A filmmaker feared his subject had turned on him. So he staged his own murder
LOS ANGELES -- A man lies flat on his stomach on the floor of an apartment high above the La Brea Tar Pits.
He isn’t moving. His hands are tied behind his back and his eyes are open and still. His face rests in a pool of blood spilling from his neck.
A glass candle-holder is shattered on the ground nearby and a chair is knocked over, signs of a struggle in the otherwise neat apartment.
On the wall is a corkboard dotted with cutouts of articles, court papers and photographs. Red string leads between related incidents along with photos and names and dates. All the string ties back to a photo at the top of a man: “Prince Fred.”
It could be a scene out of a movie. Someday, it probably will be. The man on the floor is a documentary filmmaker. What started as an exposé of a wealthy businessman with a checkered past had morphed into a low-budget, high-stakes, life-or-death drama.
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J. Esco was working as a computer technician in Florida when Fereidoun “Prince Fred” Khalilian hired him for a repair job in 2009. He was soon working full time for Khalilian: a job offer at three times his salary was hard to refuse, Esco said.
Khalilian’s lavish lifestyle impressed Esco. His boss ran in celebrity circles — he had helped open Paris Hilton’s short-lived Orlando nightclub. He drove a Range Rover and claimed to have a Bugatti and a Lamborghini at his house, according to prosecutors in a criminal complaint. He wore expensive jewelry and had a security team of at least four bodyguards who accompanied him when he went out, often spending tens of thousands of dollars in a single night at a club, the complaint said.
For a year, Esco
