Slain Recording Firm Owner Had Daring, Debt

Barry Joel Skolnick was only 30 when he died. On the surface, he appeared to be successful: president of a Hollywood recording company known for its contributions to a myriad of radio and television commercials and even a few movies.

He lived in a comfortable Thousand Oaks home with his wife, who stayed home to raise their two sons.

But the circumstances behind Skolnick’s death--he was shot once in the head in January, in a parking garage on Sunset Boulevard--are as mysterious as the details of his life.

The portrait that emerges is of an ambitious young man who wanted to make it big but whose soaring debt dwarfed his dreams. In reality, Skolnick ended up as a Hollywood murder victim who left behind a widow, two small boys and a history of bankruptcy.

And now his case has been linked to a Fountain Valley flight attendant and a San Clemente financial investigator, who police say were shot by would-be hit men linked to a Huntington Beach financial firm that allegedly used violence as a method of collecting unpaid bills.

Los Angeles police investigators confirmed they are looking at the firm in connection with the slaying of Skolnick, who, like the San Clemente man, was shot in a parking garage shortly before 8 in the morning with no one else around--and with the same creditor hassling him for money.

Skolnick owed Premium Commercial Services Corp. more than $900,000 and had listed the company as sole beneficiary on a life insurance policy that paid the firm $2.5 million, sources close to the investigation said Thursday.

Much of the detail of Skolnick’s life can be found in records in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. Much of the sadness is there as well, for they reveal that Skolnick’s boys are only 3 and 20 months.

Skolnick and his wife, Leslie, a hair stylist, married in February 1991. She worked until the birth of her first son in March 1993. A second boy came in July 1994. Two months later, Skolnick filed for bankruptcy.

“By age 27,” reads a document filed by one of his creditors, “Skolnick managed to accumulate debts of [more than] $2.1 million against assets worth no more than $579,000. It appears these debts were accumulated by misrepresentations of net worth, income and authority.”

The bulk of his debt appeared to be personal guarantees given to lenders, such as $450,000 owed to Siemens Credit Corp. He also owed the Palatino Homeowners Assn. in Westlake Village. And a man named Fred Jones had filed a claim for $400,000.

It was Jones who sold Skolnick the company.

The deal cut with Jones symbolized Skolnick’s ambition--it marked his chance to run a Hollywood company--but it also hurled him into debt and eventually placed him in the Sunset Boulevard parking garage where a killer gunned him down.

In late 1991, Skolnick and other investors had formed a limited partnership to buy Fred Jones Recording Studios. Skolnick made a down payment, and, in addition, agreed to pay Jones the $400,000, according to bankruptcy records. Skolnick previously had worked as a bookkeeper for Fred Jones Recordings between 1988 and 1990. He renamed the business Hollywood Recording Services.

Still in business at the same Sunset Boulevard address where Skolnick died, the company is known primarily for producing radio and television commercials, sources in the recording industry said Thursday. Its portfolio also includes a handful of movie credits, such as work on the forthcoming animated film “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

A year after buying the recording firm, Skolnick purchased a one-third stake in JBL Sound Studios Inc. in New York, using loans from Premium Commercial Services Corp., according to bankruptcy records.

Excluded from bankruptcy protection, however, was a guarantee on the $900,000 loan from Premium Commercial. Instead, the company took over Skolnick’s Hollywood Recording Services, and according to records, remains the owner.

One of the creditors in Skolnick’s bankruptcy, North Fork Bank of New York, vigorously fought for the $500,000 it was owed by Skolnick and, shortly before Skolnick’s death, sued Premium Commercial for the debt.

North Fork alleges that Skolnick wrongly converted collateral pledged to the bank by delivering company accounts receivable to Premium Commercial to satisfy Skolnick’s personal $900,000 debt.

Bankruptcy records show Skolnick’s income fluctuated: from $60,000 in 1992, to $64,000 in 1993 and $50,000 in 1994.

At the time of the filing, Skolnick estimated his monthly income was $8,000 and his monthly expenses were $6,095, including a $2,300 mortgage payment. He had also run up $33,000 in debt on four credit cards.

At least three Skolnick cars worth a total of more than $108,000 were repossessed in early 1994. Bankruptcy records showed he owed $23,426 to Porsche Credit Corp.; $38,000 to BMW Financial; and $47,000 to VW Credit.

Skolnick said he paid $1,500 to Steven N. Kurtz, a lawyer, to file his bankruptcy petition, according to records. Kurtz now represents Premium Commercial.

Skolnick kept a safety deposit box at American Savings Bank in Thousand Oaks, where he said he kept insurance policies, spare keys and bonds worth an unspecified amount of money belonging to one of his children.

He also listed a $1,500 savings account and a $1,500 college annuity fund for his son Ryan.

Between February 1992 and September 1994, Skolnick and his wife apparently changed residences three times, according to court records, moving to two homes in Calabasas and then another in Thousand Oaks.

Like others before him, Scott Campbell, the attorney for one of Skolnick’s creditors, said he was impressed with the young man’s energy and enthusiasm, despite all that had gone wrong. But in the end, it may have been those impressions that cost Barry Skolnick the most.

Instead of a track record of successes, Skolnick’s history reads like a series of debts--on bets that he lost, and paid for dearly.

Expressing a view that more than a few seemed to hold, his creditor client, Campbell said, simply thought Barry Skolnick “was worth . . . more than he was.”

Times staff writers Mark Platte, James Granelli and Michael G. Wagner and correspondent Jeff Kass contributed to this report.

* MAIN STORY: A1