Hollywood. Hollywood. Hollywood.
Hollywood has always been a magnet for people with big dreams.
Hopeful faces lining up in malls and studios, clutching head shots and scripts, believing the next phone call could change their lives.
The promise of fame and being noticed is intoxicating.
It draws in both the confident and the vulnerable alike.
Sometimes that very allure can become a trap.
In a city built on promises where predators can hide in plain sight, hope can sometimes be the most dangerous thing of all.
And on a clear February afternoon in 2003, one young woman’s dream would become something far darker.
—
21-year-old Christine Louise Johnson, known as Christy, had been living in sunny Los Angeles for several months.
Born in Northern California, but raised in Michigan, she, like many, had dreams that quickly outgrew her hometown.
Her mom said she had a peacefulness to her, always so calm and easy to be around.
After high school and one year of college, she got a job as an assistant on the Sandra Bullock movie Murder by Numbers.
And she really caught the entertainment bug.
Like thousands of others, she had come to California chasing more of this opportunity, auditions, modeling work, and the hope of being discovered.
She was a college student, a makeup artist, and was working for a phone company.
Originally, she had wanted to work behind the camera, hopefully doing makeup.
Now, she was in Hollywood, acting and being on the big screen was really appealing to her.
What little free time she had saw her handing out her resumes, submitting head shots, and trying to make those all-important contacts.
After booking a job on a music video, she emailed her dad, Kirk, saying, “I was so nervous when I first got down here, but I knew this is what I wanted, so I stuck with it, and now I’m on my way.”
In an oversaturated place with so many seeking the same thing she was, amazingly, she was already making moves and connections that some would struggle to make for years.
—
It was Valentine’s weekend and Christy called her mom and said she was going to the mall.
Her mom, Terry, said, “Don’t buy anything. Pick something out and it’ll be your Valentine’s present.”
And on February 15th, Christy shared some exciting news with her roommate Carrie.
She had met a casting agent at the Century City Shopping Center, and he had offered her a life-changing opportunity to be cast in the latest James Bond film, potentially as one of the famous Bond girls.
Even though there would be other actresses trying out, he told her the audition was basically a formality.
The job was hers.
Christy said she was apprehensive, but how could she pass that kind of thing up?
It was literally the sole reason she had come to LA in the first place, and she was beaming.
She showed Carrie the clothes the casting agent had told her to buy, a black miniskirt, a smart white men’s shirt, and some stilettos.
And off she drove to Beverly Hills, prepared for her 5:30 p.m. meeting and ready to take on what would hopefully become her big break.
—
It was now late into the evening and she hadn’t come back.
Maybe the meeting had run over or she met up with friends.
The next day came and went.
Still, no one had heard from Christy.
She had only been in the apartment for a couple of months, and she and Carrie weren’t overly familiar with each other’s routines yet.
They got on well, but Carrie didn’t know enough about her schedule to really think two days away was an indicator that something was wrong.
But when Christy missed her shift at work, her mom Terry called the Santa Monica Police Department and filed a missing person’s report.
Sometimes we hear about certain protocol, meaning things can take longer to get going or authorities can dig their heels in for various reasons.
But in this instance, detectives were concerned and wasted no time.
The family and the police department are very concerned because this is very uncharacteristic of her behavior to not show up to work yesterday and today and no one has seen her since Saturday afternoon.
They headed out to her apartment and Carrie told them about the casting call.
She says, “I’m so excited.” She goes, “I met this guy.”
And she’s I mean she was like really excited that they’re looking for a fresh face.
They’re looking for someone like in a James Bond movie.
She had to be real sultry and sexy.
That’s what they were looking for.
And they were going to give her a necktie to wear.
—
Investigators found a receipt in Christy’s room, a pair of new stilettos that she had picked up at the mall.
CCTV from the mall showed her buying the skirt as well.
And although they checked every camera in the whole building, there were no sightings of her with the man.
At 5:32 p.m. on the day she left, her phone had been active, but it wasn’t in the Beverly Hills area where she said her meeting was.
It was in Laurel Canyon in the Hollywood Hills.
After this, there was nothing on her phone and no activity on her bank accounts.
Douglas Kirkland, a big celebrity photographer, had actually spoken with Christy around that time.
She had been in her white Mazda at the top of Wonderland Park Avenue in the Hollywood Hills.
She was a little lost and running late and asked him for directions.
He said the look on her face he had seen a thousand times, another aspiring actress.
Good luck to her, he thought to himself as he watched her drive off.
And now, only a few days later, Douglas had seen Christy’s face in the media, but not for any of the reasons he might have hoped for for her.
—
Christy’s mom, Terry, and her dad, Kirk, both flew out and started doing the all-important media rounds, making sure Christy’s face was everywhere and her name was known to everyone.
Thanks to a small article in a local paper, a woman named Susan Murphy realized she had had an experience eerily similar to Christy’s.
Susan had been approached at the Century City Mall inside a Macy’s just a few weeks before by a man who introduced himself as Victor Thomas, a casting agent working on a James Bond film.
Susan brought her boyfriend Mark along when she went to meet Victor and he waited in the car.
She hovered around outside the building and when Victor saw her, he was immediately angry that she wasn’t wearing the clothing he had asked her to, similar to what Christy had been told to wear.
A men’s white shirt, a black miniskirt, and stilettos.
After she asked him to show his ID, he told her she wouldn’t be the right fit for the part, and he was chased off by her boyfriend.
Susan remembered him so clearly and described him to help the police create a sketch.
White male, curly, short, brown hair, about 5’11”.
The subject approached her and insisted in a very aggressive manner that she come with him immediately.
And the name he gave, Victor Thomas, turned up nothing in the system.
But unsurprisingly, given the nature of what he was doing, it was clearly a 𝒻𝒶𝓀𝑒 name.
They went to the mall with Susan to look through some of the footage, and sure enough, they found him.
They could see he had been following Susan around before approaching her.
—
The sketch was released along with a tip line which logged almost 1,000 calls.
One of those calls was another actress named Kathy Dabono.
She said from the sketch she knew who this person was.
Kathy was positive she had met this man 2 years prior in a mall.
She knew him as Brian from Disney.
Kathy had been in the business a while and she knew exactly how this worked and what red flags were.
Nevertheless, she said her own curiosity got the better of her.
What if this was legitimate?
She went to meet Brian, but took along her stunt double friend Chester just in case.
But whoever Brian was, he never came out of the house.
Another aspiring actress and dancer, Alice Walker, heard about Christy’s case from her mom.
She had worked as a waitress in the mall, the same place where Christy had been approached.
A middle-aged man had sat down at her table and struck up a conversation.
He said his name was Victor, and he was working on, surprise, surprise, the latest Bond movie.
He invited her to the same place he had asked Susan to go to, the abandoned building in West Hollywood, telling her to wear the same outfit as the other women.
She went thinking she would meet the director there, too, but it was just Victor.
She did a few walks in the outfit and he told her to put on a necktie that he had bought.
She did, but kept her thumb underneath the top so it couldn’t be tightened.
He let her go, telling her maybe the director would be around in a few days.
But the last she had heard from him was February 15th, the same day Christy had disappeared.
He had sounded frantic, out of breath, repeating over and over that he needed to get hold of her.
But she never got back to him.
And then she turned the news on and saw Christy’s face alongside that sketch.
A very sobering feeling for her.
—
Detectives then got a call from none other than a parole officer who saw the sketch, too.
She could finally give them a real name to put to the face of this 𝒻𝒶𝓀𝑒 industry professional.
His first name was in fact Victor, Victor Paleologus, someone she had actually been monitoring after his release from prison.
In 1999, he had been sentenced to almost 9 years in prison for falsifying financial statements, writing a fictitious check, and assault with intent to commit a 𝒔𝒆𝒙 act.
He had been released from prison just 26 days before Christy disappeared.
Police found Victor at the county jail because 2 days after Christy vanished, he had tried to steal a BMW in Beverly Hills.
The 40-year-old said he knew nothing about Christy and detectives had to leave it there for now.
—
Kristen Johnson’s car was found parked right here at the St. Regis Hotel valet parking area.
Finally, Christy’s white Mazda was found in the St. Regis Hotel just next to the mall.
The hotel’s valet attendant said a man had just handed him the keys.
They swabbed the car, but apart from one print, which was Christy’s, there was nothing.
It was totally clean.
The valet was asked to come in and look at a lineup of men.
Police also asked Susan Murphy to do the same as well.
Although the valet couldn’t say with certainty who had handed him the keys, Susan pointed at number three and confidently said, “That’s him. That’s the man who lured me to the casting.”
A realtor named Paul Katy came forward with yet another story about who he thought was the face behind the sketch.
He had shown someone called Victor around some houses in the Hollywood Hills.
He got a weird vibe from him as he kept asking Paul to step outside the rooms so he could, in his words, check the sound and insulation in the space.
—
Police continued to sift through a huge list of past convictions and charges.
Although Victor portrayed himself as a record company executive, a movie producer, a casting director, and an all-round well-connected figure, he was actually a failed restaurant owner who had nothing but 𝒻𝒶𝓀𝑒 credentials.
In 1991, he was tried on charges of attempted rape, assault, and false imprisonment of a woman called Christine Clusion, someone that he lured into a hotel suite on the promise that she would meet Madonna at a huge industry party.
He told her his name was John and he was an executive at Columbia Records.
Once in the suite, he had tied her to the bed and attacked her after she bit him in the crotch.
She had managed to escape.
He was acquitted of attempted rape and assault with intent to commit rape, but pleaded guilty to false imprisonment.
The jury foreman said Victor didn’t look like a rapist.
Such a ridiculous and insulting thing to say to Christine.
The then 21-year-old Christine said, “This guy’s done this before. He’ll do it again and he will 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 someone because he almost killed me.”
Victor was given just 3 years probation.
—
The same year, another actress named Christine Davis met Victor under the name Joe Messi, who worked for Disney.
He spiked her drink, but she noticed the white powder just in time and called the police.
No charges were ever filed.
In 1996, he was accused of breaking into the home of a woman he had briefly dated and lunging towards her with a ligature.
They had to call a SWAT team in when he holed himself up in the home.
With the plea deal, he got it down to just a burglary conviction.
Two years later, he told Heather Mah her that he was a Disney movie producer, asking her to meet him at a hotel and to wear a black miniskirt and black heels.
She met him and he showed her some 𝒻𝒶𝓀𝑒 contracts.
He then asked that they go to another location, saying it was his office.
He told her to pose for some modeling shots and then tied a cord around her ankles.
He pinned her to the floor and attempted to rape her, but she was able to break free and drive to a police station.
He would get a 4-year sentence for this.
—
And now flashing forward to 2003, less than a month before Christy disappeared, Victor had been released from prison after serving a sentence for assault with intent to commit rape, attempted forcible rape, and false imprisonment by violence.
It was quite the list, and the circumstantial evidence was stacking up.
But where was Christy?
March 5th, 2003.
Hikers were going through a remote Hollywood Hills ravine when they spotted the badly decomposed body of a young female almost 100 feet below them.
The lead investigator, Virginia Obenchain, asked to be lowered into the ravine herself.
She had to see this through to the very end.
The tattoo of a hibiscus on her back was the first giveaway.
It was Christy Johnson.
She was partially clothed, covered in a sleeping bag, and her hands and ankles had been bound.
There was a huge crack on her head.
She had been strangled and while still clinging to life, she was thrown down into the canyon.
The medical examiner determined she had probably been killed the same day she went missing.
Because of the decomposition, they were not able to say if she was sexually assaulted.
—
At this point, detectives had heard so many stories about Victor, including the positive ID from Susan, he was arrested for the murder of Christy Johnson.
It was clear that this had been a violent and escalating pattern of behavior over many years.
And these are the women we know about.
It’s entirely possible there are many more connected to him.
One thing was for certain, though.
What Christine Clusion had sat on the stand and predicted back in 1991 had happened.
Victor’s lawyers said there was no DNA, no hair samples or fibers, and no witnesses.
There is not any way that anybody could have been this clean, he said.
David Walgren, the Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney, did not argue this.
He said that because there was no forensic or direct evidence linking Victor, the other women’s testimonies were crucial.
The evidence was circumstantial, but it didn’t make it any less strong.
Without them, we most likely would not have had a case, he said.
—
In July 2006, after two weeks of testimonies, Victor’s team approached the prosecution saying that Victor wanted to strike a deal.
He would accept responsibility for Christy’s death, but said he was not going to give them any information about what happened.
As a result, he avoided the death penalty and was sentenced to 25 years to life, but he did walk away with the chance of parole down the line.
On the day of his sentencing, Victor wrote a letter to the judge asking to withdraw his plea, saying his lawyer had talked him into it against his will.
The court this morning received a letter, it’s very lengthy, from the defendant.
I’m going to deny the motion, Mr. Paleologus.
The law states very clearly, a plea may not be withdrawn simply because the defendant has changed his mind.
The judge denied this.
He also let Kirk and Terry, Christy’s parents, address him in court.
—
And Christy is my guardian angel.
She is the girl that I look up to.
She’s the one that provides me with strength.
And I go back to the last Father’s Day card that Christy sent me.
It’s a beautiful card.
I cherish it.
Victor Paleologus has been allowed the freedom to let the evil in his life escalate, resulting in the heinous murder of Christy, my beloved young daughter, a beautiful young woman on the threshold of her life.
3 days after he started his sentence, he did an interview with Keith Morrison of Dateline NBC.
To no one’s shock at all, he continued his mind games, his lies, his denials.
You took responsibility for Christy’s death.
I had to.
I had to in order to get the plea.
And that’s what you did.
It was a solemn oath.
That’s what you want to withdraw.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
That is what I wanted to withdraw because I’m not responsible for her death.
In 2008, Victor appealed to the California Supreme Court, but they denied this as well.
—
Kathy Dabono, who had had her own experience with Victor, had since gone into the world of psychology and studying everything about psychopathy specifically.
Naturally, Victor was a focus for her, and she set about making a documentary with all of the women that had come forward.
Kathy wrote to Victor in prison asking for an interview, telling him who she was and how they were connected.
He first said no, but then told her he would be open to talking via letter.
The pair would go back and forth for years as she tried to get more information out of him.
In one letter, she asked him to be really honest and talk about what he actually wanted to talk about.
A week later, she received a graphic and hardcore sexual fantasy story.
She knew this man was not changing and would never change.
She needed to make sure she got everything to his parole board in case he was ever up for it.
—
Down the line, Kathy had also learned of a cold case from back in 1988.
In a Philadelphia suburb, the remains of a pregnant woman were found behind a distillery.
She had died about 3 years before in 1985, estimated to be between 17 and 23 years old.
Her skeletal remains were found clothed, but she had been buried with a second outfit, a skirt, high heels, fishnet stockings, and a shirt.
The same outfit Victor had requested the aspiring actresses to wear when they met him.
A forensic sculpture was made of her, but there had been no leads and the case had been long cold.
Hearing about this, Kathy reached out to the cold case detective Chris McMullen.
Victor had family ties to that area.
This had to be looked at.
Was he possibly the father of this unborn child?
Was he her killer?
Trying to establish a connection between Victor and the unknown woman would require Victor’s DNA, but authorities in California said they could not provide this without stronger evidence.
So, after years of talking, in 2017, Kathy decided to get his DNA herself.
She traveled to the prison and spent 3 hours there with him.
As well as getting him a drink, she let him kiss her on the cheek, then made a note of where to have her cheek swabbed.
She said it was strange, but at the end of the day, it was just a kiss on the cheek, and I felt it was worth it.
I was in there to get a job done.
—
Kathy asked him about Christy, and Victor told her not to repeat what he said.
He described how he met her at the mall and invited her to his home.
He alleged they smoked weed and tried erotic asphyxiation during what he said was consensual 𝒔𝒆𝒙.
But when he couldn’t wake her up and realized that she had died, he panicked, wrapped her in a sleeping bag, and rolled her down the hill.
Kathy didn’t believe him at all.
But at least he had finally admitted to what he had been denying for years.
The DNA she obtained didn’t end up matching the fetal bones, but what an incredibly brave and determined thing of Kathy to do.
Because DNA had been extracted from the fetal bones.
In 2020, more DNA was extracted by Bode Technology and genome sequencing was performed.
A team of DNA genealogists helped to build a family tree based on the DNA results.
In March 2021, Jane Doe was finally identified as Lisa Todd, who had disappeared in October of 1985.
They still have no idea who killed her, but they do now know who she is, and her family has some sort of closure.
—
In August 2023, Victor waived his right to his first parole hearing, and a spokeswoman for California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said he wanted more time to complete additional self-help programs, relapse prevention, and parole plans.
He remains incarcerated and another hearing was scheduled for November 2025, but at the time of this episode, there is not any more information about that.
Kirk Johnson said he knew his daughter had what it took to be successful at anything she tried, but maybe LA had been too soon and too much for her.
He said Christy was a little girl from Holland, Michigan, and she went to big Los Angeles and it gobbled her up.
I don’t think she was ready for the fast lane of LA.
For Christy, the danger she unknowingly faced came disguised as hopes and dreams.
Hollywood sells a simple idea that if you want something badly enough, if you work hard enough, someone will eventually notice.
For Christy Johnson, that belief wasn’t naive.
It was human.
She did what so many are encouraged to do.
She showed up.
She tried hard.
She believed the right opportunity would come her way.
There is no way to tell which doors lead to auditions and which lead somewhere else entirely.
Kirk said, “I call Christy my guardian angel. There’s times when I think I might see her again across a lake, somebody waving.”
There was one time late at night, I’d look up and I’d say, “Christy, where are you?”
And all of a sudden, a bird chirped and I said, “Okay, I got it. That’s the messenger.”
