Heir Mail #12
An environmental activist living underground, very bad Publixity, and Paris's potential twins.
Hello! You’re reading HeirMail, the only newsletter to come from me (hi) setting a Google Alert for the word “heiress” and then just writing about whatever pops up.
Just a rec: this week that I did, belatedly, listen to the two Irish scam heiress episodes of AARP’s The Perfect Scam podcast — mentioned initially two weeks ago and recommended since back to me by a couple of readers. Very fun gossip!
CTRL + F:
Finally covering the kidnapped French hotel heiress!
Underground tunnels, a private island, and Extinction Rebellion
Paris Hilton orders a variety pack of babies
Publix heiress real, real bad
We are now Ecclezone-d for this
From the rest of the alert: more Bling Empire, a lady who had the Queen for a bridesmaid, NXIVM, Anna Delvey’s advice for Trump, a Busch goes flat, Ghislaine but skip it, Minty Mellon, Super Bowl-bound Gracie Hunt
Also: I’m looking to talk to people, especially those closer to retirement age, about the role of financial and estate planning in their lives (for something with a slightly more serious tone than this newsletter). If you’re interested or know someone who might be, please reply to this email or leave a comment with your information below. Thank you!
“Long jail terms sought over French hotel heiress kidnapping,” France 24
“British man sentenced to 14 years over kidnapping of French hotel heiress,” Telegraph
“Italian man jailed for 18 years for kidnap of French hotel heiress,” RTE.ie
“Italian Sent To 18 Years In Jail Over Kidnap Of French Hotel Heiress,” NDTV
13 people are accused of being involved in the kidnapping of Jacqueline Veyrac, which is just a lot of people for one now 80-year-old.
Jacqueline is the owner of “the five-star Grand Hotel in Cannes and the ritzy seafront La Reserve restaurant in Nice.” It was founded by her late husband, whose name I can’t find anywhere? Very strange!
The now-convicted ringleader, Giuseppe Serena, managed La Reserve, but had his contract cancelled in 2009, and he assembled a team bigger than Danny Ocean’s to snatch his former boss off the street in Nice four years ago. They held her in a van in hopes of collecting a $6 million ransom, which would go to a new restaurant. But after two days, some passerby just spotted and freed her? Details missing.
The exterior of Le Grand Hotel Cannes | @grandhotelcannes’ Instagram
This was the second time Giuseppe and his partner, British military dude, had tried to kidnap Jacqueline. Giuseppe said, "It wasn't about hate... and it wasn't about the money. Probably it was my frustrated ego," which is… good god, man, get over yourself. He’s 67 and going to jail for 18 years.
Sometimes I do wonder how many successful kidnapping ransom situations have happened that we just don’t know about. It seems like they never work out, but maybe they work out all the time! Maybe that’s how all new restaurants start!
Estimated net worth: Jacqueline’s repeatedly referred to as a millionaire but the no celebrity net worth site seems to run her info down. Rude!!
Blue Sanford is 18, a published author, a fan of hoodies and fur coats, and currently living in secret tunnels under a London railway station.
Blue’s rebelling, but not against her family. Her and parent Roc are both part of an environmental movement out of England called Extinction Rebellion, which has been around since 2018, and which describes itself as “a decentralised, international and politically non-partisan movement using non-violent direct action and civil disobedience to persuade governments to act justly on the Climate and Ecological Emergency.” The group does stuff in New York sometimes — apparently they threw fake blood on the Wall Street bull and made their logo out of people on the Rock Center ice rink, as per their Wikipedia.
Now Blue’s under the railway station to protest HS2, which stands for High Speed 2, a very-fast-railway project in the UK, which environmentalists call “expensive, wasteful and destructive” to the countryside. The whole project now reportedly costs more than £100 billion, and people aren’t super traveling these days. Blue is specifically waging a campaign against the paving of Euston Square Gardens.
Blue Sandford underneath the Euston railway station | @capterpillar_256_ Instagram
Of course, the Daily Mail loves development and developers, so the “heiress” label certainly seems designed to invite mockery in this instance. Still, the family background is compelling: Roc owns a Scottish island called Gometra and works as a publisher and environmental campaigner, with money for these endeavors coming seemingly from the island (how the island came to be owned… I can’t tell). I suspect Roc, who is non-binary, is an inheritor as well, but I can’t say for sure.
More importantly, their own website says stuff like “I proposed a minor refinement for enhanced statistical confidence in psychophysics whilst examining introspective sensationless magnitude and its methodological implications in psychology, economics—the synthetic a priori may in aspects be non-Euclidian” and later “Chauvinism I identify with the smiley face of racism” followed immediately, same graph, by “I am named for Saint Roc, patron of mad dogs, sea storms and the falsely accused, who declined his mother's breast on holy fast days.”
I do not understand a word of this! But I love Roc and Blue (who says she “puts the crime in criminal” on her Insta). They just seem like a nice loving family of weirdos, and it’s sweet and I like it! I think Blue looks happier in photos than nearly any other heiress I’ve ever seen.
Roc Sandford (center) recreates The Birth of Venus on Blue’s Insta | @capterpillar_256_ Instagram
Estimated net worth: No specifics on Blue, but this website, very random, big who knows, says that Roc has “a combined total current assets value of £8.1k with a total current liabilities of £18.6k and a total current net worth of £-6.6k.” Daily Mail just says they’re “a millionaire.”
“Paris Hilton Reveals She's Started IVF Process with Boyfriend Carter Reum, Says It Was 'Tough' but 'Worth It',” People Magazine
“Paris Hilton is doing IVF to make sure she 'has twins that are a boy and girl,'” Kidspot
“Paris Hilton IVF controversy adds to shame and stigma of fertility treatments. Don't pile on.” Think
Kidspot’s headline sums it up the way I would probably also choose to: that Paris Hilton announced this week that she is undergoing in vitro fertilization, specifically so that she make sure she has twins, and even more specifically so that she can ensure that those twins include one of each of the typically biologically assigned genders. Designer babies, etc. There was a backlash.
Paris Hilton, cosplaying her maternal future | @parishilton’s Instagram
Think, an opinion vertical from NBCNews, has author of The Trying Game: Get Through Fertility Treatment and Get Pregnant Without Losing Your Mind Amy Klein with a generous op-ed that supposes that Paris might be embarrassed to explain her real reasons for undertaking the costly and invasive procedure, noting off-handedly that Paris is 39 years old.
If I were an IVF advocate like Amy, I might instead feel like Paris was voluntarily trivializing an emotionally fraught procedure out of, at best, vanity, as well as consider that you actually don’t have to tell people you’re undergoing IVF ever, especially so early, and you certainly don’t have to make up very specific and icky reason why you’re doing so. But sounds like we’ll have a new heiress and heir soon enough!
Estimated net worth: Paris is still coming in at $300 million, according to Express, Stylecaster, and Celebrity Net Worth.
“Report: Publix heiress funded Trump rally that preceded Capitol riot,” WFLA
“Publix heiress paid for Trump rally preceding Capitol riots, WSJ reports,” Tampa Bay
We previously met Julia Jenkins Fancelli when she got robbed by a murderer. [Here I have written and deleted “now we know she deserved it” like 40 times.]
She donated $300,000 to the pre-insurrection rally, which cost $500K total. So she made it, she built that. And it cost so much to look like such humiliating, deadly shit.
Publix says, “We cannot comment on Mrs. Fancelli’s actions.”
Publix, which is tainted now. | Wikimedia Commons
Her sister, Carol donated to both the Georgia senate losers — lol, you wasted your money — and “in 2016, she also contributed $800,000 to a conservative campaign pushing to prevent medical marijuana from becoming legal.” You have supermarket money, you rich moron. Don’t you know who loves the supermarket?
TLDR: Julia Jenkins Fancelli, please eat my whole ass and choke on it.
Estimated Net Worth: $6.8 billion for the family in 2015, according to Forbes.
The Ecclezone
I wrote a whole thing cutesy here about how Tamara Ecclestone '“might be the villain of Heir Mail,” for disproving the premise (that heiress stories are always fun, or at least compelling), but after Publix Julia, saying that seems absolutely insane.
Anyways, Tamara’s still in Dubai, still posting normal junk on Insta and showing up on the Mail.
Tamara Ecclestone with her daughter in a snap that is like, normal and fine and also you know, international vacation during Covid, I don’t know. | @tamaraecclestoneofficial’s Instagram
So I am making the ‘zone official, and cordoning it off; it’s been earned by sheer force of publicity.
Estimated net worth: $300 million, according to Next Alerts.
From the rest of the Alert
Outlets still hyped on Bling Empire this week, with BuzzFeed finding out everyone’s net worth (our numbers from last week stand, but now we can put Kelly at $5 million, and they leave Kevin at $10m), Vulture bringing us a bit of a glossary/ rich person translation guide, and Business Insider checking in with Jamie Xie, who they call “the tech heiress forging her own path as a fashion influencer.” If you finished BE and were like “what’s up with Jamie’s fashion influence career?” then we are not the same, but this article does say that her dad invented the first firewall and VPN.
Mountbatten auction! “Patricia Edwina Mountbatten was the great-great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, great niece of Russia’s last Tsarina, first cousin to Prince Philip and the Queen was a bridesmaid at her wedding,” the Evening Standard explains, and now a bunch of her painted elephants are for sale. If you’re in the market! Click that last link for a fully psycho pig purse, it’s good.
NXIVM’s Keith Raniere is no longer my neighbor in Brooklyn, having been transferred to Arizona, the New York Post reports — and they also note that Seagram’s scion Clare Bronfman is being held in Philly.
Don’t recommend doing this but, for a brief moment, I did imagine how Donald Trump would Tweet — if he could — about Anna Delvey writing him a letter on her blog called “Rikers Island 101 for Donald Trump.” Written up by a couple of outlets this week, the blob is about “how to thrive in prison” ahead of his presumed legal battles.
A 93-year-old Busch (of the beer Busches) passed. Carlota “Lotsie” Busch Webster had a fantastic nickname and was instrumental in founding the Busch Gardens theme parks. If you’re interested in Busches, well, more to come.
There are new Ghislaine Maxwell details but we all have the option to just skip them.
Guest of a Guest has a slideshow about Araminta “Minty” Mellon, who is the Jimmy Choo heiress thanks to her mom Tamara — and also a Mellon, of the banking Mellons, the Carnegie Mellons. She goes to NYU, Michael Ovitz is her kind of stepdad, Travis Scott sang at her birthday party, she rides horses.
In sports news, Kansas City’s Chiefs are still called that AND going to the Super Bowl, so both Total Pro Sports and Game7 are celebrating with pictures of heiress Gracie Hunt celebrating. You might remember her from her appearance in this newsletter when she was not wearing a bikini no matter what these guys say. This time she’s kind of dressed like Juno Temple in Ted Lasso, and thinking of that show and character made me happy. The end.