up 

Ford introduces  Alexander AKA Sam Moreno as a computer forensic expert and makes him recite his CV for the jury:

Wow. I am almost impressed. I fight very hard not to crack up laughing in front of the jury and pretty much fail. Moreno looked very uncomfortable, his whole time on the stand. Under cross, he was forced to admit that he found nothing. Nada. Bupkus. Zilch. In other words, those two charges made no sense. And all the stuff they were providing as discovery to make it look legit, was nothing more than "mumbo jumbo".  I think they called Moreno to imply to a jury that although this all had the strong scent of silly, the FBI and Homeland Security don't do silly. They wanted the jury to think,' There has to be more to this, even if we don't see it.' I also think they tried to confuse the judge and jury into conviction by confusion and Curriculum Vitae. Malzman was so bamboozled before lunch she pled for me to plea. Thank god for lunch breaks.

Guess who now works as a director for Kroll?

Updated - discovered as of December 8th 2017

Can't guess... Well, it's Alexander "Sam" Moreno.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-sam-moreno-2a576b11

Alexander "Sam" Moreno

Director, Kroll Cyber Security L.L.C.

Greater Los Angeles Area

Security and Investigations

Current	Kroll
Previous	21st Century Fox,  LAPD Computer Crimes Unit

The next morning, Alissa points out the obvious to Judge Moore. She asks for him to dismiss the charges himself(acquit the charges. Always asked. (Very very very rarely granted.)

Moore says in essence, "absolutely."  The charges that they used to say I was crazy, cause I couldn't understand how they could have added them, were just thrown out cause they made no sense. Alissa gasped and said to me, " I just never win this much."

Alissa tells me that since this is taking so abnormally long with all these hearings outside of the scope of the jury (that took up approximately 90% of the trial,) she doubts that they flew in Martha Kelly(Austin TX)and Jackie Kashian(Maryland) and put them up in a hotel for over a week now. She thinks the prosecution is about to finally pull the plug. She even points out a woman sitting in the court who is the prosecution's known plug puller. Throughout the trial, many prosecutors would sit in court, whispering amongst themselves.

They just don't spend that kind of a money, time or energy, for a misdemeanor, she tells me. She confesses to me that she's been so busy with those four charges and then those two that she hasn't had time to really even prepare for them if they showed up.

Two days after the two charges victory, Alissa seems strangely chilly. Not cold shoulder cold, but distant. We were hardly friends but this felt like a why don't you like me anymore situation.

Nine days in, and Martha Kelly did show up. About three minutes into her testifying, Alissa looks at me with sheer horror in her face and says to me," You are being railroaded. She has been coached."  Kelly mentions the firearms but now instead of calling Tig the next day or eighteen days later, now it's I called Tig minutes after she heard me say anything. Now she conveniently had no cell phone that night and had to use a cell phone of a Michelle Billoon( who we learn is residing in Vienna at the time of trial) Sheesh. Conveniently, if say I had a lawyer - who ordered Martha Kelly's phone records- they would not exist so they'd have to go to Austria to get Billoon's. Double sheesh.

Alissa approached for the cross-examination. I don't remember what exactly she asked, but only what she didn't. She doesn't ask her about the comedy festival booking at Notaro's Bentzen Ball, a few weeks before trial. That would have been one doozy of deadly discrediting. She didn't question why she didn't contact the police and why it took Tig 18 days to do so considering that Kelly was now framing me as such a scary and creepy character. She didn't bring up the lawsuit and the timing of the prosecution after the lawsuit. She did nothing anyone one would expect a defense lawyer to do.

During a break in the proceedings, I begged Judge Moore to let me be my own lawyer. I was dying of frustration and knew I could be doing a better job when it came to this charge. I was honest when I told him how I appreciated Malzman's efforts and how great she'd done with those two charges. I told him how this was a malicious prosecution and he responded beautifully with, "I'm watching." Throughout my case Alissa told me many times' You are being Maliciously prosecuted." Then just recently, "you are being railroaded" and yet she did not use that. She would not go there on the record.

Next up was Jackie Kashian. Just like in Rosenberg's court she appeared out of the blue as a witness. No previous witness reports so no way to way to cross-examine. If Martha Kelly, to her credit, seemed uneasy, Jackie Kashian seemed sexually aroused. If you believed her, that night at El Cid was the most memorable and miserable of her existence. While Kelly twisted the truth with minimal malice, Kashian(who resembled a wart with legs) really got off on making up completely fabricated scenarios where I was this grotesque intent on winning her attention. And, again Alissa didn't ask her the questions she had to ask her. No mention too that she too got a gig at the Bentzen ball, a few weeks before trial.  No mention as to why if it was such a memorable trauma, she never told anyone until right this moment.

Her last witness, Jeff Klinger, didn't have much to say other than I made a scene. 

 At this point, it was clear that Alissa was purposefully not going to ask the right questions.  It's not as if I didn't tell her these things. Verbally and through email. 

Note: Martha Kelly and Jackie Kashian had done some paid gigs in the past but Jeff Klinger was strictly an open micer. And guess what he got? Can't guess...He got a spot at the Bentzen Ball.


Well Alisa and Alissa had a good run till then. Et Tu Alissa.

I remembered something Alissa had said in her office before trial, "You know even if you get convicted on one misdemeanor it's not so bad. You're an artist, right?' No dear, I'm not an artist. I'm not going to drink absinthe in my garrote with my fellow artistes, chuckling about my amusing little misdemeanor. If with all the evidence and what I've had to fight for so far, if I don't get the vindication I deserve, it will be a travesty, see.

And, if I thought I might just be being paranoid about Alissa, I knew I wasn't when she told me she couldn't find the one witness that I needed to help on the one remaining count, A Tobin Shea- even though he was the manager of El Cid and still working there. He had told the investigator that there was no scene that night. No one but these "witnesses" noticed anything out of the ordinary.

I believe that Alissa had started out on the up and up, but somewhere along the way she'd changed course. Under her watch, she'd had four charges dismissed, and two charges acquitted by a judge. Almost unheard of successes. Since she thought I was a creative type and a misdemeanor would not ruin me in the business world, she wanted to give her employers(The city) one win so they couldn't be sued.


All this is not just wild theory or supposition, as I will show you a little later.

And now it's time for the star witness. Tig struts into court wearing a miniature men's suit. Most alleged victims get the are you okay would you like some water, perhaps a tissue treatment, but Judge Moore sneered her name and mispronounced it too - Nateerio. And continued to do so even after he was corrected.

I won't repeat all the lies she was allowed to tell. But, she throws in something new. I heard Notaro say, from the witness stand, under oath, that my sister had beat her up. And, not just her but her family too.  My 5'5 115-pound sister took on the entire Notaro clan. Not only that but she had apparently had to have teleported to Mississippi to do it.


What? Wow! Yes! Game over, you pathological little fruitcake. Now Alissa would say, "Well Well Well. This is is news to me, this is news to everyone. Two years of taxpayer dollars and you just can't help yourself can you?"

And I smiled and thought, "Give my regards to Dawanna and all my mijas at Lynwood, you fucking freak." But, if you've been paying attention you know that didn't happen. Alissa said and did nothing.

I finally felt the violence I'd been accused of. I wanted to kick Alissa under the table. But, my lawyer screaming, "Ouch," mid trial wasn't good for the cause. Maybe I will sic my sister on Alissa since she apparently is immune to prosecution.


 Alissa not only did nothing about that, she did nothing about the witness tampering that Heidi Feigin had told her about. She again did not ask about the 18 days. Again did not ask about the lawsuit. Did not ask about her now five contradictory statements. Did not ask why my sister was free to be outside this very courtroom reading a New Yorker instead of being in jail for a series of assaults. Etu Alissa ETU!

 Gregozek came back and all I can remember from that is Alissa saying, " You are a detective for nine years. How can you bring these charges?''

It seems worth noting that TMU detective, Martha Defoe, was not called to testify. It is very odd that she was never put on any witness list. She was the one tasked with talking to Martha Kelly. No one but Gregozek came from the TMU. 

Since I didn't have Tobin Shea and I was denied the collateral attack I was stuck with only myself.  Judge Moore and Alissa both made quite a show of advising me strongly against it but that made zero sense to me. I never lied about anything. I'd never committed a crime. My peers needed to hear my side. 

Since I was admonished by the judge not to say anything about the restraining order, there wasn't much for me to do to defend myself. I should have pulled an Al Pacino in Justice for All, but I couldn't shake my rule following upbringing. Also, I thought it unwise for the judge to get mad at me.

I took the stand and glanced warmly at my precious twelve peers. How long and hard I fought to see them. They did not glance warmly back.

(A few months after the trial I'd learn from the minutes of the court that Katie Ford had snuck in the search warrant written out by Gregozek. Alissa and the Judge allowed this and so the jury was able to see Stef Willen's and Notaro's long disproven allegations presented as fact and under oath by an Elite Detective. The minutes and the file I got to see a few months after trial showed that like Franica Tawn before her, Aliisa Malzman had kept me very much in the dark.)

Direct was a cinch. All a blur but it felt like it went well. Katie Ford, who I now dubbed Meanie Mouse on top of Fraulien ford played her role. She came at me with questions that escape me now. A meaningless barrage of nonsense, basically. I wish I had the transcript so bad for all of it but I just never had that over two grand to spare. All I know for sure is that there were no gotcha moments. Not even close.

Ford kept walking over to a giant pile of paper on the floor near her desk. Alissa found that funny. Some hair-brained attempt to have the jury think there was a pile of evidence that she was forbidden to show.  

At some point, she also asked the judge out of the hearing of the jury that he order me to remove my blog and she actually whined about being called Fraulein Ford. That gave me some much-needed satisfaction. No, he said. More bizarrely she asked him that when I took the stand I not mention that my mother was a holocaust survivor. He looked at me said." Is that okay?" I had not remotely considered mentioning that since it bore no relevance so I  said, "sure"  She was an absolutely vile creature but no viler than her predecessors, I'd say.

It all ended in the proverbial whimper. The judge made statements in open court about how well he thought I did on the stand. Later Alissa told me that he said it again when I was not around, to the chagrin of Meanie mouse. Prior to this Judge Moore said a few other things that must have chagrined  Meanie Mouse Mouse and her masters. Very early into trial, he'd said out of the presence of the jury, " Well if worse comes to worst, Ms. Spitzberg, I'll give you time served." 
 

Waiting for the Verdict


When you spend twelve days, up close and personal, with your supposed peers, you begin to believe that they can see you for who you are. You imagine that after all this, they'll buy you a beer, and you'll all sitting around saying, " I know, right?" And, when you discover that you're just a stranger who made them miss work, it's a backstab twelve times over.


It wasn't the jury's fault. They were made to sit out in the hall for closed door hearings, for days. They didn't know that the judge expunged the domestic violence order, they didn't know about the four charges dropped, and how those facebook charges were added and why they disappeared. They heard  an Elite Detective describe in detail his expertise on stalking and fixations.They didn't know about those comedian's bias. They didn't about Gregozek's bias. They were forbidden to know anything about Notaro's lies and the lawsuit. They never heard about Sam, Julius, Heidi, Montalvo, Badar, Tobin Shea,et al. In short, they didn't know anything about anything.


All they knew was that Notaro's comedian witnesses and herself were not cross-examined, implying that there was nothing to cross-examine, and that my sister's looks must be deeply deceiving and she must be out on bond. They knew too that so much production was made for what would turn back into a one-count misdemeanor. Surely, there must be some guilt here, they thought.

Maybe the thing that was most damaging though was what Ford had managed to sneak into the jury instructions and the things that Gregozek had sworn to on the search warrants. All those long disproven liess, snuck in, and presented as fact. Had I known that at the time... 


They ended up deadlocked 9-3 against me. Judge Moore had to send them back and so he did. Two ended up folding and one stood firm. Judge Moore did not send them back again. After the jury was dismissed Alissa sighed and whispered to me, "We're going to have to do this all over again." 

We?????

If  Ford demands a retrial, she's going to get it. The numbers are against us. Even when the numbers are favorable to the defendant a judge will allow a retrial. It's called separation of powers. Meaning: It's the prosecutor's call. The judge doesn't step in. I'm not even too upset since I intend that this time I get my rightful collateral attack.  

Sure enough, Ford stood up, and requested a retrial. I'll paste the transcript here:

Dismissal in the interests of justice. I'd later learn that It should have been a long and complicated motion to write that went to a long and complicated hearing to hear. A judge almost never grants it and definitely never grants it after a single oral request.


Malzman looked shell shocked. Ford practically stomped her feet.  But, we have a rebuttal witness who could disprove everything she said on the stand? For nearly two years they had kept an omniscient(and nameless) magical witness hidden away and now she remained elusive for the duration of this 12-day trial?

Ford had the jaw dropping shamelessness to claim that she was denied inclusion of the incidences that were alleged for Notaro to get the restraining order. Malzman had argued( and I had begged her behind the scenes) to have Judge Moore allow a collateral attack of the restraining order. In other words, Moore sat right there as Katie Ford, on two occasions, did everything in her power to make sure nothing about that restraining order could be known to the judge or jury. Why? Because though the allegations were ugly and prejudicial, it was now long known to this prosecution that there was a witness or witnesses to dispute every single incident.( or non-incident, to be exact.) Ford had the astounding audacity to claim she'd dropped the four most serious charges as a... uh... favor to the court. I don't think I have to editorialize to you dear reader, about that.

This last day of the trial transcript leaves much to be desired from the standpoint of truth and justice.  I can envisage a lengthy you've got a lot of splaining to do both from the mouths of Moore and Malzman. It's a very mealy-mouthed record of the last day of a travesty. But I'm not hard to please or unreasonable. Malzman and Moore were real people not movie characters. They were not heroes. They both wanted to keep their jobs but still were willing to try and do what was right. Yes, Malzman threw that one count, and yes Moore denied me that all-important attack of the restraining order. Neither dared utter those two true words, malicious prosecution, on the record. Neither dared call out what was really going on here. In contrast to the rest, they came out smelling like roses. Morally compromised roses(in Malzman's case) but with all things being relative... not evil.

Time to go home but first I wanted badly to talk to that jury.Especially that one holdout.  We all went outside in the hall and I had a chance to tell them to read my blog and see the real story here. One of them asked so what happens next? And I am grateful that I had the chance to tell them it was dismissed in the interests of justice before I was told that the jury doesn't want to talk to me. I am told that the holdout had a "really hard time" and just wants to go home. My heart up till this point had been beyond broken- shattered beyond recognition more like it. But, this just was way too much. They agreed to talk to Katie Ford and Malzman however. I wanted to talk to Alissa a little more about what just happened and she said sure just wait till I finish talking to the jury. 

So,me, mom and sister wait on those uncomfortable benches. Of course, we eavesdrop. I overhear some interesting stuff. A chubby blonde tells Ford " there were so many holes. I felt like I didn't know so much." I  hear one juror tell Ford that it was nice to see that the search warrants were not too invasive. That was absolutely sickening. Then something even more sickening. I hear Ford say, "You know we had four more charges but we dropped them so you guys didn't have to work too hard." I expect Malzman to say something or at least say nothing. Instead, I hear her say, "yeah she did that." Et Tu Brutus so bad that I hear myself with a booming voice say, " Not cool, Alissa, not cool. you know what a vicious fraud those charges were." I'm not the type to speak in some booming voice or say  something is "not cool" but it came out. This caused them all to look excessively alarmed cause Alissa threw the case and I still looked like some scary criminal to these peers I had fought so unbearably hard for. They all started leaving and on the way out, Alissa Malzman said. "Thanks a lot for thanking me for winning your case."

Our partnership instead of ending with a hug or a high five ended with her bogus response and everlasting disgust and mistrust on my part toward her and the office of the public defender.

Every story begins with a sentence but my criminal case story did not end with a criminal sentence. Still, to say I felt dispirited by the outcome strikes me as understatement so extreme as to be rendered obscene. Of course, I did the count your blessing thing. Of course, I did it could be worse consideration. Moore (Bless him) made it clear early on he would not jail me so during the trial he spared me such agonizing and obvious suspense.

 Less obvious but even more agonizing,  I knew what happen next had there been a conviction- the victim impact statement and Lavely and Singer managing to get the press to report on said conviction since Notaro wanted dearly to have the world think she had a stalker. Just thinking about how that victim impact horror show would have played out kept me and my sister busy for quite a few hours. 

Donning a different men's suit, she'd strut back in astride Stef Willen and whatever comedian she could summon,  We'd learn she had been given the services of a victims' rights advocate throughout so she'd probably be there too. Would she bring her family from Mississippi to attest that yes me and my sister kept beating them up and add that my mom and dead grandma held them down while this occurred?

 

Sure Moore wouldn't buy it but me and sister replaced him with Jessner, Kerlin, Vanderet, Stratton, Villar, Rosenberg, Landin, Martinez et al . In an entirely plausible scenario, these judges would shake their heads in disgust, make all kinds of hideous sounds of shock and sympathy, bang their gavels violently before sentencing me to the max.

As for the press, being labeled tig notaro's stalker was unbearable enough when it came from internet trolls and poisoned comedians,. But to have that almost supernaturally persistent slander be stamped by the media?

Postcript

I'd gone it this as an agnostic, who seldom prayed. During the CASE I prayed and prayed. I prayed for justice and I prayed for freedom, and I prayed, I must admit, that god punish so many people. I never did take to reading bible verses in jail but If I didn't get out in time, I probably would. When facing such forces, such relentless treachery, such devastation- turning to god felt like a given.

When it came to revenge, which felt now like the most natural inclination ever, I googled this:

English Standard Version

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”

 I liked being called beloved, but I was a Jew. My God let loose locusts and doled out smitings. I much preferred this verse:

Deuteronomy 32:35

 It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them.”

But then I was also stuck on the non-biblical, "God helps those who help themselves" 

There was so much to do. So much wreckage to survey. So much justice to be sought. So much comeuppance to be expected in the denouement. So many mysteries to be solved. 

Most villains' motives were murky and remained so. But, I did figure out why the Public Defender's office seemed to be working with angels on their right shoulder and devils on their left --Franica Tawn and Robin Ginsburg selling out so quickly, Alissa Malzman starting so strong and petering out so dramatically, and Anan's metaphorical gun to the head phone call( He'd called me a few months before trial to urge me to take a plea.)

After trial,  I called Alissa saying I need a few witness statements I'd seen on her desk but were not given to me in the discovery she'd sent. In particular, one made by Nick Kroll. Despite our ugly parting, she was friendly and in the course of the conversation, said, " Afer what you've been through I can never be angry at you."  I wasn't too impressed with this largesse but it was better than the alternative, I guess. She told me I could pick up the missing discovery at the Public Defender's office on the 19th floor. So, sister and I went.

"I've come to pick up some discovery."

The secretary went to the back and brought out the top man, the lord of the PD's, Michael Hoagie.

"Hi. Alissa told me I could pick up the missing discovery."

"You won," he said, "Go home."

He didn't say it like you won yay, go home and relax. Take a nice long soak with some fragrant bath salts, maybe a candle. He said it like, "You messed me up now get the fuck out of here."

I said, "What the fuck is your problem." You're not supposed to say fuck to these people's faces but the trial was over and I was supposed to be free, so I repeated, "I want my discovery. What the fuck is wrong with you?"

" You better leave now. "

"I'll leave when I get my statements."

"I don't think you get it. You're not getting anything. Go home."

So in the end, as usual, my sister and I begin to leave,  I with a scathing blog post in mind. Just two steps out and we saw a bunch of bailiffs soldiering down the hallway. Oh shit... there for us? One approached my sister agressively, "show me your ID." (That's a weird intimidation tactic I've since learned. ) Christ, can we wait a week for PTSD to officially set in? Flashbacks anyone. I said, "What the fuck is wrong with you guys." 

Kidding. I said, "I'm leaving officers I'm walking quickly and calmly towards the elevators, hands in plain sight." That was the last I'd see of Clara Folz until I was called for Jury Duty(Honest to god. I got out of that easily.)

So you see Hoagie had always wanted a plea. Bottom line: the Public Defender works with the city attorney or District attorney to spare the city expense and to keep everything running smoothly. It goes deeper than overworked and underfunded. In jail, everyone called them the public pretenders and that wasn't a joke. Never count on them. If you can afford a real lawyer... oh wait. Just go on the run.

So could all this be wild supposition or a well earned paranoid fantasy? Nope. After escaping the clutches of the bailiffs, Hoagie sicced on me, I called Alissa. "You told me to come up and get it. Do you know what Hoagie did? Do you know what almost happened to me? How could you have done that? I trusted you."

"Alisa... stop... I work for the city." That shut me up. At least, she sounded sad.

What's the expression?... Phyric victory. After everything I went through to get there, I had won with a question mark. Technically, I was free to go. But if I had gotten the day in court I practically killed myself trying to get, I would not be stuck with easy slander and a crazy story I will never get out of my head, no matter how I try.  I never thought much about the money that you get from, "civil remedies." Even if I did get get something I knew it would take forever to collect. All I wanted was a teaspoon of vindication. A friend with an unused law degree told me that lawyers would be lining up.


I spoke to dozens, but, suing cops, judges, or prosecutors is not something lawyers tend to jump at, especially on contingency. Civil rights lawyers, I'd learn, aren't interested unless you are shot(preferably dead) Gloria Allred isn't interested unless you are a playmate(preferably a playmate who is the mistress of a big shot.)

Christopher Darden. Yes that Christopher Darden, had aged well and was perfectly polite but thought the case too complicated. Maybe his glove stunt made him gun shy. Finally, the lip licking lawyer from the beginning of our story shows up. As sexy as he saw it, a case like mine would take serious man power and he just didn't have it. So I was left with the only person that had righteous indignation and the ability to work for free.

It was a monster lawsuit and considering what I was up against, it's surprising it wasn't thrown out right away. Judge Fruin kept bringing me back. A good sign. He also brought back a lot of familiar faces. Members of the TMU and that Lavely and Singer lawyer, Allison Hart Sievers.

I got as far as Judge Fruin one day telling me that he sees I have gone through a serious injustice. Big Big damages he continued,  and that I'll be able to tell it to a jury.

And after a whole year that this case was before Fruin, for two weeks since those statements, it seemed that the skies had opened, the sun was shining, and things all made sense again.

And then at the next hearing Allison Hart Seivers brought a Lavely an Singer favorite, a SLAPP suit and the city an immunity motion of some sort. Both did not relate to the facts of the case. Both made no good legals sense, but suddenly Fruin was saying stuff like " How am I doing?" to Allison Hart Sievers, before he finally dismissed my suit, offering no valid legal reason.

As for the others, did I take Silverstien and Knechts betrayal lying down? No I sent evidence of his malfeasance to the bar and found out that basically a lawyer has to nap soundly throughout a client's trial in order to be reprimanded. (And, even then there have been cases were that is fine too.)

Since the bar or courts couldn't offer me any relief I once again turned to the internet to get a little Yelp inspired revenge - a site called Ripoff Report. With noble thoughts that it was my duty to save some other sap from eating a hypothetical bad burrito. Boy, did I misjudge that situation. Could Silverstien be so unethical, so vicious , so vengeful that he'd lie his ass off to save his sorry ass. Duh. Of course he would, and he did.
So now not only do I have to contend with appeals decision but I have to contend with his obscene rebuttal, on the internet, for all times.

Let go and let god. Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord. Notaro claimed she'd gotten cancer and I would be lying so hard if I didn't think god himself had smote her.

I put as much evidence as I could on the internet. I have a stat counter on my blog and I check periodically i.e every day. Ips from Glendale (Kerlin) Pasadena (Jessner) Gregozek (Huffington beach) California courts, Department of Justice.

Over time the internet told me what happened to some of these foes. Boags was demoted to civil court. Karla Kerlin was demoted to civil court in East L.A. Stratton was demoted to civil court in Van Nuys. Karma came calling and Jessner took her place in 95, before being demoted to civil court downtown. Gregozek left the TMU and is a Sargent in the Southeast Division. A promotion in the police world but he didn't yet get the cushy security job he so desperately wanted. No more jaunts to celebrity mansions. He got a desk all the way downtown. And finally to prove that Karma is a cruelly inconsistent bitch, a month after my trial ended, Judge Randolph Moore was kicked out of that court and transferred to juvenile.

Weird stuff kept happening that I don't want to go into cause I gave you so much strange as it is. I felt we had to get out of Dodge. I moved to a place with an area code to close for comfort(912) The first week there I somehow misdialed the last number and a cop showed up telling me I dialed 911. The look of relief on my face was so profound, he asked to come in and check around. He probably thought I had a body in the bathtub. He, like everyone, else found nothing.

And, me? I'm OK I guess. I have my triggers: Dialing my own area code, cop shows, judge shows, police sirens, hard benches, corruption stories, anonymous caller id's, pink ribbons, miraculous remissions, picking up the phone, getting the mail, lawyers with pocket hankies, lawyers without pocket hankies, hot chips, getting naked and on and on and on.

I've avoided most things Kroll but his ugly mug will pop up on my twitter feed from time to time. I've been luckier with Notaro. She stays off my osmosis, unless she's made some news for stripping on stage, having fights with Amy Schumer and Louis CK. Recently I heard she wrote about her bum luck called, "I'm just person." Well, I just beg to differ.

I will end with a song lyric and a few handy cliches. Love isn't all you need. It doesn't conquer all. But it does help to keep you going. Love is what I got, remember that.  I stood up for myself. I have my dignity. I fought the good fight. The truth shall set you free and Karma is going to bite them in the ass.


If you've gotten to this point, please leave a comment. It would mean a lot to some justice starved ladies out there.