Witness: Private eye talked of murder

Adam Sender told jurors the idea came while he and Pellicano met and talked about Sender’s lawsuit against Aaron Russo.

Sender said he was told by Pellicano, “If I wanted to, I could authorize him to have (Russo) murdered on the way back from Las Vegas, have someone follow him back, drive him off the road and bury his body somewhere in the desert.”

Sender said he did not approve of the suggestion.

None of the charges against Pellicano or the four other defendants in the federal wiretapping case involves solicitation of murder.

In court documents filed in 2006 in the case, federal prosecutors alleged Pellicano conspired with organized crime figures to place a hit on an associate who was hired to threaten a reporter. No one, including Pellicano, was charged in connection with that allegation.

Acting as his own lawyer, Pellicano asked Sender whether the statement about Russo could have been a passing suggestion because Sender was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on the lawsuit.

“He might have framed it that way,” Sender testified.

Pellicano, 64, and the other four co-defendants have pleaded innocent to several charges in the wiretapping case.

Prosecutors suspect Pellicano also bribed police officers and telephone company workers to collect information for clients to use against rivals in legal and other disputes.

Prosecutors estimate Pellicano, retired Los Angeles police Sgt. Mark Arneson and former telephone company worker Rayford Earl Turner collected nearly $2 million from the scheme.

Fourteen people have been charged, and seven pleaded guilty to charges including perjury and conspiracy.

During his testimony, Sender recalled investing $1.1 million in an upstart production company and online business with Russo, who managed Bette Midler and produced such films as “Trading Places.”

He made an unsuccessful run for Nevada governor as a Republican in 1998 and announced a second run in 2002 but quit the race when he was diagnosed with cancer.

Sender testified that when the companies paid no returns, he sued Russo and hired Hollywood attorney Bert Fields, who hired Pellicano.

Fields told Sender that Pellicano “was very good at what he did and used unorthodox methods but got the job done,” Sender said.

Prosecutors played a conversation between Sender and Pellicano in which Sender said he would spend $200,000 to damage Russo’s reputation.

“I want to make this guy’s life as miserable as possible,” Sender said on the 2001 recording.

Sender, who was given immunity for his testimony, estimated that Pellicano played him as many as 15 recorded conversations between Russo and others. Sender said he knew wiretapping was illegal but did not alert authorities.

Sender paid about $500,000 for Pellicano to investigate Russo and another $300,000 in legal fees involving the lawsuit. He eventually recovered $25,000 in a default judgment.

Prosecutors said Pellicano bribed former Beverly Hills police officer Craig Stevens to run unauthorized database searches on Russo and his family. Stevens pleaded guilty in 2006 to two counts of wire fraud and four counts of unauthorized access of protected computers to commit fraud. He is awaiting sentencing.

Russo died last year.

In other testimony, the ex-wife of actor Keith Carradine said Pellicano had played her wiretapped conversations between her former husband and his then-girlfriend.

Sandra Will Carradine said she paid Pellicano $25,000 in April 2001 for his work in a child custody dispute and said she wanted to know where her ex-husband was living and where he had been working.

In a separate phone recording played for jurors, Pellicano told her he would get the information but that it was better if she did not know how.

Sandra Carradine previously pleaded guilty to two counts of perjury in the case and is cooperating with prosecutors.

Asked by prosecutors why she lied to a federal grand jury in October 2004, she testified that she was protecting Pellicano during their sporadic romance from late 2002 to early 2006.

Also testifying was Lisa Gores, the former wife of billionaire businessman Alec Gores. She told jurors she had an affair with her husband’s brother in early 2001 and learned her then-husband had hired Pellicano to investigate her.

Prosecutors said they plan to play today the only wiretapped call introduced into evidence.

On the recording, Lisa Gores said, she talked to Tom Gores about her concern that someone had been following them after an evening rendezvous at the Beverly Hills Hotel.