The Kardashians Read online

  On February 10, 1991, five months after they met, Jenner asked Kris to marry him. The big event happened at dinner over champagne (and Jenner was a beer drinker) with their friends Candace Garvey, who had first introduced them, her husband, Steve, and a mutual friend, the actress Mary Frann, a divorcée best known for playing Bob Newhart’s wife in an eighties sitcom. Kris claimed that Jenner got down on one knee, the same fairy-tale claim she had made about Robert Kardashian on the day when he asked her to marry him.

  Their wedding, his third, her second, took place on April 21, 1991, in the Bel-Air home of friends of his. Jenner was so obscure as a celebrity at that point, and Kris was an unknown in the public eye, so their union passed with little or no publicity.

  “It was,” she gloats, “the perfect day.”

  They would have one hell of a ride together before their next divorce, his third, her second, just before Christmas, 2014.

  NINETEEN

  Kissin’ Cousins

  In the late eighties, Robert Kardashian’s close friend and pastor, Kenn Gulliksen, had gone east for a time to start a Vineyard church in Boston, and the two had lost touch during that horrific period when Kris had her affair, resulting in the tumultuous Kardashian marriage ending in divorce, and with Kris soon marrying Bruce Jenner.

  All that was now in the past. Gulliksen and his wife, Joanie, had returned to California, with Kenn as North American Director of the Association of Vineyard Churches. The Gulliksens were spending some time in a condo loaned to them by a friend in Palm Desert, near Palm Springs. And it was there that the Gulliksens ran into Robert and the new woman in his life, Denice Ann Shakarian Halicki, and the two couples decided to catch up and have a long, relaxed lunch together.

  As far as Gulliksen can recall, it was the first time he had met Denice, even though he knew much about her family history, and how her grandfather, Demos Shakarian, a wealthy and successful Armenian dairyman, had founded the influential Pentecostal-rooted Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship International. Gulliksen had even met the charismatic Demos in the past, and had attended some of the group’s meetings featuring testimonies regarding miracle healings, and with adherents exuberantly speaking in tongues while praying.

  And long before Gulliksen was introduced to Denice at that desert lunch, Kardashian had told him about how the Kardashians and the family of the famous Demos were related. But what now came as a surprise to Gulliksen was that his friend and fellow born-again Christian, Robert, was now seriously involved romantically with his third cousin, Denice. It was the relationship issue, that they were kissin’ cousins, that gave the minister pause. But the open-minded man of the cloth understood how his friend could fall for such a stunning, sexy younger woman.

  “I always knew Bob was attracted to glamorous women,” noted the pastor. But Denice fit into a very special category of glamorous women, as pointed out by Gulliksen’s middle son, then about twenty, who also was there at that lunch, and later “made a joke about what parts of Denice were real,” recalled Gulliksen with a chuckle. “I’m not into plastic surgery and breast implants—I’m not into that look, but I was happy for Bob.”

  The pastor’s view was that the woman snuggled up to Kardashian across the table in the restaurant, who was thirteen years his junior—even younger by two years than Kris was when Kardashian met her—resembled a real-life, silicone-enhanced, cosmetically redone love doll.

  Denice had the look that Robert clearly savored, as evidenced by how he had served up thousands of dollars for Kris just before she cheated on him.

  “Denice was very nice and very sweet, and she sat very close to Bob at lunch,” recalled Gulliksen. “After all, he’d been through a lot and he had a need to kind of return to his roots, and Denice was both beautiful and Armenian.”

  * * *

  WHEN DENICE BECAME ROMANTICALLY involved with her Kardashian cousin, she had recently been widowed by the sudden and freak death of her husband of little more than three months, the cult car-crash filmmaker, Henry Blight “Toby” Halicki, who had made a bundle with his first big low-budget movie in 1974, called Gone in 60 Seconds.

  During his relationship with Denice, the eccentric and creative filmmaker had transformed her from a plain Jane Armenian-American girl who had attended the TV evangelist–founded, staunchly conservative Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which banned students from drinking, smoking, and having premarital sex, into a Barbie-esque bombshell.

  “She had mousy brown hair, a flat chest, and a big, long Shakarian nose, and that’s what she looked like when she first started out, and then came the remodeling,” claimed the filmmaker’s brother Bud Halicki. He said Toby spent thousands of dollars on plastic surgery to transform Denice. “She went from that mousy look and she got her second or third breast augmentation from a size 30 or 32 cup to a 40-something God-awful thing. They started with her eyes and then her proboscis [nose], and then her buttocks, and God knows what else.”

  At one point, Toby Halicki complained to his brother-in-law, Robert Glaser, about his “big-time” expenditures for Denice’s beautification makeover. “He said that he had ten thousand dollars alone in the tits. I don’t know if that was for each one. Toby made her all up. Her boobs were way oversized, and he put a lot of money in cosmetic changes. I saw her before all the work was done, and she was skinny and not a glamorous person at all. Toby did it with his money.”

  Forty-eight-year-old lifelong bachelor Halicki married thirty-two-year-old Shakarian on May 11, 1989. But on August 20, a little over three months after their Miami honeymoon, Halicki himself was gone in sixty seconds, killed instantly when a cable attached to a water tower snapped and severed a telephone pole that fell on him while filming his latest car-crash epic in the Buffalo area near Dunkirk, New York, where he grew up in a family of thirteen children with a father in the towing and wrecking business.

  At the time of his death, Halicki had an estate with an estimated value of $14.7 million (but actually worth a lot more in the long run), and his widow, Denice, would fight tooth and nail for years with the Halicki family for every penny (and gold watch and Dick Tracy collectible toy) that she deemed was her property. And Robert Kardashian, who hadn’t been licensed with the California Bar Association for many years, would aid her in that probate battle, acting as her legal advisor, but also hoping to make a bundle in fees and commissions.

  “Eventually, love blossomed between them, and they were truly a wonderful couple,” recalled a cousin, Michelle Willett Orist, who roomed with Denice for about a year after Halicki’s sudden death. “To me, it appeared Robert always was quite amused by Denice. He got a kick out of her, and they had a very strong bond between the two of them, very connected. She trusted him and they worked really well together through those trying times. Robert was a very down-to-earth human being. He had a lot of flair and confidence, but his base was truly simple and down-to-earth.”

  Denice Shakarian Halicki declined to be interviewed for this book, claiming she was writing her own—a claim she has made for a number of years—and noting in an email that she had never spoken publicly about her relationship with Kardashian and the “depth, heights, and length of my life with Robert … I pray that you are guided by the truth, sincerity, joy, laughter, and love that precious Robert lived his life by, especially our life together.… My father and mother loved Robert and Toby as I did. May God guide you in love.”

  Denice’s mother, blond, blue-eyed Evangeline “Vangie” Shakarian, of Norwegian descent, did break her family’s silence, and noted that Kardashian “came in to help Denice with the [Halicki] estate and it got to be a little more than that. They were engaged for six years. Denice got Robert involved because he was part of the family. The Shakarians are related to the Kardashians, and Denice is a third cousin.

  “Robert was very religious—very much so,” continued Vangie. “He used to say to people, ‘If you want to know who I am, here’s who I am,’ and he’d give them the book The Happiest People on
Earth, about Demos Shakarian’s life, who was Denice’s grandfather.” The book, which was first published in 1975 and had many reprints, was written by a husband-and-wife team who specialized in penning Christian-themed stories. Denice’s father, Richard, who would take over the Full Gospel organization from his father, wrote a sequel, Still the Happiest People.

  According to Vangie, “Denice was already involved with Kardashian regarding the Halicki estate when he was still going through his divorce with Kris in 1990–91, and the [Kardashian] kids still adore her. Robert kept asking her to get married. He was begging Denice to get married, but she wanted to finish out her husband Toby’s estate, which was very complicated, and it was a big deal, and worth a lot of money.”

  Robert and Denice’s close live-in relationship and engagement was underscored by a family-style Christmas card they mailed that had the panache of a page out of the chic Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog. It showed the master of the richly appointed house dapperly outfitted, with the well-coiffed mistress of the house, Denice, glamorously attired in an off-the-shoulder velvet gown and high heels. Robert’s four brightly smiling children of divorce and of a philandering, now remarried mother—Kourtney, Kim, Khloé, and Rob Jr.—were seated on the festive garland-wrapped staircase.

  “The Kardashian Family wishes you a Merry Christmas,” reads the undated card. “May the Joy of the Lord be your strength. Nehemiah 8:10.”

  It was signed in gold letters, “Robert and Denice,” with the names of the Kardashian children inscribed below.

  In her memoir, Kris Kardashian Jenner made a single, brief mention of Denice. Kris and Jenner had moved from the rental that Kardashian had helped finance in Malibu to a rental in Beverly Hills in 1992 to be closer to the Kardashian girls’ private school, Marymount, and to Tower Lane and their father, who would care for them when the new Mrs. Jenner and her husband were traveling.

  If Kris was jealous of the new woman in her ex-husband’s life, she gave no indication, but, instead, was rather complimentary. Robert, she stated, “was dating an amazing woman … whom I’m sure he was in love with. She was really, really cool, but especially amazing to my kids.” She made no mention that her ex-husband and Denice were actually related, or anything about Denice’s past marital history.

  * * *

  BUD HALICKI, WHO WAS co-executor of Toby’s estate with Denice and did battle with her and her many lawyers, including Kardashian, was of the opinion that she was a gold digger, out to get every penny from the valuable estate of her husband of some ninety days.

  Toby Halicki had always feared that when he died his multimillion-dollar estate would be fought over and consumed by legal costs and fees. In order to avoid such a terrible ending, his one-page will, which looked like it had been written in chicken scratches while the author was on an LSD trip, offered a simple solution: “Split the money, guys, and have a good time. No probate.”

  It didn’t turn out that way.

  Toby had specifically left Denice a 1987 Rolls-Royce and a dream home he was forever constructing on eight acres of land—then valued at as much as $8 million—in the tony Rolling Hills section of the Palos Verdes peninsula overlooking the Pacific south of L.A. Plus he willed her another $1.5 million in either “cash, cars, or property.”

  She claimed that she never received the latter but did convince a court that as Halicki’s widow she should receive a “widow’s allowance” that averaged about ten thousand dollars a month for almost two years and totaled $250,000. The administrator of the estate ordered the payments stopped, fearing they might make the estate insolvent.

  By the time of his death, Toby’s headquarters on Vermont Avenue in Gardena was piled high with an acre of model trains, cap pistols, Little Big Books, piggy banks, pedal cars, model cars, planes, boats, and more. On his desk was a Mickey Mouse telephone. In all, there were some 100,000 different toys that Halicki had collected over some fifteen years.

  As the battle for his estate raged, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ordered the liquidation of the collection, then owned fifty-fifty by the warring co-executors Bud Halicki and Denice—in hopes of ending the probate battle between the widow and the deceased’s family, and finally settling the case.

  At that point, Denice got her unlicensed legal counsel, cousin, and lover, Robert Kardashian, to oversee the sale of her late husband Toby’s beloved toys, and hopefully get a healthy piece of the action out of the deal for himself.

  A month after Kris became Mrs. Bruce Jenner, her ex-husband was already heavily involved in aiding and abetting his cousin and new love, Denice.

  On May 22, 1991, Kardashian sent a letter—typed on official-looking stationery, with his name engraved in fancy script, and with his profession falsely listed as “Attorney-at-Law”—to Patrick McCarroll, the court-appointed executor handling the entire hellish Halicki estate matter.

  Kardashian wrote that he was confirming conversations McCarroll had had with Jeffrey B. Wheeler of Rosenfeld, Meyer and Susman, one of the law firms retained by Denice, regarding “my authorization to obtain a sale” of the Halicki toy collection. “It was agreed,” Kardashian continued, “that I am to receive Twenty Per Cent (20%) of the gross proceeds of any sale of said toy collection if the sale is consummated through my efforts. Said monies are to be paid immediately upon monies received by the estate. I shall have total negotiating power with the purchaser to negotiate a deal acceptable to the court. It is my understanding that One Million, One Hundred Fifty Thousand Dollars ($1,150,000.00) is the minimum for which I am authorized to sell said toy collection.”

  If the sale had gone off as Kardashian, and especially Denice, were hoping, the unlicensed lawyer would have walked away at the end of the day with a commission of a cool $230,000, and the widow of three months would have gotten the balance, $920,000, minus any fees. But the sale of the collectible playthings, just one fascinating piece of the wider Halicki estate, didn’t happen the way they had hoped and planned, and it wound up in an auction, realizing little of its worth. As for Kardashian’s role in the matter, Bud Halicki said, “He was like a shark, for sure.” But he got not a penny out of the deal.

  Kardashian also got caught for acting as Denice’s lawyer, but without a law license to practice.

  The matter involved a yearlong trial continuance requested by Kardashian of Denice’s probate cases. In an August 1994 letter to the Halicki estate trial judge, Robert Feinerman, an attorney for the law firm of Kindel & Anderson pointed out: “The State Bar advises that Mr. Kardashian was not an active member of the State Bar.… Therefore, it is not clear how he could have been Ms. Halicki’s ‘principal legal advisor’ during a time when he was not permitted to practice law.”

  Kardashian quickly got his law license restored.

  Bud Halicki had spent many days in court with Denice during the probate fight, and Robert Kardashian always was a part of the scene even though Bud asserted that Denice had “at least six major law firms representing her” at different times. “But every time she’d come to court Robert Kardashian would make a grand entrance and she’d say, ‘There’s my Robert. Here comes my Robert,’ and it was disgusting. Robert was advising her on everything. No matter her law firm, Robert would be telling her what he thought was necessary. He never once spoke to me. There was no conversation in any way, shape, or form. He wouldn’t even look in my general direction. He sat with her and it was obvious to me that he was her next new catch.”

  Among those in the Halicki family sued by Denice was Toby’s sister, Tara, and her husband, Robert Glaser. The widow claimed they had a very expensive gold watch that had belonged to Toby and some other items, and she wanted them returned to her. “She didn’t get anything from me, but we had to hire a lawyer,” Glaser said.

  When the Glasers flew to Los Angeles to appear in court with Denice, they met Kardashian in the courthouse and saw that Denice had permitted Kardashian “to drive Toby’s white Rolls-Royce [that Denice inherited]. I saw Kardashian in it,” recalled Gla
ser. “He was a little, short squirt, and I don’t know how he could see over the steering wheel.”

  TWENTY

  Fatal Friendship

  Robert Kardashian’s close friendship and business partnership of more than two decades with O. J. Simpson—a tight bond that would end horrifically—didn’t begin on the campus of their alma mater, USC, or on a football field as most believe. Their brother-like relationship was actually first forged in a swinging Polynesian-style celebrity and singles hangout called the Luau, at 421 North Rodeo Drive, in the heart of trendy Beverly Hills.

  Decorated with enormous wooden tiki gods, and with a moat around the exterior with a bridge leading to the entrance, the hip and hopping Luau was owned by the actor-restaurateur Steve Crane, the second of the seven husbands of screen goddess Lana Turner’s eight turbulent marriages.

  In the early seventies, the Luau became a hangout for the affluent, semi-playboy brothers Robert and Tommy Kardashian when they were both considered—in their minds at least, and by some women like Kris Houghton—to be two of the town’s “most eligible bachelors.”

  Those were the days before Tommy was arrested and before Robert began toting a Bible.

  If you drove a fancy car (and the valet parked it in front) like the Kardashians’ wheels—Tommy had a Rolls-Royce Corniche, along with a Jaguar XKE and a Lamborghini, and Robert went from a lowly Pontiac Grand Prix with a black leather interior to a Corvette and then a Rolls—and you wore your expensive clothes from the ivy-covered walls of Fred Segal’s boutique on Melrose, like the Kardashians did, the leggy, man-hungry young women who hung at the Luau’s frenzied bar figured you were cool and very eligible.

  The big Polynesian drinks, the hungry babes, and the great ribs with the secret sauce, later revealed to be nothing more than catsup, were the draws.