Fifteen years ago the contents of Paris Hilton’s storage locker were leaked online – here’s what was inside.
On August 4th, 2004, Paris & Nicky Hilton were robbed.
The perp, who apparently entered the girls’ Hollywood Hills home by cutting through a screen, got away with a laptop, cash, and more than $100,000 in jewelry. Also missing: several designer bags, a collection of watches, photographs and videotapes. The Post reported at the time that Paris was being blackmailed to keep one tape away from the public. The Globe claimed she was paying as much as $20,000 a month.
While no one was ever charged for the Hilton break-in, the case was initially linked to a series of other celebrity burglaries committed by a man who the police dubbed the “Bel-Air Burglar,” a thief rumored to have been responsible for the robberies of countless stars, including Hilton’s childhood pal Casey Johnson and Malcolm & The Middle’s Frankie Muniz.
The Hollywood rumor mill churned up a more interesting connection, however.
Seven months before the Hilton case Paris’ ex-boyfriend Joe Francis was the victim of a similar crime… but far more twisted.
On January 22nd, 2004, a man entered the Girls Gone Wild kingpin’s Bel Air mansion, and while held at gunpoint, Francis was allegedly videotaped being penetrated by a pink vibrator, pants around his knees, as he mumbled to the camera, “My name is Joe Francis. I’m from Boys Gone Wild, and I like it up the ass.” After several minutes, the grainy tape came to a close and the assailant treated himself to Francis’ Rolex, a Sony video camera, a painting, some Louis Vuitton luggage, and $1,500 in cash, before packing up the stash and driving off in Francis’ Bentley… with Joe bound and gagged in the trunk. The car was left at the gates of Bel Air, where a disheveled Francis was later discovered by security.
It would be over a year before Francis’ assailant would be arrested, and the one responsible would be none other than his ex-girlfriend Paris.
During the 15 months between the break-in and his arrest, the auteur behind the Francis tape, Darnell Riley, would try to extort Francis first for $100,000, then $300,000 and $500,000. That December, after hearing about Riley’s involvement in the Francis break-in during a party, Paris tipped off her ex-boyfriend and the following March Joe identified his attacker in a lineup, but Paris’ involvement in the Francis case would extend far beyond a friendly tip.
Somehow, Francis’ attacker was also in possession of the alleged 12 hours of videotape stolen from Hilton’s home that August. These videos reportedly featured hours of Paris’ sexual escapades with ex-boyfriends Nick Carter and model Jason Shaw, in addition to numerous videos of her using drugs, and the most damaging of them all: a tape in which Hilton calls two black men “dumb n****rs” behind their backs at a nightclub.
While Paris claimed her connection to Riley was nonexistent, and testified during his trial that she never paid her blackmailers a penny, his number would still be found in her sidekick and Riley’s mother Azline Washington even claimed that he was at the Hilton family home a week before his arrest.
As for the 12-hour video marathon, it would eventually surface without Riley’s help… in a scandal inadvertently caused by that same 2004 break-in.
A month before Paris tipped off her ex-boyfriend as to the identity of his attacker, she & Nicky packed their bags and moved out of their ransacked Hollywood pad to a new abode above the Sunset Strip – the home Paris would later be led out of in cuffs less than three years later. During the moving process, the sisters left their personal belongings in a storage locker nearby.
Exactly a year after their move, the 6,000 sq. ft. North Hollywood storage unit would hit the auction block after the scandal-prone heiress forgot to pay a $208 bill.
Hilton would later claim in court papers that she paid for the locker through her moving company, but the movers didn’t make the payments on time and never informed her when her payments were overdue, hence the foreclosure sale in November 2005. For $2,775, the treasure trove of Hiltonabilia would end up in the hands of Nabil & Nabila Haniss, a future star of the reality show Storage Wars.
When Paris caught wind of the sale, she was far from pleased. Her reaction is documented in the cinematic tour-de-force Paris, Not France – a staple of modern documentary filmmaking.
Despite her anger, when Nabila Haniss’ pal and broker David Hans Schmidt, a celebrity porn pusher nicknamed “The Sultan of Sleaze” due to his involvement in nude scandals ranging from Scott Peterson’s mistress to Colin Farrell, waited in line to meet Hilton at the Macy’s Herald Square launch of her fragrance Heiress in June 2006, Paris was all smiles. When he handed her a G-Rated collectible from her storage stash, she asked who to make it out to, to which he responded: “Make it out to, ‘The guy who has my storage locker stuff.’” She diplomatically signed the photo, “To David, Love Paris Hilton xoxo” and arranged to meet up with him back in Los Angeles to discuss buying back her belongings.
A deal, however, never came to fruition.
After pitching the Hilton loot to various tabloids in the U.S. and Europe, all of whom wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole, deeming it “too risque,” Haniss – with Schmidt’s help – brokered a whopping $10 million deal with a mysterious self-proclaimed entrepreneur named Bardia Persa later that year. Haniss’ attorney later claimed in court that the exchange went down like a movie: Persa handed the many millions in cash to Nabila, and she handed him the bag filled with Hilton’s belongings.
After the deal, all was quiet on the Hilton front until January 23rd, 2007 the day a website aptly titled Paris Exposed went live.
The existence of ParisExposed.com was first reported by The Smoking Gun, and the rest of the Internet quickly followed suit. For $39.97 a month, those interested in taking an uncensored look into the life of Paris could dig through the now-digitized treasure trove so what exactly was in that storage locker?
Paris’ prescription for the painkiller Hydrocodone
Some Brit-abilia lol
For some reason she had Nicole’s University of Arizona CatCard
A tape of Nicole licking cocaine off of a plate and throwing water on a girl at a club.
Some numbers from Paris’ black book – including Britney’s, Xtina’s, Brandy’s, Kris Jenner & many more.
Some pages from A love book to ex boyfriend Jason Shaw she wrote in
She also had some homemade sex tapes, too!
Pictures from the filming of The Simple Life
A drug kit too was found in with all of her stuff
And Receipts literally
Paris playing with wigs
Paris’ passport
Invitations to Paris’ 22nd birthday party
Photos of Paris making out with rumored ex-girlfriend Nicole Lenz
Paris’ fake ID
Some pictures with Tara Reid remember her lol
And a note claiming Tara hit her so there was so much tea happening behind closed doors lmao
A love letter to Nick Carter from the backstreet boys him and Paris dated years ago
Paris’ driver’s license
Nicole’s rehab address in Utah
And all of that is just a fraction of what was leaked!
By the next day, word of the website had spread far and wide, and it even scored a spot on the cover of the Post
Paris’ publicist Elliot Mintz also commented on the scandal, issuing a statement to Page Six about the tapes of Paris’ racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic comments:
“I’m not going to make any attempt to spin this. It happened. I’m not going to deny it happened. Each of us has used words we have regretted later. This was six years ago. She was 20 at the time. It was New Year’s Eve. She had been obviously drinking. She sincerely regrets using those words. She is not a racist or an anti-Semite.”
Within a week of the site’s creation, Paris – who was busy filming The Hottie And The Nottie at the time – headed to court to sue its creators, filing a complaint against Haniss and Bardia Persa for copyright infringement and invasion of privacy
And it worked. A Los Angeles judge quickly granted Paris a temporary restraining order, derailing the lurid website from further distributing her belongings, but the damage had been done. The pictures, videos, and prescriptions had already made their way to every gossip website and forum, and even Paris’ house ya her house
But it wasn’t gone for good.
Several months after the site’s demise, it made a comeback as Paris was embroiled in yet another scandal… one she couldn’t escape from
As a distraught Paris prepped for the pokey, ParisExposed.com relaunched for a brief period of time, but shut down again after a glitch in the website accidentally revealed the credit card numbers and identities of nearly 800 of the site’s subscribers, one being “the son of a famous TV news personality.” That’s up for you to guess!
To this day, the identity of the site’s mysterious cash-wielding creator remains a mystery.
And as for the star who built her career off of scandal, Paris Exposed would mark one of Hilton’s last hurrahs, her fame waning significantly by the end of 2007. She’d find comfort in her demise alongside another pal & fellow victim of the website, though… Joe Francis.
While a probation-violating Paris cried behind bars in Los Angeles, her ex-boyfriend fared no better in a Florida jail cell for contempt of court.
As Paris would say That’s hot xx
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