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00:01Los Angeles, especially West Hollywood, is all about image.
00:06It might seem crazy that this is all over facials and waxing.
00:10This is LA. Our facialist is just as important as our priest, our rabbi, and our therapist.
00:17It caused an international firestorm because it had all the elements that make a good headline.
00:23Hollywood facialist who's worked with A-list stars like Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt,
00:28who's accused of hiring a hitman to murder her business competitor.
00:33The other skincare guy, he was gunning for her and trying to get her out of business.
00:38Anyone who's a success usually has somebody sort of chomping at your heels.
00:41How do you become more than a friend is you do something to please them. You do something to show your worth.
00:47Although he was a convicted felon, and I knew this, a part of me just felt really sorry for him.
00:53And that is where I made my big mistake.
00:55I don't know what the f***. What's going on?
00:57I could not think who would do that to me.
01:00The jury, they were driven by a sympathy for her because of this stalking that was happening to her.
01:07It was horrific.
01:09Think of this beautiful, glamorous woman at the top of her game, and then...
01:15They released that mugshot. Just holy s***. Those roots for miles. Her face was just bloated. Just awful.
01:25She looks like a hobo and she's wearing a poncho.
01:27The lead detective was making this seem like a slam dunk solicitation for murder.
01:32Only in Hollywood, the salon owner to the stars out to kill the competition. Literally.
01:39I was scared, surprised, shocked that my life had been put in jeopardy for doing skincare.
01:45Skincare.
01:46Skincare.
01:47Skincare.
01:48Jennale.
01:49homemade music
01:55Don DeLuise
02:14My name is Dawn DeLuise.
02:17I was a celebrity esthetician for 30 years.
02:20So we are on La Cienega, a very busy street in West Hollywood.
02:25You know, it's just a whole mecca of hair or beauty or massage,
02:30all those types of businesses.
02:32This is where I learned my technique at The Face Place.
02:35That's where I started with Brad Pitt and Christian Slater
02:37and Meg Ryan and all them, right here.
02:39That's my alma mater.
02:42Now, I'm getting ready to turn left
02:44because we're going to go by my salon now.
02:55This is so creepy and so surreal
02:58that I'm going through all this all over again.
03:01My sign, by the way, was right here.
03:03A big sign that said Dawn DeLuise Skin Refinery.
03:07My business partner called me one night.
03:09Oh, Dawn, I have something terrible to tell you.
03:11I have just been outside picking up flyers with your face
03:16in a lewd sex scene.
03:18I said, oh my God.
03:20I was terrified.
03:22The only thing I did know was who I felt was responsible for it.
03:26Everybody was out to get her.
03:30Everybody's out to emulate her.
03:32Everybody wants to be the next celebrity esthetician
03:35because she was the president of West Hollywood Skin Care.
03:50So this is my ornamental camel.
03:54His name is Cho because everybody loves the camel toe.
03:58And I try to be original with names.
04:05My name is Edward Feinstein.
04:07And I was friends with Dawn DeLuise for a period of about a year.
04:13I moved to this area six years ago because I like not being able to reach out and touch my neighbor.
04:22And I have animals.
04:24So this isn't something that you could actually have in West Hollywood, right?
04:28In Beverly Hills.
04:29So this is where I ended up.
04:33So I met Dawn through my friend Nick.
04:36Nick was getting facials with Dawn.
04:38And Nick was talking about me to Dawn.
04:41Dawn was like, hey, I want to meet your friend.
04:43So she invited me to come in for a facial.
04:48So I met her the first time getting a service.
04:50And then from that point, we went out a few times.
04:53We had a budding friendship.
05:05Dawn's studio was in a very central location in West Hollywood.
05:09I'd say it was pretty banging.
05:11Some people would kill for that real estate.
05:13She would always talk about how she had these celebrity clients,
05:17how they were coming in, performing facials and waxing.
05:20Jennifer Aniston, Nicki Minaj, Nancy Reagan,
05:24anybody of any sort of stature.
05:27She's claimed to have been a client of hers at one point in time.
05:39People are willing to murder, to get famous,
05:42to become known, to succeed in LA.
05:45My name is Alyssa Bufter and I'm a publicist.
05:48Los Angeles, obviously, is an industry town.
05:51People are really image and beauty obsessed.
05:54And everybody's trying to land the same clients.
05:57And when you read, oh, such and such celebrity went to this esthetician,
06:01everybody kind of wants to go to that esthetician then,
06:04because you think they must have, you know, the fountain of youth.
06:08I feel like having a celebrity clientele in Los Angeles
06:11is definitely beneficial to your business.
06:14Like, my facialist is shares.
06:18If shares lookin' bangin', maybe I will too.
06:21I'm really vigilant about my skincare.
06:24And I started in my 20s, which was decades ago.
06:31I just wanted to have a decent complexion,
06:34what you present to the world every day.
06:36You gotta cleanse properly.
06:38I usually use a stem cell serum.
06:41Vegans wouldn't like that.
06:43But then a toner, a moisturizer.
06:46You don't use the same moisturizer at night that you use during the day.
06:50And you don't use the same moisturizer in the summer as you use in the winter.
06:54I will do something in addition, like the red light mask.
06:59I don't know what it does, but I'm not gonna stop, okay?
07:04I'm just trying to age gracefully.
07:06And Dawn, you went to her and she had her own way of doing it, and you see results.
07:11So, it's, you know, I can understand why she was popular and she was successful.
07:17Dawn came from Panama City, Florida.
07:24It was definitely a little hillbilly and a little backwoods.
07:27She said her father was a minister.
07:30And when she was younger, she started to enter local beauty pageants or beauty pontests.
07:37But she was definitely no Cindy Crawford.
07:42What she was participating in was like mall , right?
07:45Just kind of stomp down the runway, go get a corn dog and a slice of pizza afterwards.
07:51And then the events on the beach.
07:53Those were definitely some sort of low-end $20 cash in the envelope type events.
08:01Dawn wanted to escape Florida, so she sets her sights on California.
08:05She saved up her prize money, mostly in ones.
08:09And unlike some beauty queens who come to Hollywood, she actually kind of made it.
08:15I had always wanted to live in California, you know, where everyone is perfect.
08:21I knew I had to make money.
08:23I had to make it fast.
08:24I would end up modeling for Fredericks of Hollywood.
08:29It was very sexy stuff.
08:31It was, I think, the very first lingerie catalog where you could order out of the privacy of your home.
08:38Several parts of the body were being exposed through various openings.
08:42In the back of the Fredericks of Hollywood catalog were also sex toys and things that, you know, I didn't quite know what they were used for.
08:50And it paid really good money.
08:52You know, I could make a whole month's rent just for one afternoon doing that.
08:56And that's what I was more concerned about than anything.
09:00Dawn definitely had a gimmick when it came to the facial side that set her apart from the rest of the competition.
09:10What sets my facial clinic apart is that I actually use an electric machine.
09:16I pull out this Halloween-looking mask that's attached to an electric box.
09:20It's a Hannibal Lecter mask, Sons of the Lambs, and she's one of our victims here.
09:25We're going to see how she handles it.
09:27We take the intensity as high as the customer can tolerate it.
09:33Different celebrities would talk to the press about this treatment, so it had some buzz around it.
09:39I 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.
09:48The skin care business was very cutthroat and competitive.
09:52Not everyone succeeds, and you either succeed tremendously or you fail epically.
09:58There's very little in between.
10:00And 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.
10:08Anyone who's a success usually has somebody sort of chomping at your heels.
10:18Years ago, this person came to my clinic seeking a job, but I didn't have a job available.
10:25He 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.
10:30And 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?
10:37So I chased him away, and I returned to my customer room.
10:40And that is when I recognized there's trouble in our midst.
10:45Probably around August or September of 2013, when I left work.
10:50I noticed a slashed tire one night.
10:53I 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.
10:59Within another week or two, there was another flat tire.
11:04And 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.
11:12My name was covered by the word C-U-N-T.
11:15So it definitely seemed, from the outside looking in, that there was some sort of escalation in the issues that she was having.
11:29One night I was leaving work, and a man was standing in the stairwell in the pitch dark texting with his back against the wall.
11:37So it's him like this. I walk by, I go to my car, which is about where that table is.
11:41And as soon as I got in the car, a text popped up that said, you dress like crap. Where do you buy your clothes?
11:48I felt immobilized by fear.
11:52I felt like someone had their hands around my throat, not knowing what to expect next.
11:57I was terrified.
11:59It just kept getting worse.
12:11In the middle of July 2013, I was enjoying my career with my customers.
12:17And I noticed a new skincare business opened next door to me, and I'm thinking, what?
12:26Smooth cheeks.
12:27I suddenly start hearing all kinds of banging and hammering and drills going off over there.
12:34So I went over one day to try and silence the noise.
12:38And the person who has rented that space and is there at that moment, I realized that I knew him from the past.
12:45He was in my clinic years ago, seeking a job.
12:51And as if he had never met me before, when I came over, he extends his hand and says, I am Gabriel Suarez.
12:56And I says, I know who you are.
12:58I said, would you please go away?
13:01I was so shocked.
13:03He obviously was staking the place out looking for an empty suite.
13:05And it made me wonder, how long has he been keeping his eye on this location?
13:12Gabriel Suarez really scared me.
13:19To have somebody move in next door in this cutthroat industry, right next to her, somebody she did not offer a job to
13:27and felt maybe there wasn't goodwill between them, that was threatening.
13:31Like, is he going to steal her clients? He's going to offer the same services?
13:34Like, what's going on here?
13:36So that's, um, that was a problem for her, understandably.
13:41A 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.
13:49His name is Gabriel Suarez. Gabriel's business was called Smooth Cheeks.
13:55So what was his specialty?
13:56I mean, when you say Smooth Cheeks, I'm thinking somebody's ass , right?
14:01He did offer, you know, more waxing versus what Don did and his business was catered to that.
14:16If you're hairy, you could go to Gabe.
14:22He just was also in the facial business.
14:27She had said he had done all of these things to her to try to garner her clientele.
14:34I knew he was going after my clients for one sole reason, they told me.
14:39I didn't see him ever going after them.
14:41They came and handed me the card he had given them, trying to solicit them as a customer for himself.
14:48He was blatantly under my nose and under my window and bothering my customers constantly.
14:54I just wanted it to stop.
15:04My name is . I've been friends with Don since 2013, about 12 years.
15:10She has a great sense of humor, great energy.
15:13She's just a really lovely person.
15:18And a great day.
15:22At one time, we were at dinner at a very lovely restaurant.
15:26And she gets a call, she leaves the table.
15:30Comes back with tears dripping from her eyes, hysterical.
15:35This once upon a time, beautiful it girl was shaking.
15:45My business partner called me one night.
15:47Oh, Dawn, I have something terrible to tell you.
15:50I have just been outside picking up flyers with your face in a lewd sex scene.
15:56I said, oh my God.
15:57She just simply said, I'll have one of the flyers here when you arrive tomorrow morning.
16:01So I went in the next morning and saw it and I was just appalled.
16:03I was just appalled.
16:06My face had been photoshopped on a woman with her legs spread wide open in the crotch showing.
16:11And it said, come by my studio, gave the business address, gave my phone number.
16:15And it said, first time is free boys.
16:18And they had been blowing up and down Santa Monica Boulevard in the wind.
16:22That flyer was the beginning of a series of flyers that would be going to different places,
16:27including my home in North Hollywood.
16:30Don was a very, very good friend of mine for years.
16:36I remember I went to her salon to pick up some products and I walked in the back and I saw something obscene.
16:43And I'm like, oh my God.
16:47Someone posted on some website that she gives and she likes to get raped.
16:55And there were people actually banging on her door.
16:57I'm here to rape you.
16:58I hear knockings at my door late at night.
17:04I hear someone trying to jiggle the doorknob.
17:09I felt vulnerable.
17:10I felt exploited.
17:13Everywhere I go, I'm being accosted.
17:16I go into a grocery store to buy ice cream.
17:18I get a text, you forgot to buy potatoes on aisle three.
17:22Every single place I went and everything I did, I had a pair of eyes on me.
17:26It was terrifying to see my friend I care about in complete distress.
17:31I didn't even know what to do about it.
17:36The only thing I did know was who I felt was responsible for it.
17:40And it was Gabriel Suarez.
17:43As time went by, I realized he was the one that was texting at the moment that he was standing ten feet from me.
17:50You dress like crap. Where do you buy your clothes?
17:53So that's where I became really panicked.
18:01During 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.
18:16They 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 skin care.
18:28That was the type of advice I received.
18:33I was so terrified. I'm surprised I didn't fall down on a flight of stairs when I even stepped out of my house.
18:39I looked everywhere around every corner for someone who had to be lurking that was ready to jump out and kill me or attack me.
18:48So the initial complaints that Don had with Gabriel were that he was going through the trash.
18:54I have no idea what he was looking for in the trash.
18:58And in the meantime, she was sending us these messages.
19:01Gabriel's on the other side of the wall listening to me.
19:03He's going through my trash.
19:04My tires are being slashed.
19:06She was just extremely paranoid with him being one door down, separating the two of them.
19:13And she just kind of had her mind made up.
19:14According to Don, the owner of a Vietnamese restaurant called Phonomenal 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.
19:33And the owner, Phillip, said, well, it doesn't bother Don.
19:39And he said, well, that's because she's too busy giving oral sex to her customers, too busy to complain.
19:47And I made a determination that I was going to find somebody to help me get this to stop so that I could sleep at night and know that someone somewhere was going to make this problem go away.
20:01In football, there's a lot of unknown, but you try and prepare yourself.
20:20This situation, I couldn't prepare for anything.
20:26Oh, that was a good shot.
20:27My name is Chris Guiley and I'm a former NFL player.
20:34Played for Detroit Lions.
20:36I was an offensive guard and special team center.
20:39I've had broken backs.
20:41I've had broken bones all over.
20:44I had that finger bitten off.
20:46So all kinds of stuff.
20:48Back in 2013, I was retired for quite some time from football.
20:53I met Dawn DeLuise at a bar in Big Bear.
20:59She was bubbly.
21:00She liked to talk a lot.
21:03And she told me that she was a beautician, a skin care expert, that she had previously been a model with Fredericks of Hollywood for their clothing line.
21:16Or lack of clothing line, yeah.
21:19Their dental floss, et cetera.
21:24She was a nice looking lady.
21:26I was attracted to her and I exchanged numbers with Dawn.
21:29And we were chatting back and forth and she started just complaining and crying and such on the phone and through chats.
21:39And I was just like, I can't believe this lady has this many problems.
21:44She talked about the other skin care guy that he was gunning for her and trying to get her out of business.
21:51Photoshopped photos of her, just way off the wall stuff.
21:59I used to go to this one church in Santa Clarita and I headed up a program of volunteers there.
22:05One 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,
22:12what the hell is going on?
22:13You're not going to believe what I just got in the mail.
22:15And I broke down crying and that's where he and I began to talk about what was happening.
22:18He says, I have a friend and his name is Steve McCauley.
22:22He owes me a favor.
22:24Steve McCauley worked for the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.
22:27He was a detective.
22:29I'm going to get Steve to work with you on getting to the bottom of this and finding out who's stalking you.
22:38My initial meeting actually with McCauley had been at a Denny's restaurant.
22:43He wanted me to give him a copious amount of information.
22:46The copies of every flyer, every email and anyone that could substantiate the stalkings against me.
22:53I did have a few people who had witnessed all these things.
22:57Dawn 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.
23:09They're going to talk to Detective McCauley. Would you talk to him?
23:13She said, this has destroyed my life. Is there any way that you could help me and just say that you saw Gabriel throwing the fire all over Santa Monica Boulevard?
23:23And I said, yeah, I will call them that.
23:26Ed 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.
23:38So I was pretty sure that they were going to be a great testament to my stalking.
23:41Dawn texted me, I'm meeting the detective again today at 2pm. I hope he tells me he's about to make an arrest.
23:50My hope had been that Detective Steve McCauley was going to 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.
24:00I 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.
24:15And finally somebody will sit down and hear her story and arrest Gabriel so she can end this torment.
24:22Can you imagine that day? Dawn is home. She's happy. This campaign of harassment is going to end. Gabriel is going to get arrested.
24:45But oh no. The police come to her house.
24:49I see these men dressed in like tactile gear with helmets and shields and black clothing on.
25:00I'm terrified at whatever this is. I saw Steve McCauley.
25:05And I just froze. I literally felt the blood run to my feet. I just didn't know what they were there for.
25:12And 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?
25:17And he says, you don't have to worry about it if you didn't do anything wrong.
25:21And they were tossing my apartment.
25:26And I didn't know what any of it meant.
25:28I just knew whatever was going to happen to me wasn't going to be good.
25:31Tonight, 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...
25:46He ended up arresting her for solicitation to murder Gabriel.
25:52Wow.
25:55Here's the text that started it all.
25:57Dawn texted me and she said, I found someone who is going to take Gabriel out.
26:01So I believe it might have been around noon that the story was on TMZ.
26:17It caused an international firestorm because it had all the elements that make a good headline.
26:23You had a Hollywood facialist who was accused of hiring a hitman to murder her business competitor.
26:30She was being accused of plotting murder, which I still find it hard to believe.
26:39That's not the Dawn I know.
26:42And they were painting her as this horrible, vindictive, evil, unkind person.
26:49And they released that mugshot, which was a very rough mugshot for a beauty guru.
26:59She looks like a hobo and she's wearing a poncho.
27:03Her mugshot was so unattractive.
27:08It was shocking.
27:09I mean, for a beautiful lady like her to have five-inch roots coming out of her head, looking horribly ill, slightly green.
27:20It truly broke my heart.
27:23I couldn't believe my friend, who's this high-end skincare guru, would be in prison.
27:30It just seemed so nuts.
27:32But the evidence looked bad.
27:39The case against Dawn DeLuise, it was quite convoluted.
27:49The facts were exceedingly hard to grasp.
27:55My name's Christine Von Helmolt.
27:58I was a deputy district attorney with Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office for close to 30 years.
28:05When this case first started, Macaulay thought that it was just a stalking investigation.
28:12And then it segued into a solicitation of murder investigation.
28:17Dawn DeLuise was absolutely obsessed with the notion that Gabriel Suarez was out to get her.
28:25And she needed to make it stop any way she possibly could.
28:29When I was arrested, I just didn't know what they were there for.
28:35Macaulay says, do you know why we're here?
28:38And I said, no, I don't have a clue.
28:40And he said, Chris Guiley.
28:43And I didn't understand at all what that meant.
28:45So Dawn had sent me a text message saying that she had found somebody to take Gabriel out.
29:00At the time, though, I didn't really think anything of it.
29:04So I just said, like, LOL, don't get caught.
29:07In her defense, we've all not liked somebody and said that, you know, I hate them.
29:12I want to kill them.
29:13I wish they get run over.
29:15Maybe that's human nature.
29:16Maybe that's not.
29:18And she said, well, I'm not going to ask any questions.
29:21And if I don't ask any questions, I'm not going to get caught.
29:24It started to raise a red flag.
29:26It was kind of an easy target for her.
29:32He was interested in her.
29:33He wanted to be more than just her friend.
29:35And, you know, well, how do you become more than a friend?
29:40You do something to please them.
29:41You do something to show your worth.
29:44Dawn DeLuise had no patience for a legal remedy for her problem,
29:51primarily because law enforcement needed evidence of which she had none.
29:57She had originally given Detective Macaulay a list of witnesses.
30:02I think there were six of them.
30:03Claiming that these witnesses had seen various incriminating acts being committed by Gabriel Suarez.
30:09Dawn had a detective named Steve Macaulay reach out to me.
30:13She had sent me an email saying that this is what I want you to say, almost like a script.
30:19And then at the end of the email, she said, make sure you delete this so they don't find it.
30:23So I hit print and save because, again, red flag.
30:28I wasn't going to lie to the detective.
30:30So I told Detective Macaulay, hey, look, this is what I have.
30:33I have text messages. I have emails. What do you want?
30:36He said, well, can you send them over to me?
30:38I said, sure, no problem. It was fun while it lasted.
30:42But solicitation to murder Gabriel.
30:45Kind of approaching the line of too much.
30:48And the bottom line is when Detective Macaulay talked to all these witnesses, they all went,
30:52uh, no, that never happened, with one exception.
30:59A good friend of hers tried to play the role and use the script that she had been given by Dawn DeLuise.
31:07She kept texting me saying, this is what you're going to say to the detective.
31:11This is what you're going to say.
31:12And I'm like, Dawn, stop texting me this. My God.
31:16She was trying to step up the situation and get Gabriel in trouble.
31:21Detective did call me and I was very brief and I was nervous about it.
31:25But he knew I had been lying.
31:27I'm like, oh, my God, I can't do this anymore.
31:29And I couldn't believe the mess that I got myself into for her.
31:33So when police went to talk to Philip Bui, the owner of the Vietnamese Pho restaurant called Phonomenal,
31:42he denied that Gabriel said those things to him and that he said them to Dawn.
31:48Was Dawn lying to the police yet again?
31:52And because it didn't pan out, in other words, the witnesses didn't cooperate and say what she wanted them to say,
31:58the police were not arresting Gabriel Suarez.
32:03And therefore, she became more and more and more obsessed with finding her own solution to the problem, which was to take him out.
32:14So this is from Detective Macaulay's report.
32:18DeLuise confirmed Guile was a friend of hers, but she added she had not solicited him for help with Gabriel.
32:25However, DeLuise said that after telling Guile about her troubles with Suarez, he offered to take care of Gabriel.
32:31I then asked her, did you tell him no?
32:34She replied, no, of course I didn't tell him no.
32:38Later in the conversation, I asked DeLuise, what if Gabriel had come up murdered?
32:44DeLuise replied, if anything got traced to me, it would be a combination of feelings.
32:49I'd be lying if I said I didn't wish he was dead.
32:53Do I want to be traced to anything that happens to him?
32:56Or do I want anyone I know to be in trouble?
33:00No.
33:01I wanted to get a gun and learn how to shoot it.
33:04Then I said, self-defense is different than trying to hire somebody to take someone out.
33:11She replied, yeah, I guess.
33:13I see what you're saying.
33:14You're right.
33:16And there was a point where if I could even have lured Gabriel to my home, I would have shot him.
33:22That is all troubling.
33:28Here's a text from Don saying that a lot of people owe her friend Chris favors.
33:35And 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.
33:46Bet he's found a low-life drug user drifter who's itching to get the job done.
33:52She also says she loves me to death.
33:55Can you come for a facial at 4 this Tuesday the 28th?
33:59I am seeing my therapist.
34:03And then she talks about how she couldn't get Gabe's apartment number from the post office.
34:08So it was just very fitting she's going to therapy as she's harassing people and plotting to kill.
34:16So the question is, now if Don's arrested for solicitation for murder of Gabriel, who is distributing these sexually explicit fliers of her?
34:36Is it Gabriel? Is it someone else? I mean, what's going on here?
34:39I'm Gabriel Suarez.
34:46I was in the dark completely about how she hated me.
34:52She was bothered by me living. She was bothered by me existing.
34:57She was wanting me beat up, doffed.
35:00She was the original Karen. She's dangerous.
35:02I'm an esthetician here in West Hollywood for 17 years now. I'm the owner of Smooth Cheeks.
35:14The name Smooth Cheeks, it's a double entendre. It's cheeks and cheeks.
35:20I came here to do skincare originally as a facialist, but I got busier with waxing.
35:26Mostly back and booty. You know, men. Mostly men of all walks of life.
35:32And everything in the middle.
35:34It hurts a little bit, but I'm very fast, so people appreciate that.
35:38And it's a really quick discomfort, but the smoothness lasts a long time, so it's worth it.
35:42Yeah, 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.
35:57I went to many salons and spas, and her salon was one of them.
36:01And I remember it being a positive interaction, left her my resume, she was busy, and I moved on.
36:07In 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.
36:19I took over Suite 14. Dawn was at this location, Suite 12, upstairs.
36:26So when I moved in, it was just one vacant, you know, room that was kind of pretty tattered.
36:33Good morning, it's Gabriel. I just want to show you guys my new baby and my project, Facials and Waxing in West Hollywood. I think it's going to do good.
36:44I 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.
36:55One day Dawn's in my shop, and I said, can I help you? And she said, oh good, someone that finally speaks English.
37:01And it seemed kind of condescending in her tone, but I was still polite. I said, how can I help you?
37:08Dawn's complaint was sound from the place getting remodeled, and I worked around it, and that was the end of our interaction.
37:17So one morning I wake up to guns at my front door, and there were police with huge bats coming at me with a search warrant on my apartment here in West Hollywood.
37:34They 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.
37:44How could they do this? They took my phone. They took my computer. They asked for my passwords. I gave them to them. I have nothing to hide. I'm an open book.
37:53I 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.
38:04She was stopped. Because 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.
38:15For 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.
38:31A bit.
38:34One 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.
38:50Once 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.
39:02All 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.
39:15If they want to go after dawn, why are they at my house? Why are these flyers all around the front of my door on the outside?
39:22I 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 because these are really violent text messages that were coming at me.
39:33I was shaking in my boots for sure. It's sinister and really scary. I don't know what the is going on. And I could not think who would do that to me.
39:48Is Gabriel completely innocent in this whole thing? Nothing about this insane story is what it appears to be.
39:56Did she key Gabriel's car? I mean, was that all? No, we keyed Gabriel's car. But you guys? Yeah, we keyed his car. And it was one time. One time too many. Sorry, Gabriel.
40:20Nick and I also posted Craigslist ads with her phone number and a photoshopped face of a woman in various sexual positions. And the situation just sort of progressed.
40:38I was shocked when I learned Ed and Nick generated this whole campaign of denigration against me.
40:45I was at a loss of words. I just thought it was only one more nail in my coffin.
40:53They were after me like all the Craigslist men were. And I was pretty much just numb at that point.
40:59Nick was part of the Bling Ritten crew. They really terrorized the L.A. celebrities.
41:15It got crazy. If I could just kill this ass with my bare hands, I would.
41:20She was trying to take me out as a double minority, a Mexican gay, which I think should be a hate crime.
41:24We were mortal enemies and I would not piss on her if she was on fire.
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