Sellers Jailed Following Tardy Court Showing : Celebrity: Daughter of late comic actor had been charged with receiving stolen property from a string of Valley robberies.
The party’s over, at least until Tuesday, for Victoria Sellers, the nightclub-hopping, celebrity progeny and longtime gal pal of alleged Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss.
An irate Van Nuys Municipal Court judge, observing that “Miss Sellers has about as much interest in complying with the orders of this court as does a cat,” ordered her jailed Thursday without bail after Sellers failed to show up this week for police booking on a charge of receiving stolen property.
Judge Michael S. Luros said the arrangements had been made for a quiet, dignified booking this week for the 29-year-old daughter of the late comic actor Peter Sellers and his third wife, actress Britt Eckland, to spare her “embarrassment in public.” Even given such a break, Sellers “walked in when the mood suited her,” Luros said.
“This will teach me to be nice,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Carol Fisch outside the courtroom.
The judge last Friday gave Sellers until 5 p.m. Tuesday to surrender to the investigating officer to be photographed and fingerprinted, or to return to court. However, she did not appear for booking and did not show up in court until 5:15--after court was closed and far too late, the judge said.
Sellers’ lawyer, Barry F. Hammond, blamed his client’s tardiness on a communications problem. “At the present time, her life is in a state of flux,” Hammond said. He said that since Sellers last appeared in court a week previously, she had moved, had no phone, changed lawyers and her pager broke.
Less than a year ago, Sellers, a sometime actress who posed nude for the April, 1986, issue of Playboy, was chumming around with Fleiss, living in Fleiss’ Benedict Canyon house and hosting at the trendy On the Roxx night club on the Sunset Strip. She became a minor celebrity when she accompanied Fleiss to her court arraignment last August on charges that Fleiss operated a prostitution business that catered to movie moguls and stars.
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Since then, Sellers has been cited for possessing marijuana and a former boyfriend tried to shoot her, police said. One of the bodyguards she hired in March to protect her has become her new boyfriend, police and prosecutors said.
When the single felony charge of receiving stolen property was filed against her last month, Sellers was sharing a house in Northridge with the bodyguard-boyfriend, Oscar Andres Lopez, 18; another bodyguard, Anthony Zapata, 20; and child talent agent Don Gibble, 24, police said.
Lopez and Zapata have been charged with armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and attempted murder in connection with a string of nine robberies across the San Fernando Valley in April. They are being held on $1 million bail each.
Gibble has been charged with receiving stolen property and conspiracy to commit robbery. He is accused of possessing credit cards, a driver’s license and a wallet taken during the holdups.
Lopez is also charged with murdering a Taft High School student who was stabbed to death in 1992. That case is being handled in Juvenile Court.
Sellers was charged when police found some of the stolen gold and gemstone necklaces, rings and bracelets in her dresser drawers and under her bed, along with police reports describing the robberies, said Detective Jim Gerardi of the North Hollywood station.
When Sellers failed to show up for fingerprinting or appear in court by 5 p.m. Tuesday, Luros issued a bench warrant for her arrest.
Six deputies spent Wednesday night and early Thursday morning looking for Sellers, before she arrived in court with her lawyer at 8 a.m. She was promptly taken into custody, although she still was spared the indignity of appearing in public in handcuffs.
Luros said that running in wealthy circles does not necessarily make Sellers a good bail risk, noting she is a transient who gave the court an outdated address, “has worn out her welcome with virtually every friend she has” and appears in court “when the mood suits her.”
Her lawyer said Sellers had no access to her parents’ money, drives an old car and is virtually broke.
But Gerardi said two expensive cars owned by Sellers were used in the robberies.
Outside the courtroom, Hammond called it “an abuse of the court system” to jail Sellers, saying she has never been in custody before and is scared.
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“She shouldn’t be incarcerated or be held criminally liable simply because she has bad taste in friends,” Hammond said.
It isn’t the first time a friend and housemate has gotten Sellers in trouble. She was indicted in 1986, along with another boyfriend, Hollywood talent agent Reed Wallace, the alleged mastermind of a violent cocaine ring. Federal charges against her were dropped when she agreed to testify for the prosecution about the ring’s activities.
Luros set a bail hearing Tuesday, and scheduled a preliminary hearing the following week. Meanwhile, Sellers, who was born in London, is being held at the Sybil Brand Institute, the county women’s jail.
