The Kardashians Read online

  TWENTY-TWO

  Tragic Times

  Vanity Fair writer Dominick Dunne, who covered the O.J. trial, called Denice Shakarian Halicki “A beautiful, rich, blonde widow.” He once wrote, “She has very long legs and wears very short skirts and is a knockout.” But she once confronted the writer, claiming he had made an error in reporting that she had been out shopping on the day of the Bronco chase, and she demanded to know the identity of the source of his information.

  “‘Don’t you see what they’re trying to do?’” Dunne quoted her as asking. “‘They’re trying to minimize me in the case. They’re trying to make me look like a bimbo, out shopping at the time. Do you really think, knowing me, that I’m the kind of person who would be out shopping at Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills when all that was going on in my house? Of course I was there. Remember, that was half my house at the time. Robert and I had just moved in there a few weeks before the murders.’”

  Dunne characterized her as “a lady who likes to be in the center of the action.”

  When Dunne’s piece ran in the magazine in June 1996, the long relationship between Kardashian and Denice had ended, and she had moved out.

  “The story went at the time that she took all the furniture and the television sets with her,” he wrote, which angered Denice when she read it. She claimed she only took the stuff because it belonged to her.

  When she told Kardashian she was leaving, a Kardashian friend recalled him saying, “I told her to take her shit and get the fuck out.”

  * * *

  AFTER THE TRIAL ENDED, every major TV news personality was chasing Kardashian for an interview. Next to O.J., Kardashian was the big “get,” the broadcast journalism term for securing a highly sought-after, exclusive interview. Barbara Walters won the prize with a Kardashian sit-down on ABC’s 20/20 program.

  The interview was held at Kardashian’s Encino home. But Kardashian was far from pleased with how his chat with network television’s vaunted celebrity interrogator went. “She had promised him she wouldn’t ask him certain questions, and then she went ahead and asked him the questions,” revealed Joni Migdal, whom Kardashian wanted present as a witness to the proceedings. “She promised him, ‘I’m not going to go here, and I’m not going to go there,’ but she didn’t honor what she promised. Robert did not like it, and he did not like her. There were several times when he said cut, and Barbara Walters got really pissed off.”

  But he told her the truth when he admitted, with much Walters prodding, that he now had “doubts” about O.J.’s innocence. He revealed that the blood evidence was the “most devastating part of the whole trial” for him, and that he became “so conflicted” about O.J. that he’d wake up in the middle of the night. “The blood evidence is the biggest thorn in my side that causes me the greatest problems, so I struggle with the blood evidence.”

  He also revealed to her that if he had to do it all over again, he would not have participated in O.J.’s defense, and he doubted that the Juice would have done the same for him if the tables had been turned.

  * * *

  THE MUCH-BALLYHOOED WALTERS interview was tied to the promotion of a new book about the O.J. case entitled American Tragedy: The Uncensored Story of the Simpson Defense, by journalists Lawrence Schiller, a longtime friend of Kardashian, who was a major source for the book, and James Willwerth, a Time magazine correspondent. Kardashian had given his friend the pastor Kenn Gulliksen the impression it was his book and that he expected to share the byline with Schiller. However, after reading it, Gulliksen said he came away “wondering how Bob could ever have thought of this as ‘his’ book, since he appeared to just be another character in the tragic story—his voice wasn’t uniquely heard.”

  The New York Times agreed in its review, noting that Kardashian “comes off merely as a good-hearted bumbler.”

  In fact, the book’s publication underscored Kardashian’s own personal tragedy in getting involved in the O.J. drama and in cooperating with Schiller. He complained to confidants that his participation in the book had scarred his reputation and financially injured him. He railed that he had gotten taken in, and bemoaned that he never received the money he was promised or the acclaim he expected. As Gulliksen, who had received an inscribed copy from Kardashian, noted, “It was obvious Bob felt a bit betrayed by the author [Schiller], and Bob decided he wouldn’t refer to it as ‘his’ book anymore.”

  Kardashian had told Joni Migdal that Schiller approached him with a hard-to-believe offer he couldn’t refuse—a payment of “four million dollars” to cooperate in the research and writing of the book. “Robert needed the money then because no one would do business with him because of the O.J. case. But I don’t know if he received all of it, or any of it. I know from Robert that that was the agreement—four million dollars.”

  Larry Kraines, who knew Schiller for years, said his view of Kardashian’s deal with Schiller was that “Robert was more or less used.” While he didn’t know the details of Kardashian’s arrangement with Schiller, “I know that Robert felt he was going to get some money. He had trusted Schiller, and at the end of the day I think that he got the short end of the financial side.”

  Schiller, who acknowledged in his book that Kardashian “assisted me in the preparation of the book” and that he had told O.J. that the book “would include Bob’s story,” declined to be interviewed for this book.

  Migdal remembered that Kardashian initially saw the book deal as a “wonderful opening for him, that it would result in his making speeches around the country and getting paid for his appearances. He thought the book was his opportunity to regain a little bit about who he was before [the O.J. case] and heal his persona, heal his reputation. But to his total and utter dismay, it didn’t happen that way. When the book came out, he was not the hero and the compassionate friend. His role in the story kind of petered out as far as he was concerned, and as far as his future was concerned. It depressed him.”

  About a week after American Tragedy hit bookstores, a depressed Kardashian needed to get away, and he rented a house in Ventura, where he sulked. Migdal, along with another friend, visited him, and vividly recalled, “He was a wreck. He was nervous about the book, nervous about everything. Physically, he didn’t feel well. He looked horrible. Emotionally, he wasn’t in good shape. That book was a major disappointment in his life because he really believed that everyone would read it and he would come out a winner—more respected, more revered, more understood. But with the book, no one in Robert’s life wanted to be with him. He never in his whole life had anyone treat him with such disdain and such ill intentions. He was heartbroken.”

  * * *

  ROBERT KARDASHIAN’S INTERVIEW WITH Barbara Walters made headlines the next day. But it can now be told that he had also lied to America’s premier broadcast newswoman and celebrity interviewer. When she asked him what the impact of the trial had been on him personally he responded that its toll included the loss of his fiancée, Denice Shakarian Halicki, suggesting that the stresses and strains had been too much for him and her to bear.

  In fact, Kardashian had fallen for another woman.

  Unknown to the media, including journalistic big guns like Walters and Dominick Dunne, who had been closely following the O.J. case and the cast of players, Kardashian had ended it with Denice because he had quietly fallen in love with Shawn Chapman Holley, the African-American attorney who was assisting Johnnie Cochran in O.J.’s race-card defense and was a member of his prestigious L.A. firm, the Law Offices of Johnnie L. Cochran.

  In the 2016 miniseries The People v. O. J. Simpson, Holley was played by the actress Angel Parker, but there was no indication in the program (nor in Jeffrey Toobin’s book) of any intimate relationship between Holley and Kardashian, played by David Schwimmer.

  Known as Shawn Chapman back then—her later married name was Holley—she was a major player on the defense team. A UCLA graduate and a former L.A. public defender, she had had much criminal defense trial experience
when Cochran asked her to be a part of his office’s all-black team of lawyers when he joined O.J.’s defense.

  Virtually every day of the months-long trial, Chapman and Kardashian were together in the courtroom, in conference rooms, at evening and weekend meetings with the other lawyers, all with the goal of getting O.J. acquitted. And as time passed, Kardashian’s feelings grew stronger for her. He was more than smitten, as she was with him. Only a very few in his close circle knew what was going on.

  “I am absolutely positive that Shawn would want that part of her life with Robert kept secret,” asserted a well-placed source. “It was a big secret. They were very careful.”

  Denice, who wore his engagement ring and thought she would be the next Mrs. Robert Kardashian, may not have realized what was going on until it was too late. And at that critical point when she did, he asked her to leave and she soon stormed out of his life.

  “Robert and Shawn were on the case together, so they spent a great deal of time together, and they began dating, and I got to know her well,” said Larry Kraines. “We had several dinners with Shawn, and she was very bright, very liberal, very smart, and so that bothered Denice, and that sort of broke up Robert with Denice. She wasn’t going anywhere with Robert, nor was Robert going to go anywhere with Denice. The problem Robert had was getting involved with Denice in the first place. She had the looks. She was sweet to him, she was good with the kids, and if someone was good with his kids, that was good enough for Robert. But Denice didn’t mentally stimulate him.

  “When Denice saw the relationship was falling apart she came to me several times and wanted advice, and I told her, ‘Denice, I think that there’s probably some issue here that maybe you can help yourself.’ She knew that Robert was cheating on her with Shawn. I told her that one of the problems was ‘You’re so pretty and you’re so attractive, but you don’t have anything to say, you don’t add to any conversation. I told you ten times to get The Wall Street Journal. Go read the Los Angeles Times, so when you’re sitting with people at dinner and they are all talking, you can say, “Well, how about those Dodgers? Good game last night.” Say something of substance.’

  “But she did start to read and talk up and I told Robert, ‘I talked to Denice. I told her to get a newspaper,’ but he said, ‘It’s probably too late for that.’ He said, ‘I have to do everything for her. Other than the physical attraction, and being sweet and Armenian, I just don’t see myself spending the rest of my life with her.’”

  Shawn, on the other hand, was “intellectual,” and, noted Kraines, “the complete opposite of what Robert had with Denice. [Denice] was ditzy—totally.”

  When Kardashian got involved in the O. J. Simpson case, his “thoughts about Denice strayed,” a friend said, and he began seeing Shawn and “he needed to get Denice out of his life. I don’t know that she knew what was really going on.” Kardashian told this person that Denice refused to leave, even presumably after learning about his affair.

  “She did love Robert. She loved the lifestyle. She loved living in that house on Mandalay Drive. She loved what Robert had to offer her. She loved the ring he gave her. She loved the engagement—and then he wandered,” the friend said. “Denice didn’t want to break up with Robert, so he had trouble getting her out of his house and out of his life. Finally, there were her heel marks going out the door.”

  The accounts given by Kraines and the second close source are in stark contrast to the one claimed by Denice’s mother, Vangie Shakarian, who asserted that it was her daughter’s decision to end the engagement and the relationship, blaming the decline and fall on the strain of the O.J. trial.

  “They’d have probably been married if it hadn’t been for that murder and trial because it just got over the top. It was such a drama,” Vangie asserted. “My daughter went through that whole O.J. thing with Robert. My daughter went with him every day to court. She picked out Robert’s ties. Her and Robert really raised those [Kardashian] kids when they were little. The kids still adore her. And we love the kids, regardless of what they are doing. Robert and Denice were engaged for six years. He wanted to marry her. But they broke up after the trial. She’s even got an amazing letter from him just begging her to come back.”

  Shawn Chapman was hoping that her relationship with Kardashian would move forward. But Kardashian, whose close friend for decades had been a black man, who had a liberal household in which his children called Simpson “Uncle O.J.,” and two of three of whose daughters and even his ex-wife would later date and/or marry African-American men, couldn’t fully commit to Chapman because of her race.

  “Robert realized that because Shawn wasn’t white that he couldn’t get really serious with her, and that was the part where he had to give her up,” said the friend, looking back years later. “Shawn was devastated because she really loved Robert, and I think he really loved her much more so than he had loved Denice. Shawn was smart and lovely and a wonderful person. He told me he loved her but had to come to grips with his own biases—his racial biases. It didn’t matter that his best friend was O.J. He just knew that he could never give Shawn a commitment the way that she wanted it because of her race.”

  Shawn Chapman Holley did not respond to voice-mail messages and e-mails left by the author asking for comment about her relationship with Kardashian. Over the years, she became one of L.A.’s power lawyers to the stars, and her connection to the Kardashian name continued: When Kim Kardashian’s third husband, Kanye West, got into a civil suit with a paparazzo, he retained Holley to defend him. Kim’s one-time boyfriend Reggie Bush, of the NFL, also hired her. Other star clients included Michael Jackson, Axl Rose, Snoop Dogg, and Lindsay Lohan.

  Denice never remarried. As for Kardashian, she said in an e-mail in 2015, “The view the public received of Robert during the O.J. case and more recently is not representative of the Robert that was building a life with me, even though in the [O.J.] case we were caught in the eye of the storm … Robert will always be loved.”

  In 2007, Simpson was charged in a bizarre robbery in Las Vegas in which he tried to take back sports memorabilia that he claimed belonged to him. He was arrested in a sting operation, tried, convicted, and sentenced to thirty-three years in prison. Simpson haters called it karma. Others believed it was the judicial system and prosecutors taking revenge for his acquittal. O.J. could be released from prison as early as 2017, when he turns seventy.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Lonely Farewell

  With fiancée Denice Shakarian Halicki long out of his life, and with his furtive interracial relationship with Shawn Chapman having failed, a lonely, depressed and financially strapped Robert Kardashian got married for a second time, eight years after he divorced Kris. This time he chose a one-time beauty queen whom he thought had plenty of money and moxie.

  Janice Lynn “Jan” Ashley, fifty-one, a Miss Tulsa back in the late sixties, and a recent widow—her husband had been the B-movie television actor-producer John Ashley—became Mrs. Robert Kardashian. He was then fifty-five.

  They were wed in a Las Vegas–style rental chapel in Vail, Colorado, during a Thanksgiving 1998 ski trip, with friends and with Kardashian’s four children in attendance—four very unhappy children, because they didn’t like the new woman in his life and the fact that Daddy was getting remarried.

  One of the wedding guests was Kardashian’s Jewish pal Larry Kraines, who had been present at Kardashian’s first, big, fancy church wedding with Kris back in 1978. This one was different. The latest ceremony was a “regular gentile wedding, probably a little more so than if Robert got married in a chapel in Vegas,” said Kraines. “In the Vail chapel, if you were Jewish they’d put a menorah up there by the pulpit. If you were Catholic, a cross would go up. It was like Vegas, but nicer.”

  Kardashian’s longtime pastor, Kenn Gulliksen, who counseled him as a born-again Christian and officiated at his marriage to Kris, was not on the guest list. The two had lost touch for a time when Gulliksen had moved from L.A. to “plant
” a new Vineyard church.

  After the ceremony, the bride and groom had a celebratory dinner with their guests, and then spent their honeymoon in Vail—with his kids present.

  Known as “Uncle Larry” to Kourtney, Kim, Khloé, and Rob, Kraines was looking for signs about how Kardashian’s children felt about his decision to remarry. They certainly had liked Denice when he was living with her; she was sexy and dramatic looking, and the Kardashian girls loved that about her. When their mother quickly married Bruce Jenner after the divorce, it was only Kourtney, the eldest, who had qualms. But regarding their father’s new marriage, “I couldn’t get the girls to give me a read on Jan,” Kraines recalled vividly. “They weren’t talking. In other words, they didn’t like it that he was getting married again. They felt that it was too soon, and why marriage anyway, and so on and so forth.”

  From the beginning of his relationship with Jan, Kardashian raved about her to Kraines, telling him how gorgeous she was, how much fun she was.

  “We all went out together, but I didn’t think much of her—I thought she was a phony,” said Kraines, looking back. “She had a little bit of the Hollywood thing—‘aren’t I great, aren’t I this, aren’t I that.’ And I wouldn’t call her beautiful, but she was pleasant looking, for sure.”

  Having moved out of Mandalay Drive, Kardashian was house-hunting in the upscale Encino Hills–Lake Encino area of Encino—known as Beverly Hills North—with his friend Joni Migdal, who had become a real estate agent.

  “He was very specific in what he wanted,” recalled Migdal. “He wanted a bedroom for each of his children, and he would use the dining room as his office because he planned to work at home,” having lost most of his friends and not bringing in any real money. He finally settled on a one-story five-bedroom with a pool, and decorated it in a conservative Ralph Lauren style, just like the first house he had had years earlier with his brother, Tom (and frequently O.J.), in Beverly Hills. He wanted the big, modern home because he saw it as a way to bond again with his children after the hate he felt during and after the O.J. trial.