He Leaves No Trash Can Unturned in Digging Up Dirt on Rich, Famous

Liberace died of AIDS? The rape accuser of William Kennedy Smith speaks out? Frank Sinatra is headed for a stroke and doesn’t give a damn?

Stephen Butler.

Liz Taylor is at the Betty Ford Center drying out (the first and second times)? Liz’s hideaway in Puerto Vallarta? Yoko Ono still gets fan mail for John Lennon?

Stephen Butler.

The only picture of a San Diego sheriff’s deputy who killed a fellow deputy while the latter was robbing a home? Exclusive pictures of Larry Hagman going into the hospital to see his dying mother, Mary Martin?

Stephen Butler.

Lots and lots about Roseanne Arnold and Michael Jackson and the loves and diseases of the Hollywood set, and a story about Liberace’s dogs maybe having AIDS?

Stephen Butler. Stephen Butler. Stephen Butler.

By day, Butler, 37, handles communications for a San Diego doctor.

At night (and weekends) he sleuths for the English tabloids (The Sun, The Daily Star, The Daily Mirror and more) and occasionally the National Enquirer. Words and pictures on demand.

It’s a hoot. It pays like crazy. A 20-inch story on Sinatra’s colon paid $3,500; in a good year Butler made around $35,000.

He lives in the Rolando area of San Diego with his wife, Pam, an unpublished novelist of murder mysteries. The tab editors call him at all hours of the night wanting something hot and juicy on the latest Hollywood scandal.

“I’m known up and down the coast as a specialist in the medical problems of celebrities,” Butler says. “I have the Betty Ford clinic, Cedars-Sinai and other celebrity hospitals wired.”

He says his stories as filed are accurate. If the editors in London want to throw in an extraneous orgy or drunken brawl, that’s their business:

“The Brits have something over the Americans: They realize the tabs are for enjoyment. If you want to laugh, read the tabs. But if you want information to base your life on and you’re using the tabs, you’ve got a problem.”

There are, of course, hazards to the trade. He’s been subpoenaed by Liz and Joan Collins (but never successfully sued).

“I’ve had Liberace’s people shove me, Eddie Van Halen’s security people threw a bag of food at me, and countless people have tried to put up something so I can’t take their picture.”

Butler says you have to realize that celebrities crave publicity. That’s why they hire press agents to leak stories to the tabs.

“I’ve gone through many a celebrity’s rubbish,” Butler says. “One thing you always find are the tabloids. They hate ‘em, but they read ‘em.”

If press agents aren’t enough, the tabs will pay informers for scandal that has been overheard, filched or (like Sinatra’s medical records) found in a trash can.

The Liberace-died-from-AIDS story cost about $32,000 in “source money,” Butler says.

He was born in Hemet, went to UC Riverside and got the writing bug by working for an alternative weekly in El Paso, Texas. He’s been doing tabloid stories for 12 years. He can’t imagine stopping.

Of late, he’s been chasing the Ian Spiro murder case in Rancho Santa Fe:

“You have to be a young man to keep up the pace, but you have to be an old man to have the sources.”

Cruisin’, Schmoozin’

There’s more.

* Fast talk.

Myke Santos, a communications supervisor with the San Diego Police Department, relays this excuse offered by a woman stopped by an Eastern Division traffic cop:

“But officer, I couldn’t be speeding. I set my cruise control for 65.”

* Those “mystery guests” expected at Monday night’s inaugural party for mayor-elect Susan Golding?

Try Baja Gov. Ernesto Ruffo Appel and Tijuana Mayor Hector G. Osuna Jaime.

* Denise Price just went Christmas shopping at B. Dalton in Mission Valley to get something for her boss, Assemblyman Mike Gotch (D-San Diego).

She bought him “Why Americans Hate Politics” by Washington Post reporter E.J. Dionne.

It was between that and another large-size volume about politics. She chose Dionne’s book because she thought the other one (by Peter Brown) might display a certain lack of acumen.

Its title: “Minority Party: Why The Democrats Will Be Defeated In 1992.”