‘Babydol’ Trial Jurors Hear Final Arguments

The attorney for Jody “Babydol” Gibson on Wednesday denounced the police investigation of the alleged Hollywood madam as “disgraceful” and “full of cockroaches,” urging the jury, in closing arguments, to acquit.

Defense attorney Gerald V. Scotti also quoted passages from a manuscript allegedly by Gibson as “a work of fiction.” In it, the author described an affair with a police detective and claimed to have rejected Heidi Fleiss, who later became a madam herself, as a prospective employee because Fleiss wasn’t attractive enough.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard F. Walmark said the manuscript, a handwritten copy of which was found by police in Gibson’s home, amounted to an admission of pimping and pandering, for which she is on trial.

Walmark recounted a long list of evidence that he said pointed to Gibson’s guilt, including testimony from three former prostitutes who said they worked for Gibson, and from vice officers, several of whom had posed as clients and one of whom had approached Gibson as a prospective employee.

There also were investigators’ secretly taped conversations with Gibson and notebooks in which Gibson recorded her business activities, Walmark reminded the jury of seven women and five men in the Van Nuys courtroom of Los Angeles County Superior Court.

Gibson’s defense presented no witnesses during the trial, which lasted more than three weeks, resting on the contention that the prosecution had failed to prove its case.

During the trial, Gibson had been animated, taking notes, turning to confer with Scotti or whispering to his assistant. On Wednesday, she sat still and quiet.

In the manuscript, the author wrote that she was “tired” of the LAPD’s growing intolerance of prostitution. “They should just tax it. Give 1% to the homeless,” she wrote. She also promised her readers a tale of “kinky sexual preferences,” “celebrities,” “espionage” and “danger.”

“You see, the escorting business is a ruthless one,” Gibson allegedly wrote, referring to Fleiss. In 1990, Fleiss approached Gibson about a job, according to the manuscript. “She wasn’t very pretty. I passed. She always hated me for that.” Fleiss later tried to take clients from her by offering lower prices, according to passages read by Scotti.

The author also mentioned an “affair with the arresting detective with the Beverly Hills Police Department” and wrote that she “received immunity.”

“The irony for me, though, is I was just trying to be a pop star. I had created my service simply to finance my recording career,” the author wrote. The service began, she said, when she had a “talent agency” that included Playboy playmates. Women in her agency asked if she knew “sugar daddy” types, and men she knew clamored to be set up with beautiful women.

“It just came together and fell on my lap,” Scotti read aloud from the manuscript.

Scotti also argued that much of the prosecution’s evidence was untrustworthy.

The prostitutes who testified received immunity deals from prosecutors that amounted to “you tell us what we want to hear on Ms. Gibson or you’re going to jail,” Scotti said. The women were thus coerced into lying, he said.

The police investigation was “sloppy,” Scotti said, pointing out that no handwriting analysis was done on an alleged prostitution appointment book and the manuscript. “What evidence do you have before you that she even wrote those?”

He also pointed out inconsistencies in the testimony of an LAPD officer who had approached Gibson about working as a prostitute.

“How can you believe or accept a single word she said?” Scotti said of the officer. At one point, he referred to the officer, who secretly recorded conversations with Gibson, as “Linda Tripp.”

“This was a shameful investigation, a disgraceful investigation,” Scotti said. “This is a case full of cockroaches.”

“Sloppy police work . . . when it’s not checked . . . it breeds further sloppiness and it breeds corruption,” Scotti said. “You know what we have next: We have Rampart.”

Urging jurors to “stick to the facts at hand,” prosecutor Walmark said Scotti’s “boilerplate” remarks on the Rampart scandal are “the standard response now when you have the Los Angeles Police Department on cases.”

Errors may have been made by police, Walmark said, but “there’s not one item in front of you that constitutes misconduct in this case.”