Why actor Randy Quaid and wife Evi fled the Hollywood ‘star whackers’ to Canada

Source: vigilantcitizen.com

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

Randy Quaid and his wife are seeking refuge in Canada, claiming they are targets of a shadowy network Hollywood “star whackers” that murders for money

Randy Quaid and his wife are seeking refuge in Canada from what they say is a network of Hollywood “star whackers” that murders for money Photo: REUTERS

Mr Quaid, 60, is due tomorrow to appear back before an immigration board in Canada after he and Evi, 47, fled north of the border and made an eyebrow-raising claim for refugee status.

In an emotional interview from Vancouver, they last week named three prominent actors as victims of the same shadowy group and issued a warning to Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Mel Gibson that they were also in danger.

The deaths of Heath Ledger (from an accidental drug overdose), David Carradine (apparently killed by auto-asphyxiation in a Bangkok hotel room) and Sean Penn’s brother Chris (heart disease, according to a coroner) were cited to back their claims that Los Angeles lawyers and financial planners were “whacking” celebrities for their money.

“They follow us, they tail us, they tag our cell phone, they hack our computer,” Mr Quaid said. “We believe there to be a malignant tumour of star whackers in Hollywood. It’s possible for people to gain control of every facet of your life. We’re not faking it.

“I am being embezzled by a monstrous ring of accountants, estate planners and lawyers who are mercilessly slandering me and trying to kill my career and, I believe, murder me in order to gain control of my royalties.”

His wife added: “We are refugees. Hollywood refugees. I genuinely feel these people are trying to kill us. They are businessmen. It’s the mafia, it’s organised crime.” In a startling public meltdown, the Quaids face a slew of lawsuits, allegedly unpaid bills and failing careers back in the US where they swapped appearances on the red carpet for handcuffed arrests and court summonses.

A Californian judge last week issued a fresh arrest warrant for Mrs Quaid, 47, a former model, and ordered that she forfeit a $500,000 bond after she failed to appear in court on charges of breaking into and damaging a property where the couple once lived.

But however outlandish the conspiracy theory and dire their financial straits, friends say the couple is genuinely convinced that they are victims of a terrifyingly sinister intrigue.

Mr Quaid, the older brother of the better known Dennis – a leading man who most recently played President Bill Clinton, alongside Michael Sheen as Tony Blair, in The Special Relationship this year – said about $40 million in lifetime earnings had been stolen from him. As a result, the couple was often so short of cash that they on some days could not afford to eat.

The current convoluted chain of events started to unfold last September [2009] when the Quaids were arrested in Texas for allegedly failing to pay a $10,000 California hotel bill. Although the bill was later reimbursed, the incident resulted in a series of missed court appearances.

The case against Mr Quaid was eventually dismissed while his wife pleaded guilty to defrauding an innkeeper and was given probation and community service.

Then this August, the couple sued their former lawyer and estate planner for allegedly defrauding them. Part of the complicated lawsuit centred on ownership of a property they bought in Montecito, California, when they married in 1989.

And in September, they were charged with breaking into and damaging the guesthouse of the same property – which they insist was still theirs – saying sales documents were forged. They were bailed but missed another court hearing last month after fleeing instead to Canada.

Amid reports they were being pursued by bounty hunters, the couple were arrested in a Vancouver shopping mall on Oct 22. They both initially applied for refugee status, saying they feared for their lives at the hands of the “Hollywood star whackers”.

But in another twist, it emerged that Mrs Quaid now has the right to Canadian citizenship as her father was born there. In later life he lost his Canadian nationality, under a previous law which said he could not have dual American-Canadian citizenship.

Mr Quaid’s immigration lawyer Catherine Sas is currently still pursuing his refugee claim based on his fear of persecution in the US. But he may drop the refugee case if his newly Canadian wife sponsors him to remain there.

Although the Quaids’ claims sound remarkable, friends and psychiatrists say they are convinced that the plot exists. Others are not so sure.

“It is clear that they are in the throes of a paranoid and psychotic delusional state,” David McDowell, a New York psychiatrist who has handled several celebrity cases, told this newspaper.

“What is particularly unusual about this case is that they are so high profile so it is playing out so publicly. And they seem to share a disorder, known as folie à deux syndrome, and hence reinforce their irrational beliefs.”

Mr Quaid, a divorcee, met the then Evi Motalanez, a production assistant who once modelled nude for famed photographer Helmut Newton, in 1989 on the set of Bloodhounds of Broadway, a film that was quickly forgotten despite featuring Madonna and Matt Dillon in the cast. They married the same year in a ceremony attended by Dennis Quaid and his then wife Meg Ryan.

Randy Quaid’s first major role was playing a harshly-sentenced young US Navy sailor alongside Jack Nicholson in The Last Detail in 1973 in a performance for which he was nominated for an Oscar.

He later won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of a young President Lyndon Johnson in LBJ: The Early Years, appeared in the hugely-successful Independence Day and starred as Cousin Eddie, a clueless figure with money troubles, in the National Lampoon Vacation films – the role for which he is best-known in the US.

He was again nominated for a Golden Globe in 2005 for his role as Elvis Presley’s manager “Colonel” Tom Parker in a television miniseries about the singer. And the same year, he played a redneck rancher in the homosexual cowboy love story Brokeback Mountain starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.

He later sued the producers, claiming he was duped into a working for a low fee for “a low-budget, art house film with no prospect of making any money”.

The case was subsequently dropped amid disputed reports of a financial settlement.

The Quaids have had long-running issues over finances and lawsuits. Evi Quaid had directed her husband in The Debtors, a 1999 film that also starred Michael Caine. Ironically, given its title, the costs the couple incurred in the production were blamed in media reports for them filing for bankruptcy a year later. And in 2004, the Internal Revenue Service pursued a case for unpaid tax bills.

In 2008, the Actor’s Equity Association fined and banned Quaid for life for “physically and verbally abusing his fellow performers” in a production of Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, in which he played the lead role of Falstaff. The actor rejected all the charges, arguing he was driven out in a financial dispute.

As this strange saga plays out, some of Mr Quaid’s comments from previous interviews take on an added poignancy. He once observed: “When I was a kid and the carnival would come to the shopping centre, I’d go down and talk to all the people running the rides. I like that whole lifestyle, moving from town to town in a nomadic existence.”

And of his favourite roles, the 6′ 4″ actor said: “I love playing characters that are bigger than life and maybe have a darker side that they present to the world. Those are good characters.”

Source: vigilantcitizen.com

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