Trial Ordered in Anchorwoman Extortion Case

The key figure in the alleged extortion plot against television anchorwoman Jann Carl was ordered on Wednesday to stand trial in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Municipal Court Judge Karl Jaeger, after a six-day preliminary hearing of the case against producer Gil Cabot, ruled that there is sufficient evidence that Cabot attempted to extort $30,000 from the KTLA-TV newswoman. Cabot is accused of telling Carl that he could make sure sexually explicit pictures of her would not be published in return for a payoff.

The judge said he had “no problem in denying” motions by Cabot’s attorney, Rowan Klein, to drop the conspiracy and attempted extortion charges.

Carl and KTLA deny that any pictures exist. Police contend that Cabot cooked up the hoax on the expectation that Carl would pay off out of fear that her career could be hurt, even by groundless accusations.

Cabot and his attorney, Maurice Attie, were arrested June 20, 1988, after a meeting with Carl and an FBI agent who was posing as her fiance.

Charges Dismissed

Charges against Attie were dismissed by Jaeger after Attie’s attorney, Robert Shapiro, argued that his client was drawn into the scheme unaware of what was happening. Shapiro said Attie simply accepted Cabot’s story that he was trying to help the anchorwoman out of a predicament when he went to the meeting at which the payoff was discussed.

“He is naive to the extreme,” Shapiro said. “A believer, perhaps a true believer.”

The case against Cabot, 43, is based on a series of tape-recorded phone calls that began in April of last year. Prosecutors contend that Cabot assumed three different identities during the conversations, which began with a call to KTLA news director Jeff Wald warning him that a videotape of Carl was making the rounds of bachelor parties in Los Angeles.

The caller said Carl did not appear to be aware she was being filmed.

Carl said that when she learned of the call she immediately thought of Cabot. “He was the only person that I knew that I had recently angered,” she testified during the hearing. Cabot had sent her flowers and tried to persuade her to work with him on his proposal for a television interview show to be called “Up Close and Personal.” They could not agree.

Played Along

Carl said she decided to play along with the calls and pretend to be concerned about the threat that pictures lifted from the videotape might be published in a sex magazine.

“Gil, I really need your help,” she says at one point on the tape. Later, she sniffs and sounds as though she might be crying in desperation. She wonders “if I could find out who did this to me.”

Asked during her testimony if she worried that by pretending to participate in the plot, she might help make it public, thereby harming her career, she replied: “We discussed that there would be some people who would believe what they wanted to believe. Pursuing what was right was more important to me.”

Police say Cabot is a sophisticated con man who has taken advantage of aspiring performers as well as established stars. He was convicted on grand theft charges and sent to prison in 1982, police said. If convicted on the most serious charge in the present case, he could receive a 5-year prison sentence.

Cabot insists that he was only trying to help a woman in distress and argues that no crime occurred because there was no exchange of money. Carl never made the promised payoff.