Who killed the paparazzo?

The Todd Wallace story is beginning to sound a lot like Mel Gibson’s great flick Paparazzi, in which a Hollywood star takes revenge against the scumbag shutterbugs who hurt his family.

In this case, the revenge is metaphorical, of course (except with the Pellicano artichoke still being plucked and Britney Spears claiming the paparazzi defense for her PCH joyride with a baby on her lap, who knows?), and the L.A. County Coroner (visit their gift shop) may have some answers today, after spending the week with a CSI-worthy corpse believed to be that of paparazzi terrible Wallace.

Todd Wallace was a lightning rod in the battle between the new mini-celebutards and the gonzo paparazzi business, arrested in September and charged with battery for allegedly getting physical with little kids while trying to snap shots of Reese Witherspoon and her children in Disneyland.

Wallace pleaded innocent. The cops have been looking for him since he skipped bail in December. According to the papers, he was “known for using multiple aliases and traveling extensively, and officials feared he may have fled the US to Central America.”

Instead they found him on Monday, in an apartment on Darlington Avenue in Brentwood, the body so badly decomposed that they still don’t know for sure it’s the missing man, if was a homicide or if the guy died of natural causes at 44.

Patrick Ahle, a prosecutor handling the Witherspoon case, said, given Wallace's past history of aliases, he'd wait until the photographer's death is confirmed before assuming the deceased man is him.

Reese, meanwhile, is up for a Best Actress Oscar. (And Moonie, who played her dog Bruiser in Legally Blonde, stars in Cloud 9, the hit motion picture comedy written and produced by Burt Kearns and Brett Hudson of Frozen Pictures and Academy Award winner Albert S. Ruddy, now available on Fox DVD!)

For more on the Wallace mystery, see Hollywood Thoughts.