Heir Mail #14

Prison food and content aggregation and death, but imagine those words printed on lil candy hearts.

Feb 14, 2021

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.

Happy Valentine’s. This week all the headlines made me mad and I’m on deadline and that’s the vibe?

About that: I’m writing a story for actual work about the impact of inherited wealth and while I already have too much material (ha ha I should just sit down and write that, ha ha imagine), I really only like the talking to people part, so if you have thoughts you want to share about the general idea, reply to this email or leave them here:

Anna is back on Instagram, name intact. | @theannadelvey

Sunglasses and linens, a mood. She captioned it: “Prison is so exhausting, you wouldn’t know.” I would not know!

Since getting out she’s been posting, including a still of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct on which she wrote, “Pleading the fifth,” and she joined Twitter so she can say shit like, “I wish more people had my work ethic.”

Anna reminds me of this old Go Fug Yourself post I think about all the time — although I just spent like 20 minutes trying to find the original and failed, so might have been a fever dream. In my memory, though, it’s about Lindsay Lohan, years before she’d become European right after Mean Girls when she was only at the beginning of become a public punching bag, and it was all about how fun she’d probably be to be friends with. The part where you’re out and making a mess, sure, but also the next day when she rolls up to your place unannounced in sweats with a bag of tacos, and you ride out twin hangovers watching reality TV. Technically, it’s all bad for you and for her and maybe even in some larger sense, but it’s some of the funner toxic shit on offer in a toxic world. Maybe this is all just Goodfellas for femmes.

Anna might say that I am projecting. As she says in the new addition to her blog:

Don't you hate it when people try to be your friends?
When they act so fucking understanding, like they totally can relate to your life built on pillars of nihilism and amorality? Like they have even a remote idea how many sacrifices and tough choices it took to become what you are now?

I know I can’t and won’t and don’t actually support the goals — old enough, finally, to stop nurturing friendships with glamorous on-purpose ruiners — but I do still kind of root for them, depending.

This is all from another open letter, this time to her former prison neighbor Harvey Weinstein (whom I do not root for). It’s mostly about prison food and what other people think they know. It continues:

Being criminal and famous like we are (and a prolific emailer while CMC status like I am) isn't all fun and strangers sending you pounds of caviar. It's also strangers whose job is to correct you collecting and bringing tabloid articles about you to work, strangers admitting to having a Google alert on you, strangers listening to your calls and reading your messages, strangers watching you sleep, strangers trying things to make themselves a part of the story they don't know yet they want no part of, but you can't save everyone.

I would like to be saved, myself. In honor of that, and mostly out of laziness, I didn’t actually read any of the agged articles above. (At least this Google alert isn’t for her specifically.)

Anna Delvey @theannadelvey

I write better shit from a prison cell in a day than some of these bitches with fifty editors do in a year

Estimated net worth: Well, her fake number was supposed to be $60 million, according the prosecutor of her case. Her actual haul, from swindling, came to about $275,000. And she’s making $320K from Netflix for the Shonda show about her, which is supposed to go towards restitution for her victims, not all of whom could afford to get taken for the kind of ride she took them on, part of a story they didn’t know yet they wanted no part of.

“Paris Hilton Almost Got Out of Serving Her Initial Prison Sentence, But the Judge Wasn't Having It,” Showbiz CheatSheet

“‘The Simple Life’ Ended Because It Wasn’t As Dramatic As Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie’s Real Lives,” Showbiz CheatSheet

“The Paris Hilton Movie That Bombed With a 6% Rotten Tomatoes Score,” Showbiz CheatSheet

“Was Paris Hilton Jealous of Kim Kardashian’s Success?,” Showbiz CheatSheet

“Paris Hilton Testifies Against Utah Boarding School After Abuse Allegations,” ET Canada

I have to admit that Paris Hilton is not one of my personal favorite frequently-occurring heiresses. I try keep in mind her basic humanity and the fact that she was incredibly young when the video we once called a sex tape and now call revenge porn was made and released, and also remember she still often prefers a posture of glib wealth, and has a history of saying racist and classist garbage. All that attempted perspective is exhausting and not particularly pleasurable, so I haven’t even seen her YouTube documentary.

This week, though, Paris did something substantive and newsworthy, and Showbiz CheatSheet ran four articles about her that seem to have teleported from 2007.

On Monday, February 8th, Paris testified in front of a Utah legislative panel about the boarding school she was sent to as a teen. She’s said before, including in the doc, that she experienced horrific abuse at the Provo Canyon School, being forcibly drugged, thrown into walls, and watched as she used the bathroom. As she told the committee, “For the past 20 years, I have had a recurring nightmare where I’m kidnapped in the middle of the night by two strangers, strip-searched, and locked in a facility. I wish I could tell you that this haunting nightmare was just a dream, but it is not.”

parishilton

A post shared by Paris Hilton (@parishilton)

Paris with her team in Utah | @parishilton

The bill to more stringently regulate these centers has since passed unanimously.

So clearly the time was nigh for articles like “Was Paris Hilton Jealous of Kim Kardashian’s Success?” and “The Paris Hilton Movie That Bombed With a 6% Rotten Tomatoes Score.” (The movie was The Hottie and the Nottie, FYI. SCS explains that most critics felt it “perpetuated the idea that every beautiful girl has an ugly best friend” which I think might not quite be the problem?)

The site is, frankly, kind of like a very deranged Vox, where I work, insomuch as there is a whole lot of explaining, but in this case for incredibly precise celebrity minutiae (“Paris Hilton Almost Got Out of Serving Her Initial Prison Sentence, But the Judge Wasn’t Having It” includes the subhed “Paris Hilton is an heiress” which: respect).

Their tagline is “Save Time. Live More,” an oddly-pitched promise for a website that has the article “Iggy Azalea Was Vetted Before Her Salad Date With Britney Spears in 2016” on the front page as I write this. On the “About” page there are 49 writers and editors, all with little illustrations and bios. Somehow none of the bylines of the four stories I included here map to anyone on that page.

Staring into Showbiz CheatSheet’s friendly, specific, oddly impersonal sea of faces — some report that they like scrolling Zillow listings, others like sushi, many like their pets — the whole things feels like one of those media black holes. I could spout off about it being a content factory using fake identities, but I feel just as likely to discover each one of these people is just exactly who they say, people I have no interest in burning. In fact, I was able to find evidence of existence for almost as many writers as I wasn’t able to find any, before I felt depleted and stopped looking. (More like one likely real for every three possible ciphers, but whatever.)

I too have published stories I might not shout from a rooftop today, but I do think “‘The Simple Life’ Ended Because It Wasn’t As Dramatic As Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie’s Real Lives” publishing in the year 2021? I don’t know if anyone’s living more.

Estimated net worth: Paris is still coming in at $300 million, according to Express, Stylecaster, and Celebrity Net Worth.

“Fifty shades of outrage? As a British heiress' violent lover goes on trial amid claims her death was caused by 'rough sex' gone wrong, PAUL BRACCHI examines the tragic case,” Daily Mail

“German man claims British heiress died in an ‘erotic game gone wrong,’” New York Post

“Bouncer Charged With 22-Year-Old Heiress' Murder Despite His Claims That She Died During Sex Gone Wrong,” Oxygen

“Man who killed British heiress Anna Reed claims it was a 'sex game gone wrong,’” Newshub

“Ex-bouncer says British heiress died in erotic game gone wrong,” Toronto Sun

“German man to stand trial over death of British heiress, plans 'rough sex' defence,” New Zealand Herald

“HOTEL HORROR: Brit heiress 'murder' woke up hotel guests at 3am as bouncer claims it was 'sex game gone wrong,'” The Sun

“German bouncer faces trial for murder after British heiress found ‘strangled’ in luxury hotel suite bathroom,” 7 News Australia

“Brit heiress' lover claims she died in 'sex game gone wrong' which woke up hotel guests,” The Daily Star

Anna Reed was 17 when her mother died, falling down the stairs after suffering an aneurysm.

After her death, Anna, the granddaughter of late horse owner/breeder Guy Reed, began to travel the world, flying across Europe and Asia. In April 2019, she was dead in a hotel in Switzerland. She was only 22.

hotel_la_palma_au_lac

A post shared by Hotel La Palma au Lac (@hotel_la_palma_au_lac)

A post from the hotel where Anna was killed | @hotel_la_palma_au_lac

Anna’s death is a big story this week, for reasons that won’t confuse you: the man accused of killing her, with whom she was traveling and romantically involved, says that her strangling death was the result of a “sex game gone wrong.” You can see that phrase in most of the headlines above, although some sub in “erotic,” presumably for class.

It’s solid bait: a young and attractive heiress, far-flung locales and gorgeous hotels, a 8-years-older German bouncer who stands accused of a horrifically violent act, and also hiding her credit card in an elevator panel, which is a detail just confusing enough to draw people in even further. Nearly every article includes Instagrams from Anna, mostly in objectively small clothing, and pictures of Marc Schätzle, the man at whose hands she died, with a tatted up face (one reads “WARRIOR” in English). All the elements are there.

It’s also just a story about man who killed the woman he was in a relationship with, which is statistically not at all unusual. There’s little in these stories you can’t learn from the headline, and nothing that’s really anyone’s business at all, if you want to dig in on it.

And her family, who just lost this woman five years after losing her mother, has to hear a certainly-mangled story about her sex life over and over and over, told by people who are all too ready to scream it; and they have to hear it because telling that story over and over and over is the best shot the defense has of absolving the man who, whatever else, has admitted to wringing the life out of her body with his hands and the best shot the tabloids have of getting to say “sex game gone wrong,” at least for a little while, til the next one.

The only thing I learned that I liked here were the names of Anna’s grandfather’s horses, which I found when I was googling him, no need to click these links. The horses included Path of Peace, Warpath, and Flossy (also Apache and Dakota, I don’t know, man, the family’s British, too). Also his first influx of cash came from poultry farming.

There! I’m done with this week! I’m starting to think money really can’t buy happiness!

From the rest of the Alert

One of the people arrested alongside Lori Loughlin in the college admissions scandal was Hot Pockets heiress Michelle Janavs.

A 15-year-old (princess) from Spain is going to school in Wales.

Sandi Feinberg, a woman the New York post calls “sexy grandma,” is selling a New York apartment with a pool in it, and damn it, this is probably the story I should have focused on this week. Her late husband imported Stoli and tried to keep the Apple store from opening on Madison Ave, lest it attract “undesirables” looking to buy cheap little iPhones. Here’s the Post’s own kicker, I can’t improve: “The Post dubbed his daughter Candice Lalicata, “the underwear heiress” after she sued her husband Steven for $10 million, accusing him of raiding her trust fund of $744,000 to lavish luxury gifts on his mistress. (He told her the cash was to pay off mobsters.)”

I live another week without diving into licensed ghoul Rebekah Mercer. This time the Parler guy says she “stabbed” him “in the back”. A nice gal like Bekky?

Heir Mail