May 2, 2024 • 38 mins
Sarah and her teenage brother Charles Warren go on the record with Paul to tell the whole sordid story. With a mountain of documents, shocking videos and on-record sources, the reporting team pushes the editors to finally publish. But the top brass continue to dilute and delay, and the reporting team considers taking drastic steps to make sure the story sees the light of day.
A note: for substance abuse treatment and mental health referrals, contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's (SAMHSA) National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Content warning. This episode contains talk of addiction. If you
were someone you know is struggling with addiction, there are
resources in our show notes for today's episode. This episode
will feature legal declarations given by Sarah and Charles Warren.
The voice of Sarah is read by Kat Protano and
the voice of Charles is read by Dylan Saunders.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I had struggled with drug and alcohol use since I
was like younger, and I just, you know, I was
really lost. We moved up to California and I had
started using math.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
In my head. Just really wasn't screw down street.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
The first time I speak with Sarah Warren, she's in
the car during an outing from rehab with her father Paul.
He calls and puts Sarah on speaker. I asked her
to start at the beginning.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I think because of my drug use and everything, Like,
our family was fighting a lot and I just wanted
I wanted out, and I thought running away would somehow
fix it. I think I was just really kind of
spiteful at the time, and I kind of wanted to, like,
(01:23):
you know, like fuck you to my parents. I'm going
to like do something really crazy, and I just like
got a lot more than.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
I bargained for, and there was a lot Sarah didn't
bargain for, especially once she got involved with Carmen Puliafido,
the dean of the medical school at USC. That relationship
led to a cycle of drugs and rehab that had
no end in sight. But now she's decided to talk
(01:54):
on the record, so maybe there is a way out
for her after all. My name is Paul Pringle and
this is Fallen Angels. This is a story that started
in a hotel room in Pasadena and it ends with
the undoing of some of the most powerful people in
Los Angeles. It's about influence and money and the way
(02:15):
they can eat away at people and make them look
past things they know are very, very wrong. This is
episode six, Sarah's story.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
I met Carmen Puliafido working as a prostitute. I had
like a lady pimp at the time, who connected us
through a website called Backpage that I was.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Not aware I was even on.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
She had set up a profile and he had his
own profile on that site, found mine and contacted who he.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Thought was me, but it was really this woman.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
And then he came to a hotel room out in
Branchio Cucamonga and met me there for the first time.
That first night, we used meth together, we had sex.
I got his number that night. I could tell he
had money because he just didn't like hesitate to give
(03:17):
me more when I asked for it, and usually that
was something that people would argue about. So from then
on he would contact me, not that lady, to come
see and it just escalated really like quickly to where
you know, he would take me out to dinner and
pay me like money to go out to dinner with him. Afterwards,
(03:40):
they always included like sex and meth. He was always
excited to like try new drugs or bring his own drugs.
So at first he would pay me, and then after
he would start buying me like laptops and like just
(04:03):
like larger gifts. I would kind of just spend time
with him because he was giving me like so much.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
There came a time where he just.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
He has such a big personality that it really turned
me off and I had decided that I wasn't going
to see him, and I stopped seeing for about two weeks.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
But then she found herself in a dangerous situation. A
man she met online invited her to fly to Portland, Oregon,
but when she met him there, he frightened her. She
didn't have the money to get home, and she was
not going to call her parents for help.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
I was desperate at the time, you know, and I
just felt really unsafe at the situation, Like the man
was not who he said he was, and like kind
of turned violent, and I didn't know who to turn to.
And I just I knew Carmen would be that he
(04:59):
could have to fly me back out, and I knew
he would be interested, and so I called him and
he flew me back out to California and ended up
putting me in the Hilton for a couple of months
and then later.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Helping me get an apartment.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Juliafido paid Sarah's rent, he bought her clothes, paid for trips,
and he bought her drugs.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Like if he brought me like a large supply of heroin,
you know, that was like six hundreds, seven hundred dollars,
But if he got like d that's like more expensive.
Or if he brought like a stash of roxies, those
are really expensive.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Roxies is a street name for a brand of voxy codone.
Pulliafido doesn't seem concerned about the money. He has a
surgery practice, not to mention his job as dean of
the medical school. But he didn't let either of those
get in the way of a good time.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
His office was in like Beverly Hills, when he would
most of the time come by after, but sometimes before.
I remember one time that he was really late and
he was telling me about how like a doctor like
him always makes his patience wait at least four hours.
So he was late to seeing a patient because he
(06:20):
was getting high.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
And well, the Fido didn't seem that concerned about keeping
his two lives all that separate. He would sometimes bring
Sarah to the Kech campus.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
There were times he would set up doctor's appointments for
me at USC. He just introduced me to all at first.
He always says his niece, and I know it's like surprise,
like this nineteen year old niece or twenty year old
I've had we'se drugs like in the car. We were
(06:54):
definitely both high. One time, I think it was like
three am, and we like went to his office and
had a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
I mean like used.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Drugs in his office and raided the T shirts and stuff, uh, methamphetamines, ecstasy, GHB,
sometimes ketamine, sometimes like MDMA. Sometimes I would always use heroin,
(07:25):
and then later on he started using heroin too, pretty
much anything.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
And Sarah confirms what her mother had told me about
pulling your FEEDO delivering drugs to her while she was
in rehab.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
One rehab I actually got kicked out of because he
later came back and brought me champagne and like dildo's
and like xanax bars, and then like four am the
next morning he brought like math and a torch. I
think if I, like, had I not been kicked out
of Creative Care, I probably would have gotten sober sooner.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
You know.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
However, like he found me like I was a prostitute
just having sex with people for money. So in a
way he kind of like took me out of that
CD world and like put me into his own kind.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
These stories of pull your FEETO enabling a recovering addict
to relapse, these are the details that should force our
editors to act. I asked Sarah to tell me what
happened at the hotel Constance, the incident that was my
starting point for this story.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
So we were at the Hotel Constance, and we I
had stayed there the night prior, you know, using like
meth and heroin, and I also had.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Like taken a drug called GHB.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
It was me and Carmen, and the night before there
was like another mail escort.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
There, a male escort for Sarah to have sex with
so Puliafido could watch. According to Sarah, he's an avid voyeur.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
I just took way too much.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
He was on like like escort websites, like looking at
male escorts to come in for us, and I was
like getting ready. I was putting on makeup, and like
right before I overdosed, he was just taking a lot
of photos of me. I even have those photos now,
and I can see in the photos that I was
(09:33):
like starting to just heavily perspire, and then right before
I overdosed, he was like trying to have sex with me.
And then I think I just like passed out, and
that's when I think he might have like left me
alone for a while. But then we had to we
(09:55):
had to move hotel rooms because somebody wanted that room,
and that's when they found out.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
The fact that they had to move hotel rooms may
have saved Sarah's life if they've been able to stay
in the room. She thinks Pulliofido, a practicing doctor, would
have let her sleep off her overdose and she may
never have woken up again. Sarah also tells me that
Pulliofido had made sure that the cops didn't find everything
they had in the room.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
I think the police found the drugs, well, they just
found the math because Carmen, I guess, was able to
hide the heroine, the bongs, some of the math, and
the jeep. He hid it in the stairwell like a
couple floors down in the stairwell, and when we went
back to the hotel, we went got it.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Sarah and Carmen Pullliofido had gone back to the hotel.
That's news to me. Devon Khan, the whistleblower who worked
at the hotel Constance and who had first told me
about what happened there, didn't have that detail. Sarah woke
up six hours after her overdoes in the hospital. That
same night, she and Puliofido returned to the hotel to
(11:08):
continue their party in another room. It says something about
pullio Fido's sense of his own invulnerability, even though the
police had questioned him. He wasn't worried about returning to
the scene, and it gives you a feeling for his
recklessness as well. Sarah had o deed. But here they
were again doing drugs.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
After I woke up.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
I was probably only in the hospital for like thirty minutes.
They did a walk test and then they released me.
I called Carmen and he came and picked me up,
and we went back to the hotel and got another room,
and when got the drugs out of the stairwell, he
(11:51):
was just so proud of himself.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Sarah tells me that this is not the only time
she ended up in the hospital after doing drugs given
to her by Six months later, they're at the Balboa
Bay Resort, a fancy waterfront hotel in Newport Beach.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
He gave me all the drugs. He watched me use them,
but then he left when I started spinning out. So
this is like a meth overdose, or like technically it
was like a meth psychosis, So like it's not an overdose,
(12:27):
like you fall asleep, like I went insane, and I
was on the roof yelling. I was talking with like
aliens and demons, and the world was ending, and I
was like very violent.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
The hotel staff founder on the roof screaming. They called
the cops, who came with paramedics.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
The police came and I was trying to fight them
and they had to.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Sit a me.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Sarah tells me there was someone else there that day,
her sometimes boyfriend, a Huntington Beach DJ named Don Stokes.
Stokes is seventeen years older than Sarah and, like her,
struggling to beat a drug addiction. I ask Mary Anne
and Paul Warren if they'll put me in touch with him,
and they do. Don Stokes and I meet for lunch
(13:29):
at a family restaurant in Huntington Beach. So when did
you first start.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
To struggle with.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Addiction?
Speaker 5 (13:37):
I believe it was somewhere in my mid twenties.
Speaker 6 (13:41):
I thought, in my eyes, like a cup of coffee
in the morning, to some people, some folks can't function
without that first cup of coffee. I would wake up,
do a small amount of math, and continue onward.
Speaker 7 (13:53):
With my day.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
And so, how did you meet Sarah.
Speaker 5 (13:56):
At one of my shows?
Speaker 6 (13:58):
I showed up and she was living in a complex
next door, and we started speaking and she says, you're
a cowboy, Yes, you're honest, Yes you're self employed. Yes,
these are not three traits that apparently women find together nowadays,
and she couldn't believe it. I saw hers just learning
and exploring life and being fun loving again. She was
(14:19):
very young. I was in silver livings drugs. I was
not using drugs.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Don was in a solber living program in Orange County
after getting arrested for drugs. It was a condition of
his parole. But he didn't stay for long after meeting
Sarah Warren because along with Sarah came Carmen Puliofido.
Speaker 6 (14:37):
I first met Carmen three four days later after I
met Sarah. She introduced him to me and was very
elusive regarding who he was.
Speaker 5 (14:48):
He was a friend, is what I was told.
Speaker 6 (14:50):
I had no idea that he was supplementing her lifestyle
by taking care of the rant, by taking care of
a number of superfluous amenities, I'll call it less amenities.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Does that include the drugs.
Speaker 6 (15:03):
The drugs were just present, whether they came from her,
whether they came from him, whether I brought something.
Speaker 5 (15:08):
To the table, because I had.
Speaker 6 (15:11):
Broken my own promise to myself at that point in
time and started dabbling once again, even behind the backs
of those that trusted me from the Sober Living.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
At first, Puliafido tried to get rid of the new guy.
He threatened to cut off Sarah's drugs and rent money
if he didn't dumped on Stokes, but Sarah ignored him,
so Pulliofido changed course, inviting don to join them for
their parties, like the one at the ball Bola Bay
Resort that ended with Sarah on the roof.
Speaker 6 (15:37):
I had been told that Sarah was going to be
going into a treatment program of some type, and the
date came where she was going to be going in.
She said, okay, I'm going to be staying down in Newport.
We're going to go get a hotel for a week,
and you're welcome to come down. I've asked Carmen and
he said okay. So I informed the management at Sober
(15:59):
Living that I was going to be staying elsewhere for
the night and got a haul passed basically for the day,
and rode down there in aneuver. When I arrived at
the Balbo Bay Club, I was blown away. Beautiful place,
very upscale. Went to the room and there was a
huge water pipe. We're talking at least three foot tall,
(16:19):
handblown glass, and I'd never seen one with an adapter
to smoke methomphetamines through.
Speaker 5 (16:27):
I got very, very high, very quick.
Speaker 6 (16:29):
At which point in time, Sarah starts getting louder and louder,
and I said, I'm on probation at this juncture, Okay,
I need you to rain it in a bit, otherwise
I'm going to have to leave because you're causing a disturbance.
And she's laughing uncontrollably and just slipping further and further
into this different person.
Speaker 5 (16:50):
She wasn't talking to me anymore.
Speaker 6 (16:52):
She was talking to herself, to other voices in her head.
She starts yelling about how much meth is in the room.
I said, I cannot be here for this. I got up,
put my clothes on, and headed out the door, called
for a ride, and stood on the corner of PCHM
(17:13):
and the street at Balboa waiting for my ride for.
Speaker 5 (17:15):
Well over twenty five thirty minutes.
Speaker 6 (17:18):
In that span, I saw no less than a half
dozen police units roll in to take Sarah inticustody as
she was on the balcony and running through the hotel
wearing nothing but a bathrobe.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
Screaming about all the method fetamines.
Speaker 6 (17:29):
In the room that night, going back to the sober
living that I had told him I was going to
be staying elsewhere, climbing onto the top rack of a
bunk bed and being spun out like nobody's business.
Speaker 5 (17:42):
Obviously, I couldn't.
Speaker 6 (17:43):
Sleep, but to lay there shaking and going, my God,
I hope she's okay. I was very concerned for her health,
for her mental well being, for her legal wellbeing as
well in that scenario, because again she was being taken
into custody.
Speaker 5 (18:02):
She was released the next day. Finally I get her
on the phone.
Speaker 6 (18:05):
She said, I'm really truly sorry about putting you in
that scenario myself. Had I been there when the police arrived,
I would have gone to prison for six years because
I was on probation. I was being kicked out of
this sober living because I obviously tested dirty after that night.
So I stayed for a few days in Sarah's old
apartment and then literally packed up a couple bags and
(18:29):
headed to the Phoenix House. In fact, I was informed
while I was there, like Carmen was paying for my
storage and offered to do so. Just said as long
as you're pursuing your sobriety. I will help continue pay
for the storage unit, and I know that that unit
was not cheap. He spent several thousand dollars just to
(18:50):
make sure that my personal belongings were there.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Don saw this as pulledio Fido doing him a favor,
but I'm not so sure. Don has seen a lot
and Nadan had a lot to lose. Don talked paying
for a storage and it would be a small price
to pay for Don stokes silence.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
I was facing jail time.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
And I needed to get this community service or this
community labor done. So I broke it off as much
like fun, and I use fun very loosely as everything was.
Having him like touched me and having to be intimate
(19:42):
with him was by far the hardest aspect of all
this because I'm not attracted to him, you know, And
you know, I loved that lifestyle, but I also really
like hated it because it felt like he was really
obsessed with me and he really couldn't understand why I
(20:04):
wanted like other people.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
And not him.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Right before I went into rehab for this final time,
we were talking about looking at houses and stuff.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
I knew that I just was unhappy, and I knew
he had to get out of my life for me
to get sober. I went into.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Detox November ninth of twenty sixteen, and that's the last.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Time I saw him. Well, I take that back.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
He came to my community labor one day and I
saw him from afar. But I, like, you know, told
my supervisor that, like, I do not want to see
this man, and like you need to tell him to leave.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Sarah's out of rehab almost five months sober and wants
to tell her story, and she encourages her teenage brother
to talk to me too. I heard a little about
Puliafido's involvement with Charles Warren from his mother, Mary Anne,
but Charles has a lot more to say. Again. These
are his words from an official transcript read by an actor.
Speaker 8 (21:26):
My initial encounter with doctor Carmen Puliaffido would be about
the age, at approximately the age seventeen. My sister had
invited me over to one of the many apartments that
she had gotten over the course of time that she
had spent with him.
Speaker 7 (21:45):
And he, you know, he was just surprising character.
Speaker 8 (21:53):
He is a sixty five year old guy that partied
like harder than I had ever seen anybody my age party.
He took methamphetamine to a whole another level. He would
go to liquor stores and bring me with him buy
(22:14):
kegs of beer.
Speaker 7 (22:15):
My first encounter was when he was providing me with.
Speaker 8 (22:19):
Nitrous oxide and other substances such as marijuana xanax.
Speaker 7 (22:26):
There was ecstasy involved, and there was also heroin.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Again, Polifido didn't bother to keep the two sides of
his life apart. He would sometimes be partying with seventeen
year old Charles Warren, what would still take work calls.
Speaker 8 (22:43):
He would answer calls and then he'd be like, all right,
this girl really wants to suck my dick. Be quiet,
so I'm going to answer this. And I went to
his office as well.
Speaker 9 (22:55):
I was taken down to the bookstore by his secretary,
who was an Asian woman, and she seemed equally as
scared of me as she seemed of Carmen, which really
made me uncomfortable.
Speaker 7 (23:12):
Every time I saw him.
Speaker 8 (23:14):
If I was home alone at the house and I
wanted something, I could call him up and he would
send a package that's filled with alcohol.
Speaker 7 (23:23):
Even ecstasy at the time. If I was asking for.
Speaker 8 (23:26):
It, and definitely marijuana. He would give it to an
uber driver and say it's important medical supplies or it's
important school supplies that need to get there, immediately send
it over from Pasadena to me. He had like a
metal box that he would keep drugs in. There's a
(23:48):
felt wining and he keeps his emergency dash of math
under the felt lining. So you can go in there
with a knife and prop up the felt lining and
get under there, and there will be meth under there.
It's guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
What I hear from Charles Ward makes for the most
damning allegations against Pulliafido yet, since Charles was a minor
when Pulliafido first gave him drugs. Devon Maharaj, the editor
in chief of the La Times, had told me he
was quote open to more reporting when he killed the
first Pulliafido story. I didn't believe that, but either way,
(24:29):
this is more reporting. Now. The team and I go
to work to get this story into the paper. Reporter
Harriet Ryan writes a draft that includes this explosive new material.
We submit through revised draft to California editor Shelby Grad
who agrees it's ready for the top editors. He sends
it on to the number two editor at the paper,
(24:51):
Mark Duvason. I also said Mark an email saying we
need to get this published as soon as possible. My
sense of urgency isn't just because it's taken near a
year to get to this point. I've talked to two
medical ethicists who told me that The Times has an
obligation to disclose the information about pulldia Feedo promptly because
he's still treating people. Sarah Warren told me he would
(25:12):
see patients while he was high. Mark writes back, quote
the new and much improved story was given to me
a few days ago. I read it last night, We'll
read it again tonight, and we'll follow up with any questions.
Shelby Grad's edits are straightforward, but Mark keeps dithering, just.
Speaker 10 (25:37):
As sort of a sort of king pong back and
forth of adding detailed, adding explanations, taking some things out
that they thought, you know, we might not need restructuring
here and there. It was a very contentious process.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Reporter Sarah Pargini.
Speaker 10 (25:53):
Any journalist, any reporter or editor could tell you that
at times, especially when it comes to an investigation, the
editing process isn't always fun, but it was the first
time in my experience where.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
It wasn't just.
Speaker 10 (26:11):
The sort of standard back and forth editing process of
like maybe you get a little bit angry at the editor,
or the editor might think like you are not seeing
clearly on something, and you sort of have a little
bit of a bicker about that. It was just an
actually contentious process that was upsetting.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Shelby tells us his story is at the final stage
of lawyering for publication, but days pass with still no
word from Shelby's boss Mark. I'm so frustrated that I
tell the Times legal counsel that if the story is
killed again, I'll complain to HR. Not long after that,
Mark tells me to come to his office. I've never
(26:56):
seen him so angry. He slaps his desk and jabs
his fingers at me. The newsroom handles its own problems,
he says, we do not involve HR. It seems like
for Mark, I've crossed the line. He takes the story
away from Shelby, who's been working with us for months,
and gives it to the paper's new investigations editor, Matt Doig,
(27:17):
who was just recently hired. Reporter Matt Hamilton.
Speaker 11 (27:21):
Suddenly it's being kind of diverted to this other editor
who has just arrived, has no idea how we've gotten
to this point, and it felt like a delay tactic. Frankly,
the edits came back in increments, and there were edits,
there were questions, there were requests to tighten certain sentences
(27:43):
or cut or move, but we address those really quickly.
I mean almost within hours of getting the edits. We
immediately turned it around and it's like back into that
very slow waiting period.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Reporter Adam Lmar is dumbfounded by this new editor's judgments
about the story.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
He took the draft and he basically threw it out
and suggested his own draft that he thought would be
better to publish. And we looked at it and we
just thought it was not publishable, that it wasn't up
to the standards of the La Times. There were certain
things that were that just right off the bat didn't
(28:27):
make sense. He wanted to take Sarah Warren off the record.
Sarah Warren was on the record, cooperative source, our most
important source in the story. He wanted to take her
off the record because well, one day she might be
thirty five and want to get a real job, and
this will come back to haunt her. With his rationale,
(28:50):
I've never really encountered that before where an editor says,
let's take a main cooperating source who has no problem
being on the record. Let's take that person and put
them off the record. That was just flabbergasting to me.
Another thing was he tried to refer to Pullifido as
somebody who's not a public figure. There was a sentence
(29:10):
in there that said something like, you know, The Times
doesn't normally write about people who are not public figures
or your government officials as far as like their private lives.
And it was one of those things where it's like, Wow,
you're kind of like giving Pulifido his own legal defense here.
You're just opening it up for it when.
Speaker 11 (29:32):
You have this kind of bulletproof, well reported story that
has taken a lot of resources sitting in the queue
where you're like, what the hell is going on? Step
reading out the public health concerns, the public interest concerns
of like, well, he's still seeing patients, Sarah one's still
(29:54):
trying to deal with her drug addiction. The sources are
pressing for progress, and it waits I can't convey how
each day it goes unpublished intensifies the frustrations and takers
of this team of people.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
The back and forth with Mark Duvison and editor Matt
doy goes on for months. I noticed that the story
won't run during the La Times Festival of Books, which
is hosted by USC. It doesn't run during USC's May
commencement ceremonies. I hear for my longtime confidential source at USC,
a person I call Tommy Trojan. He tells me that
(30:33):
there are rumblings among Nikias's lieutenants about an embarrassing story
that might be coming, but not until after the end
of the school year. How anyone at USC could know
that is beyond me. My fear is that it's being
leaked directly from the newsroom. We keep trying to address
the edits to our draft that seem designed to downplay
Pullafido's crimes or any hint of a cover up by USC.
(30:57):
The section on USC's poaching of the Alzheimer's sure is
cut in half are reported in two of Pullifeto's criminal
associates is cut for no reason.
Speaker 4 (31:06):
So we kind of had to comb through this draft
to see, well, what has been cut. There were a
couple of key cuts that were like, Wow, we don't
I don't think we can let this pass. One of
them was the whistle blower. There was a whistle blower
who had called the USC president's off.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
The whistleblower is Devon Cohn.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
He was cut from the draft, which was really disheartening
because this is the only indication that we had that
US soon knew that PULLI Fido was in the presence
of a young woman who'd overdose, and I'm telling him
that was being taken out, which was something that we
couldn't really allow that to happen. We emailed Mark and
(31:46):
we said we have some concerns about this draft in
terms of holding USC accountable. We outlined maybe some other concerns,
and we asked to have a meeting.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
The reporting team. Harriet, Sarah, Adam, Matt and me all
agree that this is one cut too far. That Devon
Cohn has to stay in the story. Harriet Ryan, we.
Speaker 12 (32:23):
All worked in a part of the La Times old
newsroom that was called Baja. The newsrooms arranged like California,
and so when you get far away from the city
desk and the big offices, you get into Baja and
then Cabo like way out in the in the end
of the building, and so we all worked out there
and so we could talk over our cubicles and stuff,
but we were going down to meet with the big bosses.
(32:45):
We would walk down this like long quarter that went
past all of our colleagues to the big glass offices.
People would watch you move and there's like five of us,
and so it's like this huge group going down and
like the eyes of the newsream are on you and
they're just like, what's going on. So we go into
Mark dubs Sun's office. It's glass on two sides view
of a city desk. He's sitting behind his desk, and
(33:08):
then there's Matt Day He's sitting in front of his desk.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Adam l. Mark.
Speaker 4 (33:12):
We talk about the whistleblower and how he's being cut.
Mark just kept saying, well, you don't have a second
corroborating source. It was not This is really important fact
to holding USC accountable in this story. This is an
indication that USC knew what was going on. How do
we beef this up or how do we make this
even stronger? It was just not for me to cut it.
(33:33):
You don't have a secondary source. We just we just
need to get rid of it. And this was a
very critical, uncomfortable truth in this story that USC potentially
knew about Puliafido's conduct, and so to cut that was
it just betrayed what I thought was our mission in journalism.
(33:56):
And so they said cutting the whistleblowers as unethical. I don't,
I can't stand by it.
Speaker 12 (34:01):
It just got more and more intense, to the point
where I remember being told to stop shouting. Paul and
I had had such scarring experiences with the management that
we're just like we're ready to go, like we're ready
to fight at any point because of what we've seen
in the past. It was just clear like they were
going to try to take this guy out, and like,
(34:23):
you take him out, you're taking out the accountability of USC.
We're writing about this guy because of who USC is,
not because of who he is, and we're starting to
grasp like they're going to try to just like gut
the main point in the story. And then Mark says, guys, guys,
whether this is it or not, this is already going
(34:43):
to be the worst day of Max m Keys's career.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
It was a surreal moment. Why would do we care
whether this is already going to be the worst day
of Max nicky's' his life. What is the implication of
that that we should ease up on USC because it's
already going to be a bad day for them. Up
to then and since then, I've never heard anyone say
on an investigative story about a powerful institution, you know what, guys,
(35:11):
this is already going to be the worst day of
so and so politicians life. So let's just excise a
couple of bad facts that they wouldn't like to be
out there.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Our investigation is filled with bad facts about Puliafido, about
the leadership of USC. We have bad facts confirmed in
court records, through videos and photos, in nine to one
one recordings with witnesses, and on the record interviews. But
it seems like our editors want to get rid of
the one bad fact that looks the worst for USC.
Speaker 12 (35:43):
I have a sense of just like blood rushing in
my ears, so so frustrated and I not knowing what
I want to scream or burst into tears that this
thing was happening again. When I think about the class
on Marx Walls, I just picture it just sort of
like pulse, like the rage and frustration in that room.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
It was a turning point.
Speaker 12 (36:05):
I just remember saying, Okay, if that's your decision, we
need to go talk because we're gonna decide what we're
going to do. And that's code for we're taking our
names off the story. That's a huge deal because they're
not going to run the story without our names.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
The meeting has left all of us more determined to
restore Devon Khan to the story, determined to get the
story into the paper.
Speaker 4 (36:26):
There was no way for the story not to be run.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
These bad facts have to see the light of day.
Dave On Maharaj, Mark Duvson, and Matt Doig deny that
they did anything wrong in their handling of the USC investigation,
and they maintained that any negative betrayal of their actions
is false. Next time on Fallen Angels, our fight to
(36:51):
publish reaches a boiling point. At the LA Times, she
was just like.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
Real aggressively, let's go, let's get to the bottom of this.
Speaker 12 (36:58):
And here was like a person power saying like, okay,
that's not okay.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Nobody should speak to you the way, but.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Our sources are starting to lose faith at the time.
Speaker 7 (37:07):
Why hey man, I've given you everything I could possibly
give you.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
What is it?
Speaker 1 (37:13):
And we discovered that Sarah Warren is not alone.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Door was like, oh, this is my friend, Carmen.
Speaker 4 (37:18):
I mean, in a million years looking at this man,
I would never have believed he was the dean of
USC Medical.
Speaker 5 (37:26):
It's insane.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
My parents started contacting the police about what was going on.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
That's next time on Fallen Angels. Fallen Angels, The Story
of California Corruption is a production of iHeart Podcasts in
partnership with Best Case Studios. I'm Paul Pringle. This show
is based on my book Bad City, Peril and Power
(37:54):
in the City of Angels. Fallen Angels was written by
Isabel Evans, Adam pink and Brent Katz. Isabel Evans is
our producer. Brent Katz is co producer. Associate producers are
Hannah Leebowitz, Lockhart and On Paho Locke. Executive producers are Me,
Paul Pringle, Joe Piccarello, and Adam Pinkus for Best Case Studios.
(38:17):
Original music is by James Newberry. This episode was edited
by Max Michael Miller, with assistants from Daniel Turek and
Nisha Venkat, additional editings, sound design and additional music by
Dean White. The voice of Sarah is read by Cat
Protano and the voice of Charles is read by Dylan Saunders.
Harriet Ryan, Matt Hamilton, Sarah Parvini and Adam Olmaik are
(38:39):
consulting producers. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Carl Catle.
Follow and rate Fallen Angels wherever you get your podcasts
Content warning. This episode contains talk of addiction. If you
were someone you know is struggling with addiction, there are
resources in our show notes for today's episode. This episode
will feature legal declarations given by Sarah and Charles Warren.
The voice of Sarah is read by Kat Protano and
the voice of Charles is read by Dylan Saunders.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I had struggled with drug and alcohol use since I
was like younger, and I just, you know, I was
really lost. We moved up to California and I had
started using math.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
In my head. Just really wasn't screw down street.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
The first time I speak with Sarah Warren, she's in
the car during an outing from rehab with her father Paul.
He calls and puts Sarah on speaker. I asked her
to start at the beginning.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I think because of my drug use and everything, Like,
our family was fighting a lot and I just wanted
I wanted out, and I thought running away would somehow
fix it. I think I was just really kind of
spiteful at the time, and I kind of wanted to, like,
(01:23):
you know, like fuck you to my parents. I'm going
to like do something really crazy, and I just like
got a lot more than.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
I bargained for, and there was a lot Sarah didn't
bargain for, especially once she got involved with Carmen Puliafido,
the dean of the medical school at USC. That relationship
led to a cycle of drugs and rehab that had
no end in sight. But now she's decided to talk
(01:54):
on the record, so maybe there is a way out
for her after all. My name is Paul Pringle and
this is Fallen Angels. This is a story that started
in a hotel room in Pasadena and it ends with
the undoing of some of the most powerful people in
Los Angeles. It's about influence and money and the way
(02:15):
they can eat away at people and make them look
past things they know are very, very wrong. This is
episode six, Sarah's story.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
I met Carmen Puliafido working as a prostitute. I had
like a lady pimp at the time, who connected us
through a website called Backpage that I was.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Not aware I was even on.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
She had set up a profile and he had his
own profile on that site, found mine and contacted who he.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Thought was me, but it was really this woman.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
And then he came to a hotel room out in
Branchio Cucamonga and met me there for the first time.
That first night, we used meth together, we had sex.
I got his number that night. I could tell he
had money because he just didn't like hesitate to give
(03:17):
me more when I asked for it, and usually that
was something that people would argue about. So from then
on he would contact me, not that lady, to come
see and it just escalated really like quickly to where
you know, he would take me out to dinner and
pay me like money to go out to dinner with him. Afterwards,
(03:40):
they always included like sex and meth. He was always
excited to like try new drugs or bring his own drugs.
So at first he would pay me, and then after
he would start buying me like laptops and like just
(04:03):
like larger gifts. I would kind of just spend time
with him because he was giving me like so much.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
There came a time where he just.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
He has such a big personality that it really turned
me off and I had decided that I wasn't going
to see him, and I stopped seeing for about two weeks.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
But then she found herself in a dangerous situation. A
man she met online invited her to fly to Portland, Oregon,
but when she met him there, he frightened her. She
didn't have the money to get home, and she was
not going to call her parents for help.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
I was desperate at the time, you know, and I
just felt really unsafe at the situation, Like the man
was not who he said he was, and like kind
of turned violent, and I didn't know who to turn to.
And I just I knew Carmen would be that he
(04:59):
could have to fly me back out, and I knew
he would be interested, and so I called him and
he flew me back out to California and ended up
putting me in the Hilton for a couple of months
and then later.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Helping me get an apartment.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Juliafido paid Sarah's rent, he bought her clothes, paid for trips,
and he bought her drugs.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Like if he brought me like a large supply of heroin,
you know, that was like six hundreds, seven hundred dollars,
But if he got like d that's like more expensive.
Or if he brought like a stash of roxies, those
are really expensive.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Roxies is a street name for a brand of voxy codone.
Pulliafido doesn't seem concerned about the money. He has a
surgery practice, not to mention his job as dean of
the medical school. But he didn't let either of those
get in the way of a good time.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
His office was in like Beverly Hills, when he would
most of the time come by after, but sometimes before.
I remember one time that he was really late and
he was telling me about how like a doctor like
him always makes his patience wait at least four hours.
So he was late to seeing a patient because he
(06:20):
was getting high.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
And well, the Fido didn't seem that concerned about keeping
his two lives all that separate. He would sometimes bring
Sarah to the Kech campus.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
There were times he would set up doctor's appointments for
me at USC. He just introduced me to all at first.
He always says his niece, and I know it's like surprise,
like this nineteen year old niece or twenty year old
I've had we'se drugs like in the car. We were
(06:54):
definitely both high. One time, I think it was like
three am, and we like went to his office and
had a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
I mean like used.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Drugs in his office and raided the T shirts and stuff, uh, methamphetamines, ecstasy, GHB,
sometimes ketamine, sometimes like MDMA. Sometimes I would always use heroin,
(07:25):
and then later on he started using heroin too, pretty
much anything.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
And Sarah confirms what her mother had told me about
pulling your FEEDO delivering drugs to her while she was
in rehab.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
One rehab I actually got kicked out of because he
later came back and brought me champagne and like dildo's
and like xanax bars, and then like four am the
next morning he brought like math and a torch. I
think if I, like, had I not been kicked out
of Creative Care, I probably would have gotten sober sooner.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
You know.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
However, like he found me like I was a prostitute
just having sex with people for money. So in a
way he kind of like took me out of that
CD world and like put me into his own kind.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
These stories of pull your FEETO enabling a recovering addict
to relapse, these are the details that should force our
editors to act. I asked Sarah to tell me what
happened at the hotel Constance, the incident that was my
starting point for this story.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
So we were at the Hotel Constance, and we I
had stayed there the night prior, you know, using like
meth and heroin, and I also had.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Like taken a drug called GHB.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
It was me and Carmen, and the night before there
was like another mail escort.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
There, a male escort for Sarah to have sex with
so Puliafido could watch. According to Sarah, he's an avid voyeur.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
I just took way too much.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
He was on like like escort websites, like looking at
male escorts to come in for us, and I was
like getting ready. I was putting on makeup, and like
right before I overdosed, he was just taking a lot
of photos of me. I even have those photos now,
and I can see in the photos that I was
(09:33):
like starting to just heavily perspire, and then right before
I overdosed, he was like trying to have sex with me.
And then I think I just like passed out, and
that's when I think he might have like left me
alone for a while. But then we had to we
(09:55):
had to move hotel rooms because somebody wanted that room,
and that's when they found out.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
The fact that they had to move hotel rooms may
have saved Sarah's life if they've been able to stay
in the room. She thinks Pulliofido, a practicing doctor, would
have let her sleep off her overdose and she may
never have woken up again. Sarah also tells me that
Pulliofido had made sure that the cops didn't find everything
they had in the room.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
I think the police found the drugs, well, they just
found the math because Carmen, I guess, was able to
hide the heroine, the bongs, some of the math, and
the jeep. He hid it in the stairwell like a
couple floors down in the stairwell, and when we went
back to the hotel, we went got it.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Sarah and Carmen Pullliofido had gone back to the hotel.
That's news to me. Devon Khan, the whistleblower who worked
at the hotel Constance and who had first told me
about what happened there, didn't have that detail. Sarah woke
up six hours after her overdoes in the hospital. That
same night, she and Puliofido returned to the hotel to
(11:08):
continue their party in another room. It says something about
pullio Fido's sense of his own invulnerability, even though the
police had questioned him. He wasn't worried about returning to
the scene, and it gives you a feeling for his
recklessness as well. Sarah had o deed. But here they
were again doing drugs.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
After I woke up.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
I was probably only in the hospital for like thirty minutes.
They did a walk test and then they released me.
I called Carmen and he came and picked me up,
and we went back to the hotel and got another room,
and when got the drugs out of the stairwell, he
(11:51):
was just so proud of himself.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Sarah tells me that this is not the only time
she ended up in the hospital after doing drugs given
to her by Six months later, they're at the Balboa
Bay Resort, a fancy waterfront hotel in Newport Beach.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
He gave me all the drugs. He watched me use them,
but then he left when I started spinning out. So
this is like a meth overdose, or like technically it
was like a meth psychosis, So like it's not an overdose,
(12:27):
like you fall asleep, like I went insane, and I
was on the roof yelling. I was talking with like
aliens and demons, and the world was ending, and I
was like very violent.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
The hotel staff founder on the roof screaming. They called
the cops, who came with paramedics.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
The police came and I was trying to fight them
and they had to.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Sit a me.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Sarah tells me there was someone else there that day,
her sometimes boyfriend, a Huntington Beach DJ named Don Stokes.
Stokes is seventeen years older than Sarah and, like her,
struggling to beat a drug addiction. I ask Mary Anne
and Paul Warren if they'll put me in touch with him,
and they do. Don Stokes and I meet for lunch
(13:29):
at a family restaurant in Huntington Beach. So when did
you first start.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
To struggle with.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Addiction?
Speaker 5 (13:37):
I believe it was somewhere in my mid twenties.
Speaker 6 (13:41):
I thought, in my eyes, like a cup of coffee
in the morning, to some people, some folks can't function
without that first cup of coffee. I would wake up,
do a small amount of math, and continue onward.
Speaker 7 (13:53):
With my day.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
And so, how did you meet Sarah.
Speaker 5 (13:56):
At one of my shows?
Speaker 6 (13:58):
I showed up and she was living in a complex
next door, and we started speaking and she says, you're
a cowboy, Yes, you're honest, Yes you're self employed. Yes,
these are not three traits that apparently women find together nowadays,
and she couldn't believe it. I saw hers just learning
and exploring life and being fun loving again. She was
(14:19):
very young. I was in silver livings drugs. I was
not using drugs.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Don was in a solber living program in Orange County
after getting arrested for drugs. It was a condition of
his parole. But he didn't stay for long after meeting
Sarah Warren because along with Sarah came Carmen Puliofido.
Speaker 6 (14:37):
I first met Carmen three four days later after I
met Sarah. She introduced him to me and was very
elusive regarding who he was.
Speaker 5 (14:48):
He was a friend, is what I was told.
Speaker 6 (14:50):
I had no idea that he was supplementing her lifestyle
by taking care of the rant, by taking care of
a number of superfluous amenities, I'll call it less amenities.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Does that include the drugs.
Speaker 6 (15:03):
The drugs were just present, whether they came from her,
whether they came from him, whether I brought something.
Speaker 5 (15:08):
To the table, because I had.
Speaker 6 (15:11):
Broken my own promise to myself at that point in
time and started dabbling once again, even behind the backs
of those that trusted me from the Sober Living.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
At first, Puliafido tried to get rid of the new guy.
He threatened to cut off Sarah's drugs and rent money
if he didn't dumped on Stokes, but Sarah ignored him,
so Pulliofido changed course, inviting don to join them for
their parties, like the one at the ball Bola Bay
Resort that ended with Sarah on the roof.
Speaker 6 (15:37):
I had been told that Sarah was going to be
going into a treatment program of some type, and the
date came where she was going to be going in.
She said, okay, I'm going to be staying down in Newport.
We're going to go get a hotel for a week,
and you're welcome to come down. I've asked Carmen and
he said okay. So I informed the management at Sober
(15:59):
Living that I was going to be staying elsewhere for
the night and got a haul passed basically for the day,
and rode down there in aneuver. When I arrived at
the Balbo Bay Club, I was blown away. Beautiful place,
very upscale. Went to the room and there was a
huge water pipe. We're talking at least three foot tall,
(16:19):
handblown glass, and I'd never seen one with an adapter
to smoke methomphetamines through.
Speaker 5 (16:27):
I got very, very high, very quick.
Speaker 6 (16:29):
At which point in time, Sarah starts getting louder and louder,
and I said, I'm on probation at this juncture, Okay,
I need you to rain it in a bit, otherwise
I'm going to have to leave because you're causing a disturbance.
And she's laughing uncontrollably and just slipping further and further
into this different person.
Speaker 5 (16:50):
She wasn't talking to me anymore.
Speaker 6 (16:52):
She was talking to herself, to other voices in her head.
She starts yelling about how much meth is in the room.
I said, I cannot be here for this. I got up,
put my clothes on, and headed out the door, called
for a ride, and stood on the corner of PCHM
(17:13):
and the street at Balboa waiting for my ride for.
Speaker 5 (17:15):
Well over twenty five thirty minutes.
Speaker 6 (17:18):
In that span, I saw no less than a half
dozen police units roll in to take Sarah inticustody as
she was on the balcony and running through the hotel
wearing nothing but a bathrobe.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
Screaming about all the method fetamines.
Speaker 6 (17:29):
In the room that night, going back to the sober
living that I had told him I was going to
be staying elsewhere, climbing onto the top rack of a
bunk bed and being spun out like nobody's business.
Speaker 5 (17:42):
Obviously, I couldn't.
Speaker 6 (17:43):
Sleep, but to lay there shaking and going, my God,
I hope she's okay. I was very concerned for her health,
for her mental well being, for her legal wellbeing as
well in that scenario, because again she was being taken
into custody.
Speaker 5 (18:02):
She was released the next day. Finally I get her
on the phone.
Speaker 6 (18:05):
She said, I'm really truly sorry about putting you in
that scenario myself. Had I been there when the police arrived,
I would have gone to prison for six years because
I was on probation. I was being kicked out of
this sober living because I obviously tested dirty after that night.
So I stayed for a few days in Sarah's old
apartment and then literally packed up a couple bags and
(18:29):
headed to the Phoenix House. In fact, I was informed
while I was there, like Carmen was paying for my
storage and offered to do so. Just said as long
as you're pursuing your sobriety. I will help continue pay
for the storage unit, and I know that that unit
was not cheap. He spent several thousand dollars just to
(18:50):
make sure that my personal belongings were there.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Don saw this as pulledio Fido doing him a favor,
but I'm not so sure. Don has seen a lot
and Nadan had a lot to lose. Don talked paying
for a storage and it would be a small price
to pay for Don stokes silence.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
I was facing jail time.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
And I needed to get this community service or this
community labor done. So I broke it off as much
like fun, and I use fun very loosely as everything was.
Having him like touched me and having to be intimate
(19:42):
with him was by far the hardest aspect of all
this because I'm not attracted to him, you know, And
you know, I loved that lifestyle, but I also really
like hated it because it felt like he was really
obsessed with me and he really couldn't understand why I
(20:04):
wanted like other people.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
And not him.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Right before I went into rehab for this final time,
we were talking about looking at houses and stuff.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
I knew that I just was unhappy, and I knew
he had to get out of my life for me
to get sober. I went into.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Detox November ninth of twenty sixteen, and that's the last.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Time I saw him. Well, I take that back.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
He came to my community labor one day and I
saw him from afar. But I, like, you know, told
my supervisor that, like, I do not want to see
this man, and like you need to tell him to leave.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Sarah's out of rehab almost five months sober and wants
to tell her story, and she encourages her teenage brother
to talk to me too. I heard a little about
Puliafido's involvement with Charles Warren from his mother, Mary Anne,
but Charles has a lot more to say. Again. These
are his words from an official transcript read by an actor.
Speaker 8 (21:26):
My initial encounter with doctor Carmen Puliaffido would be about
the age, at approximately the age seventeen. My sister had
invited me over to one of the many apartments that
she had gotten over the course of time that she
had spent with him.
Speaker 7 (21:45):
And he, you know, he was just surprising character.
Speaker 8 (21:53):
He is a sixty five year old guy that partied
like harder than I had ever seen anybody my age party.
He took methamphetamine to a whole another level. He would
go to liquor stores and bring me with him buy
(22:14):
kegs of beer.
Speaker 7 (22:15):
My first encounter was when he was providing me with.
Speaker 8 (22:19):
Nitrous oxide and other substances such as marijuana xanax.
Speaker 7 (22:26):
There was ecstasy involved, and there was also heroin.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Again, Polifido didn't bother to keep the two sides of
his life apart. He would sometimes be partying with seventeen
year old Charles Warren, what would still take work calls.
Speaker 8 (22:43):
He would answer calls and then he'd be like, all right,
this girl really wants to suck my dick. Be quiet,
so I'm going to answer this. And I went to
his office as well.
Speaker 9 (22:55):
I was taken down to the bookstore by his secretary,
who was an Asian woman, and she seemed equally as
scared of me as she seemed of Carmen, which really
made me uncomfortable.
Speaker 7 (23:12):
Every time I saw him.
Speaker 8 (23:14):
If I was home alone at the house and I
wanted something, I could call him up and he would
send a package that's filled with alcohol.
Speaker 7 (23:23):
Even ecstasy at the time. If I was asking for.
Speaker 8 (23:26):
It, and definitely marijuana. He would give it to an
uber driver and say it's important medical supplies or it's
important school supplies that need to get there, immediately send
it over from Pasadena to me. He had like a
metal box that he would keep drugs in. There's a
(23:48):
felt wining and he keeps his emergency dash of math
under the felt lining. So you can go in there
with a knife and prop up the felt lining and
get under there, and there will be meth under there.
It's guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
What I hear from Charles Ward makes for the most
damning allegations against Pulliafido yet, since Charles was a minor
when Pulliafido first gave him drugs. Devon Maharaj, the editor
in chief of the La Times, had told me he
was quote open to more reporting when he killed the
first Pulliafido story. I didn't believe that, but either way,
(24:29):
this is more reporting. Now. The team and I go
to work to get this story into the paper. Reporter
Harriet Ryan writes a draft that includes this explosive new material.
We submit through revised draft to California editor Shelby Grad
who agrees it's ready for the top editors. He sends
it on to the number two editor at the paper,
(24:51):
Mark Duvason. I also said Mark an email saying we
need to get this published as soon as possible. My
sense of urgency isn't just because it's taken near a
year to get to this point. I've talked to two
medical ethicists who told me that The Times has an
obligation to disclose the information about pulldia Feedo promptly because
he's still treating people. Sarah Warren told me he would
(25:12):
see patients while he was high. Mark writes back, quote
the new and much improved story was given to me
a few days ago. I read it last night, We'll
read it again tonight, and we'll follow up with any questions.
Shelby Grad's edits are straightforward, but Mark keeps dithering, just.
Speaker 10 (25:37):
As sort of a sort of king pong back and
forth of adding detailed, adding explanations, taking some things out
that they thought, you know, we might not need restructuring
here and there. It was a very contentious process.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Reporter Sarah Pargini.
Speaker 10 (25:53):
Any journalist, any reporter or editor could tell you that
at times, especially when it comes to an investigation, the
editing process isn't always fun, but it was the first
time in my experience where.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
It wasn't just.
Speaker 10 (26:11):
The sort of standard back and forth editing process of
like maybe you get a little bit angry at the editor,
or the editor might think like you are not seeing
clearly on something, and you sort of have a little
bit of a bicker about that. It was just an
actually contentious process that was upsetting.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Shelby tells us his story is at the final stage
of lawyering for publication, but days pass with still no
word from Shelby's boss Mark. I'm so frustrated that I
tell the Times legal counsel that if the story is
killed again, I'll complain to HR. Not long after that,
Mark tells me to come to his office. I've never
(26:56):
seen him so angry. He slaps his desk and jabs
his fingers at me. The newsroom handles its own problems,
he says, we do not involve HR. It seems like
for Mark, I've crossed the line. He takes the story
away from Shelby, who's been working with us for months,
and gives it to the paper's new investigations editor, Matt Doig,
(27:17):
who was just recently hired. Reporter Matt Hamilton.
Speaker 11 (27:21):
Suddenly it's being kind of diverted to this other editor
who has just arrived, has no idea how we've gotten
to this point, and it felt like a delay tactic. Frankly,
the edits came back in increments, and there were edits,
there were questions, there were requests to tighten certain sentences
(27:43):
or cut or move, but we address those really quickly.
I mean almost within hours of getting the edits. We
immediately turned it around and it's like back into that
very slow waiting period.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Reporter Adam Lmar is dumbfounded by this new editor's judgments
about the story.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
He took the draft and he basically threw it out
and suggested his own draft that he thought would be
better to publish. And we looked at it and we
just thought it was not publishable, that it wasn't up
to the standards of the La Times. There were certain
things that were that just right off the bat didn't
(28:27):
make sense. He wanted to take Sarah Warren off the record.
Sarah Warren was on the record, cooperative source, our most
important source in the story. He wanted to take her
off the record because well, one day she might be
thirty five and want to get a real job, and
this will come back to haunt her. With his rationale,
(28:50):
I've never really encountered that before where an editor says,
let's take a main cooperating source who has no problem
being on the record. Let's take that person and put
them off the record. That was just flabbergasting to me.
Another thing was he tried to refer to Pullifido as
somebody who's not a public figure. There was a sentence
(29:10):
in there that said something like, you know, The Times
doesn't normally write about people who are not public figures
or your government officials as far as like their private lives.
And it was one of those things where it's like, Wow,
you're kind of like giving Pulifido his own legal defense here.
You're just opening it up for it when.
Speaker 11 (29:32):
You have this kind of bulletproof, well reported story that
has taken a lot of resources sitting in the queue
where you're like, what the hell is going on? Step
reading out the public health concerns, the public interest concerns
of like, well, he's still seeing patients, Sarah one's still
(29:54):
trying to deal with her drug addiction. The sources are
pressing for progress, and it waits I can't convey how
each day it goes unpublished intensifies the frustrations and takers
of this team of people.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
The back and forth with Mark Duvison and editor Matt
doy goes on for months. I noticed that the story
won't run during the La Times Festival of Books, which
is hosted by USC. It doesn't run during USC's May
commencement ceremonies. I hear for my longtime confidential source at USC,
a person I call Tommy Trojan. He tells me that
(30:33):
there are rumblings among Nikias's lieutenants about an embarrassing story
that might be coming, but not until after the end
of the school year. How anyone at USC could know
that is beyond me. My fear is that it's being
leaked directly from the newsroom. We keep trying to address
the edits to our draft that seem designed to downplay
Pullafido's crimes or any hint of a cover up by USC.
(30:57):
The section on USC's poaching of the Alzheimer's sure is
cut in half are reported in two of Pullifeto's criminal
associates is cut for no reason.
Speaker 4 (31:06):
So we kind of had to comb through this draft
to see, well, what has been cut. There were a
couple of key cuts that were like, Wow, we don't
I don't think we can let this pass. One of
them was the whistle blower. There was a whistle blower
who had called the USC president's off.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
The whistleblower is Devon Cohn.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
He was cut from the draft, which was really disheartening
because this is the only indication that we had that
US soon knew that PULLI Fido was in the presence
of a young woman who'd overdose, and I'm telling him
that was being taken out, which was something that we
couldn't really allow that to happen. We emailed Mark and
(31:46):
we said we have some concerns about this draft in
terms of holding USC accountable. We outlined maybe some other concerns,
and we asked to have a meeting.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
The reporting team. Harriet, Sarah, Adam, Matt and me all
agree that this is one cut too far. That Devon
Cohn has to stay in the story. Harriet Ryan, we.
Speaker 12 (32:23):
All worked in a part of the La Times old
newsroom that was called Baja. The newsrooms arranged like California,
and so when you get far away from the city
desk and the big offices, you get into Baja and
then Cabo like way out in the in the end
of the building, and so we all worked out there
and so we could talk over our cubicles and stuff,
but we were going down to meet with the big bosses.
(32:45):
We would walk down this like long quarter that went
past all of our colleagues to the big glass offices.
People would watch you move and there's like five of us,
and so it's like this huge group going down and
like the eyes of the newsream are on you and
they're just like, what's going on. So we go into
Mark dubs Sun's office. It's glass on two sides view
of a city desk. He's sitting behind his desk, and
(33:08):
then there's Matt Day He's sitting in front of his desk.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Adam l. Mark.
Speaker 4 (33:12):
We talk about the whistleblower and how he's being cut.
Mark just kept saying, well, you don't have a second
corroborating source. It was not This is really important fact
to holding USC accountable in this story. This is an
indication that USC knew what was going on. How do
we beef this up or how do we make this
even stronger? It was just not for me to cut it.
(33:33):
You don't have a secondary source. We just we just
need to get rid of it. And this was a
very critical, uncomfortable truth in this story that USC potentially
knew about Puliafido's conduct, and so to cut that was
it just betrayed what I thought was our mission in journalism.
(33:56):
And so they said cutting the whistleblowers as unethical. I don't,
I can't stand by it.
Speaker 12 (34:01):
It just got more and more intense, to the point
where I remember being told to stop shouting. Paul and
I had had such scarring experiences with the management that
we're just like we're ready to go, like we're ready
to fight at any point because of what we've seen
in the past. It was just clear like they were
going to try to take this guy out, and like,
(34:23):
you take him out, you're taking out the accountability of USC.
We're writing about this guy because of who USC is,
not because of who he is, and we're starting to
grasp like they're going to try to just like gut
the main point in the story. And then Mark says, guys, guys,
whether this is it or not, this is already going
(34:43):
to be the worst day of Max m Keys's career.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
It was a surreal moment. Why would do we care
whether this is already going to be the worst day
of Max nicky's' his life. What is the implication of
that that we should ease up on USC because it's
already going to be a bad day for them. Up
to then and since then, I've never heard anyone say
on an investigative story about a powerful institution, you know what, guys,
(35:11):
this is already going to be the worst day of
so and so politicians life. So let's just excise a
couple of bad facts that they wouldn't like to be
out there.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Our investigation is filled with bad facts about Puliafido, about
the leadership of USC. We have bad facts confirmed in
court records, through videos and photos, in nine to one
one recordings with witnesses, and on the record interviews. But
it seems like our editors want to get rid of
the one bad fact that looks the worst for USC.
Speaker 12 (35:43):
I have a sense of just like blood rushing in
my ears, so so frustrated and I not knowing what
I want to scream or burst into tears that this
thing was happening again. When I think about the class
on Marx Walls, I just picture it just sort of
like pulse, like the rage and frustration in that room.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
It was a turning point.
Speaker 12 (36:05):
I just remember saying, Okay, if that's your decision, we
need to go talk because we're gonna decide what we're
going to do. And that's code for we're taking our
names off the story. That's a huge deal because they're
not going to run the story without our names.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
The meeting has left all of us more determined to
restore Devon Khan to the story, determined to get the
story into the paper.
Speaker 4 (36:26):
There was no way for the story not to be run.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
These bad facts have to see the light of day.
Dave On Maharaj, Mark Duvson, and Matt Doig deny that
they did anything wrong in their handling of the USC investigation,
and they maintained that any negative betrayal of their actions
is false. Next time on Fallen Angels, our fight to
(36:51):
publish reaches a boiling point. At the LA Times, she
was just like.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
Real aggressively, let's go, let's get to the bottom of this.
Speaker 12 (36:58):
And here was like a person power saying like, okay,
that's not okay.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Nobody should speak to you the way, but.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Our sources are starting to lose faith at the time.
Speaker 7 (37:07):
Why hey man, I've given you everything I could possibly
give you.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
What is it?
Speaker 1 (37:13):
And we discovered that Sarah Warren is not alone.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Door was like, oh, this is my friend, Carmen.
Speaker 4 (37:18):
I mean, in a million years looking at this man,
I would never have believed he was the dean of
USC Medical.
Speaker 5 (37:26):
It's insane.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
My parents started contacting the police about what was going on.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
That's next time on Fallen Angels. Fallen Angels, The Story
of California Corruption is a production of iHeart Podcasts in
partnership with Best Case Studios. I'm Paul Pringle. This show
is based on my book Bad City, Peril and Power
(37:54):
in the City of Angels. Fallen Angels was written by
Isabel Evans, Adam pink and Brent Katz. Isabel Evans is
our producer. Brent Katz is co producer. Associate producers are
Hannah Leebowitz, Lockhart and On Paho Locke. Executive producers are Me,
Paul Pringle, Joe Piccarello, and Adam Pinkus for Best Case Studios.
(38:17):
Original music is by James Newberry. This episode was edited
by Max Michael Miller, with assistants from Daniel Turek and
Nisha Venkat, additional editings, sound design and additional music by
Dean White. The voice of Sarah is read by Cat
Protano and the voice of Charles is read by Dylan Saunders.
Harriet Ryan, Matt Hamilton, Sarah Parvini and Adam Olmaik are
(38:39):
consulting producers. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Carl Catle.
Follow and rate Fallen Angels wherever you get your podcasts
Host
Paul Pringle
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