- Joined
- Feb 9, 2014
- Messages
- 20,922
- Name
- Peter
http://interactive.nydailynews.com/2016/03/richard-simmons-disappeared-twisted-mystery/
| Hollywood mysteries
THE HAUNTED TWILIGHT OF RICHARD SIMMONS
Two years ago, the flamboyant fitness guru abruptly disappeared from public life. Now, his closest friends, banished from his inner circle, have grown increasingly concerned. They worry that the pop-culture icon is being held against his will inside his Hollywood Hills mansion — with one suggesting more sinister notions are at play.
BY ANDY MARTINO
SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 2016
Richard Simmons opened his front door, frail and trembling. Mauro Oliveira, a visual artist who was also Simmons’ masseur and former assistant, greeted him on the front porch, concerned about his friend. After receiving an ominous phone call from Simmons, Oliveira had driven his truck to the Hollywood Hills, past the two metal gates that Simmons had left ajar for him, and into the driveway. He reached the porch through the white columns that recalled an antebellum Southern mansion, and past Simmons’ bronze statue of a regal Dalmatian.
Wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, a gaunt Simmons led Oliveira through the foyer, and into the living room. “Mauro, we can no longer see each other,” Simmons told him in a quiet, defeated voice.
Evan Hurd/Sygma/Corbis
HIT THE DECK Simmons, whose childhood experiences with bullying helped him empathize with overweight women, reaches out on the “Cruise to Lose” ocean liner in 1996.
It was April 2014. Oliveira, a 49-year-old from Brazil with the burly arms and trim physique of a gym rat and close-cropped black hair, had met Simmons 13 months earlier, and the two became fast friends. But he was catching a weird vibe lately, and hadn’t seen him in a while, before the then 65-year-old Simmons summoned him to the mansion, saying only that they needed to talk.
“What’s going on, Richard?” Oliveira asked. “Why are you saying that?”
“I don’t know,” Simmons replied. “I just want to be by myself, and I want to be in the house, and we’re never going to see each other again.”
Simmons’ home is a mixture of classical architecture and design that recalls his New Orleans youth. He collects offbeat pieces, including a menagerie of dolls highlighted by a rare Barbra Streisand model and the colorful work of Mexican painter and sculptor Sergio Bustamante. As they spoke, he and Oliveira stood near an ornate grand piano.
“Let’s talk it over,” Oliveira said. “I want to sit here, and make sure you’ll be OK. Let’s go upstairs, I’ll give you a massage and relax you.”
Simmons called up to Teresa Reveles, his live-in housekeeper of nearly three decades. “Mauro is going upstairs with me,” he said.
“No, no, no!” Reveles shouted from the second floor, according to Oliveira. “Get out! Get out!”
Oliveira looked at his friend, who told him in a soft voice, “You’ve gotta go.”
Oliveira leaned in toward Simmons. “Is she controlling your life now?”
As Oliveira tells it, Simmons looked down, and with one resigned word confirmed his worst suspicions: “Yes.” This was the last time he saw his friend.
With Reveles shrieking behind him, Oliveira hustled out to his truck, picked up his cell phone, and asked an intermediary to contact Simmons’ older brother, Lenny. He and Lenny did not have a close relationship, but Oliveira knew of nowhere else to turn.
Oliveira is calm as he recounts this story, but irritation enters his voice as he recalls a threat leveled that day, nearly two years ago. “Later that evening, Richard called me and said that his manager and Teresa wanted to put a restraining order against me — you can see how controlling they are — and I said, ‘What restraining order? You are the one who called me. I’m not invading your privacy, or your house.’ That was the end of that. No restraining order was put against me.”
Oliveira has spoken briefly about his privileged access to Simmons during this dark period, but never in this much detail. He recently underwent a heart procedure, which he blames on Simmons-related stress, and is reluctant to invite further strain. But he agreed to elaborate on a Hollywood mystery that has previously been told only in a few cryptic tabloid items.
Richard Simmons has vanished from public view, and many who know him best say they haven’t had any contact in more than two years. All repeat the same message, some anonymously and some on the record: Simmons stopped returning calls and emails more than two years ago, behavior that is highly out of character, and his housekeeper is blocking access to him at home.
Indeed, for a generous and intensely social public figure, one who taught classes at his Beverly Hills gym until a few years ago; has sold more than 20 million exercise videos, including the mega-popular “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” series; appeared many times on David Letterman’s shows, “General Hospital,” his own talk show and infomercials; and was a seemingly ubiquitous presence for decades, the silence is striking.
Getty
INTO HIS SHELL In one of his last public appearances, Simmons surveys the scene from his perch on a turtle float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2013.
“We were very close,” says a friend in Hollywood who spoke on the condition that his name be withheld, and who has not heard back from Simmons since 2013 — one of five people who described to me the same situation. “It’s not something that I want to seek publicity about, but we are very concerned. Teresa did turn me away several times. He has missed funerals of close friends. He was the most reliable and caring person on the planet, and then to suddenly vanish? I have come to believe that something else is happening. I don’t think Richard is in there of his own volition.”
It’s a sentiment that Oliveira takes even further. “I feel that Richard is now being controlled by the very people that he controlled his whole life,” he says. “Controlled in the sense that they are taking advantage of his weak mental state. Controlled in the sense that they are controlling his mail, controlling his everything. His brother, the manager and Teresa. Those three people.”
He also believes that Simmons is deeply depressed, because of a chronic knee injury that has kept him from teaching classes; the death of his beloved 17-year-old dalmatian, Hattie; and exhaustion from a lifetime as one of the highest-octane characters in American pop culture. How does he think Simmons has spent his days since cutting off contact with the world? “Medicated and in bed,” Oliveira says.
Michael Catalano, Simmons’ longtime manager, insists that all the worry is misplaced. “Richard is enjoying life at home after a 40-year career of traveling the world and inspiring people to take better care of themselves,” Catalano told me (he declined my request for an interview with Simmons). “He is working on several projects and continues to encourage those that need his help.”
Teresa Reveles did not respond to phone and email messages, and the gates were locked during my several visits to Simmons’ home. But Catalano pushes back strongly against the idea that the housekeeper, or anyone else, is controlling the fitness guru. “I can tell you absolutely 100% that is not the case,” he told me. “If Richard wants to get in his car and drive to Starbucks, no one is telling him he can’t. In response to ‘the housekeeper is keeping him captive,’ I can tell you that it is 100% not true. It’s ridiculous. Richard has always been someone who makes up his own mind what he wants to do.”
Until they see him, however, many friends will remain highly skeptical. “If Richard never comes out of the shadows and says he is OK, then no one will ever know the truth,” says one. “His fans will just wake up one day and see the horrible story that he passed away.”
Oliveira presents the most solid evidence of Simmons’ mental and emotional state, because his access to the mansion was more recent than others’. But even he has been left with a dearth of concrete, up-to-date information, leaving friends to concoct theories, some more outlandish than others.
“I think tormented is the best word to describe his mental state,” Oliveira says. “I think it was (caused by) black magic, witchcraft. That’s not close to your culture, but to my culture in Brazil, and to Mexicans” — Teresa Reveles is from Mexico — “that is a real thing. They invoke the spirits. They light black candles, and red and blue candles. I’ve never participated. I only saw from a distance. But at services, they do special meals. They offer meals to the bad spirits, and light candles, invoking with words.”
It is a bizarre allegation, but one not totally out of place in the story of this extraordinary American life.
Simmons’ tale, defined by depression, resilience and reinvention, began on July 12, 1948, in that city of muggy mysticism, New Orleans. Milton Teagle Simmons — he later changed the name to honor a beloved uncle — was the second of two boys born to Leonard and Shirley Simmons. Theirs was a complicated family, crammed into a shotgun house in the French Quarter.
Both parents were entertainers from the vaudeville era, having worked as singers, dancers, actors, and masters of ceremony. Shirley found more success than Leonard, so when Richard and his older brother, Lenny, were young, their parents made a decision unusual for the time: Shirley would continue to tour, and Leonard would be a stay-at-home parent.
As Shirley packed for her trips, young Richard would cry and plead with his mother, “Why do you have to go? Why do you have to go?”
Leonard, annoyed, would respond by freezing Richard out of the family for periods of time; Richard would fire back by mocking his dad for not having a job. “His method of punishment was perfect,” Simmons wrote in his engaging 1999 memoir, “Still Hungry — After All These Years.” “It was the Punishment of Silence. Very effective for a child who craves attention. You didn’t exist. He didn’t do your laundry, he didn’t set a place at the table for you — Milton doesn’t live here anymore.”
Leonard and Shirley kept separate bedrooms and argued often, especially when she returned from the road. Once when Richard was 4 or 5 years old, he peered into the kitchen, to see his mother doubled over the sink, clutching her stomach. She had an ulcer, which Leonard blamed on his high-maintenance youngest son.
“Are you happy now?” he said to Richard, as recounted in the memoir. “See what you have done? You made your mother sick. You gave her a peptic ulcer. It’s all your fault.”
More than 30 years later, when Simmons was showing off his first house in the Hollywood Hills, his father still withheld attention and approval. “There’s too many windows and too much glass,” Leonard told his son, who by now was a successful workout guru with a recurring role on “General Hospital.” “It’s going to be very drafty. And where is the nearest grocery store, fish market, bakery? You’re going to have to drive all the way down the side of this mountain. This just doesn’t make sense!”
“Nothing I did,” Simmons wrote, “seemed to be right.”
People close to Simmons say that wounds from the fraught father-son dynamic have always been raw, even though both parents are long dead. “Now he has a complicated relationship with his brother,” one friend says. “He loves him, but (he) always says that his father favored Lenny.”
When I tried to reach Lenny Simmons, a woman, presumably Lenny’s wife Kathy, picked up the phone, and had no interest in chatting.
“Hi,” I began. “I’m a writer working on a piece about Richard Simmons—”
“We have no comment,” the woman said.
“I haven’t asked a question yet.”
“I said we have no comment.” Click.
Courtesy of Mauro Oliveira
GOLDEN YEARS Mauro Oliveira, right, once a part of Simmons’ inner circle, is one of many friends and associates who say they’ve been cut off from all contact with the workout guru.
Friends say that family history has always weighed on Simmons. “He sometimes will slip into the persona of a 5-year-old child,” says one pal who claims to have seen this within the past few years. “He’ll play with dolls, and call you daddy. It’s ‘daddy this’ and ‘daddy that.’ ”
Simmons’ relationship with his father was far from his only source of childhood trauma. From an early age, he struggled with his weight, and addiction to food. Leonard cooked elaborate meals, and taught his son how to do the same; the kitchen was one of the only places where their tension cooled. But by the time he was in grammar school, Simmons was heavier than his peers.
His parents took him to doctors — “you’re a big fella,” one joked, a comment that Simmons never forgot — put him on diets, did whatever they could. Before even reaching high school, Simmons experimented with diet pills; as a young adult, he would starve himself, take laxatives, binge and purge, and otherwise try to escape the torture of hating his body.
The other kids hardly made it easier, alternating between taunts about his weight and his effeminate manner, which brought on the label of “sissy,” as Simmons recalls in his memoir. Once, in the sixth grade, Simmons had just walked out of the schoolyard when a boy named Moose called to him, “Hey, porker.” Before Simmons could turn around, he felt the crack of a baseball bat on the back of his head. “Maybe I can put a hole in your head and some of that fat will come out,” Moose said.
For Simmons, these experiences brought out the ability to empathize with singular intensity, the skill that would later bring him success and fame. While in high school, Simmons began accompanying the mother of a friend, named Barbara, to Weight Watchers meetings. At those weekly gatherings, women stepped on a scale; if they had gained any weight, the leader would pin a pig on their clothing.
Deep into middle age, Simmons still recalled watching Barbara receive a pig. “I’ll never forget the look of shame on her face,” he wrote. “Here was this happy lady, and one trip to the scale and 20 minutes later, her mascara is running down her cheeks, and she has a pig on her shoulder.… I felt a need to give her a pep talk, and try to make her feel better about herself again.”
For a time in college, Simmons lived and studied in Venice, hoping to become a serious painter in the tradition of Gustav Klimt. One day, a casting agent for the legendary director Federico Fellini approached him, needing an obese extra for the film “Satyricon.” Simmons parlayed that appearance into a string of Italian commercials, and achieved minor local celebrity. But those roles required him to stay overweight; he was 5-foot-7, and had ballooned to more than 250 pounds. Simmons eventually moved back to the U.S., hoping to get healthier. His interest in becoming a painter faded, as the desire to escape fat and self-loathing persisted.
Having cycled through every imaginable way to control his eating, Simmons became passionate about exercise in the early 1970s, while working as a waiter in Los Angeles. His outgoing personality in that job attracted attention, and helped him to meet investors interested in his idea of starting a combined salad bar and gym, called the Ruffage and Anatomy Asylum. He opened his business in 1974, soon dropped the food-service aspect, and renamed the space Slimmons Studio. It launched what quickly became an exercise empire and still stands today on what is now City Center Drive in Beverly Hills. The location, and Simmons’ sociability, helped him forge connections in Hollywood, which led to TV appearances, videos, a talk show, radio, infomercials and game shows.
Once his fame exploded, Simmons’ contribution to the culture transcended “Sweatin’ to the Oldies.” Decades before “Will and Grace” helped make middle America more comfortable with gay culture, Simmons — while never technically out to the public — pushed traditional boundaries of manliness and gender, all while helping others. Rhonda Garelick, a professor of fine- and performing arts at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has studied and written about Simmons’ impact. “By inserting himself so dramatically into popular culture, and befriending and working to help overweight women — another group often ostracized or shamed — Simmons did make progress I think for the general acceptance of gay people,” Garelick told me in an email.
Simmons taught classes at his gym until about two years ago, but hasn’t been seen there since. Dropping by Slimmons is an experience akin to calling Lenny Simmons’ house. When I knocked on the door on a recent morning, a woman in exercise clothes opened it a crack. “Sorry, we don’t allow reporters in here,” she said, before shutting it in my face.
Betty Wilson is an advocate in Los Angeles for people with disabilities, and now the commissioner of the California Commission on Disability Access, located in downtown L.A. She has also been a friend of Simmons for more than 20 years — until, that is, late 2013. “I’m concerned because it is not like him to not respond to me,” Wilson tells me over lunch in Santa Monica. “I mean, personally respond. I have sent many emails. No response.”
A few years ago, Simmons expressed interest in developing exercise programs for the disabled. Wilson saw this as a natural extension of his empathy and desire to help marginalized people. “It shows his humanity,” Wilson says. “He wanted to be inclusive, before that word was even being used.”
The two were in regular contact about this project, until just over two years ago, when Simmons’ responses abruptly stopped. Now, she joins the chorus of worried and suspicious friends.
Wilson and Simmons have a mutual friend, June Park, who operates the store Wigs Today in a strip mall at Third and Fairfax in Los Angeles. For years, Simmons made frequent visits to the shop, to chat with Park and browse the merchandise (at home, friends say, Simmons sometimes wears wigs including a blonde bob and a brown, shoulder-length model). The two began to socialize, with group dinners and nights on the town. But like many others, Park has been unable to reach Simmons for about two years.
“He’s a wonderful, wonderful guy,” says Park, 62. “He’s such a sweet guy. He tries to help everybody. He brings people in here and buys them wigs. Sometimes he would look at people, and read their aura, and start crying. That’s real. That’s true.”
Park last tried to visit Simmons on July 12, 2014, his 66th birthday. She brought flowers. Teresa Reveles answered the door.
“I want to see Richard,” Park recalls saying. “She said, ‘He doesn’t want to see anybody right now.’ I don’t believe it. He’s not OK.… After that, I can’t go anymore. I tried to call Richard a couple times. No one will call me back. It is a really sad story. I’m so sad right now. Everybody loves him.”
Standing in her store, surrounded by wigs, Park’s penetrating gaze fixes on mine and she implores me to spread the word about her concerns, “as soon as possible, please.”
Oliveira’s version of Simmons’ descent into what he calls “self-imprisonment” is the most viable theory to which friends in the dark can cling. Simmons and Oliveira first met in a Hollywood art gallery in March 2013, when Oliveira was showing his paintings. They quickly connected, and the versatile Oliveira started working for Simmons, first as a masseuse, and then as a personal assistant. He insists that he and Simmons were just friends, and never romantically involved.
That May, Oliveira says, Simmons offered to buy him a birthday present, saying it could be big. Oliveira responded by telling him how, from the age of 6 to 18, he had lived in an orphanage called Hope Unlimited in Campinas, Brazil, and had recently learned that the place needed a new well for its water. It would cost $30,000. Could Simmons do that?
Simmons said that he would be glad to help. In August he, Oliveira and Catalano traveled to Brazil for the opening of the well. Oliveira remembers the day as beautiful and moving, with children singing to Simmons. But the trip itself brought about new tensions between the two.
“When he woke up at the hotel, he was already tormented,” Oliveira says. “I went into his room and said, ‘Richard, are you ready?’ And he already started being bipolar: ‘Don’t rush me!’ I had just asked in a nice way. Then, as we were driving from Sao Paulo to Campinas, he started humiliating me in front of the driver, in front of everybody, in front of Michael. Just being a tormented person. It’s extremely hard to explain to you how someone is when they are tormented by a bad force. That’s the thing. Fucking Teresa is putting black magic on him. Like I put in the book.”
Ah, the book. The tome to which Oliveira refers is “King Rich and the Evil Witch,” a self-published e-book in which Oliveira presents his version of the people and events in Simmons’ inner circle. In the book, labeled a “living fairy tale,” Simmons is “The Good Goofy King Rich,” Teresa Reveles is “Evil Witch Boreza,” Lenny Simmons is “Prince Benny” and Michael Catalano is “Morono.” Oliveira calls the character based on himself “The Artist.” He hopes to adapt the tale into a Broadway play.
“On a Christmas early hours, the author had a dream in New York City that he was in a fairy tale with the guru and the witch,” Oliveira writes in his introduction. “After his dream…the author strongly felt the responsibility to share his true story with the world, and help his friend, ‘the King.’ ”
In the story, the young Prince Rich develops a “brilliant life plan to help the large obese population in the kingdom and beyond,” and becomes successful in the “Kingdom of LA LA LAND.” Realizing that he needs help maintaining his castle, he places an ad in the “LA LA LAND TIMES,” soliciting a servant. Witch Boreza answers it and immediately “has her eye on the big prize: To inherit the castle and all of the Prince’s fortune and possessions.”
After many years, the now-King Rich meets the Artist, arousing jealousy in Witch Boreza and others in his court. The friends travel to help an orphanage, and later to Europe, both based on real life experiences. Tensions ensue, resulting in a dramatic — and admittedly fictional — climax, where King Rich realizes that he has been put under the witch’s spell, and breaks free of it.
“Boreza, YOU FUCKING WITCH,” King Rich shouts. “You are now expelled from the LA LA LAND KINGDOM. You have the choice to fly away on your broom now, from the castle’s balcony, or I am going to order the guards to give you to the thousands of commoners waiting outside.”
Reality has brought no such catharsis. Teresa Reveles continues to work for Simmons, and remains an object of suspicion to those cast from his circle. June Park has read “King Rich and the Evil Witch,” and says, “(Oliveira) did a wonderful job. Everything he said was true.”
Oliveira admits that some in Simmons’ camp were concerned that it was he who was after the boss’s money. In October of 2013, he began living in an apartment that Simmons purchased, which made the others uncomfortable. Oliveira said that he sent a monthly rent check of $2,000, which Simmons never cashed. In 2015, long after he last saw his friend, he contacted Simmons’ accountant and asked for an unspecified amount. Oliveira claims that Simmons had told him to ask for money whenever he needed it, and when he did so, he only asked once, and received nothing.
“The good side of Richard felt compelled by my story that I was raised in an orphanage, and was living in a bad neighborhood at the time,” Oliveira says. “So he offered (the apartment), and I accepted. He didn’t put it in my name. It was just an investment for him.”
In November 2013, as Simmons’ depression seemed to worsen, he suggested a trip to Europe with Oliveira, Catalano, Simmons’ accountant, and Lenny and Kathy Simmons. Oliveira, not wanting a repeat of the Brazil experience, declined, but Simmons kept pushing. Finally, Oliveira agreed to go.
The group made it through its first two stops, France and England, without incident, but a darker energy materialized in Venice. On the final day of their trip, Simmons emerged in the hotel lobby dressed in a purple wig, fur coat and earrings, wearing heavy purple lipstick and rouge. It was not unusual for him to don women’s apparel, but this outfit appeared extreme, and Oliveira sensed trouble brewing.
That day, the group rented a gondola large enough to fit six people. According to Oliveira, when Kathy Simmons tried to step onto the boat, it tipped, and water rushed in. The gondolier started screaming at her.
“Then I said, ‘Listen, you don’t talk to tourists like this. We are paying you,’ ” Oliveira says. “Richard turned to me, and started screaming at me, (saying) that I was a nobody, that I wasn’t an accomplished artist. I don’t know if he was looking for an opportunity or a reason. (Then) he started singing opera. He was completely…” Oliveira trails off, searching for the right words, before picking up the story. “When a bad spirit gets in your body — he was possessed by a bad spirit. My blood pressure was through the roof, and I suspect that I had a minor heart attack. That’s the reason why I (later) had to put a valve on my heart.”
CNN
CRY FOR HELP? A troubled Simmons last appeared on TV with CNN’s Brooke Baldwin on Dec. 31, 2013. The fitness host broke down in tears during the course of the interview.
After the boat ride — “the longest half hour I’ve ever had in my life,” Oliveira says — Oliveira returned to his hotel room, and decided that he could no longer work for Simmons. Between that day and their dramatic final meeting the following April, they socialized occasionally, and Oliveira still provided massages.
As Simmons began cutting off most friends, his beloved dog Hattie declined precipitously, defecating all over the house, and finally needing to be put down. Oliveira visited the mansion in March 2014, and found a depressing scene. “He was sleeping at 2 p.m. on a Sunday,” Oliveira says. “I said, ‘Richard, you need to get up. You need to do something.’ He said, ‘No I’m tired, let me sleep.’ And nobody cares. I walked downstairs and said, ‘Teresa, Richard needs treatment.’ She said, ‘I don’t care.’ ”
Oliveira and Simmons parted ways in April, and after that, Oliveira says he communicated only with Simmons’ accountant about the apartment, which he vacated that October, and the request for money that he did not receive.
Upon his return from the European vacation, Simmons made only a few more public appearances. At the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in November 2013, he rode in a turtle float, and interacted enthusiastically with the crowd. On January 30, 2014, he attended a Los Angeles fundraiser for Covered California, the state’s health insurance exchange. His most recent media interview, as far as Catalano can recall, was on New Year’s Eve 2013, when he appeared for five minutes on CNN with anchor Brooke Baldwin, and left in tears. The mood began to turn after Simmons encouraged viewers to be non-judgmental when they looked in the mirror.
“What do you say to yourself in the mirror in the morning?” Baldwin asked.
“I say, ‘Try to help more people,’ ” Simmons responded, his voice cracking.
Back in the ’70s, when Slimmons was still called the Ruffage and Anatomy Asylum, a woman named Ellen would often come in and order a small juice. She was less than 5 feet tall, and skinny. Simmons could detect in her quiet demeanor a fellow survivor of childhood teasing and trauma. “Although she always wore the mask of a pleasant smile on her face,” he wrote in his memoir, “I’m sure Ellen endured years of being teased about her appearance. Just as people who are very overweight are often made fun of, people who are very thin are fair game, too.”
Ellen made and sold teddy bears, and on Simmons’ birthday she brought him an original creation, with rusty brown fur and a smile. Over the next few months, she remained quiet and reserved, but would occasionally leave beautiful bears for Simmons, with notes that said, “I hope this makes your day.”
One morning, Simmons arrived to find a minuscule box by the door. “Inside, wrapped in tissue, was the tiniest, most detailed teddy bear I’d ever seen,” he later wrote. “It was no more than the size of a postage stamp — it must have been made under a large magnifying glass. Unlike Ellen’s other works, this was not a happy-looking bear. It seemed very lonely sitting in that box, all by itself.”
Simmons kept Ellen’s bears in his living room, and now noticed that they had been getting smaller, as the months ticked by. Days passed, and he didn’t see her, so Simmons became worried, and asked about her at a Beverly Hills boutique that sold her work.
“She died a few days ago,” the owner said. Ellen had been anorexic, and Simmons has tormented himself for decades with the thought that he could have done more for her. He has spent a lifetime immersed in the deep end of other people’s despair, working to lift them out. Now, friends fear that he is the one wasting away.
In January 2015, TMZ reported that the LAPD, acting on an anonymous tip, sent two officers to check on Simmons, and found him responsive and alert. Michael Catalano points to this as evidence that Simmons is fine, and says that he last saw his client during the 2015 holiday season, while Lenny and Kathy Simmons visited. “He was in great health,” Catalano says.
But those words do little to comfort the folks who care about Simmons, who fear that the next news they hear will be the worst, and be left to wonder if they should have been more aggressive in their attempts to save him. In the absence of any news from the Hollywood Hills mansion, one is left to fill in the blanks. Thoughts inevitably turn to the troubled Beach Boy Brian Wilson and his possessive guru, Dr. Eugene Landy, or the final, isolated years of Michael Jackson and his prescription-happy doctor, Conrad Murray. The mind slips to dark places, when deprived of information.
“He has to know his friends and the community are so concerned,” says one of the longtime friends who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Show business is one thing, but friends are another. If he had any say in the matter, he would reach out to any of us. I’m very suspicious, as it just doesn’t make sense. It’s very bizarre. It’s beyond mysterious. If something is going on, we want to be there for him. We want to support him.”
THE HAUNTED TWILIGHT OF RICHARD SIMMONS
Two years ago, the flamboyant fitness guru abruptly disappeared from public life. Now, his closest friends, banished from his inner circle, have grown increasingly concerned. They worry that the pop-culture icon is being held against his will inside his Hollywood Hills mansion — with one suggesting more sinister notions are at play.
BY ANDY MARTINO
SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 2016
Richard Simmons opened his front door, frail and trembling. Mauro Oliveira, a visual artist who was also Simmons’ masseur and former assistant, greeted him on the front porch, concerned about his friend. After receiving an ominous phone call from Simmons, Oliveira had driven his truck to the Hollywood Hills, past the two metal gates that Simmons had left ajar for him, and into the driveway. He reached the porch through the white columns that recalled an antebellum Southern mansion, and past Simmons’ bronze statue of a regal Dalmatian.
Wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, a gaunt Simmons led Oliveira through the foyer, and into the living room. “Mauro, we can no longer see each other,” Simmons told him in a quiet, defeated voice.
Evan Hurd/Sygma/Corbis
HIT THE DECK Simmons, whose childhood experiences with bullying helped him empathize with overweight women, reaches out on the “Cruise to Lose” ocean liner in 1996.
It was April 2014. Oliveira, a 49-year-old from Brazil with the burly arms and trim physique of a gym rat and close-cropped black hair, had met Simmons 13 months earlier, and the two became fast friends. But he was catching a weird vibe lately, and hadn’t seen him in a while, before the then 65-year-old Simmons summoned him to the mansion, saying only that they needed to talk.
“What’s going on, Richard?” Oliveira asked. “Why are you saying that?”
“I don’t know,” Simmons replied. “I just want to be by myself, and I want to be in the house, and we’re never going to see each other again.”
Simmons’ home is a mixture of classical architecture and design that recalls his New Orleans youth. He collects offbeat pieces, including a menagerie of dolls highlighted by a rare Barbra Streisand model and the colorful work of Mexican painter and sculptor Sergio Bustamante. As they spoke, he and Oliveira stood near an ornate grand piano.
“Let’s talk it over,” Oliveira said. “I want to sit here, and make sure you’ll be OK. Let’s go upstairs, I’ll give you a massage and relax you.”
Simmons called up to Teresa Reveles, his live-in housekeeper of nearly three decades. “Mauro is going upstairs with me,” he said.
“No, no, no!” Reveles shouted from the second floor, according to Oliveira. “Get out! Get out!”
Oliveira looked at his friend, who told him in a soft voice, “You’ve gotta go.”
Oliveira leaned in toward Simmons. “Is she controlling your life now?”
As Oliveira tells it, Simmons looked down, and with one resigned word confirmed his worst suspicions: “Yes.” This was the last time he saw his friend.
With Reveles shrieking behind him, Oliveira hustled out to his truck, picked up his cell phone, and asked an intermediary to contact Simmons’ older brother, Lenny. He and Lenny did not have a close relationship, but Oliveira knew of nowhere else to turn.
Oliveira is calm as he recounts this story, but irritation enters his voice as he recalls a threat leveled that day, nearly two years ago. “Later that evening, Richard called me and said that his manager and Teresa wanted to put a restraining order against me — you can see how controlling they are — and I said, ‘What restraining order? You are the one who called me. I’m not invading your privacy, or your house.’ That was the end of that. No restraining order was put against me.”
Oliveira has spoken briefly about his privileged access to Simmons during this dark period, but never in this much detail. He recently underwent a heart procedure, which he blames on Simmons-related stress, and is reluctant to invite further strain. But he agreed to elaborate on a Hollywood mystery that has previously been told only in a few cryptic tabloid items.
Richard Simmons has vanished from public view, and many who know him best say they haven’t had any contact in more than two years. All repeat the same message, some anonymously and some on the record: Simmons stopped returning calls and emails more than two years ago, behavior that is highly out of character, and his housekeeper is blocking access to him at home.
Indeed, for a generous and intensely social public figure, one who taught classes at his Beverly Hills gym until a few years ago; has sold more than 20 million exercise videos, including the mega-popular “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” series; appeared many times on David Letterman’s shows, “General Hospital,” his own talk show and infomercials; and was a seemingly ubiquitous presence for decades, the silence is striking.
Getty
INTO HIS SHELL In one of his last public appearances, Simmons surveys the scene from his perch on a turtle float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2013.
“We were very close,” says a friend in Hollywood who spoke on the condition that his name be withheld, and who has not heard back from Simmons since 2013 — one of five people who described to me the same situation. “It’s not something that I want to seek publicity about, but we are very concerned. Teresa did turn me away several times. He has missed funerals of close friends. He was the most reliable and caring person on the planet, and then to suddenly vanish? I have come to believe that something else is happening. I don’t think Richard is in there of his own volition.”
It’s a sentiment that Oliveira takes even further. “I feel that Richard is now being controlled by the very people that he controlled his whole life,” he says. “Controlled in the sense that they are taking advantage of his weak mental state. Controlled in the sense that they are controlling his mail, controlling his everything. His brother, the manager and Teresa. Those three people.”
He also believes that Simmons is deeply depressed, because of a chronic knee injury that has kept him from teaching classes; the death of his beloved 17-year-old dalmatian, Hattie; and exhaustion from a lifetime as one of the highest-octane characters in American pop culture. How does he think Simmons has spent his days since cutting off contact with the world? “Medicated and in bed,” Oliveira says.
Michael Catalano, Simmons’ longtime manager, insists that all the worry is misplaced. “Richard is enjoying life at home after a 40-year career of traveling the world and inspiring people to take better care of themselves,” Catalano told me (he declined my request for an interview with Simmons). “He is working on several projects and continues to encourage those that need his help.”
Teresa Reveles did not respond to phone and email messages, and the gates were locked during my several visits to Simmons’ home. But Catalano pushes back strongly against the idea that the housekeeper, or anyone else, is controlling the fitness guru. “I can tell you absolutely 100% that is not the case,” he told me. “If Richard wants to get in his car and drive to Starbucks, no one is telling him he can’t. In response to ‘the housekeeper is keeping him captive,’ I can tell you that it is 100% not true. It’s ridiculous. Richard has always been someone who makes up his own mind what he wants to do.”
Until they see him, however, many friends will remain highly skeptical. “If Richard never comes out of the shadows and says he is OK, then no one will ever know the truth,” says one. “His fans will just wake up one day and see the horrible story that he passed away.”
Oliveira presents the most solid evidence of Simmons’ mental and emotional state, because his access to the mansion was more recent than others’. But even he has been left with a dearth of concrete, up-to-date information, leaving friends to concoct theories, some more outlandish than others.
“I think tormented is the best word to describe his mental state,” Oliveira says. “I think it was (caused by) black magic, witchcraft. That’s not close to your culture, but to my culture in Brazil, and to Mexicans” — Teresa Reveles is from Mexico — “that is a real thing. They invoke the spirits. They light black candles, and red and blue candles. I’ve never participated. I only saw from a distance. But at services, they do special meals. They offer meals to the bad spirits, and light candles, invoking with words.”
It is a bizarre allegation, but one not totally out of place in the story of this extraordinary American life.
Simmons’ tale, defined by depression, resilience and reinvention, began on July 12, 1948, in that city of muggy mysticism, New Orleans. Milton Teagle Simmons — he later changed the name to honor a beloved uncle — was the second of two boys born to Leonard and Shirley Simmons. Theirs was a complicated family, crammed into a shotgun house in the French Quarter.
Both parents were entertainers from the vaudeville era, having worked as singers, dancers, actors, and masters of ceremony. Shirley found more success than Leonard, so when Richard and his older brother, Lenny, were young, their parents made a decision unusual for the time: Shirley would continue to tour, and Leonard would be a stay-at-home parent.
As Shirley packed for her trips, young Richard would cry and plead with his mother, “Why do you have to go? Why do you have to go?”
Leonard, annoyed, would respond by freezing Richard out of the family for periods of time; Richard would fire back by mocking his dad for not having a job. “His method of punishment was perfect,” Simmons wrote in his engaging 1999 memoir, “Still Hungry — After All These Years.” “It was the Punishment of Silence. Very effective for a child who craves attention. You didn’t exist. He didn’t do your laundry, he didn’t set a place at the table for you — Milton doesn’t live here anymore.”
Leonard and Shirley kept separate bedrooms and argued often, especially when she returned from the road. Once when Richard was 4 or 5 years old, he peered into the kitchen, to see his mother doubled over the sink, clutching her stomach. She had an ulcer, which Leonard blamed on his high-maintenance youngest son.
“Are you happy now?” he said to Richard, as recounted in the memoir. “See what you have done? You made your mother sick. You gave her a peptic ulcer. It’s all your fault.”
More than 30 years later, when Simmons was showing off his first house in the Hollywood Hills, his father still withheld attention and approval. “There’s too many windows and too much glass,” Leonard told his son, who by now was a successful workout guru with a recurring role on “General Hospital.” “It’s going to be very drafty. And where is the nearest grocery store, fish market, bakery? You’re going to have to drive all the way down the side of this mountain. This just doesn’t make sense!”
“Nothing I did,” Simmons wrote, “seemed to be right.”
People close to Simmons say that wounds from the fraught father-son dynamic have always been raw, even though both parents are long dead. “Now he has a complicated relationship with his brother,” one friend says. “He loves him, but (he) always says that his father favored Lenny.”
When I tried to reach Lenny Simmons, a woman, presumably Lenny’s wife Kathy, picked up the phone, and had no interest in chatting.
“Hi,” I began. “I’m a writer working on a piece about Richard Simmons—”
“We have no comment,” the woman said.
“I haven’t asked a question yet.”
“I said we have no comment.” Click.
Courtesy of Mauro Oliveira
GOLDEN YEARS Mauro Oliveira, right, once a part of Simmons’ inner circle, is one of many friends and associates who say they’ve been cut off from all contact with the workout guru.
Friends say that family history has always weighed on Simmons. “He sometimes will slip into the persona of a 5-year-old child,” says one pal who claims to have seen this within the past few years. “He’ll play with dolls, and call you daddy. It’s ‘daddy this’ and ‘daddy that.’ ”
Simmons’ relationship with his father was far from his only source of childhood trauma. From an early age, he struggled with his weight, and addiction to food. Leonard cooked elaborate meals, and taught his son how to do the same; the kitchen was one of the only places where their tension cooled. But by the time he was in grammar school, Simmons was heavier than his peers.
His parents took him to doctors — “you’re a big fella,” one joked, a comment that Simmons never forgot — put him on diets, did whatever they could. Before even reaching high school, Simmons experimented with diet pills; as a young adult, he would starve himself, take laxatives, binge and purge, and otherwise try to escape the torture of hating his body.
The other kids hardly made it easier, alternating between taunts about his weight and his effeminate manner, which brought on the label of “sissy,” as Simmons recalls in his memoir. Once, in the sixth grade, Simmons had just walked out of the schoolyard when a boy named Moose called to him, “Hey, porker.” Before Simmons could turn around, he felt the crack of a baseball bat on the back of his head. “Maybe I can put a hole in your head and some of that fat will come out,” Moose said.
For Simmons, these experiences brought out the ability to empathize with singular intensity, the skill that would later bring him success and fame. While in high school, Simmons began accompanying the mother of a friend, named Barbara, to Weight Watchers meetings. At those weekly gatherings, women stepped on a scale; if they had gained any weight, the leader would pin a pig on their clothing.
Deep into middle age, Simmons still recalled watching Barbara receive a pig. “I’ll never forget the look of shame on her face,” he wrote. “Here was this happy lady, and one trip to the scale and 20 minutes later, her mascara is running down her cheeks, and she has a pig on her shoulder.… I felt a need to give her a pep talk, and try to make her feel better about herself again.”
For a time in college, Simmons lived and studied in Venice, hoping to become a serious painter in the tradition of Gustav Klimt. One day, a casting agent for the legendary director Federico Fellini approached him, needing an obese extra for the film “Satyricon.” Simmons parlayed that appearance into a string of Italian commercials, and achieved minor local celebrity. But those roles required him to stay overweight; he was 5-foot-7, and had ballooned to more than 250 pounds. Simmons eventually moved back to the U.S., hoping to get healthier. His interest in becoming a painter faded, as the desire to escape fat and self-loathing persisted.
Having cycled through every imaginable way to control his eating, Simmons became passionate about exercise in the early 1970s, while working as a waiter in Los Angeles. His outgoing personality in that job attracted attention, and helped him to meet investors interested in his idea of starting a combined salad bar and gym, called the Ruffage and Anatomy Asylum. He opened his business in 1974, soon dropped the food-service aspect, and renamed the space Slimmons Studio. It launched what quickly became an exercise empire and still stands today on what is now City Center Drive in Beverly Hills. The location, and Simmons’ sociability, helped him forge connections in Hollywood, which led to TV appearances, videos, a talk show, radio, infomercials and game shows.
Once his fame exploded, Simmons’ contribution to the culture transcended “Sweatin’ to the Oldies.” Decades before “Will and Grace” helped make middle America more comfortable with gay culture, Simmons — while never technically out to the public — pushed traditional boundaries of manliness and gender, all while helping others. Rhonda Garelick, a professor of fine- and performing arts at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has studied and written about Simmons’ impact. “By inserting himself so dramatically into popular culture, and befriending and working to help overweight women — another group often ostracized or shamed — Simmons did make progress I think for the general acceptance of gay people,” Garelick told me in an email.
Simmons taught classes at his gym until about two years ago, but hasn’t been seen there since. Dropping by Slimmons is an experience akin to calling Lenny Simmons’ house. When I knocked on the door on a recent morning, a woman in exercise clothes opened it a crack. “Sorry, we don’t allow reporters in here,” she said, before shutting it in my face.
Betty Wilson is an advocate in Los Angeles for people with disabilities, and now the commissioner of the California Commission on Disability Access, located in downtown L.A. She has also been a friend of Simmons for more than 20 years — until, that is, late 2013. “I’m concerned because it is not like him to not respond to me,” Wilson tells me over lunch in Santa Monica. “I mean, personally respond. I have sent many emails. No response.”
A few years ago, Simmons expressed interest in developing exercise programs for the disabled. Wilson saw this as a natural extension of his empathy and desire to help marginalized people. “It shows his humanity,” Wilson says. “He wanted to be inclusive, before that word was even being used.”
The two were in regular contact about this project, until just over two years ago, when Simmons’ responses abruptly stopped. Now, she joins the chorus of worried and suspicious friends.
Wilson and Simmons have a mutual friend, June Park, who operates the store Wigs Today in a strip mall at Third and Fairfax in Los Angeles. For years, Simmons made frequent visits to the shop, to chat with Park and browse the merchandise (at home, friends say, Simmons sometimes wears wigs including a blonde bob and a brown, shoulder-length model). The two began to socialize, with group dinners and nights on the town. But like many others, Park has been unable to reach Simmons for about two years.
“He’s a wonderful, wonderful guy,” says Park, 62. “He’s such a sweet guy. He tries to help everybody. He brings people in here and buys them wigs. Sometimes he would look at people, and read their aura, and start crying. That’s real. That’s true.”
Park last tried to visit Simmons on July 12, 2014, his 66th birthday. She brought flowers. Teresa Reveles answered the door.
“I want to see Richard,” Park recalls saying. “She said, ‘He doesn’t want to see anybody right now.’ I don’t believe it. He’s not OK.… After that, I can’t go anymore. I tried to call Richard a couple times. No one will call me back. It is a really sad story. I’m so sad right now. Everybody loves him.”
Standing in her store, surrounded by wigs, Park’s penetrating gaze fixes on mine and she implores me to spread the word about her concerns, “as soon as possible, please.”
Oliveira’s version of Simmons’ descent into what he calls “self-imprisonment” is the most viable theory to which friends in the dark can cling. Simmons and Oliveira first met in a Hollywood art gallery in March 2013, when Oliveira was showing his paintings. They quickly connected, and the versatile Oliveira started working for Simmons, first as a masseuse, and then as a personal assistant. He insists that he and Simmons were just friends, and never romantically involved.
That May, Oliveira says, Simmons offered to buy him a birthday present, saying it could be big. Oliveira responded by telling him how, from the age of 6 to 18, he had lived in an orphanage called Hope Unlimited in Campinas, Brazil, and had recently learned that the place needed a new well for its water. It would cost $30,000. Could Simmons do that?
Simmons said that he would be glad to help. In August he, Oliveira and Catalano traveled to Brazil for the opening of the well. Oliveira remembers the day as beautiful and moving, with children singing to Simmons. But the trip itself brought about new tensions between the two.
“When he woke up at the hotel, he was already tormented,” Oliveira says. “I went into his room and said, ‘Richard, are you ready?’ And he already started being bipolar: ‘Don’t rush me!’ I had just asked in a nice way. Then, as we were driving from Sao Paulo to Campinas, he started humiliating me in front of the driver, in front of everybody, in front of Michael. Just being a tormented person. It’s extremely hard to explain to you how someone is when they are tormented by a bad force. That’s the thing. Fucking Teresa is putting black magic on him. Like I put in the book.”
Ah, the book. The tome to which Oliveira refers is “King Rich and the Evil Witch,” a self-published e-book in which Oliveira presents his version of the people and events in Simmons’ inner circle. In the book, labeled a “living fairy tale,” Simmons is “The Good Goofy King Rich,” Teresa Reveles is “Evil Witch Boreza,” Lenny Simmons is “Prince Benny” and Michael Catalano is “Morono.” Oliveira calls the character based on himself “The Artist.” He hopes to adapt the tale into a Broadway play.
“On a Christmas early hours, the author had a dream in New York City that he was in a fairy tale with the guru and the witch,” Oliveira writes in his introduction. “After his dream…the author strongly felt the responsibility to share his true story with the world, and help his friend, ‘the King.’ ”
In the story, the young Prince Rich develops a “brilliant life plan to help the large obese population in the kingdom and beyond,” and becomes successful in the “Kingdom of LA LA LAND.” Realizing that he needs help maintaining his castle, he places an ad in the “LA LA LAND TIMES,” soliciting a servant. Witch Boreza answers it and immediately “has her eye on the big prize: To inherit the castle and all of the Prince’s fortune and possessions.”
After many years, the now-King Rich meets the Artist, arousing jealousy in Witch Boreza and others in his court. The friends travel to help an orphanage, and later to Europe, both based on real life experiences. Tensions ensue, resulting in a dramatic — and admittedly fictional — climax, where King Rich realizes that he has been put under the witch’s spell, and breaks free of it.
“Boreza, YOU FUCKING WITCH,” King Rich shouts. “You are now expelled from the LA LA LAND KINGDOM. You have the choice to fly away on your broom now, from the castle’s balcony, or I am going to order the guards to give you to the thousands of commoners waiting outside.”
Reality has brought no such catharsis. Teresa Reveles continues to work for Simmons, and remains an object of suspicion to those cast from his circle. June Park has read “King Rich and the Evil Witch,” and says, “(Oliveira) did a wonderful job. Everything he said was true.”
Oliveira admits that some in Simmons’ camp were concerned that it was he who was after the boss’s money. In October of 2013, he began living in an apartment that Simmons purchased, which made the others uncomfortable. Oliveira said that he sent a monthly rent check of $2,000, which Simmons never cashed. In 2015, long after he last saw his friend, he contacted Simmons’ accountant and asked for an unspecified amount. Oliveira claims that Simmons had told him to ask for money whenever he needed it, and when he did so, he only asked once, and received nothing.
“The good side of Richard felt compelled by my story that I was raised in an orphanage, and was living in a bad neighborhood at the time,” Oliveira says. “So he offered (the apartment), and I accepted. He didn’t put it in my name. It was just an investment for him.”
In November 2013, as Simmons’ depression seemed to worsen, he suggested a trip to Europe with Oliveira, Catalano, Simmons’ accountant, and Lenny and Kathy Simmons. Oliveira, not wanting a repeat of the Brazil experience, declined, but Simmons kept pushing. Finally, Oliveira agreed to go.
The group made it through its first two stops, France and England, without incident, but a darker energy materialized in Venice. On the final day of their trip, Simmons emerged in the hotel lobby dressed in a purple wig, fur coat and earrings, wearing heavy purple lipstick and rouge. It was not unusual for him to don women’s apparel, but this outfit appeared extreme, and Oliveira sensed trouble brewing.
That day, the group rented a gondola large enough to fit six people. According to Oliveira, when Kathy Simmons tried to step onto the boat, it tipped, and water rushed in. The gondolier started screaming at her.
“Then I said, ‘Listen, you don’t talk to tourists like this. We are paying you,’ ” Oliveira says. “Richard turned to me, and started screaming at me, (saying) that I was a nobody, that I wasn’t an accomplished artist. I don’t know if he was looking for an opportunity or a reason. (Then) he started singing opera. He was completely…” Oliveira trails off, searching for the right words, before picking up the story. “When a bad spirit gets in your body — he was possessed by a bad spirit. My blood pressure was through the roof, and I suspect that I had a minor heart attack. That’s the reason why I (later) had to put a valve on my heart.”
CNN
CRY FOR HELP? A troubled Simmons last appeared on TV with CNN’s Brooke Baldwin on Dec. 31, 2013. The fitness host broke down in tears during the course of the interview.
After the boat ride — “the longest half hour I’ve ever had in my life,” Oliveira says — Oliveira returned to his hotel room, and decided that he could no longer work for Simmons. Between that day and their dramatic final meeting the following April, they socialized occasionally, and Oliveira still provided massages.
As Simmons began cutting off most friends, his beloved dog Hattie declined precipitously, defecating all over the house, and finally needing to be put down. Oliveira visited the mansion in March 2014, and found a depressing scene. “He was sleeping at 2 p.m. on a Sunday,” Oliveira says. “I said, ‘Richard, you need to get up. You need to do something.’ He said, ‘No I’m tired, let me sleep.’ And nobody cares. I walked downstairs and said, ‘Teresa, Richard needs treatment.’ She said, ‘I don’t care.’ ”
Oliveira and Simmons parted ways in April, and after that, Oliveira says he communicated only with Simmons’ accountant about the apartment, which he vacated that October, and the request for money that he did not receive.
Upon his return from the European vacation, Simmons made only a few more public appearances. At the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in November 2013, he rode in a turtle float, and interacted enthusiastically with the crowd. On January 30, 2014, he attended a Los Angeles fundraiser for Covered California, the state’s health insurance exchange. His most recent media interview, as far as Catalano can recall, was on New Year’s Eve 2013, when he appeared for five minutes on CNN with anchor Brooke Baldwin, and left in tears. The mood began to turn after Simmons encouraged viewers to be non-judgmental when they looked in the mirror.
“What do you say to yourself in the mirror in the morning?” Baldwin asked.
“I say, ‘Try to help more people,’ ” Simmons responded, his voice cracking.
Back in the ’70s, when Slimmons was still called the Ruffage and Anatomy Asylum, a woman named Ellen would often come in and order a small juice. She was less than 5 feet tall, and skinny. Simmons could detect in her quiet demeanor a fellow survivor of childhood teasing and trauma. “Although she always wore the mask of a pleasant smile on her face,” he wrote in his memoir, “I’m sure Ellen endured years of being teased about her appearance. Just as people who are very overweight are often made fun of, people who are very thin are fair game, too.”
Ellen made and sold teddy bears, and on Simmons’ birthday she brought him an original creation, with rusty brown fur and a smile. Over the next few months, she remained quiet and reserved, but would occasionally leave beautiful bears for Simmons, with notes that said, “I hope this makes your day.”
One morning, Simmons arrived to find a minuscule box by the door. “Inside, wrapped in tissue, was the tiniest, most detailed teddy bear I’d ever seen,” he later wrote. “It was no more than the size of a postage stamp — it must have been made under a large magnifying glass. Unlike Ellen’s other works, this was not a happy-looking bear. It seemed very lonely sitting in that box, all by itself.”
Simmons kept Ellen’s bears in his living room, and now noticed that they had been getting smaller, as the months ticked by. Days passed, and he didn’t see her, so Simmons became worried, and asked about her at a Beverly Hills boutique that sold her work.
“She died a few days ago,” the owner said. Ellen had been anorexic, and Simmons has tormented himself for decades with the thought that he could have done more for her. He has spent a lifetime immersed in the deep end of other people’s despair, working to lift them out. Now, friends fear that he is the one wasting away.
In January 2015, TMZ reported that the LAPD, acting on an anonymous tip, sent two officers to check on Simmons, and found him responsive and alert. Michael Catalano points to this as evidence that Simmons is fine, and says that he last saw his client during the 2015 holiday season, while Lenny and Kathy Simmons visited. “He was in great health,” Catalano says.
But those words do little to comfort the folks who care about Simmons, who fear that the next news they hear will be the worst, and be left to wonder if they should have been more aggressive in their attempts to save him. In the absence of any news from the Hollywood Hills mansion, one is left to fill in the blanks. Thoughts inevitably turn to the troubled Beach Boy Brian Wilson and his possessive guru, Dr. Eugene Landy, or the final, isolated years of Michael Jackson and his prescription-happy doctor, Conrad Murray. The mind slips to dark places, when deprived of information.
“He has to know his friends and the community are so concerned,” says one of the longtime friends who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Show business is one thing, but friends are another. If he had any say in the matter, he would reach out to any of us. I’m very suspicious, as it just doesn’t make sense. It’s very bizarre. It’s beyond mysterious. If something is going on, we want to be there for him. We want to support him.”
