We dealt with David Hans Schmidt a couple of years back during the ill-fated revival of A Current Affair. He was a cheerful, straight-ahead, agressive, self-professed sleaze merchant with the unlikely home base of Phoenix, Arizona, eager to broker all kinds of celebrity smut from Tonya Harding to Colin Farrell to Paris Hilton. He talked like an out-of-towner out to take on Hollywood big shots like ourselves, hinted at a shadowy military past and reveled in all the publicity the mainstream media lavished upon him as they presented him as an underworld curiosity. More recently, he dealt with the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com in the marketing of various sex tapes, including a spectacularly distasteful one featuring a washed-up child actor from the old syndicated television series, Saved By The Bell.
Then he tangled with with Tom Cruise and his team when he allegedly tried to extort the star over wedding photos. He was facing two years in prison but planned to ask for probation next month. Cops had him under house arrest with a GPS tracking device. They say they found him dead in his house yesterday, an apparent suicide at 47.
An apparent suicide.
Seriously. You don't mess around with big Tom Cruise. That was my first thought.
ReplyDeleteIt all sounds odd, and now surfing over here confirms my suspicions. What's next on this one.
He is the "sultan of sleaze" who released the screech video,also who dropped the news to NYDN rush&molloy he had the Cory bernstein sex tape, though neither ever mentioned it again and no tape surfaced,yet. He supposedly was trying to broker an Eva Longoria tape also. Bernstein should be worried along with the rest of the characters whos tapes he purportedly had. tom criuse brings this to another level, the guy wouldn't commit suicide.
ReplyDeleteWhatever--slimeballs everywhere realize they are slimeballs and off themselves everyday. Hell maybe the dude was into auto-eroti asphyxiation for christs sake!
ReplyDeleteIf the Church of Scientology did kill Schmidt (which I doubt), it would not be their first assassination.
ReplyDeleteI can also see Tom Cruise being so enraged as to be prevented from seeking retaliation only by the likely unreliability of any assassin hired to perform such a ridiculous job, for such a lucratively mega-famous client.
I suspect that he is like Mel Gibson behind closed doors.
I heard he was shopping around a sex tape with eva longoria.
ReplyDeletealso he still has nude pictures from paris hilton's storage locker. also in posesseion a sex tape of model cory bernstein and a mrs usa, also pictures of gennifer flowers, marcia cross, and other tapes. i think the church easily could have been behind it or anybody he had so many enemies but he had been to jail before so wouldn't hang himself for going back, he reveled in publicity and was damn good!
The picture of the tits in the top row is terrible !
ReplyDeleteI cant see why the guy would have commited suicide, I doubt there will be any case with regards to this though..
I personally know David and we have some very close friends in common. I did not respect anything about David, he had no conscience. I can tell you he was a very ill man and needed professional help. Those of us who knew David well recognized that he was completely self destructive; and attempted to destroy everybody around him. YES, we have all had many discussions with David about being bipolar and tried to help him. Several of us encouraged him to get medicated instead of self medicating. Of course he had to make that choice. And David's life has been always been based on very bad choices. David chose to live life on the edge and merely survive from one High to the next. David likely did commit suicide.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it is fair to say that David had many many enemies. Therefore, it is not entirely out of the question that someone might have preferred him dead, and acted on it.
I do believe the most likely cause was suicide. David was certainly not worried about jail or likely probation. However, financially he was broken and as well as romatically. The turbulance he experienced in these two areas of his life are the most likely cause of his demise.
So he had 'wedding pictures' of Cruise and Katie. I hate to sound dense, but is the only point of this the blackmail aspect? Tom Cruise likes to approve everything (i.e., the loss of tabloid payments).
ReplyDeleteThe actual pictures would be tame. No sex tape, no private parts, nothing like the other 'stars' in his video collection.
I lived with David H. Schmidy during his first two years of college 1980-82. He was self-centered, inconsiderate, hyper, careless, defaming (even then), and encourage the abuse of females. This proves that it hasn't been ONLY in recent years that D.H.S. was out-of-control. I did hear he was good at painting the dorm walls. David Hans Schmidt. R.I.P. S.K.
ReplyDelete^^ Whoa. Just whoa.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I knew David.. nice enough guy who was successful at exposing the exploits of the REAL sleaze-bags in Hollywood and politics.
ReplyDeleteHowever, two people died on that same Friday afternoon by the same method. David, at his home in a shower stall where it would be almost 'impossible' to hang anyone; and the other was the woman who was handcuffed in a holding cell at Sky Harbor (she died just a couple hours after DHS). Both died from instances of 'unusual asphyxia'.
Strangely, that woman was traveling alone, freaked out (like a cult member) when stopped, she had no explanation for being in Phoenix, was 'out to lunch' for 3 hours between layovers, and seemed to be the Scientologist' type... and David's.
Has anyone considered the possiblity she (Carol Gotbaum) was in Phoenix to set-up and kill David Hans Schmidt and then after the job was done, another Scientologist made sure she met the same fate?
Don't be surprised. David had the sense to wait for the outcome of his hearing... so who killed DHS?!