Original subtitles

[Dawn's friend] Los Angeles, especially West Hollywood,

is all about image.

[woman] It might seem crazy that this is all over facials and waxing.

This is LA.

Our facialist is just as important as our priest,

our rabbi, and our therapist.

It caused an international firestorm because it had

all the elements that make a good headline.

Hollywood facialist who's worked with A-list stars

like Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, who's accused

of hiring a hitman to murder her business competitor.

The other skincare guy, he was gunning for her

and trying to get her out of business.

[Dawn] Anyone who's a success usually has somebody

sort of chomping at your heels.

How do you become more than a friend

is you do something to please them.

You do something to show your worth.

[Dawn] Although he was a convicted felon, and I knew this,

a part of me just felt really sorry for him.

And that is where I made my big mistake.

[Gabriel] I don't know what the [bleep] was going on.

I could not think who would do that to me.

The jury, they were driven by a sympathy for her

because of this stalking that was happening to her.

[Dawn's friend] It was horrific.

Think of this beautiful, glamorous woman

at the top of her game, and then...

They released that mugshot. Just -- holy [bleep].

Those roots for miles. Her face was just bloated.

Just awful.

She looks like a hobo, and she's wearing a poncho.

[man] The lead detective was making this seem like a slam dunk

solicitation for murder.

[narrator] Only in Hollywood, the salon owner to the stars

out to kill the competition, literally.

[Gabriel] I was scared, surprised, shocked that my life

had been put in jeopardy for doing skincare.

[theme music playing]

[theme music fades]

[soft music playing]

My name is Dawn DaLuise.

I was a celebrity esthetician for 30 years.

So we are on La Cienega,

a very busy street in West Hollywood.

You know, it's just a whole mecca of hair or beauty

or massage, all those types of businesses.

This is where I learned my technique at The Face Place.

That's where I started with Brad Pitt and Christian Slater

and Meg Ryan and all them, right here.

That's my alma mater.

Now, I'm getting ready to turn left because we're going to go

by my salon now.

[tense music playing]

[Dawn] This is so creepy and so surreal that I'm going

through all this all over again.

My sign, by the way, was right here, a big sign

that said Dawn DaLuise Skin Refinery.

My business partner called me one night, "Oh, Dawn, I have

"something terrible to tell you.

"I have just been outside picking up flyers,

with your face in a lewd sex scene."

I said, "Oh, my God!"

I was terrified.

The only thing I did know was who I felt was

responsible for it.

[Edward] Everybody was out to get her. Everybody's out to emulate her.

Everybody wants to be the next celebrity esthetician

because she was the president of West Hollywood skincare.

[chuckles]

-[rooster crowing] -[sheep bleating]

[Edward] So this is my ornamental camel.

His name is Toe

because everybody loves the camel toe.

And I try to be original with names.

[chuckles]

My name is Edward Feinstein, and I was friends

with Dawn DaLuise for a period of about a year.

I moved to this area six years ago

because I like not being able to reach out

and touch my neighbor, and I have animals.

So this isn't something that you could actually have

in West Hollywood, right? In Beverly Hills.

So this is where I ended up.

So I met Dawn through my friend Nick.

Nick was getting facials with Dawn, and Nick was

talking about me to Dawn.

Dawn was like, "Hey, I wanna meet your friend."

So she invited me to come in for a facial.

Um, so I met her the first time, getting a service

and then from that point, we went out a few times.

We had a budding friendship.

♪♪

[Edward] Dawn's studio was in a very central location

in West Hollywood. I'd say it was pretty banging.

Some people would kill for that real estate.

She would always talk about how she had these

celebrity clients, how they were coming in, performing facials

and waxing, Jennifer Aniston, Nicki Minaj, Nancy Reagan,

anybody of any sort of stature, she's claimed to have been

a client of hers at one point in time.

[Elissa] People are willing to murder to get famous,

to become known, to succeed in LA.

My name is Elissa Buchter, and I'm a publicist.

Los Angeles, obviously, is an industry town.

People are really image and beauty obsessed,

and everybody's trying to land the same clients.

And when you read, "Oh, such and such celebrity went

to this esthetician," everybody kind of wants to go

to that esthetician then, because you think

they must have, you know, the fountain of youth.

I feel like having a celebrity clientele in Los Angeles is

definitely beneficial to your business.

Like, my facialist is...

Cher's.

If Cher's looking banging, maybe I will, too.

I'm really vigilant about my skincare,

and I started in my 20s, which was decades ago.

[Beethoven's "9th Symphony, 2nd Movement" playing]

I just wanted to have a decent complexion,

what you present to the world every day.

You gotta cleanse properly.

I usually use a stem cell serum.

Vegans wouldn't like that.

But then a toner, a moisturizer.

You don't use the same moisturizer at night

that you use during the day.

And you don't use the same moisturizer in the summer

as you use in the winter.

I will do something in addition, like the red light mask.

I don't know what it does,

but I'm not gonna stop. OK?

I'm just trying to age gracefully.

And Dawn, you went to her, and she had her own way

of doing it, and you see results.

So, it's, you know, I can understand why she was popular

and she was successful.

[Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker, Dance of the Reed-Flutes" playing]

[Edward] Dawn came from Panama City, Florida.

It was definitely a little hillbilly

and a little backwoods.

She said her father was a minister, and when she was

younger, she started to enter local beauty pageants

or beauty contests, but she was definitely no Cindy Crawford.

What she was participating in was like mall [bleep], right?

Just kind of stomped down the runway, go get a corn dog

and a slice of pizza afterwards.

And then the events on the beach.

Those were definitely some sort of low-end,

$20 cash in the envelope type events.

Dawn wanted to escape Florida,

so she sets her sights on California.

She saved up her prize money, mostly in ones,

and unlike some beauty queens who come to Hollywood,

she actually kind of made it.

[Dawn] I had always wanted to live in California, you know,

where everyone is perfect.

I knew I had to make money. I had to make it fast.

I would end up modeling for Frederick's of Hollywood.

It was very sexy stuff.

It was, I think, the very first lingerie catalog

where you could order out of the privacy of your home.

Several parts of the body were being exposed

through various openings.

In the back of the Frederick's of Hollywood catalog

were also sex toys and things that,

[clicks teeth] you know, I didn't quite know what they were used for.

And it paid really good money.

You know, I could make a whole month's rent

just for one afternoon doing that.

And that's what I was more concerned about than anything.

[Edward] Dawn definitely had a gimmick when it came to the facial side

that set her apart from the rest of the competition.

[Dawn] What sets my facial clinic apart is that I actually use

an electric machine.

I pull out this Halloween-looking mask

that's attached to an electric box.

It's a Hannibal Lecter mask, "Silence of the Lambs,"

and she's one of our victims here.

We're gonna see how she handles it.

We take the intensity as high as the customer

can tolerate it.

[Elissa] Different celebrities would talk to the press

about this treatment, so it had some buzz around it.

[Dawn] I was voted the best facialist in Los Angeles back in 2000,

and that's when it just erupted

and everyone was coming to my clinic.

The skincare business was very cutthroat and competitive.

Not everyone succeeds, and you either succeed

tremendously or you fail epically.

There's very little in between, and that can lead to a lot

of problems, a lot of jealousy, a lot of anger,

a lot of fights, and all kinds of things that I've seen

over the years.

Anyone who's a success usually has somebody

sort of chomping at your heels.

[steady string music playing]

[Dawn] Years ago, this person came to my clinic seeking a job,

but I didn't have a job available.

He says, "Well, I won't bother you.

"I see you have a customer. Let me just sit here

in your landing, and I'll wait for you to finish, and we can talk."

And I says, "There's nothing else to talk about -- get out.

"Did you see any kind of a sign that I have a job?

No. Would you leave?"

So I chased him away, and I returned my customer.

And that is when I recognized there's trouble in our midst.

Probably around August or September of 2013,

when I left work, I noticed a slashed tire one night,

I had a flat tire. I thought nothing of.

I must have ridden over a nail.

I had it changed, and I went about my way.

Within another week or two, there was another flat tire.

And as if that wasn't bad enough,

the next day I come to work,

already with my heart pounding as I turned into the driveway,

and I look.

My name was covered by the word C-U-N-T.

So it definitely seems from the outside looking in

that there was some sort of escalation

in the issues that she was having.

[tense music playing]

[Dawn] One night, I was leaving work, and a man was standing

in the stairwell in the pitch dark, texting

with his back against the wall. So it's him like this.

I walk by, go to my car, which is about

where that table is.

And as soon as I got in the car, a text popped up

that said, "You dress like crap, where do you buy your clothes?"

I felt immobilized by fear.

I felt like someone had their hands around my throat,

not knowing what to expect next.

I was terrified.

It just kept getting worse.

[Dawn] In the middle of July 2013, I was enjoying my career

with my customers,

and I noticed a new skincare business opened

next door to me, and I'm thinking, "What?"

[ominous music playing]

[Dawn] Smooth Cheeks.

I suddenly start hearing all kinds of banging

and hammering and drills going off over there.

So I went over one day to try and silence the noise,

and the person who has rented that space and is there

at that moment, I realized that I knew him

from the past.

He was in my clinic years ago, seeking a job.

And as if he had never met me before, when I came over,

he extends his hand and says, "I am Gabriel Suarez."

And I says, "I know who you are."

I said, "Would you please go away?"

I was so shocked.

He obviously was staking the place out

looking for an empty suite.

And it made me wonder, how long has he been keeping

his eye on this location?

Gabriel Suarez really scared me.

[Beth] To have somebody move in next door in this

cutthroat industry, right next to her,

somebody she did not offer a job to and felt maybe there wasn't

goodwill between them, uh, that was threatening.

Like, is he gonna steal her clients?

Is he gonna offer the same services?

Like, what's going on here?

So that's -- that was a problem for her, understandably.

[Edward] A couple of months into our relationship, I would say,

she had came to me like, "Hey, look, you know,

I'm having a problem with this guy."

His name is Gabriel Suarez.

Gabriel's business was called Smooth Cheeks.

I mean, when you say "Smooth Cheeks," I'm thinking

somebody's ass[bleep], right?

He did offer, you know, more waxing versus what

Dawn did, and his business was catered to that.

If you're hairy, you could go to Gabe.

He just was also in the facial business.

She had said he had done all of these things to her

to try to garner her clientele.

[Dawn] I knew he was going after my clients for one sole reason,

they told me.

I didn't see him ever going after them.

They came and handed me the card he had given them,

trying to solicit them as a customer for himself.

He was blatantly under my nose and under my window

and bothering my customers constantly.

I just wanted it to stop.

♪♪

My name is [bleep].

I've been friends with Dawn since 2013, about 12 years.

She has a great sense of humor,

great energy.

She's just a really lovely person.

And a great date.

One time, we were at dinner at a very lovely restaurant,

and she gets a call. She leaves the table,

comes back with tears dripping from her eyes, hysterical.

This once-upon-a-time, beautiful it-girl was shaking.

[Dawn] My business partner called me one night.

"Oh, Dawn, I have something terrible to tell you.

"I have just been outside picking up flyers

with your face in a lewd sex scene."

I said, "Oh, my God."

She just simply said, "I'll have one of the flyers

here when you arrive tomorrow morning."

So I went in the next morning and saw it,

and I was just appalled. I was just appalled.

My face had been Photoshopped on a woman with her legs spread

wide open and the crotch showing.

And it said, "Come by my studio,"

gave the business address, gave my phone number,

and it said, "First time is free, boys."

And they had been blowing up and down

Santa Monica Boulevard in the wind.

That flyer was the beginning of a series of flyers

that would be going to different places,

including my home in North Hollywood.

Dawn was a very, very good friend of mine for years.

I remember I went to her salon to pick up some products,

and I walked in the back, and I saw something obscene.

And I'm like, "Oh my god."

Someone posted on some website that she gives [bleep]

and she likes to get raped.

And there were people actually banging on her door,

"I'm here to rape you."

[sinister music playing]

[Dawn] I'd hear knockings at my door late at night.

I'd hear someone trying to jiggle the doorknob.

I felt vulnerable, I felt exploited.

Everywhere I go, I'm being accosted.

I go into a grocery store to buy ice cream,

I get a text, "You forgot to buy potatoes on aisle three."

Every single place I went and everything I did,

I had a pair of eyes on me.

It was terrifying to see my friend I care about

in complete distress.

[Dawn] I didn't even know what to do about it.

The only thing I did know was who I felt was responsible

for it, and it was Gabriel Suarez.

As time went by, I realized he was the one that was texting

at the moment that he was standing 10 feet from me.

"You dress like crap. Where do you buy your clothes?"

So that's where I became really panicked.

[scheming music playing]

[Dawn] During the time that I was being harassed,

I went to both the West Hollywood Police Department

near my work and the North Hollywood Police Department

near my home approximately 16 times.

They were always very intrigued and willing to sit down

and listen to what my story was, but then to say,

"Go buy protective gear or move your home or change

your phone number or just stop doing skincare."

That was the type of advice I received.

I was so terrified.

I'm surprised I didn't fall down a flight of stairs

when I even stepped out of my house.

I looked everywhere around every corner for someone

who had to be lurking that was ready to jump out

and kill me or attack me.

[Edward] So the initial complaints that Dawn had with Gabriel were

that he was going through the trash.

I have no idea what he was looking for in the trash.

And in the meantime, she was sending us

these messages.

"Gabriel's on the other side of the wall listening to me.

He's going through my trash. My tires are being slashed."

She was just extremely paranoid with him being one door down,

separating the two of them.

And she just kind of had her mind made up.

[Beth] According to Dawn, the owner of a Vietnamese

restaurant called Pho Nominal in the same strip

where her business is, said that Gabriel came up to him

kind of belligerently and asked him to turn his music down

because it was bothering his customers.

And the owner, Philip, said, "Well, it doesn't

bother Dawn." And he said, "Well,

that's because she's too busy," you know, "giving oral sex

to her customers, too busy to complain."

And I made a determination that I was gonna find somebody

to help me get this to stop...

so that I could sleep at night, know that someone somewhere was

gonna make this problem go away.

[Johannes Steinray's "Quand tu es dans mes bras ma chérie" playing]

[Chris] In football, there's a lot of unknown,

but you try and prepare yourself.

This situation,

I couldn't prepare for anything.

Oh, that was a good shot.

My name is Chris Geile, and I'm a former NFL player.

Played for Detroit Lions.

I was an offensive guard and special-team center.

I've had broken backs. I've had broken bones all over.

I had that finger bitten off. So all kinds of stuff.

Back in 2013, I was retired for quite some time from football.

I met Dawn DaLuise at a bar in Big Bear.

She was bubbly, she liked to talk a lot,

and she told me that she was a beautician,

a skincare expert, that she had previously been a model

with Frederick's of Hollywood for their clothing line,

or lack-of-clothing line, yeah.

Their dental floss, et cetera.

She was a nice-looking lady.

I was attracted to her, and I exchanged numbers

with Dawn, and we were chatting back and forth,

and she started just complaining and crying and such

on the phone and through chats.

And I was just like, "I can't believe this lady has

this many problems."

She talked about the other skincare guy

that he was gunning for her and trying to get her

out of business,

Photoshopped photos of her, just way off-the-wall stuff.

[Dawn] I used to go to this one church in Santa Clarita,

and I headed up a program of volunteers there.

One of those volunteers was a man named Pat Abbott,

who received a lewd email, unbeknownst to me,

until he phoned me one night and said,

"What the hell is going on?

You're not gonna believe what I just got in the mail."

And I broke down crying, and that's where he and I began

to talk about what was happening.

He says, "I have a friend, and his name is Steve McCauley.

He owes me a favor."

Steve McCauley worked for the Los Angeles

Sheriff's Department. He was a detective.

"I'm gonna get Steve to work with you on getting

"to the bottom of this and finding out

who's stalking you."

My initial meeting, actually, with McCauley had been

at a Denny's restaurant.

He wanted me to give him a copious amount of information,

the copies of every flyer, every email,

and anyone that could substantiate the stalkings

against me.

I did have a few people who had witnessed all these things.

Dawn contacted me one day, and she said that,

"The detective is trying to reach out to some of my friends

"or people that have seen things, and I already have

"two friends that are going to do that for me.

"They're gonna talk to Detective McCauley.

Would you talk to him?"

She said, "This is destroying my life.

"Is there any way that you could help me and just say

"that you've saw Gabriel throwing the flyers

all over Santa Monica Boulevard?"

And I said, "Yeah, I will tell them that."

[Dawn] Ed and Nick truly wanted to help as well.

They were very anxious to talk to McCauley.

They said they would be happy to explain everything

that had happened and even show him some flyers.

So I was pretty sure that they were gonna be

a great testament to my stalking.

[Edward] Dawn texted me, "I'm meeting the detective

"again today at 2 PM.

I hope he tells me he's about to make an arrest."

[Dawn] My hope had been that Detective Steve McCauley was

gonna get to the bottom of this and was going

to arrest Gabriel Suarez, and then I would be able

to sleep at night and I can get on with my life.

[Beth] I can imagine how relieved Dawn felt.

She'd been trying to get the police to pay attention

to this ongoing harassment campaign against her,

pretty bad stuff, and finally somebody will

sit down and hear her story and arrest Gabriel so she can

end this torment.

[uneasy tones playing]

[siren wailing]

[indistinct voices on radio]

[Beth] Can you imagine that day?

Dawn is home, she's happy, this campaign of harassment is

gonna end, Gabriel's gonna get arrested.

But, oh no, the police come to her house.

I see these men dressed in, like, tactile gear

with helmets and shields and black clothing on.

I'm terrified at whatever this is.

I saw Steve McCauley. And I just froze.

I literally felt the blood run to my feet.

I just didn't know what they were there for.

And McCauley sits down next to me and he wants my passwords

on my laptop, which I gave him. And I says,

"What are you here for?" What are you even looking for?

And he says, "You don't have to worry about it

if you didn't do anything wrong,"

And they were tossing my apartment.

And I didn't know what any of it meant.

[voice breaking] I just knew whatever was gonna happen to me

wasn't gonna be good.

Tonight, breaking news, a jaw-dropping Hollywood

murder-for-hire plot has a beauty consultant

to the stars behind bars charged with trying to hire a hitman

to murder a business rival she thought...

[Edward] He ended up arresting her for solicitation

to murder Gabriel.

Wow!

Here's the text that started it all.

Dawn texted me and she said, "I found someone

who is going to take Gabriel out."

[suspenseful music playing]

So, I believe it might have been around noon

that the story was on TMZ.

[Elissa] It caused an international firestorm because it had

all the elements that make a good headline.

You had a Hollywood facialist who was accused of hiring

a hitman to murder her business competitor.

[Dawn's friend] She was being accused of plotting murder,

which I still find it hard to believe.

That's not the Dawn I know.

And they were painting her as this horrible,

vindictive, evil, unkind person.

And they released that mugshot, which was

a very rough mugshot for a beauty guru.

She looks like a hobo, and she's wearing a poncho.

[Dawn's friend] Her mugshot was so unattractive.

It was shocking.

I mean, for a beautiful lady like her to have

five-inch roots coming out of her head,

looking horribly old, slightly green.

It truly broke my heart.

[Elissa] I couldn't believe my friend, who was this

high-end skincare guru, would be in prison.

It just seemed so [bleep] nuts.

But the evidence looked bad.

[soft string music playing]

The case against Dawn DaLuise,

it was quite convoluted.

The facts were exceedingly hard to grasp.

My name's Christine Von Helmot.

I was a Deputy District Attorney

with Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office

for close to 30 years.

When this case first started, McCauley thought that it was

just a stalking investigation, and then it segued

into a solicitation of murder investigation.

Dawn DaLuise was absolutely obsessed with the notion

that Gabriel Suarez was out to get her,

and she needed to make it stop any way she possibly could.

[Dawn] When I was arrested,

I just didn't know what they were there for.

McCauley says, "Do you know why we're here?"

And I says, "No, I don't have a clue."

And he said, "Chris Geile."

And I didn't understand at all what that meant.

♪♪

So, Dawn had sent me a text message saying

that she had found somebody to take Gabriel out.

At the time, though, I didn't really think anything of it,

so I just said, like, "LOL, don't get caught."

In her defense, we've all not liked somebody and said that,

you know, "I hate them, I wanna kill them,

I wish they'd get run over."

Maybe that's human nature, maybe that's not.

And she said, "Well, I'm not gonna ask any questions.

"And if I don't ask any questions,

I'm not gonna get caught."

It started to raise a red flag.

[Christine] He was kind of an easy target for her.

He was interested in her.

He wanted to be more than just her friend,

and, you know, well, how do you become more than a friend?

Is you do something to please them.

You do something to show your worth.

Dawn DaLuise had no patience for a legal remedy

for her problem, primarily because law enforcement

needed evidence, of which she had none.

She had originally given Detective McCauley a list

of witnesses, I think there were six of them, claiming

that these witnesses had seen various incriminating acts

being committed by Gabriel Suarez.

[Edward] Dawn had a detective named Steve McCauley reach out to me.

She had sent me an email saying that, "This is what I want you

to say," almost like a script.

And then at the end of the email, she said,

"Make sure you delete this so they don't find it."

So I hit print and save because, again, red flag.

I wasn't going to lie to the detective.

So I told Detective McCauley, "Hey, look, this is what I have.

"I have text messages. I have emails.

What do you want?"

He said, "Well, can you send them over to me?"

I said, "Sure, no problem." It was fun while it lasted.

But solicitation to murder Gabriel, kind of approaching

the line of too much.

And the bottom line is, when Detective McCauley talked

to all these witnesses, they all went, "Uh, no.

That never happened," with one exception.

A good friend of hers tried to play the role

and use the script that she had been given by Dawn DaLuise.

She kept texting me, saying, "This is what you're

"gonna say to the detective. This is what you're gonna say."

And I'm like, "Dawn, stop texting me this, my God."

She was trying to step up the situation

and get Gabriel in trouble.

The detective did call me, and I was very brief,

and I was nervous about it, but he knew I had been lying.

So I'm like, "Oh, my God, I can't do this anymore."

And I couldn't believe the mess that I got myself into for her.

So when police went to talk to Philip Bui, the owner

of the Vietnamese Pho restaurant called Pho Nominal,

he denied that Gabriel said those things to him.

And that he said them to Dawn.

Was Dawn lying to the police yet again?

And because it didn't pan out, in other words,

the witnesses didn't cooperate and say what she wanted them

to say, the police were not arresting Gabriel Suarez.

And therefore, she became more and more and more obsessed

with finding her own

solution to the problem, which was to take him out.

So this is from Detective McCauley's report.

"DaLuise confirmed Geile was a friend of hers, but she added

"she had not solicited him for help with Gabriel.

"However, DaLuise said that after telling Geile

"about her troubles with Suarez,

"he offered to take care of Gabriel.

"I then asked her, 'Did you tell him no?'

"She replied, 'No, of course I didn't tell him no.'

"Later in the conversation, I asked DaLuise,

"'What if Gabriel had come up murdered?'

"DaLuise replied, 'If anything, got traced to me,

"it would be a combination of feelings.

"I'd be lying if I said I didn't wish he was dead.

"Do I wanna be traced to anything that happens to him?

"Or do I want anyone I know to be in trouble?

"No.

"I wanted to get a gun and learn how to shoot it.'

"Then I said, 'Self-defense is different than trying to hire

"somebody to take someone out.'

"She replied, 'Yeah, I guess. I see what you're saying.

"You're right.

"And there was a point where if I could even have

lured Gabriel to my home, I would have shot him.'"

That is all troubling.

[Edward] Here's a text from Dawn saying that a lot of people

owe her friend Chris favors.

And the guy in San Bernardino who says he'll "handle"

the Gabriel problem for her texted her last night

asking for a photo of Gabriel, which she sent, that he's found

a low-life drug user drifter who's itching to get

the job done.

She also says she loves me to death.

"Can you come for a facial at 4 this Tuesday the 28th?

I am seeing my therapist."

And then she talks about how she couldn't get

Gabe's apartment number from the post office.

So it was just very fitting.

She's going to therapy as she's harassing people

and plotting to kill someone.

[Beth] So the question is, now Dawn's arrested

for solicitation for murder of Gabriel.

Who is distributing these sexually explicit

flyers of her? Is it Gabriel?

Is it someone else? I mean, what's going on here?

[Gabriel] I'm Gabriel Suarez.

I was in the dark completely about how she hated me.

She was bothered by me living.

She was bothered by me existing.

She was wanting me beat up, offed.

She was the original Karen. She's dangerous.

[soft string music playing]

I'm an esthetician here in West Hollywood

for 17 years now.

I'm the owner of Smooth Cheeks.

The name's Smooth Cheeks. It's a double entendre.

It's cheeks and cheeks.

I came here to do skincare originally as a facialist,

but I got busier with waxing.

Mostly back and booty, you know, men,

mostly men of all walks of life,

and everything in the middle.

It hurts a little bit, but I'm very fast,

so people appreciate that.

And it's a really quick discomfort,

but the smoothness lasts a long time, so it's worth it.

Yeah, so originally I came across Dawn when I started

doing skincare in West Hollywood in about maybe 2008 or so

when I first started looking for work just out of school.

I went to many salons and spas and her salon was one of them.

And I remember it being a positive interaction.

Left her my resume, she was busy, and I moved on.

In 2013, I had been working at a spa nearby for five years

and I had some money saved

and I wanted to open my own place.

I took over suite 14.

Dawn was at this location, suite 12, upstairs.

So when I moved in, it was just one vacant, you know, room

that was kind of pretty tattered.

Good morning, it's Gabriel.

I just wanna show you guys my new baby and my projects.

Facials and waxing in West Hollywood.

I think it's gonna do good.

I was having work done to the shop and I had

some day-laborers here putting up the walls and tile

for quite a while, maybe a couple months.

One day, Dawn's in my shop, and I said, "Can I help you?"

And she said, "Oh, good, someone that finally speaks English."

And it seemed kind of condescending

in her tone, but I was still polite and I said,

"How can I help you?"

Dawn's complaint was sound from

the place getting remodeled, and I worked around it,

and that was the end of our interaction.

So...

one morning, I wake up to guns at my front door.

[siren wailing]

And there were police with huge bats coming at me

with a search warrant on my apartment

here in West Hollywood.

They put handcuffs on me and pushed me against the wall.

There was guns drawn on me.

I was just shaking. It was horrific.

I wondered what they would have on me to do this.

How could they do this? They took my phone.

They took my computer. They asked for my passwords.

I gave them to 'em. I have nothing to hide.

I'm an open book.

I find out later through TMZ that Dawn was arrested

for solicitation of murder. And my stomach just dropped.

And I was like, "Wow!" Thank goodness she was stopped.

'Cause she was seeking someone to have me killed.

I had no idea that she was saying

all these horrible things that I was doing to her.

[Beth] For Gabriel to know that somebody wanted him dead,

that he could have been killed,

and he's a young guy at the pinnacle of his career,

it had to have affected him in a way that I would

imagine it changed him a bit.

[Gabriel] One night I was walking to my car after work,

and I saw that my car was keyed from the front end

to the very back end. It was Halloween of 2013,

so there's a lot of people around drinking too much,

so I didn't think much of it.

But then when it happened twice, I knew it was targeted

towards me.

Once I was walking to my office and I saw these flyers

with her in provocative positions.

And I was really taken back,

scared, didn't know what to make of it.

All the flyers were laid out all down the hallway.

When I was walking home, they were laid out

all the way here

and all the way, just everywhere.

I got home, they were all around the outside

of my apartment.

If they wanna go out after Dawn,

why are they at my house?

Why are these flyers all around the front

of my door and the outside?

I was getting strange text messages from men

looking for sex with her.

And I didn't know what was going on.

I was just really scared, 'cause these are

really violent text messages that were coming at me.

I was shaking in my boots, for sure.

It's sinister and really scary.

I didn't know what the [bleep] was going on.

And I could not think who would do that to me.

[Beth] Is Gabriel completely innocent in this whole thing?

Nothing about this insane story is what it appears to be.

No, we keyed Gabriel's car.

Yeah, we keyed his car. And it was one time.

One time too many.

Sorry, Gabriel.

Nick and I also posted Craigslist ads

with her phone number and a Photoshopped face

of a woman in various sexual positions.

And the, um, situation just sort of progressed.

[Dawn] I was shocked when I learned Ed and Nick generated

this whole campaign of denigration against me.

I was at a loss of words.

I just thought it was only one more nail in my coffin.

They were after me like all the Craigslist men were,

and I was pretty much just numb at that point.

[scheming music playing]

[rooster crowing]

[laughing]

Nick was part of the Bling Ring crew.

They really terrorized the LA celebrities.

[Edward] It got crazy.

If I could just kill this ass[bleep]

with my bare hands, I would.

[Gabriel] She was trying to take me out as a double minority,

a Mexican gay, which I think should be a hate crime.

We were [bleep] mortal enemies, and I would not piss on her

if she was on fire.