Death in the Hollywood Hills

On September 15^th this year, Victor Paleologus, looking ashen, appeared in court to be sentenced for the murder of Kristi Johnson.

Having admitted he killed her, having pleaded guilty, he was finally going to take responsibility for  what he did to the trusting young woman whose mistake was believing he might just be the man make her a star.

But suddenly, there was a hitch in the proceedings.

Judge (during court proceedings): The court this morning received a letter, it’s very lengthy from the defendant. It’s a 11 pages from the defendant. I’ve read the letter this morning and I’ve read it again.

Victor had written a letter to the judge. 11 handwritten pages, crammed with misused words of many syllables pleading for, well, the judge seemed astonished.

Judge: In the letter, Mr. Paleologus requests or makes a motion to withdraw his guilty plea.

Withdraw?  Victor had changed his mind about pleading guilty.

Judge: I’m going to deny the motion Mr. Paleologus. The law states clearly that a plea cannot be withdrawn simply because the defendant has changed his mind.

And then he listened as her family spoke about the loss and the hurt.

Kirk Johnson, Kristi’s father: The reason we are here is because of Mr. Paleologus. And there is a reason why this happened. Only God knows. And I can’t find an answer for that.

Terry Hall, Kristi’s mother: Victor Paleologus has been allowed the freedom to let the evil in his life escalate, resulting in the heinous murder of Kristi my beloved young daughter, a beautiful young woman on the threshold of her life.

And so it was a sullen and obviously miserable Victor Paleologus who listened to the judge pronounce his fate.

Judge: For the willful deliberate and premeditated first degree murder of Kristine Johnson, the court sentences the defendant to serve 25 years to life in the state penitentiary.

This is how the predator was brought to justice,  after so many women, so many accusations, and so many plea deals for so little prison time (in Christine Kludjian’s case, there was no jail time at all).

Christine Kludjian: One had to die for us to pay attention?  One had to die for us to look at a situation and say, “Wait a minute, what is going on with our laws in this country that put repeat offenders who are not rehabilitateable out on the street again and again and again?” 

Three days after sentencing, we met once again at the men’s central jail for one more try to get inside the mind of this predator.

Keith Morrison, Dateline correspondent: Are you ready now to talk more candidly about what happened?

Victor Paleologus (second interview with Dateline): Well, I’ve never had an issue about talking about any piece of the case.  Hindsight right now almost immediately gave me the remorse of ever signing or ever agreeing to a plea.

There it was.

For Victor Paleologus, remorse was not about killing Kristi.  It was only for taking a deal and admitting he did it.

Morrison: You took responsibility for Kristi’s death.

Paleologus: I had to. I had to in order to get the plea. Look, unless you’re actually in that situation,  you’re actually faced with the same consequences and the same pressure and the same mental mind-bending that you’re going through, that you may have just made the same choices I made that day.

Morrison: I’m fairly confident I wouldn’t confess to killing somebody if I hadn’t actually killed them.

Paleologus: Well, I think you say that with all sincerity.  I don’t think you’d say that I the situation if you were being bent over the barrel for 3 ½ years.

Morrison: You know, it’s funny.  You always make plea deals, right?

Paleologus: Yeah unfortunately. 

Victor gave us lots of reasons he took the plea this time. Unbelievably, one of them, he said, was money…

Paleologus: But only agreed to the plea based on the fact that when you considered a ruinous cost of even a successful defense, I was gonna end up in the same position anyway and—

Seem odd that a man in prison for life is worried about personal financial ruin?  Well, get this:  He wasn’t even paying his legal bills.  The state has been doing that for three years. But that was just one of his “dog ate his homework” excuses for pleading guilty to murdering an innocent young woman.

His lawyer, he told us, would have lost a prepaid vacation had he continued the trial. He really was going to win, he said.

The real victim here, he said, is himself.

Paleologus’ lawyer: This whole issue has been really about what someone else can say about Victor.  What someone else can bring up on dirty laundry about Victor.

Round and round—for more than an hour—went Victor, avoiding one topic: What really happened to Kristi Johnson?

Morrison: We all know you did it. And I think—

Paleologus: What evidence do you have—

Morrison: —the whole point is of finally—no, no, let me finish.  Finally somebody wants you to stand up, like a man. But the fact is, we know you did it.  So this is all a dance that’s kind of silly, don’t you think?

Paleologus: No, I don’t think.  No.

It was the day after Valentine's, 2003, when Kristine Johnson thought she had met the man who’d discovered her, just like somebody discovered Lana Turner all those years ago.

How could she know it was Victor Paleologus, and that her story would end like the Black Dahlia?

Cathy Debuono: When what you want so badly is written on your sleeve, predators of any kind are gonna use that as the bait. They’re gonna tell you they have it to give.

Susan Murphy: I mean I felt close to her. I felt like, "Oh my gosh... What if I had done… What if?" She didn’t make a mistake. She didn’t do anything wrong.

Sometimes it hard to spot the bad ones. He’d been honing his scheme for years. She didn’t stand a chance.

Even though the terms of Victor Paleologus' plea  prevent any appeal, he says he plans to file one anyway. Kristi Johnson's Mother Terry Hall is helping to build a memorial to Kristi -- a fountain in her name. Click here to read about their family’s ordeal and the fountain being built in Kristi’s honor.

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Death in the Hollywood Hills Remembering Kristi Johnson Morrison: A Hollywood dream-turned-nightmare Crime scene photos Did the suspect prey on other attractive women? Timeline: Paleologus' dark history Kristi's mom: A fountain of joy in Kristi's memory Victor Paleologus' letter to the judge Death in Hollywood Hills Section Front   Add Death in Hollywood Hills headlines to your news reader: