Federal officials investigating infamous Hollywood detective Anthony Pellicano have found no convincing evidence that actor Steven Seagal was involved in depositing a dead fish on a reporter's windshield in June 2002 and now believe Pellicano had some other motivation for staging the mob-style threat.
While prosecutors have yet to explain what that impetus was, their current lack of interest in Seagal fundamentally alters the original plot line of this Hollywood cliffhanger and raises this question: If not the movie star, then who \o7was\f7 Pellicano working for?
The original premise was that Seagal had hired Pellicano to threaten Los Angeles Times reporter Anita Busch and scare her off a story about the actor's problems with organized crime.
The FBI initially subscribed to that theory because Alexander Proctor, the former convict that Pellicano allegedly hired to put a dead fish with a rose in its mouth and a note that said "Stop" on the smashed windshield of Busch's car, claimed he was working for Pellicano on Seagal's behalf.
Seagal's lawyers have denied since the fall of 2002 that the actor had anything to do with the threat, but federal authorities have never publicly exonerated him or explained why they eventually came to disbelieve Proctor.
"As we looked into it, there was very little to corroborate" Proctor's claim, said a source close to the investigation. "There was a lot to suggest that Seagal was not involved."
Indeed, the 110-count federal indictment accusing Pellicano and six others of conspiring to blackmail and intimidate dozens of celebrities, business executives and others in Los Angeles alleges that the private eye started spying on Busch well before Seagal was even on her radar.
Pellicano allegedly began prying into Busch's life nine days after she and her reporting partner, Bernard Weinraub, wrapped up a series of damaging articles in the New York Times about former super agent Michael Ovitz -- and more than two weeks before she began working on the Seagal story for the Los Angeles Times.
On May 16, 2002, Pellicano allegedly asked his contact in the Los Angeles Police Department, Sgt. Mark Arneson -- also now indicted -- to troll for information on Busch and Weinraub in law enforcement databases. Pellicano also is accused of paying telephone company technician Rayford Earl Turner to obtain confidential information that later enabled the private eye to tap Busch's phone. She no longer works for The Times.
