May 9, 2024 • 35 mins
The Puliafito story finally lands, and it’s a bombshell. USC goes into damage control mode, while the leadership of the LA Times seem to forget the months of contentious edits, and bask in the acclaim. But Paul and the other reporters have mobilized to ensure the end of these roadblocks at the paper. Meanwhile, more damning details about Puliafito continue to surface, including another young woman caught under his influence – with tragic results.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
I didn't understand what was taking so long, because he
literally had all the information. So much time had passed.
I washed my hands of the situation, felt like I
had done everything I could do.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Devon Khan had been my original source for the story
about Carmen Puliafido, but the top betterers at the La
Times cut him.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
From the story.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
The reporters Me, Harriet Ryan, Matt Hamilton, Sarah Parveni, and
Adam Mawarack are furious. We're talking about keeping our bylines
off the story, but that would just give the editors
an excuse.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Not to publish.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Devin had told me from the start that he needed
to remain anonymous. Now it seems like the editors are
looking for any pretext to cut him. For one thing,
they argue that I don't have a phone record to
prove this person actually called the office of USC President
Max Takias.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
I know I can get that record from.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Devon within hours, but he's just about had enough.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
I'm really kind of getting kicked off with him, actually,
because he's asking me questions that he's already asked me
numerous times at the time, like, hey man, I've given
you everything I could possibly give you what is this?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Devon sends me the record of his six minute phone
call to the office of Maxakias.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
This seals the deal.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
The editors who are foot dragging on the story, Davon Maharaj,
Mark Duvason and Matt Dorig, they can't say we don't
have overwhelming evidence to support the anonymous whistleblowers claims, but
their delays continue. So I decide to do something I've
never done in my forty years in journalism, something that
(01:47):
will cause even more trouble than a secret reporting to you.
I decide to go to HR. My name is Paul Pringle,
and this is Fallen Angels. This is a story of
an investigation that starts in a hotel room in Pasading
to California and reaches all the way to the top
of two of the most powerful institutions in the city
(02:09):
of Los Angeles. This is episode seven, publication day. It's
June twenty seventeen, more than a year since the incident
at the hotel Constance, and four months since Davon Maharaj
(02:32):
killed the story, and there are real stakes to more delays.
The Warrens are afraid that Pulliofido could burst back into
their lives at any moment and jeopardize Sarah's sobriety. I'm
angry all the time. I go to bed angry and
wake up angry. It gets to the point that even
my family can't take it anymore. My daughter finally says,
(02:53):
if you're so angry, why don't you do something about it?
So a day or two later, I file a formal
complaint with the Times office about the actions of the
top editors for many months, I write, Davon and Mark
unconscionably delayed publication of my reporting on a dangerous drug
abusing former dean of USC's medical school. The head of
(03:14):
publishing refers me to Cindy Ballard, the director of HR
for Trunk Media, the company that owns the La Times.
We meet and she takes my claim seriously. She calls
in my fellow reporters as well.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
I went in and I sat down at this little desk,
and Cindy Ballard was at the desk.
Speaker 5 (03:30):
She seemed very like competent and like a nice person.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Reporter Harriet Ryan and I.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
Remember she was eating this like giant panini. I don't
know she ate it through my whole interview, even when
she was like patting me on the hand. She was
just like real aggressive, like let's go, let's get to
the bottom of this, and like she had so many
appointments that she was eating the panini because she wasn't
taking lunch. I knew a lot of stuff about what
happened with Puliafito, but like I saw all this other
(03:56):
stuff that had happened before. And when she he ask
me what happened with this other story of the popsy story,
I mean I literally got like two sentences out and
I just started crying because like it was so fucked up,
and like nobody ever acknowledged it, And here was like
a person in power saying like Okay, that's not okay.
(04:17):
Nobody should speak to you that way.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Meanwhile, Mark Duvason continues to try to undermine our story.
He now says, we can't report that Pulliofido uses drugs
on a regular basis, despite the fact that we have
three on the record sources confirming that he does, and
we have photos and videos that show him literally using
drugs and admitting to it on camera. We point this
(04:41):
out to Mark, not that we should have needed to,
and he doesn't budge. Then a couple of days before
we're scheduled to finally publish, Mark goes back into the
story and deletes all but one of the references to
Pulliafido supplying drugs to other people. The fact that he
gave other people drugs is the worst of the allegations
against Pulliafida and the most legally damaging to his employer USC.
(05:06):
When we protest, Mark claims that's the advice of the
paper's internal legal counsel. But when I asked the lawyer,
he says Mark hat approached him and asked him to
come up with, quote, the most conservative version of the
story possible. Our editors don't care how well we've nailed
this down. By this point, it's too clear that if
this story is going to be published at all, it'll
(05:26):
have to be this watered down version, one that skips
over most of Puliafido's own drug use and says next
to nothing about him supplying drugs to other people, including
seventeen year old Charles Warren. Finally, July seventeenth, we publish,
and everything explodes.
Speaker 6 (05:57):
A former dean at USC is now to a drug
overdose with his alleged prostitute girlfriend. He was the dean
of the university's School of Medicine until he resigned last year.
Speaker 7 (06:09):
Now his secret life is being revealed that don plan involvement.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
That CBS affiliate in Sacramento is just one of many
news outlets from California to Japan to the UK that
pick up the story of the hard partying dean of
the medical school at USC.
Speaker 8 (06:25):
I remember not sleeping the night before and just like
sweating in my bed.
Speaker 5 (06:30):
It felt like just a relief that it was out.
Speaker 8 (06:31):
There, Matt Hamilton, something that was known to only a
few people internally was now suddenly public. I had no
concept of what the reaction would be. I knew it
would be shocking to people, but I didn't anticipate. I
didn't know where it would lead us.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
The reaction of CBS Sacramento was fairly typical. People are
stunned by the news.
Speaker 9 (06:56):
Andel.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
This is nothing short of remarkable.
Speaker 10 (06:58):
These allegations very.
Speaker 11 (06:59):
Shocking stuf hear you, guys. And the dark side of
this dean did come to light following an overdose by
an alleged prostitute in his presence. In a report by
The La Times, the woman claims the world renowned doctor
paid for her living expenses, bought her drugs.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
And devon khn. It's been a very long road. It's
his information that got this story started.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
I felt a sense of justice. I was also very
pleased that it was on the front page, above the fold,
which I understand is prime real estate in newspapers. There
was nothing there that would indicate that I was the
person that it given the information.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
And now US can no longer sweep it under the rug.
Speaker 12 (07:40):
We are outraged and disgusted. The first public comments from
USC President Max Nikias about a scandal at the medical school,
he revealed USC is now moving to terminate Puliaffido, and
USC has hired a former federal prosecutor to investigate who
knew what and when and why the school took no
(08:03):
action for so long.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
The k CAL nine report pretty much sums up the
crisis control going on in the office of Max to Kias.
There are layers to it. One, make it clear the
university is done with Puliafido. Two, launch an investigation into
how this could possibly have gone unchecked.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
For so long.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
What's not Inni Kiyas's statement is any concern for Sarah
Warren or the other young people Pulliafido did drugs with,
but it does offer some tender words for Puliafedo himself.
The school says, quote, we hope that Carmen receives care
and treatment that will lead him to a full recovery.
Doctor William Tierney, a professor emeritus with USC, remembers the
(08:46):
reaction among the faculty.
Speaker 13 (08:48):
That first article in the La Times.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
I mean, who could believe that?
Speaker 13 (08:53):
I mean even the picture of him with the pill
out his tongue. So Max sends a letter out to
the whole university saying I'm shocked, shocked. I so hope
he gets the counseling he needs. Really, that's like a
cardinal finding out that there's a child abuse in his
diocese and he says, I'm so amazed that you know,
(09:14):
father Smith is molesting children. I hope he gets help.
So that was kind of tone deaf.
Speaker 5 (09:25):
The day that an.
Speaker 13 (09:26):
Article came out, I called Max and he didn't talk
to me. I've never spoken to him since. I mean,
it's crazy. The one quality of a leader should be
to talk to your critics, even loving critics, and say
where have I gone wrong? And you can reject what
they say, but where have I gone wrong, but instead
(09:47):
he's stonewalled.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
USC's internal investigation might be a pr move, but the
Medical Board of California seems to want to actually get
to the truth, acting in our reporting, opens an investigation
into Puliofido. The passing A Police department faces some backlash too.
In response to our story, the city manager sends a
memo to the mayor and city council noting that the
(10:12):
article quote reflects poorly on the city and the pasading
A Police department. And now the city admits it actually
has another police recording from that incident at the hotel constance.
This one features Pullifido in conversation with a police officer
at Huntingdon Hospital where Sarah Warren was taken after she odeed.
Speaker 10 (10:30):
How do you know her family friend Ruth Dan and
you're a friend or day.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
You guys have a romantic relationship between each other.
Speaker 10 (10:38):
No, no, just friends, just friends, thinking that's probably why
he's the con turner.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
The release of this recording way after to the fact
just makes me that much more suspicious that this was
a deliberate cover up. Now the story is out and
it's an investigative coup for the La Times with a
huge readership.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Here's Matt Hamilton.
Speaker 8 (11:14):
Suddenly this like ban of five reporters who had been
kind of persona on grata were like welcomed with open
arms into Javon's office with Mark and other editors present,
and it was like the fights and conflict of the
past few months had not even happened, and that they
(11:37):
had been champions of the story all along. It was
really disorienting, actually, because suddenly the follows couldn't come fast enough.
Speaker 5 (11:46):
Suddenly, you know, where are you.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Going to take the story?
Speaker 4 (11:50):
A lot of the things that we thought were important
hadn't been in the story, and so it was like,
now this like rush to try to nail those things
down follow a bunch of tips that we.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Had Adam l. Mark.
Speaker 14 (12:04):
Mark said something like going forward, we're not going to
have five people working on this. When this story was
published and it was this massive hit, there was no
question as to having five people and even more working
on it.
Speaker 8 (12:19):
It was like, wait, did you not just live through
the last few months. It just it was really clear
that the editors were basking in the public accolades of
the story. It just seemed like they were trying to
memory a hole the last few months of contentious edits.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
But there's one person Davon and Mark haven't forgotten, Shelby grad,
the editor who supported our work for months, but they
were trying to kill the story.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
They're basically going to fire Shelby, like move him to
some job that was going to suck, and then they
were going to replace him with like one of their friends.
Me felt that he was being punished because they couldn't
really do anything to us, like what can you do
to a reporter, but like he was being punished for
having not kind of dropped the hammer on us and
not told us, like stop working on it.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
The top betteritor's treatment of Shelby doesn't play well in
the newsroom, and Cindy Ballard, the HR director, starts to
hear from many more reporters than just us, and.
Speaker 4 (13:20):
Then when other people have heard they were trying to
punish Shelby, other people started writing their own complaint letters.
I mean I remember seeing that, like people could write
letters together and the multiple people would sign them, and
the people that were in other bureaus were just like, yeah,
this has to stop. And most of the people had
not had a specific they weren't involved in the pussy,
they were involved with Uxy Hutton. They just you know,
(13:40):
heard like, finally somebody is standing up to these guys,
and I want to be a part of it.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Trunk intervenes to stop Shelby's emotion, and the pressure starts
to mount on Davon and Mark. At one pm on Monday,
August twenty first, the staffers of the La Times receive
an all company email from Tronk's CEO. It says that Davon, Maharaj,
Mark Duvasan, and Matt doug will all be leaving the paper.
Speaker 14 (14:10):
The atmosphere in the newsroom was just it was almost
like festive celebratory. You know, people were high fiving, people
were hugging each other. It was like one of the
happiest days in the newsroom I'd ever witnessed.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
I don't want to dance on their graves or anything
like that, but I felt that the way that the
Oxy Project had handled and then sc was really unprofessional,
and that it was completely defensible to show them the door.
I just thought it would never happen.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
In the email, Tronk's management doesn't say anything about the
HR investigation, or the move against Shelby or the delays
in publishing several important stories, but we do feel vindicated
and finally able to get back doing our jobs as
investigative reporters. Now, the question is what will USC's response
be to the revelations about Pulliufido. Will anyone actually be
(15:07):
held accountable?
Speaker 7 (15:17):
The State Medical Board has suspended the license of former
USC Medical School Dean Carmen Puliaffido. This is in response
to an La Times investigation that found that Puliafiedo was
regularly taking meth and other drugs with other people having
parties in hotel rooms. The Times now reports the board
is working on a final decision about whether or not
(15:38):
he will be able to continue to practice medicine at all.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
About two months after the story comes out, we break
more news. CBSLA picks up on our reporting that the
State Medical Board is suspending Pullifido's license. The Warrens believe
he should be in jail, but at least he won't
be able to treat patients. The Warren family hires celebrity
attorney Mark Gerago to represent them in a threatened lawsuit
(16:02):
against Pulliofido and USC. He tells the mer civil claim
could be worth ten million.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Dollars or more.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
The Warrens also provide USC with the images of Pulliafido's
smoking meth with Sarah. In a new statement to the faculty,
USC leadership says the images are quote extremely troubling and
we need to take serious action. The powerful US board
says nothing. Doctor Tierney is not surprised the.
Speaker 13 (16:29):
Board was really in the president's pocket. That's the classic
example of what happens to an administration under fire. Anybody
who says anything is a bad person.
Speaker 15 (16:48):
It is a privilege to be sworn into office on
the University of Southern California campus. I think President Nikias
now USC represents so much to me. It has been
like the iconic center of some of the most important
events of my life.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Jackie Lacey is a District attorney for La County in
twenty seventeen. Like a lot of powerful people in La
she's a USC alum, proud of her connection to the university,
and she has helped raise funds for the school, as
you can hear in that clip from the DA's office.
She even had her swearing in ceremony on US's campus.
The Puliafido case, along with the State Medical Board's recommendation
(17:31):
of criminal charges lands on Lacey's desk in October, but
Lacey declines to press charges. In a brief memo, prosecutors
say that quote, the current state of the case does
not establish sufficient evidence to prove the charges beyond a
reasonable doubt. It's clear to me there wasn't much of
an investigation, if any, there's no indication that authorities ever
(17:52):
searched pullia Fido's car or home for drugs, and the
DA's office abandons the case without once speaking to the warrants.
Devon con at least gets some satisfaction as far.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
As I was concerned, As long as he wasn't the dean,
as long as he wasn't in charge of the new
doctors going out into the world, that was good enough
for me.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
As for that ten million dollar lawsuit, the Garrigos firm
tells the Warrens the best it can do for them
is a settlement for one point five million, six hundred thousand,
of which goes to the firm, and it comes with
a strict non disclosure agreement. The Warrens have to agree
to never speak publicly about their experiences with Pulliaffedo and
to wipe their devices of the videos and other images
(18:40):
featuring his drug use. That's a nice deal for Pulliafido
in USC. As the weeks pass, I'm bothered by what
hasn't happened, because even though he's been stripped of his
medical license and he no longer has a big job
at USC, there's nothing stopping pull Fido from pushing drugs
(19:01):
on vulnerable people. Sarah Warren has managed to break free
of him, but in the course of our reporting, we
found other young users in his circle, and I can't
help but think about them as we learned that he
won't face any charges.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
One of those young people is Dori Yoder.
Speaker 5 (19:18):
Charles and Sarah Warren had told Paul about Dori Yoder.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
She was in that circle of people who were addicts
and users who were in a lot of the photos.
This is a woman who was raised in an Amish
household and then had come to LA to become a star.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Dora's sister, Miriam, had moved to La first. It was
a long way from the world they grew up in.
Speaker 9 (19:45):
We grew up in Pennsylvania. My parents had seven children.
I'm the oldest. We were born there and we were
part of the Yoder family. We were the second strictest
order in Pennsylvania. We didn't have running water, I mean electricity,
I mean obviously, we didn't have anything.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
We lived on a two hundred.
Speaker 9 (20:07):
Acre farm, just lived a very conservative, very hard working,
homish lifestyle until my dad decided he wanted to leave.
All seven of us left with my parents in nineteen
ninety six and I was fifteen. We then moved to
the Missouri and I lived there until I was twenty
(20:30):
three and I moved to Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Mariam and her brothers and sisters had seen firsthand what
drugs could do to people.
Speaker 9 (20:39):
So my parents became addicted to meth. We were homeless
for a while. I had to take care of all
my siblings, and my parents went to rehab and after
a couple of years they got out of rehab and
became born again Christian. At that point when they came
back from rehab is when I left for Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Dora came to LA to live with her sister. A
few years later when she was twenty three.
Speaker 9 (21:10):
Dora's life, her whole lifestyle during her teen years were
wild by people's standards who are not conservative. She was
a handful for my family. My parents suggested that she
move in with me, and honestly, I don't know why
on earth they thought that was a good idea. I
(21:30):
think they just didn't know how to control Dora, or
I think they were exhausted from her, so they sent
her out to live with me. And I was excited
at the time because I had lived here for three
years on my own, I had a good job, I
had a place for her to stay, and I wanted
her to stay with me, and Dora and I always
(21:52):
got along, so she moved in with me. She at
first worked at my hair salon. Her modeling career started
doing well. She started meeting a lot of people. She
got hired to model at parties that were private where
she would just be naked. She would only wear a
(22:15):
mask in heels and just be naked at the party
by herself at a stranger's house.
Speaker 12 (22:21):
And that's how.
Speaker 9 (22:22):
Dora started getting back into her old habits, and she
was just wild in Hollywood, and it wasn't long before
her and I were fighting all the time. I believe
it was in that period of time when she managed
to run into Carmen Puliaffido.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Dora met Carmen Puliafido through her boyfriend Ario Franco. Like
Kyle Voyd and Don Stokes, Ariel is yet another drug
user in Pulliafido's Rolodex. He's also a heroin dealer and
he's been arrested multiple times for possession.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
In photos and videos, you could see him like in
the circle with Pillifido and Sarah and you know, various
high jinks.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Julia Fido became infatuated with Ariel's girlfriend, Dora, and just
like with Sarah, he began subsidizing her life in exchange
for sex.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Harriet Ryan, she.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
Was still very beautiful at this time, very young and
stylish and beautiful, and he was like kind of underwriting
her life. And that life included like a boyfriend, but
also like a house, a rental house in a duplex
in Altadena, which is like a pretty short drive from
his mansion.
Speaker 9 (23:33):
She was living there and just she had no job,
but she lived in this house at the time that
was pretty expensive rent and she had everything that she
wanted and was paying her bills on time. I found
that to be odd, and I would go see her
and her house was always sort of messy and stuff.
(23:57):
And then she'd have a maid come clean it. And
I just never understood how she had the money to
do any of these things. And at that point, my
sister was not yet a drug addict. She was just
her usual normal self, And so I didn't press the
issue because I mean, it's Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
It didn't occur to Mariam that Pullofdo was the source
of her sister's mystery income.
Speaker 9 (24:18):
Initially, when I met Puliafedo, I didn't know what his
relationship was to my sister. I mean, for all I
knew at that moment in time, he was just an acquaintance,
or he was the landlord. I never ever would have
guessed that he had any sort of romantic affiliation with her.
Aside from his age, he just looked like a loser.
(24:41):
My sister was like a supermodel.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Dora had recently dated Hollywood director Todd Phillips. Pullofido couldn't
be further out of her league, and he certainly didn't
look like the dean of a major medical school.
Speaker 9 (24:53):
He was wearing some blues shorts and like a white
shirt that was really rumpled. It was like a button
down and it was just wrinkly, and he just looked
like weird and gross. He wouldn't look me in the eye,
he mumbled when he talked. He was very strange, and
(25:15):
Dora was like, oh, this is my friend Carmen. In
a million years, looking at this man, I would never
have believed he was the dean of USC Medical. It's insane.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Eventually, Dora told Miriam that Puliafido was paying for her lifestyle.
Speaker 9 (25:31):
She said, Oh, he just really likes me, and he's
like my other dad, and he just buys all these
things for me. And I'm like, Dora, are you sleeping
with him? She's like, ew, no, I would.
Speaker 5 (25:43):
Not do that.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Puliafido was also supplying drugs to both Dora and her
boyfriend Ariel, but at this point it was clear Dora
had a serious problem.
Speaker 9 (25:52):
The first time I discovered that she really had an
actual drug abuse problem was it had been a while
since I spoke to her. I went to her house
and her house was absolutely disgusting. Food on the stove,
overgrown with mold, piles of trash outside. My sister started
(26:16):
flaking a lot on me. When we had set up
a lunch date. I was really hard to reach her
on my phone, and I would show up at her
house and knock on the door, and I could tell
she was home, but she wouldn't answer. And at one
point she finally let me in to see her, and
she was acting strange, and that's when I noticed there
(26:37):
were needles drug needles on the floor in her house.
And it's then that I started to realize that she
wasn't just recreationally using drugs. She had a real drug
abuse problem.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Miriam called their parents, with the help of Dora's ex
boyfriend Todd, they checked her into rehab, but after three
weeks in treatment, Dora left rehab and went back to Missouri.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
It didn't last long.
Speaker 9 (27:06):
It was not long before she was a mess again,
and she decided to leave my mom's house, come back
out here and resume her life. And at that time
I did not know she was still talking to Puliaffido.
I still didn't know at that time, none of us did,
(27:28):
that he was providing her with these drugs. I realized
she was still on drugs and reached out to my
parents again.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Dora's parents brought her back to Missouri, but Miriam discovered
that Dora didn't come by herself. Puliafido had gotten on
the flight with her.
Speaker 9 (27:44):
Somehow, Dora ended up back at their house again, only
this time my parents told me that Pulliaffido was at
their house and I asked my mom. I was like, Mom,
why are you letting this man stay in your house
(28:05):
with Dora. I was like, he's giving her endless, limitless money.
She's never gonna get off drugs if she has access
to that much money. My mom was like, Oh, he's nice,
he's nice.
Speaker 12 (28:17):
I talked to him.
Speaker 9 (28:17):
He's fine, He's not. And this is my mom being
so gullible. I'm like, Mom, he's seventy years old. Dora
is like twenty five. What are you talking about?
Speaker 5 (28:29):
I was living.
Speaker 9 (28:32):
It occurred to me that there's more going on than
just an exchange of money, because he has a thing
for her that clearly he's having a sexual relationship with
her and providing her with money. I still didn't know
he was giving her drugs, and I still didn't really
know who he was. When I met Ril, I was
(28:52):
confused because I was like, wait, Dora is having some
sexual thing with Carmen. And then and I think I
confronted her at one point and she's like, it's not
like that with Carmen. Aril's my boyfriend, and Carmen just
gives us money. It just started to become so strange,
(29:12):
and I was like, is he giving you more than money?
Where are you guys getting drugs from? Because Aril was
clearly on drugs, And I just remember Dora getting really upset.
We got in a big fight and I threw up
my hands at that point and I just stopped talking
to Dora.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Dora and Polio Fido went back to LA and finally
Miriam figures out who this man is and the reason
for his hold on her sister.
Speaker 9 (29:38):
I found out shortly thereafter. I found out he's the
Dean of USC Medical. I also found out that he
was prescribing drugs to my sister while he was at
my parents' house. And I think that's when I finally
broke through to my parents.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Miriam's parents were horrified by this discovery. Pull your feet
on a no longer seemed like an old guy who's
otherwise harmless. They come out to LA to help Miriam
confront Dora about her involvement with the dean and his
connection to her drug use.
Speaker 9 (30:10):
We tried again to do an intervention with her. We
tried again to get her off of drugs. We show
up at our house and her house is just like
a fort. At this point, Puliafido is paying.
Speaker 11 (30:24):
For her house.
Speaker 9 (30:26):
The outside of her door has a biometric lock on it.
She's got cameras pointed from multiple directions to whoever shows
up at the porch. But my mom lured her to
lunch while they were out here, and she told my
mom that Puliafido tracks her, records her phone conversations, tracks
(30:50):
who she's calling, tracks her vehicle, and knows everything she does.
And so my parents started contact the police about what
was going on. My father ended up calling the Altadena
Police Department. He made several attempts, but he called them
(31:12):
to report the drug use, and specifically the carmen has
cameras on our house, that he can't get a hold
of his daughter, that he wants them to go do
a check on her. I think he did that several times,
and the Altadena police responded, but they put as little
effort as possible into the whole situation. From day one,
(31:36):
it was very clear they could care less. And so
that again left my family wondering how we're going to
solve this problem.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Months go by and the older family is still left wondering.
Like the Warrens, they just can't get this man away
from their daughter and stop him from giving her drugs.
Dora seems unreachable. Then Miriam learns that her sister was
pregnant with Ariel's child and has already had the baby.
Speaker 9 (32:05):
I found out Dora was pregnant about three weeks after
she had a baby.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
And as far as she knows, Puliafido is still in
the picture. But now the stakes are much higher.
Speaker 9 (32:18):
I was just horrified and also very lost. How do
you begin to fix a situation like this. It's hard
enough when a member of your family is a drug addict,
but add to that unlimited access to money. I mean,
how do you get them out of that situation? They
never hit rock bottom. They're under the control of the
(32:41):
person giving them the drugs and giving them the money.
Speaker 5 (32:45):
They're an adult.
Speaker 9 (32:46):
How do you get them out of this situation?
Speaker 2 (32:51):
For Miriam and her parents, it seems like the situation
could not be worse. But on the morning of October fifth, tragedy.
Speaker 13 (32:58):
Strikes Department of Hello, Yes, I'm here.
Speaker 6 (33:02):
Baby not breathing yet, Baby not breathing?
Speaker 4 (33:06):
Are you there?
Speaker 13 (33:06):
At the location right now. My girlfriend there telling us
a child three weeks three weeks old boy, but he
was just found like this place.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
Karen, I don't know you called me crying.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Davon Maharaj, Mark Duvison, and Matt Doyg 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, Matt and Harriet
launched an investigation into the death of Doriota's baby.
Speaker 8 (33:39):
It's it's not someone who's rattled, but there was something
about the call that rattled her.
Speaker 9 (33:45):
I mean, a baby doesn't just have mes in its system.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
And we get a new tip about another bad doctor
at USC.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
There's like a long pause and then the person just
opened the door and we sat down at the kitchen
table and they just laid it out.
Speaker 9 (33:59):
There were actually several all instances looking back because I realized, oh.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Everyone, n 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.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
I'm Paul Pringle.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
This show is based on my book Bad City Peril
and Power in the City of Angels. Fallen Angels was
written by Isabel Evans, Adam Pinks, and Brent Katz. Isabel
Evans is our producer, Brent Katz.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Is co producer.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Associate producers are Hanna Leebowitz Lockhart and On Paho Locke.
Executive producers are Me Paul Pringle, Joe Picarello, and Adam
Pinkas for Best Case Studios. Original music is by James Newberry.
This episode was edited by Max Michael Miller with assistants
from Nisha Venkat. Additional editings, sound design and additional music
(34:56):
by Dean White. Harriet Ryan, Matt Hamilton, Sarah ParvE and
Adam Almarik are consulting producers. Our iHeart Team is Ali
Perry and Carl Catle. Follow and rate Fallen Angels wherever
you get your podcasts
I didn't understand what was taking so long, because he
literally had all the information. So much time had passed.
I washed my hands of the situation, felt like I
had done everything I could do.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Devon Khan had been my original source for the story
about Carmen Puliafido, but the top betterers at the La
Times cut him.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
From the story.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
The reporters Me, Harriet Ryan, Matt Hamilton, Sarah Parveni, and
Adam Mawarack are furious. We're talking about keeping our bylines
off the story, but that would just give the editors
an excuse.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Not to publish.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Devin had told me from the start that he needed
to remain anonymous. Now it seems like the editors are
looking for any pretext to cut him. For one thing,
they argue that I don't have a phone record to
prove this person actually called the office of USC President
Max Takias.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
I know I can get that record from.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Devon within hours, but he's just about had enough.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
I'm really kind of getting kicked off with him, actually,
because he's asking me questions that he's already asked me
numerous times at the time, like, hey man, I've given
you everything I could possibly give you what is this?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Devon sends me the record of his six minute phone
call to the office of Maxakias.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
This seals the deal.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
The editors who are foot dragging on the story, Davon Maharaj,
Mark Duvason and Matt Dorig, they can't say we don't
have overwhelming evidence to support the anonymous whistleblowers claims, but
their delays continue. So I decide to do something I've
never done in my forty years in journalism, something that
(01:47):
will cause even more trouble than a secret reporting to you.
I decide to go to HR. My name is Paul Pringle,
and this is Fallen Angels. This is a story of
an investigation that starts in a hotel room in Pasading
to California and reaches all the way to the top
of two of the most powerful institutions in the city
(02:09):
of Los Angeles. This is episode seven, publication day. It's
June twenty seventeen, more than a year since the incident
at the hotel Constance, and four months since Davon Maharaj
(02:32):
killed the story, and there are real stakes to more delays.
The Warrens are afraid that Pulliofido could burst back into
their lives at any moment and jeopardize Sarah's sobriety. I'm
angry all the time. I go to bed angry and
wake up angry. It gets to the point that even
my family can't take it anymore. My daughter finally says,
(02:53):
if you're so angry, why don't you do something about it?
So a day or two later, I file a formal
complaint with the Times office about the actions of the
top editors for many months, I write, Davon and Mark
unconscionably delayed publication of my reporting on a dangerous drug
abusing former dean of USC's medical school. The head of
(03:14):
publishing refers me to Cindy Ballard, the director of HR
for Trunk Media, the company that owns the La Times.
We meet and she takes my claim seriously. She calls
in my fellow reporters as well.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
I went in and I sat down at this little desk,
and Cindy Ballard was at the desk.
Speaker 5 (03:30):
She seemed very like competent and like a nice person.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Reporter Harriet Ryan and I.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
Remember she was eating this like giant panini. I don't
know she ate it through my whole interview, even when
she was like patting me on the hand. She was
just like real aggressive, like let's go, let's get to
the bottom of this, and like she had so many
appointments that she was eating the panini because she wasn't
taking lunch. I knew a lot of stuff about what
happened with Puliafito, but like I saw all this other
(03:56):
stuff that had happened before. And when she he ask
me what happened with this other story of the popsy story,
I mean I literally got like two sentences out and
I just started crying because like it was so fucked up,
and like nobody ever acknowledged it, And here was like
a person in power saying like Okay, that's not okay.
(04:17):
Nobody should speak to you that way.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Meanwhile, Mark Duvason continues to try to undermine our story.
He now says, we can't report that Pulliofido uses drugs
on a regular basis, despite the fact that we have
three on the record sources confirming that he does, and
we have photos and videos that show him literally using
drugs and admitting to it on camera. We point this
(04:41):
out to Mark, not that we should have needed to,
and he doesn't budge. Then a couple of days before
we're scheduled to finally publish, Mark goes back into the
story and deletes all but one of the references to
Pulliafido supplying drugs to other people. The fact that he
gave other people drugs is the worst of the allegations
against Pulliafida and the most legally damaging to his employer USC.
(05:06):
When we protest, Mark claims that's the advice of the
paper's internal legal counsel. But when I asked the lawyer,
he says Mark hat approached him and asked him to
come up with, quote, the most conservative version of the
story possible. Our editors don't care how well we've nailed
this down. By this point, it's too clear that if
this story is going to be published at all, it'll
(05:26):
have to be this watered down version, one that skips
over most of Puliafido's own drug use and says next
to nothing about him supplying drugs to other people, including
seventeen year old Charles Warren. Finally, July seventeenth, we publish,
and everything explodes.
Speaker 6 (05:57):
A former dean at USC is now to a drug
overdose with his alleged prostitute girlfriend. He was the dean
of the university's School of Medicine until he resigned last year.
Speaker 7 (06:09):
Now his secret life is being revealed that don plan involvement.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
That CBS affiliate in Sacramento is just one of many
news outlets from California to Japan to the UK that
pick up the story of the hard partying dean of
the medical school at USC.
Speaker 8 (06:25):
I remember not sleeping the night before and just like
sweating in my bed.
Speaker 5 (06:30):
It felt like just a relief that it was out.
Speaker 8 (06:31):
There, Matt Hamilton, something that was known to only a
few people internally was now suddenly public. I had no
concept of what the reaction would be. I knew it
would be shocking to people, but I didn't anticipate. I
didn't know where it would lead us.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
The reaction of CBS Sacramento was fairly typical. People are
stunned by the news.
Speaker 9 (06:56):
Andel.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
This is nothing short of remarkable.
Speaker 10 (06:58):
These allegations very.
Speaker 11 (06:59):
Shocking stuf hear you, guys. And the dark side of
this dean did come to light following an overdose by
an alleged prostitute in his presence. In a report by
The La Times, the woman claims the world renowned doctor
paid for her living expenses, bought her drugs.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
And devon khn. It's been a very long road. It's
his information that got this story started.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
I felt a sense of justice. I was also very
pleased that it was on the front page, above the fold,
which I understand is prime real estate in newspapers. There
was nothing there that would indicate that I was the
person that it given the information.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
And now US can no longer sweep it under the rug.
Speaker 12 (07:40):
We are outraged and disgusted. The first public comments from
USC President Max Nikias about a scandal at the medical school,
he revealed USC is now moving to terminate Puliaffido, and
USC has hired a former federal prosecutor to investigate who
knew what and when and why the school took no
(08:03):
action for so long.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
The k CAL nine report pretty much sums up the
crisis control going on in the office of Max to Kias.
There are layers to it. One, make it clear the
university is done with Puliafido. Two, launch an investigation into
how this could possibly have gone unchecked.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
For so long.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
What's not Inni Kiyas's statement is any concern for Sarah
Warren or the other young people Pulliafido did drugs with,
but it does offer some tender words for Puliafedo himself.
The school says, quote, we hope that Carmen receives care
and treatment that will lead him to a full recovery.
Doctor William Tierney, a professor emeritus with USC, remembers the
(08:46):
reaction among the faculty.
Speaker 13 (08:48):
That first article in the La Times.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
I mean, who could believe that?
Speaker 13 (08:53):
I mean even the picture of him with the pill
out his tongue. So Max sends a letter out to
the whole university saying I'm shocked, shocked. I so hope
he gets the counseling he needs. Really, that's like a
cardinal finding out that there's a child abuse in his
diocese and he says, I'm so amazed that you know,
(09:14):
father Smith is molesting children. I hope he gets help.
So that was kind of tone deaf.
Speaker 5 (09:25):
The day that an.
Speaker 13 (09:26):
Article came out, I called Max and he didn't talk
to me. I've never spoken to him since. I mean,
it's crazy. The one quality of a leader should be
to talk to your critics, even loving critics, and say
where have I gone wrong? And you can reject what
they say, but where have I gone wrong, but instead
(09:47):
he's stonewalled.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
USC's internal investigation might be a pr move, but the
Medical Board of California seems to want to actually get
to the truth, acting in our reporting, opens an investigation
into Puliofido. The passing A Police department faces some backlash too.
In response to our story, the city manager sends a
memo to the mayor and city council noting that the
(10:12):
article quote reflects poorly on the city and the pasading
A Police department. And now the city admits it actually
has another police recording from that incident at the hotel constance.
This one features Pullifido in conversation with a police officer
at Huntingdon Hospital where Sarah Warren was taken after she odeed.
Speaker 10 (10:30):
How do you know her family friend Ruth Dan and
you're a friend or day.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
You guys have a romantic relationship between each other.
Speaker 10 (10:38):
No, no, just friends, just friends, thinking that's probably why
he's the con turner.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
The release of this recording way after to the fact
just makes me that much more suspicious that this was
a deliberate cover up. Now the story is out and
it's an investigative coup for the La Times with a
huge readership.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Here's Matt Hamilton.
Speaker 8 (11:14):
Suddenly this like ban of five reporters who had been
kind of persona on grata were like welcomed with open
arms into Javon's office with Mark and other editors present,
and it was like the fights and conflict of the
past few months had not even happened, and that they
(11:37):
had been champions of the story all along. It was
really disorienting, actually, because suddenly the follows couldn't come fast enough.
Speaker 5 (11:46):
Suddenly, you know, where are you.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Going to take the story?
Speaker 4 (11:50):
A lot of the things that we thought were important
hadn't been in the story, and so it was like,
now this like rush to try to nail those things
down follow a bunch of tips that we.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Had Adam l. Mark.
Speaker 14 (12:04):
Mark said something like going forward, we're not going to
have five people working on this. When this story was
published and it was this massive hit, there was no
question as to having five people and even more working
on it.
Speaker 8 (12:19):
It was like, wait, did you not just live through
the last few months. It just it was really clear
that the editors were basking in the public accolades of
the story. It just seemed like they were trying to
memory a hole the last few months of contentious edits.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
But there's one person Davon and Mark haven't forgotten, Shelby grad,
the editor who supported our work for months, but they
were trying to kill the story.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
They're basically going to fire Shelby, like move him to
some job that was going to suck, and then they
were going to replace him with like one of their friends.
Me felt that he was being punished because they couldn't
really do anything to us, like what can you do
to a reporter, but like he was being punished for
having not kind of dropped the hammer on us and
not told us, like stop working on it.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
The top betteritor's treatment of Shelby doesn't play well in
the newsroom, and Cindy Ballard, the HR director, starts to
hear from many more reporters than just us, and.
Speaker 4 (13:20):
Then when other people have heard they were trying to
punish Shelby, other people started writing their own complaint letters.
I mean I remember seeing that, like people could write
letters together and the multiple people would sign them, and
the people that were in other bureaus were just like, yeah,
this has to stop. And most of the people had
not had a specific they weren't involved in the pussy,
they were involved with Uxy Hutton. They just you know,
(13:40):
heard like, finally somebody is standing up to these guys,
and I want to be a part of it.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Trunk intervenes to stop Shelby's emotion, and the pressure starts
to mount on Davon and Mark. At one pm on Monday,
August twenty first, the staffers of the La Times receive
an all company email from Tronk's CEO. It says that Davon, Maharaj,
Mark Duvasan, and Matt doug will all be leaving the paper.
Speaker 14 (14:10):
The atmosphere in the newsroom was just it was almost
like festive celebratory. You know, people were high fiving, people
were hugging each other. It was like one of the
happiest days in the newsroom I'd ever witnessed.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
I don't want to dance on their graves or anything
like that, but I felt that the way that the
Oxy Project had handled and then sc was really unprofessional,
and that it was completely defensible to show them the door.
I just thought it would never happen.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
In the email, Tronk's management doesn't say anything about the
HR investigation, or the move against Shelby or the delays
in publishing several important stories, but we do feel vindicated
and finally able to get back doing our jobs as
investigative reporters. Now, the question is what will USC's response
be to the revelations about Pulliufido. Will anyone actually be
(15:07):
held accountable?
Speaker 7 (15:17):
The State Medical Board has suspended the license of former
USC Medical School Dean Carmen Puliaffido. This is in response
to an La Times investigation that found that Puliafiedo was
regularly taking meth and other drugs with other people having
parties in hotel rooms. The Times now reports the board
is working on a final decision about whether or not
(15:38):
he will be able to continue to practice medicine at all.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
About two months after the story comes out, we break
more news. CBSLA picks up on our reporting that the
State Medical Board is suspending Pullifido's license. The Warrens believe
he should be in jail, but at least he won't
be able to treat patients. The Warren family hires celebrity
attorney Mark Gerago to represent them in a threatened lawsuit
(16:02):
against Pulliofido and USC. He tells the mer civil claim
could be worth ten million.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Dollars or more.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
The Warrens also provide USC with the images of Pulliafido's
smoking meth with Sarah. In a new statement to the faculty,
USC leadership says the images are quote extremely troubling and
we need to take serious action. The powerful US board
says nothing. Doctor Tierney is not surprised the.
Speaker 13 (16:29):
Board was really in the president's pocket. That's the classic
example of what happens to an administration under fire. Anybody
who says anything is a bad person.
Speaker 15 (16:48):
It is a privilege to be sworn into office on
the University of Southern California campus. I think President Nikias
now USC represents so much to me. It has been
like the iconic center of some of the most important
events of my life.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Jackie Lacey is a District attorney for La County in
twenty seventeen. Like a lot of powerful people in La
she's a USC alum, proud of her connection to the university,
and she has helped raise funds for the school, as
you can hear in that clip from the DA's office.
She even had her swearing in ceremony on US's campus.
The Puliafido case, along with the State Medical Board's recommendation
(17:31):
of criminal charges lands on Lacey's desk in October, but
Lacey declines to press charges. In a brief memo, prosecutors
say that quote, the current state of the case does
not establish sufficient evidence to prove the charges beyond a
reasonable doubt. It's clear to me there wasn't much of
an investigation, if any, there's no indication that authorities ever
(17:52):
searched pullia Fido's car or home for drugs, and the
DA's office abandons the case without once speaking to the warrants.
Devon con at least gets some satisfaction as far.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
As I was concerned, As long as he wasn't the dean,
as long as he wasn't in charge of the new
doctors going out into the world, that was good enough
for me.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
As for that ten million dollar lawsuit, the Garrigos firm
tells the Warrens the best it can do for them
is a settlement for one point five million, six hundred thousand,
of which goes to the firm, and it comes with
a strict non disclosure agreement. The Warrens have to agree
to never speak publicly about their experiences with Pulliaffedo and
to wipe their devices of the videos and other images
(18:40):
featuring his drug use. That's a nice deal for Pulliafido
in USC. As the weeks pass, I'm bothered by what
hasn't happened, because even though he's been stripped of his
medical license and he no longer has a big job
at USC, there's nothing stopping pull Fido from pushing drugs
(19:01):
on vulnerable people. Sarah Warren has managed to break free
of him, but in the course of our reporting, we
found other young users in his circle, and I can't
help but think about them as we learned that he
won't face any charges.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
One of those young people is Dori Yoder.
Speaker 5 (19:18):
Charles and Sarah Warren had told Paul about Dori Yoder.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
She was in that circle of people who were addicts
and users who were in a lot of the photos.
This is a woman who was raised in an Amish
household and then had come to LA to become a star.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Dora's sister, Miriam, had moved to La first. It was
a long way from the world they grew up in.
Speaker 9 (19:45):
We grew up in Pennsylvania. My parents had seven children.
I'm the oldest. We were born there and we were
part of the Yoder family. We were the second strictest
order in Pennsylvania. We didn't have running water, I mean electricity,
I mean obviously, we didn't have anything.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
We lived on a two hundred.
Speaker 9 (20:07):
Acre farm, just lived a very conservative, very hard working,
homish lifestyle until my dad decided he wanted to leave.
All seven of us left with my parents in nineteen
ninety six and I was fifteen. We then moved to
the Missouri and I lived there until I was twenty
(20:30):
three and I moved to Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Mariam and her brothers and sisters had seen firsthand what
drugs could do to people.
Speaker 9 (20:39):
So my parents became addicted to meth. We were homeless
for a while. I had to take care of all
my siblings, and my parents went to rehab and after
a couple of years they got out of rehab and
became born again Christian. At that point when they came
back from rehab is when I left for Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Dora came to LA to live with her sister. A
few years later when she was twenty three.
Speaker 9 (21:10):
Dora's life, her whole lifestyle during her teen years were
wild by people's standards who are not conservative. She was
a handful for my family. My parents suggested that she
move in with me, and honestly, I don't know why
on earth they thought that was a good idea. I
(21:30):
think they just didn't know how to control Dora, or
I think they were exhausted from her, so they sent
her out to live with me. And I was excited
at the time because I had lived here for three
years on my own, I had a good job, I
had a place for her to stay, and I wanted
her to stay with me, and Dora and I always
(21:52):
got along, so she moved in with me. She at
first worked at my hair salon. Her modeling career started
doing well. She started meeting a lot of people. She
got hired to model at parties that were private where
she would just be naked. She would only wear a
(22:15):
mask in heels and just be naked at the party
by herself at a stranger's house.
Speaker 12 (22:21):
And that's how.
Speaker 9 (22:22):
Dora started getting back into her old habits, and she
was just wild in Hollywood, and it wasn't long before
her and I were fighting all the time. I believe
it was in that period of time when she managed
to run into Carmen Puliaffido.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Dora met Carmen Puliafido through her boyfriend Ario Franco. Like
Kyle Voyd and Don Stokes, Ariel is yet another drug
user in Pulliafido's Rolodex. He's also a heroin dealer and
he's been arrested multiple times for possession.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
In photos and videos, you could see him like in
the circle with Pillifido and Sarah and you know, various
high jinks.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Julia Fido became infatuated with Ariel's girlfriend, Dora, and just
like with Sarah, he began subsidizing her life in exchange
for sex.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Harriet Ryan, she.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
Was still very beautiful at this time, very young and
stylish and beautiful, and he was like kind of underwriting
her life. And that life included like a boyfriend, but
also like a house, a rental house in a duplex
in Altadena, which is like a pretty short drive from
his mansion.
Speaker 9 (23:33):
She was living there and just she had no job,
but she lived in this house at the time that
was pretty expensive rent and she had everything that she
wanted and was paying her bills on time. I found
that to be odd, and I would go see her
and her house was always sort of messy and stuff.
(23:57):
And then she'd have a maid come clean it. And
I just never understood how she had the money to
do any of these things. And at that point, my
sister was not yet a drug addict. She was just
her usual normal self, And so I didn't press the
issue because I mean, it's Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
It didn't occur to Mariam that Pullofdo was the source
of her sister's mystery income.
Speaker 9 (24:18):
Initially, when I met Puliafedo, I didn't know what his
relationship was to my sister. I mean, for all I
knew at that moment in time, he was just an acquaintance,
or he was the landlord. I never ever would have
guessed that he had any sort of romantic affiliation with her.
Aside from his age, he just looked like a loser.
(24:41):
My sister was like a supermodel.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Dora had recently dated Hollywood director Todd Phillips. Pullofido couldn't
be further out of her league, and he certainly didn't
look like the dean of a major medical school.
Speaker 9 (24:53):
He was wearing some blues shorts and like a white
shirt that was really rumpled. It was like a button
down and it was just wrinkly, and he just looked
like weird and gross. He wouldn't look me in the eye,
he mumbled when he talked. He was very strange, and
(25:15):
Dora was like, oh, this is my friend Carmen. In
a million years, looking at this man, I would never
have believed he was the dean of USC Medical. It's insane.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Eventually, Dora told Miriam that Puliafido was paying for her lifestyle.
Speaker 9 (25:31):
She said, Oh, he just really likes me, and he's
like my other dad, and he just buys all these
things for me. And I'm like, Dora, are you sleeping
with him? She's like, ew, no, I would.
Speaker 5 (25:43):
Not do that.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Puliafido was also supplying drugs to both Dora and her
boyfriend Ariel, but at this point it was clear Dora
had a serious problem.
Speaker 9 (25:52):
The first time I discovered that she really had an
actual drug abuse problem was it had been a while
since I spoke to her. I went to her house
and her house was absolutely disgusting. Food on the stove,
overgrown with mold, piles of trash outside. My sister started
(26:16):
flaking a lot on me. When we had set up
a lunch date. I was really hard to reach her
on my phone, and I would show up at her
house and knock on the door, and I could tell
she was home, but she wouldn't answer. And at one
point she finally let me in to see her, and
she was acting strange, and that's when I noticed there
(26:37):
were needles drug needles on the floor in her house.
And it's then that I started to realize that she
wasn't just recreationally using drugs. She had a real drug
abuse problem.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Miriam called their parents, with the help of Dora's ex
boyfriend Todd, they checked her into rehab, but after three
weeks in treatment, Dora left rehab and went back to Missouri.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
It didn't last long.
Speaker 9 (27:06):
It was not long before she was a mess again,
and she decided to leave my mom's house, come back
out here and resume her life. And at that time
I did not know she was still talking to Puliaffido.
I still didn't know at that time, none of us did,
(27:28):
that he was providing her with these drugs. I realized
she was still on drugs and reached out to my
parents again.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Dora's parents brought her back to Missouri, but Miriam discovered
that Dora didn't come by herself. Puliafido had gotten on
the flight with her.
Speaker 9 (27:44):
Somehow, Dora ended up back at their house again, only
this time my parents told me that Pulliaffido was at
their house and I asked my mom. I was like, Mom,
why are you letting this man stay in your house
(28:05):
with Dora. I was like, he's giving her endless, limitless money.
She's never gonna get off drugs if she has access
to that much money. My mom was like, Oh, he's nice,
he's nice.
Speaker 12 (28:17):
I talked to him.
Speaker 9 (28:17):
He's fine, He's not. And this is my mom being
so gullible. I'm like, Mom, he's seventy years old. Dora
is like twenty five. What are you talking about?
Speaker 5 (28:29):
I was living.
Speaker 9 (28:32):
It occurred to me that there's more going on than
just an exchange of money, because he has a thing
for her that clearly he's having a sexual relationship with
her and providing her with money. I still didn't know
he was giving her drugs, and I still didn't really
know who he was. When I met Ril, I was
(28:52):
confused because I was like, wait, Dora is having some
sexual thing with Carmen. And then and I think I
confronted her at one point and she's like, it's not
like that with Carmen. Aril's my boyfriend, and Carmen just
gives us money. It just started to become so strange,
(29:12):
and I was like, is he giving you more than money?
Where are you guys getting drugs from? Because Aril was
clearly on drugs, And I just remember Dora getting really upset.
We got in a big fight and I threw up
my hands at that point and I just stopped talking
to Dora.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Dora and Polio Fido went back to LA and finally
Miriam figures out who this man is and the reason
for his hold on her sister.
Speaker 9 (29:38):
I found out shortly thereafter. I found out he's the
Dean of USC Medical. I also found out that he
was prescribing drugs to my sister while he was at
my parents' house. And I think that's when I finally
broke through to my parents.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Miriam's parents were horrified by this discovery. Pull your feet
on a no longer seemed like an old guy who's
otherwise harmless. They come out to LA to help Miriam
confront Dora about her involvement with the dean and his
connection to her drug use.
Speaker 9 (30:10):
We tried again to do an intervention with her. We
tried again to get her off of drugs. We show
up at our house and her house is just like
a fort. At this point, Puliafido is paying.
Speaker 11 (30:24):
For her house.
Speaker 9 (30:26):
The outside of her door has a biometric lock on it.
She's got cameras pointed from multiple directions to whoever shows
up at the porch. But my mom lured her to
lunch while they were out here, and she told my
mom that Puliafido tracks her, records her phone conversations, tracks
(30:50):
who she's calling, tracks her vehicle, and knows everything she does.
And so my parents started contact the police about what
was going on. My father ended up calling the Altadena
Police Department. He made several attempts, but he called them
(31:12):
to report the drug use, and specifically the carmen has
cameras on our house, that he can't get a hold
of his daughter, that he wants them to go do
a check on her. I think he did that several times,
and the Altadena police responded, but they put as little
effort as possible into the whole situation. From day one,
(31:36):
it was very clear they could care less. And so
that again left my family wondering how we're going to
solve this problem.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Months go by and the older family is still left wondering.
Like the Warrens, they just can't get this man away
from their daughter and stop him from giving her drugs.
Dora seems unreachable. Then Miriam learns that her sister was
pregnant with Ariel's child and has already had the baby.
Speaker 9 (32:05):
I found out Dora was pregnant about three weeks after
she had a baby.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
And as far as she knows, Puliafido is still in
the picture. But now the stakes are much higher.
Speaker 9 (32:18):
I was just horrified and also very lost. How do
you begin to fix a situation like this. It's hard
enough when a member of your family is a drug addict,
but add to that unlimited access to money. I mean,
how do you get them out of that situation? They
never hit rock bottom. They're under the control of the
(32:41):
person giving them the drugs and giving them the money.
Speaker 5 (32:45):
They're an adult.
Speaker 9 (32:46):
How do you get them out of this situation?
Speaker 2 (32:51):
For Miriam and her parents, it seems like the situation
could not be worse. But on the morning of October fifth, tragedy.
Speaker 13 (32:58):
Strikes Department of Hello, Yes, I'm here.
Speaker 6 (33:02):
Baby not breathing yet, Baby not breathing?
Speaker 4 (33:06):
Are you there?
Speaker 13 (33:06):
At the location right now. My girlfriend there telling us
a child three weeks three weeks old boy, but he
was just found like this place.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
Karen, I don't know you called me crying.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Davon Maharaj, Mark Duvison, and Matt Doyg 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, Matt and Harriet
launched an investigation into the death of Doriota's baby.
Speaker 8 (33:39):
It's it's not someone who's rattled, but there was something
about the call that rattled her.
Speaker 9 (33:45):
I mean, a baby doesn't just have mes in its system.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
And we get a new tip about another bad doctor
at USC.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
There's like a long pause and then the person just
opened the door and we sat down at the kitchen
table and they just laid it out.
Speaker 9 (33:59):
There were actually several all instances looking back because I realized, oh.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Everyone, n 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.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
I'm Paul Pringle.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
This show is based on my book Bad City Peril
and Power in the City of Angels. Fallen Angels was
written by Isabel Evans, Adam Pinks, and Brent Katz. Isabel
Evans is our producer, Brent Katz.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Is co producer.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Associate producers are Hanna Leebowitz Lockhart and On Paho Locke.
Executive producers are Me Paul Pringle, Joe Picarello, and Adam
Pinkas for Best Case Studios. Original music is by James Newberry.
This episode was edited by Max Michael Miller with assistants
from Nisha Venkat. Additional editings, sound design and additional music
(34:56):
by Dean White. Harriet Ryan, Matt Hamilton, Sarah ParvE and
Adam Almarik are consulting producers. Our iHeart Team is Ali
Perry and Carl Catle. Follow and rate Fallen Angels wherever
you get your podcasts
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