Nancy Sales - The Bling Ring - How a Gang of Fame-obsessed Teens Ripped off Hollywood and Shocked the World

“That’s the thing that really made everything flow when me and Rachel would go out and do these things,” Nick said. “We wouldn’t be masked, we wouldn’t be in gloves. We wouldn’t be conspicuous—we’d be just natural looking so if anything ever happened we’d just be like, what? We’re normal kids. It wasn’t that we were criminals.”

He said he could never remember the exact moment when he and Rachel decided to start burglarizing the homes of celebrities; but once they did, they knew right away that Paris would be the first. “Rachel’s idea,” he said, “and, I guess, my idea, was that she was dumb. Like, who would leave a door unlocked? Who would have a lot of money lying around? Logically, anyone in America could probably figure out that if you were gonna do something to a celebrity it would be someone that wasn’t, you know, that bright….”

And then suddenly there was Paris’ house, rising before them like the villa of some Spanish contessa, all glowing yellow stone and Mediterranean tile. Nick tried to stay calm as he followed Rachel across the driveway to the front door. Their plan—well, not really a plan, it was more of an impulse, for as often as they had imagined this night, they had actually decided to just go and do it spontaneously, after having a few drinks—their plan was just to ring the bell and see if anybody answered. And if somebody did, well, then, they might get to see Paris. And that would be awesome, in a funny kind of way. They would pretend they were just a couple of ditzy kids with the wrong address, kids out looking for a party.

Rachel rang the bell, Nick said, putting on the innocent face he had seen her wear so many times before. Rachel was good at playing the pretty girl whenever adults were around asking questions. “She knew she was a good-looking girl and she knew there were certain things she could get away with. She knew how the system worked. She knew how you could play it.”

She rang and rang again … but still there was no answer. Was Paris in, or out? Promoting her handbag line at some Tokyo department store? Attending a Russian billionaire’s birthday party in Moscow (for a fee, of course)? Nick had been tracking Hilton’s whereabouts through her Twitter account and celebrity news outlets like TMZ, but he wasn’t actually sure where she was that night….

Ding-dong.

Paris Hilton’s booking photo following her arrest for reckless driving, September 2006.

Were they really going to do this thing? Or were they just going to go home with a funny story to tell their friends?

And then, Nick said, the thought occurred to him just to look under the mat. It was like finding Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket when the glinting metal of the key appeared. Dumb was right.

“Wow.”

Inside it was like a Barbie Dreamhouse. There were images of Paris everywhere, framed photographs of Paris on the walls; framed magazine covers of Paris cover stories; framed pictures on tables of Paris with all her famous friends—there was Mariah Carey, Jessica Simpson, Fergie, Nicky Hilton (Paris’ sister), Nicole Richie (were they still close?). There were pictures of Paris in the bathrooms. Her face was silkscreened on couch pillows.

There was a lot of pink, and there were crystal chandeliers in almost every room. Even the kitchen. It was like stepping into the girliest Hilton hotel you’ve ever seen. Nick said they walked around slowly, marveling that they were really there. “There was that percentage of wow, this is Paris Hilton’s house, but as soon as I put my foot in the door, I was just wanting to run out…. It was horrifying.”

He wanted to leave, he said, but now Rachel was running up the stairs. Upstairs were the bedrooms, and the bedrooms had the closets, and the closets had the clothes. Nick said he followed Rachel to the master bedroom—it was chilly in there and smelled like the perfume counter in a department store. The room led out on to a balcony overlooking the pool and, beyond that, the rolling hills of the Valley, shimmering with lights. As they gazed in the direction of their own homes from the vantage point of one of the most Googled people on the planet, they couldn’t help but laugh.

The little dogs—Chihuahuas and a Pomeranian, Tinkerbell, Marilyn Monroe, Prince Baby Bear, Harajuku Bitch, Dolce and Prada—scurried around, regarding them curiously, but they didn’t bark. They must have been used to having strangers in the house. (About a year later, Hilton would build the dogs a 300-square-foot, $325,000 miniature of her home in the backyard. Philippe Starck would provide the furniture.)

“Oh my God!”

Nick said that Rachel squealed with delight when she found the closets. One was the size of a small room and the other the size of a small clothing store. It was like that scene where the dwarves discover the dragon’s treasure-laden lair in The Hobbit . One closet had a chandelier, and the other had furniture, as if Paris might want to just sit in there and look at all her stuff. The smaller closet had floor-to-ceiling shelves with hundreds of pairs of shoes, all lined up like trophies—Manolos, Louboutins, Jimmy Choos, a pair of YSLs shaped like the Eiffel Tower. There were shoes of every color—satiny, shiny, pointy shoes. Huge shoes. Size 11.

The bigger closet was full of racks and racks of clothes. Nick had to smile. “Rachel, do your thing,” he said. And “she was rummaging through everything, very, very into it, very focused, very ‘This is my mission.’ ” She was plowing through the racks of the wild, sparkly, feathery clothing, exclaiming over all the designers—this was Ungaro, that was Chanel! There were dresses, gowns, blouses, and coats by Roberto Cavalli and Dolce & Gabbana and Versace and Diane von Furstenberg and Prada…. Nick said Rachel recognized some of the pieces from Paris’ public appearances; she followed these things; she knew which one Paris had worn to the VMAs and the Teen Choice Awards.

He said she said it was like “going shopping.”

Now he was starting to get nervous again. He decided to go and be the lookout from the top of the stairs; from there, you could see through the big windows to the front of the house. So Nick stationed himself there. He was “sweating unnaturally,” he said. “Every five minutes I was yelling down the hall, ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here! I want to leave! Fuck this, I don’t care anymore!’ And she was like, it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine, let’s keep going….”

He resented the way that Rachel was always in charge, no matter what they did—he “hated that,” he said—but what could he do? This was “the girl [he] loved,” and he didn’t want to lose her. And although he’d never tested it, there was something about Rachel that said that if you didn’t do what Rachel wanted, she would walk. It wasn’t that he minded Rachel taking a few of Paris’s things—look at Paris’s house; she “had everything.” And she “didn’t really to contribute to society,” she wasn’t “some great actor like Anthony Hopkins or Johnny Depp, someone that’s really good at their craft.” She was an “heir head,” like the tabloids said, a “celebutard.”

“It wasn’t like a malicious thing for me,” Nick said. “I wasn’t out to get, like, a working-class American.”

But Nick did not want to get caught. He yelled again for Rachel to “hurry up and let’s get out of here!” But he said she just answered, “This is fine, this is okay, why are you tripping out?”

And then he saw on the wall of the stairwell the portrait of Paris scowling down at him. She was wearing a little black cocktail dress and sitting on a settee with her legs folded underneath her. She looked like a Park Avenue princess who has become very displeased about something. She was staring, glaring, as if to say, “How dare you come in my house and touch my stuff, bitch? I’m gonna get you….”