Publicist nicknamed 'Sultan of Sleaze' kills self

updated 5:59 p.m. ET Oct. 4, 2007

PHOENIX - David Hans Schmidt made a career out of peddling photos and videos of celebrities, usually when they were naked. His deals included arranging nude pictures of two women at the center of sex scandals involving President Clinton.

Schmidt, whose business earned him the nickname the "Sultan of Sleaze," recently agreed to plead guilty in a plot to extort more than $1 million from Tom Cruise for the actor's stolen wedding photos.

But the final headline Schmidt made was his own: He committed suicide last week at the age of 47.

Police found Schmidt dead in his home on Sept. 28 after a monitoring device he was required to wear had not registered movement for some time. The medical examiner's office said he hanged himself.

His brother, Doug Schmidt, said he spoke to David Hans Schmidt by phone about two weeks before his death.

"He sounded pretty shaky in the voice, and he sounded like he didn't know what was going to happen in the end and how he was going to get through it," he said. "He felt his life spiraling out of control and didn't have a way to get out of it."

David Hans Schmidt's seedy deals began in 1992, when he arranged a nude photo spread in Penthouse magazine of Gennifer Flowers, who said she had a 12-year affair with Clinton before he was president.

A biography on Schmidt's Web site describes how he "got goose bumps up and down his arms" when he first hit on the idea of arranging for Flowers to pose. "Hey, if the Star paid Flowers $125,000 to give a kiss-and-tell story about her affair, I'll bet Playboy or Penthouse would pay her a million to go nude!" he wrote.

Paula Jones, Tonya Harding also photographed
Penthouse spokeswoman Kathleen Berzon confirmed that Schmidt brokered the deal with Flowers but did not release the terms. A publicist for Flowers said she would have no comment.

Berzon also confirmed that Schmidt brokered two other deals with Penthouse: a 2000 nude photo spread of Paula Jones, who sued President Clinton for sexual harassment; and still photos from a wedding-night sex tape of figure-skating bad girl Tonya Harding.

An e-mail to Harding agent Linda Lewis was not returned. Jones could not be located for comment.

More recently, Schmidt tried to auction off Paris Hilton's diaries, along with photos of her in various stages of undress and other personal items that had been locked in a Los Angeles-area storage facility until a few months ago.

"He transformed himself into being a merchant of filth, and he would hang out on his shingles, 'If you have dirt on someone, call me,'" said Jason Rose, a Phoenix publicist who met but didn't do business with Schmidt.

Another of Schmidt's deals allowed the distribution of a sex video of Dustin Diamond, who played the geeky but lovable Screech in the sitcom "Saved by the Bell."

Diamond declined to comment through his agent, Roger Paul. But Paul described Schmidt as a hustler.

"He did what he had to do to make money," Paul said. "He was just a very interesting character, very boisterous, very loud. He bragged to me about his cars. He bragged to me about everything."

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