LA Weekly

October 28-November 3, 1983

OBSESSION: ALFRED BLOOMINGDALE & VICKI MORGAN—AN UNUSUAL LOVE STORY

Even by Los Angeles homicide norms, the murder on July 7 of 30-year-old Vicki Morgan, the late Alfred Bloomingdale’s paramour of 12 years (who had slapped a $5-million palimony suit on the Reagan confidante/powerbroker), was a stunner. Some murders suggest conspiracy, but this one seemed to scream it.. It seemed a suspiciously nasty ending for Vicki Morgan to be bludgeoned to death in the middle of the night with her son’s baseball bat by an insomniacal roommate. Other people had better motives than lack of sleep to want Vicki Morgan dead. No doubt, some muttered “they finally got her…”

The case was soaked in sleaze, starting with the announcement of the palimony suit in August 1982 on through Bloomingdale’s death on August 20, 1982,  Morgan’s murder, and the sordid controversy over the existence of “sex tapes” – rumored to possibly involve high administration officials.

Over the next few months, there is likely to be new revelations and stranger twists, along with the names dropped of VIPs as two trials begin: the continuing palimony case against the Bloomingdale estate (and wife Betsy Bloomingdale) brought by the Morgan estate, represented by Constance Laney, Vicki Morgan’s mother; followed by the murder trial of Marvin Pancoast, who confessed to killing Morgan notwithstanding the lack of a significant motive or fingerprints.

There is also speculation on the possibility of a third trial—pertaining to an alleged “authorized biography” tentatively entitled Alfred’s Mistress that Vicki Morgan was working on at the time of her death with a freelance television writer named Gordon Basichis. Vicki had a contract drawn up between herself and Basichis that expired on August 1, 1982; it gave her creative and business control over the book. At press time, neither Michael Dave nor Laney have a copy of the manuscript—which, they say, Basichis has refused to turn over - along with the dozens of audio tapes on which Vicki recorded her memories of her life with Bloomingdale.

Some people may have thought that Vicki Morgan got her comeuppance—that the woman in the front page glamor pix, the vixen with the arched eyebrows, the haughty look and come hither eyes, snuggled in fur coat, got what could be expected. The sad truth is, Vicki Morgan could have been just about any of the thousands of beautiful, hopeful, working class California teenagers who make their way to LA to strike it big.

A post-war baby boomer,, Victoria Lynn Morgan was born on August 9, 1952, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the second child of Air Force recruitment officer Delbert Morgan and his English wife Constance. The two had met and married in England, and shortly after the war had their first child, Barbara, six years Vicki’s senior.

Soon after Vicki’s birth, Delbert Morgan abandoned his wife and family for another woman. After four years of grief and bitterness (“I hated the ground men walked on,” recalled Constance Laney), including a two year retreat back to England, Vicki’s mother remarried, becoming Mrs. Ralph Laney, the wife of a tool-and-die maker. The Laneys moved to California, where Ralph Laney looked forward to better prospects, settling into a modest house in the suburb of Montclair, about an hour’s drive east of Los Angeles. The couple had two more children, both sons, and Ralph Laney’s hopes were indeed fulfilled with a coveted promotion to foreman of a tool-and-die company.

Then in September 1962, Laney died of a massive coronary, “right after everybody got acquainted with him,” said Laney, leaving he with four children ages one to fifteen, and virtually penniless. Ralph Laney had died the day after his life insurance policy has lapsed.

Nor was there much time to deal with the trauma as Laney had to go out to work for the first time in her life, finding employment as the manager of the cafeteria of Chaffee High School in Montclair. She would work there for the next 16-plus years.

Vicki was spared some discomfort by attending the other high school in town, Montclair High, where she was remembered as being quiet, easygoing and well dressed. She had little interest in school or learning, but provided no discipline problems in class. “She just didn’t like to go in the classroom,” remembers Laney. She took music lessons, studying accordion and the violin.

She had much more enthusiasm for modeling school, a small-time academy, in Covina for which her mother had mustered the tuition fees. Vicki - lankyl, thin (five feet, ten inches, 110 pounds) and beautiful,- was frequently chosen Model of the Month, and did some modeling at the local Montclair Plaza. This was important to her, as she had high hopes of becoming a professional model and actress.

Outside of modeling school, Vicki’s other interest was her boyfriend, Gary Haskell. The two were inseparable from junior high school, “going steady” for three years. At that point, there was promise in Vicki Morgan’s life: she had the best looking guy in school as and the firm belief that one day she would make the big time as a model or actress—if she could just muddle through another two years of school.

But at 16, after finishing her sophomore year, she realized she was pregnant. She kept it a secret for the first two months - until her mother guessed. Abortion was out of the question in her Episcopalian family and Vicki maintained that Gary would marry her before the child’s birth and things would still work out. In fact, her pregnancy was the end of the relationship. Gary had other plans for himself, such as medical school. (He became a registered nurse).Laney took Vicki out of high school and enrolled her in St. Anne’s School for Unwed Mothers. It was there that Vicki lived in the dorms, attended some classes, and finally gave birth to a son, Todd, on January 7, 1969.

Gary Haskell moved to another town and Vicki returned to L.A. to look for work. She quickly discovered that an unwed mother without a high school diploma had limited job opportunities. Broke and jobless, she permitted Todd to be taken on by her mother, who raised him almost exclusively for his first eight years in the hope that Vicki would get a new start in life.

Morgan was a rather typical young woman who arrived in Hollywood with little going for her but her fantasies. She was beautiful, pleasant and easily led, especially by men, who were attracted by her beauty and eagerness. The new start began with a trip to Las Vegas to marry Earle Lamb, a clothing wholesaler with a store on Westwood Boulevard. He was exactly 30 years older than she.

The newlyweds found a comfortable apartment in the Sierra Towers, just off Sunset and Doheny; Vicki told her mother it was a promising beginning.

Enter, shortly thereafter, one Alfred Bloomingdale.

In Vicki’s own words, their meeting went like this: “He [Alfred] followed me into a restaurant, the Old World Restaurant on Sunset Boulevard” and struck up a conversation. “He told me that his wife was in Europe. I recall him asking if I played tennis because his daughter played tennis…she had been in school in England and he said we didn’t live that far from each other…and he asked me for my phone number so that I could maybe get a relationship going with his daughter Lisa, playing tennis, because he could no longer play. He had hurt his knee years prior…and that’s how it went, very, you know, lax, casual conversation.”

Despite Vicki having no clue as to who Alfred Bloomingdale was (she’d never heard of Bloomingdale’s department store, or for that matter much about New York), she found him engaging—and gave him her number.

The next day, “Alfred started calling me, a minimum of five times a day up to 20 times a day for approximately two months straight, all day long…He wanted me to have lunch with him.” Numerous friends and family members go further, and say that Bloomingdale’s compulsive phoning to Vicki continued virtually every day for the next 12 years until his death -through their separations, her marriages and his final hospitalization.

Although she repeatedly told him she was married and hung up on him “many times,” Morgan would later testify, Bloomingdale, a consummate power broker, was determined to have his way. During her palimony suit deposition, an ingenuous-sounding Vicki told Hillel Chodos, Bloomingdale’s prestigious attorney, “You don’t know Mr. Bloomingdale…He was so persistent…that I had lunch with him.”

The rendezvous took place at their original meeting place, the Old World. She lunched with Bloomingdale and a woman friend of his, who was presumably there to “check out” Vicki. Morgan never learned the nature of the relationship of this woman to Alfred, nor did she ever see her again. Before the check arrived, Bloomingdale expressed a desire to see her again, privately, and Vicki agreed. By this time, Vicki had more than a glimmer that this mysterious older man was very wealthy and powerful. She was, as she would admit, already hooked.

Their third meeting came a week later, outside Schwab’s Pharmacy on Sunset and Crescent Heights. “He was standing in front on the street and I waved and he told me to pull into the parking lot…Alfred said ‘There’s a young lady that’s going to be riding with you. Just follow me.’ My heart sunk to my feet…I drove my car with this person in it up to someone’s house. I’m driving up Sunset Plaza and she proceeds to tell me that ‘Alfred has a real interest in you and I’m here to tell you that he’s going to beat you when he sees you up at that house, as he does all the hookers he sees…He will probably tie you up. He wants me to tell you this but he wants me to also let you know that you are special to him and that he will make special…what’s the word…allowances.’”

In the two story house on Sunset Plaza Drive near Mulholland, America’s version of the Profumo-Christine Keeler affair began. The differences were that Bloomingdale’s chum, Ronald Reagan, was not yet President, and Bloomingdale was only a member of the shadow cabinet, not the official one.

At the house, Vicki met another woman, a woman in her thirties named Kaye—a woman she would see at least another ten times within the next three months at the Sunset Plaza house. According to Vicki, Kaye made iced tea for Alfred (“an iced tea drinker”), then went upstairs with the other woman (from the car), leaving Vicki and Alfred alone for a leisurely tete a tete, where, they formalized their relationship. “Alfred told me he wanted me to be his mistress. I said “Okay, but I’m married,” and he told me to find out from my husband what it would take to get rid of him, financially…as he was holding my hand on the sofa.”

With the issue of her husband tidily resolved, Bloomingdale then explained to Vicki that they “were going to have a little fun upstairs.”

“By the time Alfred and I walked up there, these two women were nude and I was told to take my clothes off and Alfred was already taking his clothes off and he asked one of the girls to get the equipment, which is Alfred Bloomingdale’s belt, his ties (that he wears around his neck), and excuse me gentlemen, but a dildo,” Morgan demurely explained to the attorneys. “He then proceeded to have [the two women] line up against the wall, arms raised, with a tie around their wrists, “which was over the door and tied to the door knob…and then beat them with his belt.”

As Vicki looked on, Alfred remarked to her, “Wasn’t this fun?” “He had a look in his eyes and believe me when I say this, a look in his eyes and his face that scared me to death. He was a different person…and I was scared to death to say anything but ‘yes’ and you better believe I said, ‘Yes, this is fun.’” After he was finished with the two women, who promptly left the room, Vicki and Alfred had their first sexual encounter, during which Alfred “spanked” her. (“Alfred didn’t know from sharp love taps,” Vicki responded to a query from attorney Chodos.)

The sexual violence shocked her, yet she remained in the room—and she watched and participated. Why didn’t she run home to her adoring husband? “I was scared to leave…and at the same time, Alfred is the most fascinating man I have ever met in my entire life. There’s no one like him in the world. He’s fun, he’s childlike. He’s a little arrogant but not rudely arrogant. He always needed helping doing this or that because he was tripping over his own feet and he was so worldly. He knew everything.”

And so an intense, complicated, obsessional folie a deux began and continued, bumbled and fumbled, fell apart and reformed dozens of times for the next 12 years; a relationship in which Vicki Morgan would later seek financial restitution for her therapeutic attempts to cure Bloomingdale of “his Marquis de Sade complex.” For all the S&M, it would appear, however, that the relationship between these two wounded people pivoted much more on a Pygmalion/Galatea axis than on any perversions of Bloomingdale’s. In fact, despite Vicki’s protestations about her dislike for/revulsion over Bloomingdale’s sexual predilections, she eventually inhabited Bloomingdale’s sexual fantasies comfortably enough to endure and participate in them for many years. One can assume that the primary issue of discontent for Morgan was, alas, the ancient ax, monogamy: Bloomingdale’s penchant for hookers and his marriage to socialite Betsy Bloomingdale.

Yet so intense and unusual was their relationship that through 12 years of obsession (during which Vicki had three marriages, at least a half-dozen other semi-serious affairs including one, friends say, with the king of a Mideast country and one with another women), a bond of mutual need, passion and love continually drew them back together.

One suspects that Bloomingdale, without his brash willfulness and sadistic disciplines, would have been less desirable to her. Vicki Morgan was, from earliest years, in search of dominant men, dominance perhaps signifying steadfastness and security to her. Vicki’s relationships with men “go back from the time when she didn’t even hardly know,” says her mother, Constance Laney, a no-nonsense woman herself with a gritty sense of humor. “You know what I mean? She would be crying when she was six months old and when a male picked her up, she’d stop crying. She sensed it somehow.”

If nothing else, her affair with Bloomingdale was intense and glamorous. As Alfred’s companion, the girl from the other side of the tracks would rub shoulders with the rich and the powerful. It was a catapulting high and she liked it. They frequently traveled together—particularly on his business trips to Florida, the Bahamas, Europe, and regular holiday retreats to La Costa, the jet set spa in San Diego. She met many of his friends, and refers specifically in her deposition to meeting Ray Stark, the late Joyce Selznick, Mike Frankovitch, the director Mervyn LeRoy (whom Vicki claims told her she could be the next Vivien Leigh), Justin Dart (of the Kitchen Cabinet), Edwin Meese and numerous business friends and associates of Alfred’s.

Some three months after first meeting Alfred, Vicki’s husband “found out [that] Alfred and I were in Florida together.” According to her deposition, Alfred tried to pay Lamb off, but did not succeed. Vicki claimed she overheard the heated exchange between the two men by listening “on the [phone] extension” in her and Lamb’s apartment. Before she hung up she heard Earle say to Bloomingdale, “Anybody that tries to buy human beings is not a human being himself.” Vicki agreed with the sentiment, but “I was falling in love with Alfred.”

Shortly after Bloomingdale extracted her from her marriage, he leased a home for her on Sierra Mar Drive in West Hollywood replete with a cook and housekeeper. By this time, Vicki testified, she was utterly enamored with her aging prince, enough to discount her objections to his sexual practices, her mother’s disapproval of Bloomingdale (he called Laney his “mother-in-law”), and the ambivalence of her best friend, Sally Talbert.

Bloomingdale’s charm appears to have been entirely lost on Talbert, whom Vicki had known since 1970. In Talbert’s deposition, she described Bloomingdale as “an unfulfilled and unhappy person and one who was rude and abrupt with people, and though I had many interactions with him, I did not enjoy being around him because of his personality. However, in Miss Morgan’s presence, it appeared to me that his attitudes and demeanor would dramatically change and he became softer, more pleasant, and happier. At times, when Mr. Bloomingdale was unable to reach her he would call me beseeching me to attempt to locate her. He would sound frantic, unhappy and devastated by his inability to communicate with her…It seemed to me that Mr. Bloomingdale lived his life through Miss Morgan. Every time the three of us would have lunch together, which was very often, he would want to know the smallest detail of her life and what she had been doing since they last saw or talked to one another, even if their previous encounter was only hours earlier.”

Describing herself as a “farm girl,” Vicki did not grasp what Alfred meant about being his mistress. On one occasion when she returned to L.A. from a vacation two days later than expected, Alfred picked her up in his car at her home and took her for a ride. According to Vicki, Bloomingdale was distressed, and told her, “I sometimes forget your age but you obviously don’t know what a mistress is, Vicki. So let me explain…It’s like my other wife, meaning, Vicki, you just don’t call me every day and tell me where you are and how tan you’re getting, how lovely this place is and that place is. You’re here to be here for me.”

During the first year of their relationship, Nancy Reagan, Betsy Bloomingdale’s best friend, became knowledgeable of Alfred’s affair with Vicki Morgan. “Nancy Reagan,” according to Vicki, “had seen us [together] along with quite a few other people. At the time, I’m still young and naïve. I don’t know who Nancy is. I don’t know who a lot of Alfred’s friends were…but he would say to his friends that I was his daughter. I’d say ‘Alfred, I don’t look like your daughter.’”

During this period, Betsy Bloomingdale and her daughter Lisa accidentally encountered Alfred and Vicki in Beverly Hills. “He dropped me off at the hairdresser and apparently she [Betsy] was across the street…and you know, we kissed…an affectionate little kiss.”

That evening, the shit hit the fan at the Bloomingdale three-acre estate on Delfern Drive in Bel Air. “Betsy told him and he told me ‘not only have I and your daughter seen you, the whole town knows about you and this woman,’” Vicki testified. As a result, she said, Betsy “had all his numbers changed, the private line at the house, the private line at the office, and all the phone numbers except the main number at the house, and he called to let me know that.”

Also in 1971, Morgan became pregnant. Throughout their relationship, Vicki maintained, Alfred promised repeatedly to divorce his wife and marry her; he also promised to support her for the rest of his life. “He proudly told several of his friends that I was having his child. He told me many times that he wanted me to have our child.” Nevertheless, Alfred reconsidered the ramifications of having such a child, and Vicki, who tended to do as she was told, had an abortion at Beverly Glen Hospital in November 1971.

For the first three or four years of the relationship, a great deal of Morgan and Bloomingdale’s sexual activities were performed with other women present. Usually the routine began with Alfred tying and beating the other women, then beating Vicki, after which Vicki and Bloomingdale would make love. Morgan claimed that Alfred had sex exclusively with her, and that on no occasion were other women present in her home for sexual activities with him. Those incidents, she said, were confined to the “play” house on Sunset Plaza, which they eventually abandoned when Bloomingdale “leased an apartment on La Cienega,” where other women were brought to participate in their S&M activities.

Vicki testified that despite the fact that she accompanied Bloomingdale regularly to the La Cienega apartment, she loathed participating in the sex games. “I hated that part about Alfred,” she said. “Alfred was two people. He was a Jekyll and Hyde…I mean, a sickness. I truly mean a sickness.” However, during the sessions involving other women, Vicki also played “the heavy.” Alfred instructed her to “hit them harder if they don’t call me ‘master.’” She claimed she was too frightened to protest. “I’m not kidding when I say that [his] eyes got glazed [like] something you would see in a hospital or in a movie. He’d have these girls crawl on the floor and he’d sit on their back and drool; okay? I mean he’d drool.”

That Bloomingdale had a triple coronary bypass operation in the early years of their relationship seemed to have little impact on his sexual activities. Nevertheless, in response to Vicki’s protestations, Alfred made continuous promises that he would modify his sexual predilections. Vicki herself eventually sought therapy with Dr. Victor Monke in Beverly Hills and had at least one joint session with Bloomingdale. (Her mother recalls Vicki receiving a phone call from Bloomingdale while he was in session with Dr. Monke.)

Despite the lavish attention she had always elicited from men, Morgan did not see herself as pretty, at least not pretty enough. Like many women who assess their worth as reflected by men, Vicki found herself lacking and incomplete. Sometime in the early ‘70’s, Morgan had her breasts enlarged with silicone prosthesis, paid for by Bloomingdale.

Unsuccessful in achieving the relationship she wanted, Morgan attempted to escape. On one occasion, when she went abroad, Bloomingdale pursued her. “He found me in Europe.” Other times she changed apartments and telephone numbers to escape his harassment. But she underestimated Bloomingdale’s influence and cunning. “I changed my phone number [but] Alfred knows that chairman of the board of Pacific Telephone and he knows the chairman of the board of General Telephone.” Distressed by the pursuit, unhappy with Bloomingdale’s sexual demands, tired of being the other woman, Vicki finally abandoned him in 1975 to marry a struggling young actor named John David Carson, whom she’d met through her friends Ben and Ann Gage. Ironically, Ben Gage, now deceased, “was an old friend of Alfred’s.”

True to style, Bloomingdale endeavored to make the marriage as miserable as possible. He phoned Vicki incessantly and implored her to come back. Incredibly, he offered Carson money to terminate the marriage. Carson told a close friend of his, “I’ve never loved anyone like I’ve loved Vic. I’m married now, and it sounds crazy, but Alfred Bloomingdale ruined her. I went into his office, grabbed his collar one day and told him, ‘you son of a bitch, leave my wife alone,’ and he replied ‘I’ll see that you don’t get any more work.’”

Ultimately, Bloomingdale prevailed, forcing the marriage to splinter after less than a year. Obsessed with Alfred, overwhelmed by his blandishments and cajolery, unable to settle into a relationship with Carson, Vicki returned to Bloomingdale. Bloomingdale had more than bully power and wealth at his disposal, he had Vicki’s personality: she was a compliant captive, quite convinced of her inability to make it on her own and willing to tell herself that she was irreconcilably in love. More importantly, the resumption of Morgan’s relationship with Bloomingdale was also predicated on his promise to abandon his sexual practices; this, according to Morgan, he upheld.

Alfred and Vicki resumed their relationship in the mid-‘70s in a newly leased home on Basil Lane at the top of Beverly Glen. Money again began to flow in to Vicki on the first of the month, at a rate of approximately $10,000 a month. Feeling settled but lonely, Vicki now decided she wanted her son to live with her, for companionship and for something to do in Bloomingdale’s absence. Mrs. Laney did not regard it as a wise decision, viewing the transition to Vicki, with her erratic lifestyle, as potentially traumatic to Todd. Eventually, though, she relented and Todd moved in with his mother. Alfred supplied two housekeepers.

Their relationship on a better footing, and enlivened with extensive and frequent travel to Florida, Atlanta, New York, La Costa and Europe, Vicki Morgan now began meeting virtually all Bloomingdale’s business friends and colleagues, including many currently employed by the Reagan administration. Among them, one source says, was presidential counsel Ed Meese, whom Bloomingdale introduced Vicki to at a lunch and with whom Vicki met, the source said, “before and after the election.”

It was a rich life and Vicki loved the money. Unlike the movie stars who are catapulted overnight into furs and cocaine and then quickly wither into potential suicides, Vicki took to “the good life” as comfortably as a hand in a kid-leather glove. While the money was pouring in, Vicki spent it as though she always had it. “She conducted herself like she was a queen,” remembers one old friend. “And she used the money to have people at her beck and call.”

Despite the fact that she usually had a leased Mercedes-Benz, Vicki preferred traveling by limousine. “She used to have a limo on retainer from one particular company,” says her old friend, “because she wanted to travel in the style to which she became accustomed.” And she preferred traveling with company—often close pals like Sally Tallbert or Mary Garcia, but if they weren’t available, just about anyone would do. She’d keep the limo waiting, whether it was a 20-minute shopping errand at Neiman-Marcus or a three-hour visit with a friend.

Morgan lavished expensive gifts on her friends, family and herself. Perhaps the only sensible thing Vicki ever did with her money was to take out a $100,000 life insurance policy on herself payable to her son.

Of course, there was a downside. Despite all the classes she took—ballet, tennis, aerobics, acting lessons—she knew nothing would ever come of it. As long as she was Bloomingdale’s mistress, she would never have an acting career. She met all the right people, but she was never free to work. She had to be “on call” from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m.—“when Alfred could see me”—often running over to his office for lunch. Hence, for all those years of self-improvement classes, Vicki Morgan was a primed and bred racehorse ready for the track but not allowed out of the gate.

When her frustrations grew intolerable, she sublimated her energy into painting. By all accounts, she possessed a natural gift. She had begun sketching and painting as a child. As a “lady of means,” she bought herself a very spiffy easel, excellent paints, and fine quality canvases. Painting was the closest she came to experiencing gratification.

Morgan saw herself as a lonely child, even as an adult. She clung desperately to the rich blandishments of her new life. Without them, her existence was as tenuous as a handkerchief caught on a leafless branch.

Vicki later said she felt like a prisoner. She would speak to Bloomingdale throughout the day, see him several times a week, but they rarely dined or spent evenings together except when Betsy was out of town. Even with Todd around, and all the money, Morgan complained, “I’m getting older and I’m getting lonelier and I’m going to bed earlier. TV is boring.” Once again, she told Bloomingdale after a couple of years that she felt unsatisfied and wanted out. According to Vicki, he replied, “I’m not a young man…you’re the only person I’ve truly loved in my life…I’ll divorce my wife. We’ll tell her and we’ll be married.” Morgan drew small comfort from this “as he told me that hundreds of times.”

Their differences prompted Morgan’s interest in another man, real estate developer Robert Schulman. In 1978, Vicki told Alfred that she was going to marry Schulman, whom she had met through her friends Lorraine and Michael Dave, an attorney. At the time, Vicki’s father, Delbert Morgan, was dying of cancer in Texas. Schulman accompanied Vicki on several visits to her father before Morgan died in 1979. Schulman eventually “moved into Basil Lane, took over the lease and there was an exchange of money…” According to Vicki, Bloomingdale accosted Schulman, and the two had a heated altercation—“they grabbed shirts, they were going to fight.” Bloomingdale said, she claimed, “Then you owe me $10,000” (purportedly for some money and merchandise Bloomingdale had provided Morgan). “See, Alfred thought he was going to be able to get Schulman. Alfred powers everybody that way.” Schulman, though, was not a man to be bought. “You’ll have your $10,000,” he told Bloomingdale, and, according to Vicki, he wrote a check for that sum.

Although Bloomingdale was successful in postponing the marriage, Vicki and Schulman were eventually married. According to Vicki’s closest friends, Schulman was deeply in love with her—a relationship not unlike that of Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe, one friend said. He had great hopes for a happy marriage with Vicki. Despite her affection for Schulman, the marriage, though, lasted only six months before Vicki felt compelled to return to Bloomingdale, who did not cease his pursuit of her. Until her death, Schulman remained a close friend of Morgan’s and a silent suitor.

After she separated from Schulman, Morgan rented a house at 1611 Tower Grove Drive in Beverly Hills. It was a large, comfortable house with a pool and cost $2,300 a month. One source says that Vicki lavished $70,000 on decorating this leased home. At the same time, Bloomingdale and Vicki resumed what had been an intermittent house hunt. Purchasing a home for Vicki had been a recurring promise of Bloomingdale’s, and over a period of time, he made offers on six houses for her.

Politics now entered their lives. Bloomingdale shared his enthusiasm with Vicki over the upcoming 1980 Presidential election, one that put one of his closest friends in the White House. “Alfred continuously confided in me by telling me his private opinions about influential and important people with whom he was intimately involved, such as Ronald and Nancy Reagan, and he would relate specific instances involving them; and he told me about his involvement in secret and delicate matters such as campaign contributions for Mr. Reagan.”

At Bloomingdale’s request, Morgan testified, she “went to work in the main Reagan campaign headquarters as a volunteer mailing-list checker. After the election, she said, “Alfred told me about his judgments concerning Ronald Reagan’s appointments, the Reagan Cabinet, and his role in Reagan’s Kitchen Cabinet.” Morgan received an invitation to the Inaugural Ball but chose not to attend. According to one friend’s account, she did, however, travel to Washington for the festivities but remained in a hotel, where presumably she saw Alfred.

Around this time, friends say, Vicki began what was to be an intermittent affair with another woman. “Vicki had a whole life that Alfred didn’t even know about,” a friend recalled.

In the spring of 1981, Bloomingdale became ill. “Alfred wasn’t feeling well,” remembered Vicki, “but we didn’t know he had anything wrong until August.” Bloomingdale was admitted to UCLA Hospital for treatment for cancer of the esophagus and Vicki began a deathbed vigil, visiting him “every single day.” “I spent more time [with him] while he was in the hospital this past year than I have in any one year for the 12 years I have known him.”

Mary Garcia, a close friend of Vicki’s since 1979, accompanied Morgan to Bloomingdale’s hospital room “on at least six occasions.” “It seemed to me at that point,” stated Garcia “[that Vicki] appeared to be his prime reason for remaining alive.”

During Bloomingdale’s UCLA hospitalization, the rift between Betsy and Vicki finally fulfilled its promise of a love triangle melodrama. According to Morgan, Betsy’s resentment over her visits and Bloomingdale’s misbehavior finally exploded, creating an irreconcilable tension between Betsy and her dying husband.

“Alfred frequently told me about the bitter fights he had with his wife because of his phone calls to me…[he] told me that his wife was too occupied with her social life, her shopping, her lunches with designers and lady friends to give him the support he needed…he said that he wanted me to promise him that I would help him get well no matter how long it took and to supervise the nurses, whom he said he did not trust. He said he was afraid of the nurses,” and, further, that, “on his deathbed, he’s afraid of his wife, not me.”

Vicki told friends that Betsy had forbidden her visits to see Alfred. Vicki simply dressed up in a nurse’s uniform and continued the visits. Morgan later told attorney Paul Caruso that she “had won the confidence of all the nurses and attendants at the hospital,” and she was successful in seeing Alfred regularly. She claimed that “Betsy Bloomingdale eventually locked herself in the room with him and made the nurses leave and was in there for over four hours with that man [and] he’s not strong.” Pressing her point, she alleged, “Betsy did say to someone that she’d make him mentally incompetent by the time she was through with him.” (Mrs. Bloomingdale has never testified, so her side of the story is unknown.)

During his hospitalization, Bloomingdale had agreements drawn up, witnessed by two members of the hospital staff, giving Vicki one half of his share of Show Biz Pizza and two years of a monthly allowance of $10,000.

When he returned (with full-time nursing care) to his Bel Air home on Delfern Drive, Vicki visited him there “24 to 29 times,” she said, while Betsy was out of town. When Betsy found out, according to Vicki, she “told the guard at the gates not to allow any more visits.” On one occasion—on June 16, 1982—Bloomingdale managed to get to Vicki’s house for lunch, assisted by attendants. It was the last time they would see each other.

With Bloomingdale so ill, Betsy took over the family finances. For the first time since she had left Schulman, Vicki’s monthly check did not arrive and her worst fears were realized. Accustomed to a lavish lifestyle, she was now broke.

Morgan now retained Marvin Mitchelson and filed her palimony suit. In early August 1982, Bloomingdale was admitted under a fictitious name to St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. He died on August 20 and was buried privately with only his family in attendance. His will was read and there was no mention of Vicki Morgan. For the first time in twenty years, Vicki was totally on her own. Her source of love, money and protection was a memory.

The Last Desperate Year

Vicki Morgan gave her deposition on Friday, the 13th of August, 1982, to the Bloomingdale's attorney, Hillel Chodos. Morgan almost certainly her savaged her own case that day by discussing the sexual and financial relationships she had with Bloomingdale. It is widely agreed that mixing sex and money in a breach of contract case will quite likely raise the legal spectre of prostitution.

Exactly one week later, Bloomingdale died and Vicki began a steady disintegration that continued until her death. One friend went so far as to suggest that her brutal death might have actually "put her out of her misery."

Morgan’s relationship with her attorney, Marvin Mitchelson, wasn’t working. Shortly after Mitchelson filed the suit, he was “invited to a meeting at the White House.” The meeting was arranged by Morgan Mason, at that time Reagan’s special assistant for political affairs. Mason is the son of actor James Mason, and Mitchelson had represented Mason’s wife, Pamela, in their divorce 18 years earlier. At the White House meeting, Mitchelson says, “we did discuss the Vicki Morgan case.” Mitchelson will not say who else other than Morgan Mason was present at the meeting, except that Ronald Reagan was not a participant.

According to close friends, Vicki was extremely agitated by Mitchelson’s publicizing of her case; overnight her name had become a household word signifying scandal, and the effects augmented her insecurity until she reached a perilous emotional low. Before the suit was resolved, the two parted company in mid-September. Vicki then sought the counsel of Michael Dave, an attorney friend whom she had known for a decade. “She had a profound realization that she was doing something that most people don’t do,” Dave recalls. “She was suing a very wealthy and powerful family. She had a whole host of emotions and apprehensions about what she had undertaken with this suit.” Simultaneously, a friend of hers named Marvin Pancoast suggested that Vicki see another attorney, Arthur Barens. [See sidebar: “Who killed Vicki Morgan”] Irony was to be well served.

By December 1981, Vicki ran out of money again and was forced to move from her comfortable Beverly Hills home. According to one source, her friend Mary Garcia helped her find a three-bedroom condo in Studio City to rent. Morgan’s renewed acquaintance with poverty only deepened the emotional fallout from the media-blitzed trial. She expressed a fear of Betsy Bloomingdale’s ill will and a certain amount of paranoia that may not have been ill founded.

As a result of the media blitz, Morgan could no longer user her own name. No one in the Studio City condo had known that the slender, dark-haired woman who walked her Doberman pinscher each day was the infamous Vicki Morgan. The only thing memorable about her, according to one neighbor, was Todd, now 14, “a nice boy” who dressed punk and sported a green mohawk.

“The news and publicity was so negative,” says Dave, “that she literally withdrew from all but her closest friends. She couldn’t use her own name…even to open a bank account. She felt herself to be a pariah of society.”

A close woman friend of Vicki’s told another friend, “Vicki was all for letting everything hang out and making it public in the days before Bloomingdale died” and that “…everyone was furious at her.” The woman, who requested anonymity, also told her friend that “she is scared to death,” stating that “this shit goes so deep and so high…it combines everything involved in big money, big politics, and big society.” Also, she maintained that “anyone connected with Vicki Morgan doesn’t want any further investigation.” This may explain why few of Morgan’s closest friends will speak publicly about her or her life.

Sources close to Morgan claim that she did have a number of unsavory friends by this time in her life. One was “an Arabian princess who was strung out on heroin.” Vicki herself, according to an artist acquaintance of hers, dabbled in freebasing cocaine. The artist said that “there was a period in Vicki’s life when she did an extensive amount of freebasing and squandered a good deal of money on it.” He also said that the drug took its toll on her—she “used to be an extremely bright, together person”—and that “freebasing sort of destroyed her brain. She was always getting involved with these real lowlifes.”

When Judge Markey ruled against the bulk of her palimony suit, Vicki was devastated. Writing her memoirs had been on her mind for some time, but as the scandal mongering about her escalated and her funds dwindled, the idea of a book came to seem like salvation—a financial bailout through a therapeutic process.

Vicki eventually settled on television freelance writer Gordon Basichis, who was introduced to her by a Hollywood producer, and with whom Vicki had a romantic liaison.

It was a decision that displeased her closest friends and her mother, though it was no surprise to anyone that she would choose to work with a male writer, especially one with a forceful presence. Basichis, described by one friend of Vicki’s as “slim, halfway good-looking, real street-wise…and [acts] like he’s crawled and clawed his way along with the best of them,” fit the bill. The same friend commented, “Vicki always needed a male figure around. She had that with Alfred, then with Mitchelson (not sexually) because her whole reason for being at that point was her case.” While Michael Dave appealed the Markey decision, Vicki, friends say, became obsessed with her book, her new raison d’etre, and Gordon Basichis.

Vicki met Basichis in November, 1982; several months later her attorney, Michael Dave, drew up a contract defining their respective roles. Basichis was to serve as collaborator, transcribing and editing Vicki’s story, which she told into a small tape recorder. Vicki was to have creative business control. Though the two would split the profits and the book’s byline, Vicki had to approve the terms struck with any publisher. The book was to be called Alfred’s Mistress, an autobiography of Vicki Morgan, co-written by her and Basichis. It was to be a trial working relationship, which contractually terminated on August 1, 1983, unless Vicki was pleased with the results and saw fit to continue.

The audio tapes on which Vicki recorded her life’s saga were kept, according to her mother, in a safe deposit box.

The relationship between Morgan and Basichis was intense, complicated, and often quarrelsome, according to Laney. Michael Dave describes the relationship as “multi-faceted in a number of different directions.” Basichis was at her condo as often as not, frequently staying late into the night and sometimes overnight, Laney and Marvin Pancoast have said.

From the start, there was antipathy between Laney and Basichis. Laney, a devout woman, could not come to terms, she says, with the amount of time and evenings that Basichis, a married man with a newborn child, spent with Vicki. She had roughly the same feeling about Basichis that she had about Bloomingdale: disapproval. “Vicki let people use her,” says Laney, who long ago gave up any illusions about her daughter leading a normal life. “She had some weird friends. Apparently she was attracted to them. I once told her ‘Gordon is no friend of yours,’ and she said, ‘Mom, you’re so out of it,’ I said, ‘Okay, just wait and see.’”

The last month of Vicki’s life was tormented, desperate - and she was completely broke. Already she had been forced to sell her Mercedes Benz, leaving her without a car and dependent on friends for transportation. She turned to selling her jewelry and anything of value that she owned. It also became clear to her that she would have to leave the three-bedroom condo in Studio City. The rent was $1,000 a month and often there was barely enough money for groceries. What money she had saved had been spent fro Todd’s tuition to attend Notre Dame High School in the Valley.

Morgan had also at the time recently renewed a friendship with an old acquaintance, 33-year-old Marvin Pancoast. The two had met in October 1979 when they were both patients at Thalians Community Mental Health Center at Cedars Sinai Hospital. Morgan was on a Bloomingdale-paid retreat to help her come to terms with the breakup of her marriage to Schulman. Pancoast, no foreigner to psychiatric institutions, was in for an array of psychological malaises, principally depression but also a bi-polar disorder.

According to an associate of Pancoast’s who worked with him at William Morris Agency in 1981, Pancoast was “very nervous, had a good sense of humor, could turn a joke, an had a short temper.” Working at odd jobs for most of his life, Pancoast was still hopeful—and quite ambitious, "but he had no idea what he wanted to do…he didn’t have skills and wasn’t very educated.” The associate recalls that “Pancoast was well-liked at the Morris Agency and was generally easygoing. He was very sympathetic to other people’s problems, very supportive. He extended himself.”

This view of Pancoast was shared by others. He is remembered by another friend “as someone you could turn to when you were in a pinch…extremely empathetic.” Friend number one, who twice had lunch with Pancoast alone when they worked together, adds, “There was no question he was very high-strung and troubled…but I wouldn’t say he was any crazier than a lot other people walking around.” Of Pancoast’s arrest, the friend said, “I was shocked…completely stunned. I couldn’t imagine Pancoast doing anything to hurt anyone but himself. He was harmless.”

Out of their loneliness and destitution, Vicki and Marvin decided to be roommates. Pancoast moved into the Studio City condo, a three-week stay he would later describe as “pure hell.” However, there were two distinct advantages Pancoast had as a roommate: he was overtly homosexual, which at least insured Vicki’s personal privacy; and he had a car, a blue Oldsmobile that Vicki could use for errands. In theory, he was the perfect companion—a good listener; a helper; and could, on occasion, rustle up some money, principally from his mother, a successful realtor.

Another young man we’ll call Jake met Pancoast in 1967. Jake’s roommate had invited Pancoast to stay a while until he sorted out his life. “He wanted to be a hairdresser and was as gay a three dollar bill, very nelly…scattered but not violent. He stayed a few months and left owing me money.”

Jake lost contact with Pancoast in the early ‘70s and lost interest in him, having failed to convince Pancoast’s mother to reimburse him for her son’s debts. “I forgot about him,” said Jake, “until sometime in the mid-late ‘70s I heard on the news that this guy was trying to commit suicide on the Sunset Strip. It was Marvin. I was stunned.”

Employees at the Hyatt House Hotel vaguely recall the incident. “There was this guy on the roof,” said a hotel porter, “and the police came and they talked him out of it and took him away. That’s all I remember about it.”

Jake was also incredulous upon hearing of Pancoast’s confession. “Never in a million years would I think that Marvin Pancoast could commit that kind of violence.”

One thing Vicki and Marvin had in common was tragedy. They would spend long hours reminiscing about their lost loves, love turned bad, and treacherous lovers. Both had known a glamorous, fickle, cruel world; both had been into S & M.

The last week of Vicki’s life was a swirl of turmoil and depression. There was still no interest from publishers on her book (at least, no offers), she grew poorer each day, and she had to move. Daily she would go off with Marvin, her mother or Gordon and look at less expensive apartments. Nothing interested her. Morgan’s awareness of her dramatic “fall from grace” was only sharpened by looking at the relatively shabby accommodations affordable to her. Her moods swung from listlessness to brief flashes of euphoria. Around ten days before her death, she phoned her mother. “You know, Mom, just wanted to tell you,” recalls Laney, “I’m going to live a very long life…probably past a hundred. I’m definitely going to outlive you.”

Laney came in to visit Vicki and Todd almost every day of Vicki’s last week. Vicki had to move by the seventh of the month—she had phoned the movers but had refused to pack. Laney would buy some groceries, coax Vicki out of bed, chat with Pancoast or Basichis a bit, do a little packing, and then return around five to her home in Montclair.

On Friday, July 1,. Laney, accompanied by an old friend of Vicki’s—her former housekeeper from the grand old days—visited Vicki. The maid had just had a baby and had spent the previous night at Laney’s, from where she’d spoken with Vicki on the phone on Wednesday night. According to. Laney, Vicki told the maid she’d had “a very bad fight with Gordon the night before” and that as much as she wanted to see the baby, “she had these bruises that Gordon had done to her, but she ‘Don’t tell my mother.’” The maid vaguely mentioned the conversation to Laney, who didn’t regard the news as that unusual.

When Laney saw her daughter on Friday, she was stunned. “To be quite honest with you, I had forgotten what Vicki had told the maid. When I saw Vicki, I saw a bruise on Vicki’s cheek.” Laney said there was also a mark on Vicki’s arm “just like someone would grab you.” Vicki told her, Laney said, that Basichis was responsible. Another source confirmed the same to the Weekly.

Basichis’ attorney, Brian Keslek, denies any assault or fight. “That is an impossibility,” Keslek said. However, Assistant DA Stanley Weissburg, the prosecutor in the Pancoast case, concedes that “there was a bruise on her cheek that may have happened a week before her death.” Also, Pancoast’s attorney, Arthur Barens, claims that Pancoast “walked into the room as they [Vicki and Basichis] were fighting and witnessed the assault” that “required medical assistance.” The nature or cause of the alleged argument is not clear.

Unquestionably, Basichis (who has refused to comment on any aspect of his relationship with Morgan) must have been strained from his working and personal relationship with Vicki. His contract with Vicki was to expire soon, and she was undoubtedly a difficult collaborator. According to multiplesources, her diet was often not much more than candy bars, wine, Scotch, Valium and cocaine - when she could afford it. She spent long periods in bed - day and night. Pancoast has described her as irritable and complaining.

Approximately one month before Vicki’s death, Basichis visited a reputable, prominent Beverly Hills attorney/businessman at the latter’s office. Basichis arrived dressed in “patent leather shoes, slacks, a silky or satin-looking shirt that was unbuttoned, wearing a gold necklace…that sort of Hollywood slick look,” the attorney says.

Basichis explained that he was working with Vicki Morgan on her life story. ‘He was the ghostwriter and she was the writer, and the impression I got was that he was interviewing her on tape.” Basichis “wanted $50,000” in exchange for “a piece of his action…whatever his deal was with Vicki Morgan. He never showed me any contract between him and her…but my sense of it was that he did have a contract with her and that he was required to make certain payments to her under it. He said the contract was running out. He definitely said that he needed the money in order to give her the money, and it was his responsibility to kind of keep her going… ‘and she really doesn’t have a farthing left.’”

Basichis stayed in the attorney’s office “for roughly an hour and a half,” and “what he ultimately said in substance could have been said in five minutes. He kept repeating himself, and he talked so fast I literally couldn’t get a word in.”

To convince the attorney of the potential of the book, Basichis produced a small pocket tape recorder and played a tape of Vicki talking (“he said there were many more tapes”), describing “her unhappy childhood, her mother, and then this home was put in…the pregnancy and how she felt really bad about it. The theme of it was what a shitty life she led…a girl who had nothing and then was later destined to go all the way to the height of power.”

“I said, ‘This is fine, but what the world wants to know is about Bloomingdale.’ He said a lot of leading stuff…like there were other people besides Bloomingdale and that this goes right to the White House, and that what people knew now ‘was only the tip of the iceberg.’ He called it the ‘the book of the 20th century,’ which would ‘rip the lid off things.’” He added, the attorney said, “that the book would be bigger than Watergate.” Pressed by the attorney, however, for specifics, Basichis only said that Betsy Bloomingdale was a close friend of Nancy Reagan.

Shortly after Morgan’s murder, in a taped interview with CNN’s Robert Weiner, Basichis said that “the story itself, I think, in terms of bringing down the government or any of this, has been blown way out of proportion. She was not ready or prepared to bring down the government. She was not afraid of government officials assassinating her or something.” Weiner also quoted Basichis as saying that the book “contains no information that would severely embarrass any government official or compromise national security.”

Despite promising otherwise while trying to peddle the book, this was exactly the impression the attorney got; consequently, he wasn’t interested in the project. “The whole subject matter really turned me off,” he said. Basichis sensed his disinterest and only pushed harder. “It must have taken 15 minutes to say goodbye to him, you know, shaking hands, standing up, edging towards the door.”

Whether Basichis solicited others before or after the attorney is unclear but if he did, he was not successful. Vicki was just as broke the day she died as she was a month earlier—and, according to Pancoast, just as miserable.

According to the Herald Examiner, a woman who claimed to have been a friend of Vicki’s for ten years called anonymously and said, “Vicki had called her and left a message and sounded somewhat desperate.” Presumably before or after Laney and the maid visited Vicki on Friday, July 1, the two women “met in a restaurant…Morgan said she was broke and [the woman] lent Morgan $200.”

On Tuesday, July 5th, Laney spent the day at Vicki’s apartment packing her belongings in preparation for Vicki’s move to a new, far cheaper apartment in Burbank, scheduled for Thursday. Around dinner time she returned to her home in Montclair. “Todd was going over to see a friend to spend the night there, Marvin was going to an AA meeting,” remembers Laney, “and then Gordon came over.”

The next day, Wednesday,. Laney asked a friend of hers “if she would like to go into Los Angeles with me to help me pack this tuff of Vicki’s, and she said, ‘Connie, if you don’t think Vicki will mind.’ And I said, ‘At this stage of the game, Vicki doesn’t have a leg to stand on.’”

Laney and her friend arrived at the Studio City condo on Wednesday “around 12 o’clock, whenever it was that they [Vicki and Gordon] got up. [Basichis had apparently spent the night, Laney said.] Vicki told me that Gordon told her the night before, meaning Tuesday night, that she had to play it cool with Marvin. He told her to lighten up on Marvin about 11 o’clock Tuesday night, because they sat up all night.”

Vicki expressed her reservations to her mother about remaiingn roommates with Pancoast. The relationship was not working out and there was some discussion between Morgan and Pancoast about going their separate ways. “Marvin showed more aggravation, more anxiety in the evening when I went with him to pick up Todd” in Marvin’s blue Oldsmobile. “When we picked up Todd, the first thing Todd said to him was ‘What are you doing with my baseball bat in your car?,…because Todd was in his car Tuesday, and it [the baseball bat] was not in there” at the time. Asked if Marvin looked noticeably under the weather on Wednesday, Laney answered that she did not see much difference. “He hasn’t looked like a healthy person since I’ve known him, but I took it for granted that it was because he was gay, and had been on drugs and alcohol for years.” However, Pancoast had been regularly attending AA meetings for the past year.

Prior to moving in with Vicki, Pancoast had worked briefly for a counseling center in Los Angeles called the Phobia Clinic. Referred through a “temp” agency, Pancoast, according to a woman who worked with him, was “very dedicated and reliable and worked long hours. He was real good at carrying out tasks” but less impressive when it came to taking initiative. According to his co-workers, he panicked when faced with responsibility. Pancoast quit because he was not allowed to smoke on the job and wanted more money and an expense account. This was Pancoast’s last job prior to moving in with Vicki.

Constance Laney remembers “clearly and distinctly that I didn’t leave Vicki’s until five minutes to nine Wednesday evening.” She also recalls that throughout Wednesday, Vicki remained at home, never leaving the house for errands or any other reason.

From nine on, there is no available information as to what happened in the apartment outside of Pancoast’s confession that he murdered Vicki Morgan at approximately three a.m. because, “I was tired.”

Post Mortem

Betsy Bloomingdale is the sole survivor of the love triangle. There must be days when she wishes she had kept paying the checks to Morgan that Bloomingdale had been sending for over a decade. At least, there would have been no scandal, no interminable s, no problems with her friendships in the White House. She could have come and gone without sensing that people were whispering about her.

Alfred Bloomingdale would have had a grand public funeral commensurate to others of his stature and wealth. Ronald Reagan probably would have attended. Wasn’t that the way it was supposed to be? What’s the point of keeping a publicist on staff who ensures that your picture is regularly in W every week if you can’t bury your husband with dignity?

It took half a lifetime to become the best friend of the First Lady. The trial costs and legal fees will probably be more expensive than Vicki’s annual maintenance fees.

Some days she must wonder if it was actually worth the bother stopping these checks.Hunter Thompson summed it up well some years back: “There’s a lot of wreckage in the fast lane these days.”

 SIDEBAR   

Who Killed Vicki Morgan?

Vicki Morgan was found at her apartment in the early hours of July 7, clad in a yellow t-shirt, blue bikini panties, with red-painted toenails … and dead.

According to the L.A. Coroner, Morgan died around 3 a.m. from “multiple skull fractures and an intercerebral hemorrhage: blunt force trauma.”

What that means is that Vicki Morgan was brutally beaten to death. Though it was assumed that she was asleep when she was murdered, her fingers on both hands were broken, suggesting, she awoke and resisted her attacker, who inflicted a multitude of blows, so many that the autopsy report states the “separation of the individual injuries is difficult” [to distinguish].

According to officers at the LAPD North Hollywood Division, Marvin Pancoast staggered in at 3:20 a.m. and told the desk officer “I want to speak to a homicide detective.” When asked why, LAPD spokesman Dan Cooke reported that Pancoast said, “I just killed someone.” Later, he would give a statement to Detective Bill Welch, an 18-year veteran who is spearheading the investigation for the LAPD. Pancoast was transferred to the County Jail, where for the first day he was strapped to a bed as a suicide preventive.

“I remembered I had a baseball bat in my car,” Pancoast told Herald Examiner reporter Andy Furillo the next day. “I went outside and got it, then I went upstairs and turned the water on in the bathroom — noise factor, I guess. Then I started hitting her. She raised up in the bed when I hit her the first time. It scared me, but I just kept hitting her again and again and again. I don’t know how many times.”

His motive? “The way she talked to her mother when she was over … Her mother came over and packed all her things, and she just sat there like the Queen of Sheba … She needled me and she wouldn’t quit … And she was going on and on. And when I started hitting her, I couldn’t stop … I was drained, tired.” Pancoast went on to paint a picture of constant harassment by Morgan that finally drove him over the edge.

An open and shut case? Not quite, according to Pancoast’s attorneys, Arthur Barens and Charles (Ted) Matthes..

Matthews, with his ample stomach, suspenders, and genial manner, ressembles an amiable county sheriff. Ineed, he was an Assistant D.A. of L.A. County. Matthews has the indefinable quality of one who’s seen a lot, heard a lot and, judicially speaking, has been around the dance floor.

Barens is the more gregarious partner of the team. Always fashionably dressed, Barens he seems always on full alert and inquisitive. Though criminal law is not the bread and butter of his practice, he has pursued this case with an almost obsessional quest for the killer of Vicki Morgan, maintaining steadfastly that Marvin Pancoast did not kill her. “Marvin Pancoast is an innocent man,” he says flatly.

Barens said he knew Christine Pancoast, Marvin’s mother, for “twenty years and had done some work for her in years past, and her for me,” referring to her real estate firm. In fact, Marvin referred Vicki Morgan to Barens after she parted company with Marvin Mitchelson. Although she had already turned her case over to Michael Dave, Morgan had three meetings with Barens at which she was accompanied by Mary Garcia. Barens claims that he told Vicki that he wasn’t interested in the case as he “didn’t feel, at that point, that she had a chance of winning.”

Pancoast, who is in jail on $250,000 bond, “is exactly where I want him to be. At least I know that he’s safe,” Barens says. Barens requested and received additional security precautions for his client. Referring to Pancoast’s confession, Barens replies, “if Marvin told me it was raining outside, I’d check myself.”

Barens and Matthew's principal obstacle in this trial is Pancoast’s confession and his day-after interview with the Herald Examiner. Working for the defense is the absence of any fingerprints of Pancoast on the baseball bat (the police say this is not unusual in that the bat was wooden and “fingerprints are difficult to lift from that type of surface”), and a motive of any substance deeper than Marvin’s professed irritation with Vicki. Also, there are several discrepancies in Pancoast’s confession and the physical evidence, most notably the location where he says he left the bat after the murder.

Not surprisingly, the defense will try to use Pancoast’s psychiatric history to its advantage; its most telling piece of information being the confession Barens claims Pancoast made years earlier to the Manson murders to some of his friends, although there is no corroboration such a confession took place.

Whether the defense can undermine the "Manson confession" or not, they will remind the jury that, in Barens’ words, “Pancoast was seeing a psychiatrist four to five time a week at St. John’s hospital, and that he may have been on different prescription drugs that may have contra-indicated each other.” Beyond this, Pancoast does have a long psychiatric history that includes at least one suicide attempt and a pattern of submissiveness to violence rather than aggression (Pancoast is known to have been involved in the masochistic side of several S&M relationships). Ergo: he was incapable of murder but not incapable of confessing to one. The defense will argue that a tormented, self-defeating Marvin awoke in the middle of the night, somewhat stoned on his prescription psychiatric drugs, saw Vicki battered in her bed, panicked and ran out of the house to the nearest police station and confessed to murdering her.

If Pancoast didn’t murder her, as Barens argue, then who did? This is where the alleged sex tapes could figure in the trial. If a jury is going to believe that Pancoast did not murder Morgan, they made conclude there were other possibilities. If Vicki was indeed involved in sexual affairs with high-placed officials other than Bloomingdale (indeed through Bloomingdale's introductions), particularly as she was known to be working on a book about her relationship with Bloomingdale, would she not be viewed as a threat?

Barens cites as support for such a conspiracy theory that Morgan’s apartment was ransacked, something Marvin had no reason to do. Even the police conceded at the preliminary hearing that the apartment was in a total state of disarray.

Based on the information collected by private detectives, Barens and Matthews say they believe in the existence of pornographic videotapes. Barens said, “I’m scared at some of the stuff that’s been turning up.”

Finally, although unwilling to discuss Gordon Basichis in detail,, Barens said that the fact that Basichis had fought with Vicki a week before the murder and allegedly struck her could be relevant: “I think it’s very interesting that an assault was committed on her and that the same individual meets a violent death days later," he said. One could well speculate that the defense might make more of this at trial to bolster its contention of Pancoast’s innocence.

A.L.B.

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Alfred Bloomingdale to Vicki – A Letter

Dearest Vick:

            I planned and fought for this trip for weeks against all odds. I finally won out. It was so we could be together and straighten out a few things. This trip is the most important thing in my life at this time. I only live for you. I know Todd is important. But he’s young and every time you leave it will be the same thing. I’m old and I need you. I will come by tomorrow at 10:00. Please be ready. You can come back any time you wish. If by chance this letter is not read till after Sunday at 10:00 I hope you will call me at La Costa and tell me what day and hour you will be with me there. Don’t disappoint me. I love you and it’s our only chance to be together for any length of time. Last week I only saw you about 1 hour all told. It’s always a rush. It’s my fault but please forgive me. And forgive me for yesterday. I’ll explain more in La Costa. Please please love me and go with me.

I love you,

Alfred

P.S. This is the 1st letter I’ve written in 25 years.