San Diego villains, part 2

J. David, Mark Anthony Gator, Olaf Wieghorst scammer, Andrew Cunanan, Walter Keane, and drug runners on Harbor Drive

Author

Publish Date

June 3, 2018

The Caliph in Hillcrest is "a gay bar where older men can meet younger men."

Nancy Hoover and J. David Dominelli

Captain Money and the golden girl

They bought $100,000 foreign sports cars by the dozens. Still unsated they bought a limousine company for personal transportation. They had three jets. They owned several elegant homes. They shelled out ridiculously high sums for racehorses. She collected expensive jewelry. He wore only drab but very expensive suits, mostly pinstripe, with vests. At the company's peak, he had 50 such suits and four dozen pairs of shoes, all Italian wingtips.

By Don Bauder, June 2, 2005 Read full article

Mark Anthony. Gator was one of the hottest tickets in that market. A Gator skate "deck” would sell for up to $50, of which Gator would receive $2.

Dude amps out

Gator gave tips to beginners in Sports Illustrated for Kids. There was a Gator clothing line, Gator skateboards, Gator videos. “I had it all.” Despite all he had, on March 20, 1991, Gator beat 21-year-old Jessica Bergsten over the head with a steering-wheel lock called the Club and raped her for nearly three hours. Then he strangled her in a surfboard bag and buried her naked in the desert 100 miles away.

Drug-runners' hideaway

He frequented one of the best units at One Harbor Drive, the twin-tower condominium project across the street from the convention center. His people told the sales staff at the condo complex that they were in the tuna business. But federal prosecutors say Castrillón wasn't really a fisherman. Instead, they say, he was captain of a billion-dollar cocaine-smuggling empire for the Cali cartel.

By Matt Potter, Feb. 25, 1999 Read full article

Detail from Salt River Canyon. Wieghorst sold paintings to John Wayne, Roy Rogers, and Gene Autry. Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan bought his work, and Barry Goldwater wrote the foreword to the only biography written about him.

Olaf Wieghorst trusted the wrong man

Almeida got his start at George Thackeray’s gallery in the late ’50s. He and his wife Grace agreed to talk to me at their house in Ocean Beach, a dark, wood-shingled structure on the side of a hill. George was one of Wieghorst’s first friends when Wieghorst arrived in El Cajon. Thackeray says now that he believes Almeida cheated him of untold amounts of money.

By Phyllis Orrick, Feb. 25, 1996 Read full article

Andrew Cunanan at Bishop's, 1987. When complimented on a red leather jumpsuit that he wore to a school dance, he told his classmate, "My boyfriend, Antoine, bought it for me."

La Jolla gentlemen and the party boy

Many of Cunanan’s old friends and acquaintances have fled the city, reportedly because they fear the return of a man now suspected of torturing and killing his four victims in a weeklong orgy of terror. Some fear the Cunanan case because it has focused a laser beam of publicity on the hidden practice of male prostitution among some of the older gay men who inhabit many of La Jolla’s oceanview condos and elaborately decorated hillside aeries.

By Matt Potter, May 22, 1997 Read full article

Margaret and Walter Keane, c. 1963. “I envisioned myself as a sort of Henry Higgins with Margaret as a modern-day version of Eliza Doolittle.”

The big-eyed kids suffer a painful paternity suit

A 1985 article on Walter Keane in USA Today states, “Thinking he was dead, the second of his three ex-wives (also a painter) claimed to have done some of the Keane paintings. The claim, vehemently refuted by a very much alive Keane, is in litigation.” Margaret files a libel suit in Hawaii against Gannett, owners of the newspaper, and against Walter Keane for slander.

By Adam Parfrey, May 14, 1992 Read full article