Rachel Lee was 19 years old and high on Xanax when she drove 4 hours from Las Vegas to Los Angeles to rob Lindsay Lohan’s house.
“My friends called me they usually said, ‘Let’s go steal.’ I got my things and I remember taking Xanax and I left. It really sounds psychotic, but I still felt that FOMO,” she recalls within the Max documentary “The Ringleader: The Case of the Bling Ring,” airing and streaming Sunday.
It’s the primary time Lee, now 33, has ever publicly spoken about being the ringleader of the notorious Bling Ring: a band of LA teens who went on a Hollywood crime spree between October 2008 and August 2009, robbing celebrities including Lohan, Paris Hilton, Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green, and Orlando Bloom of greater than $3 million in luxury goods — Louis Vuitton luggage, Rolexes — in addition to handguns.
Within the documentary, Lee recalls her last adrenaline-filled heist, during which the group made off with $130,000 value of clothing, jewelry, and private items from Lohan’s Hollywood Hills home.
Lee knew she was on the LAPD’s radar after TMZ had dropped surveillance footage of the teenagers burglarizing “The Hills” star Audrina Partridge’s home. But not even the danger of being caught could quell her addiction to the fun of getting away with it.
“I remember pulling up [to Lohan’s house] … the stakes were so high because there was already surveillance of us,” she says. “At this point, we were, like, just on the actual edge — I feel there was a component of me that was like ‘I’m going to complete strong.’”
But not everyone could take the pressure.
One in all her friends, then-18-year-old Alexis Neiers, ratted out Lee and Nick Prugo, 18, to police in an anonymous phone call. The dominos quickly begin to fall, as Prugo, Diana Tamayo, 19, and Courtney Ames, 18, were all arrested for connections to the burglaries.
Within the documentary, Lee recalls talking to Prugo, her best friend, after the Lohan robbery.
“I said to him, ‘This is actually bad, what’s happening to us. I don’t know what’s going to occur to us’ — I remember I put my hand on his shoulders — ‘but I really like you a lot. ‘I’ll never betray you,’” she says.
A day later, Lee says, she got a phone call from Prugo asking for her father’s address in Las Vegas, where she was staying.
“Me and Nick were still best friends. I remember once I answered the phone it wasn’t our usual vibe,” Lee remembers. Moments later, she heard pounding on her father’s front door.
“Nick betrayed me. The door swung open as if it was a bomb squad,” Lee says.
In accordance with the book “The Bling Ring” by Nancy Jo Sales, Lee believes she had gotten rid of any evidence that might tie her to the crimes. When police discovered Lohan’s coat and topless photos of Hilton, taken from the starlet’s secure, Lee is claimed to have melted down in hysterics — gagging as if she were going to vomit.
“They were like, ‘We got her – we got the evidence we wanted,’” Lee says within the film. “The detective said to me, ‘It is a game of musical chairs and we’ve already talked to all your folks and also you’re the just one with out a chair.’”
Prugo — who admitted to police that the group had Miley Cyrus, Zac Efron, and Hilary Duff, amongst other celebs, of their sights — copped a plea deal and received two years in prison. Tamayo and Ames got probation after admitting to robbing Lohan and Hilton. (Two others also served time for connections to the crimes.)
In a coincidence, Neiers pleaded no contest to residential burglary, was sentenced to 180 days in prison, and ended up on the identical cell block as Lohan, who had violated her probation for a necklace theft conviction.
Lee accepted a plea deal of 4 years in a California state prison for burgling Patridge’s home and served 16 months.
Over time, a number of the teens gave interviews as their story took on mythic status — there was a “Bling Ring” movie starring Emma Watson and directed by Sofia Coppola, in addition to a Lifetime version with a pre-“Elvis” Austin Butler, and a Netflix docu-series last yr that re-ignited interest within the story
But Lee kept quiet.
“Rachel was so scared and he or she was the individual that got a state prison sentence of 4 years. Her mom said not to talk, and he or she listened,” Erin Lee Carr, who directed “The Ringleader,” told The Post.
“She thought that by just talking about it, it could proceed to reveal her, and her life could be more difficult in consequence. She finally felt like she was in a secure enough place to do it.”
The opening scene of the documentary shows Lee working at a hair salon, with crystals lining her workstation, having earned her cosmetology license in 2018. Lee got sober in prison and stays clean, she told the Los Angeles Times. Today, she lives within the Los Angeles suburb of Sherman Oaks; nevertheless, details of her personal life are scarce within the film.
She recalls her struggle to seek out work as a convicted felon, having come home from prison to a mattress on the ground, a phone, and a meager box of belongings.
It was an extended fall from her privileged upbringing in Calabasas, the rich LA suburb that’s home to varied Kardashians and Jenners, in addition to Will Smith and Justin Bieber.
Her mother was an attorney, and her father was an accountant. Lee drove an Audi A4 in highschool and wearing designer clothes — but gripes within the film about living within the “smallest house” within the ritzy zip code.
She also says she felt “so ashamed” of being a Korean-American in her predominantly white neighborhood, which led her to mask the insecurity with material luxuries.
“I wanted my mom to all the time buy me something designer. I feel it made me feel wealthy. It made me feel ‘I’m a part of this material world,’” she says.
Lee says she began doing drugs at age 14, adding that Xanax became “a catalyst for quite a lot of things. It took away my emotion and since I didn’t care I could act the way in which that I all the time desired to.”
The very first thing she ever stole was a pair of Uggs. She was sent to another highschool for troubled teens, Indian Hills, where she met Prugo.
“It made no sense why a young person would put herself at that much risk unless there was extreme mental health issues or dependency on drugs,” Carr, who also directed “Britney Vs Spears,” told The Post.
“She desired to be bad. She felt like an outsider and he or she used drugs to numb herself — was it the entire reason? Is it the missing key? No, it’s not. It’s some added context for people after they think, ‘Why would any individual feel comfortable going into any individual’s house at night?’”
Lee compares her crimes to a drug, describing the push it gave her as “adrenaline after which, when the crime was over I felt so high and clear-headed. I actually liked that feeling so much.”
The high also numbed her to the implications.
“Once you rob you understand you could possibly go to prison, but she [Lee] maintained to me that it didn’t really consider. She was like, ‘I didn’t really care about life so if I get caught, whatever, I’m going to die.’ It was so mind-boggling for me,” Carr told The Post.
However the director believes prison has helped Lee to reconcile her attachment to materialism and find herself.
“She felt like a special version of her. She credits prison for helping her. She found herself in being incarcerated and fortunately she was secure in doing so,” Carr said.
“This was any individual who wanted the whole lot and nothing was ever adequate and all the time wanted more … and [now] she starts crying because she’s like, ‘I even have the whole lot I want.’”
Rachel Lee was 19 years old and high on Xanax when she drove 4 hours from Las Vegas to Los Angeles to rob Lindsay Lohan’s house.
“My friends called me they usually said, ‘Let’s go steal.’ I got my things and I remember taking Xanax and I left. It really sounds psychotic, but I still felt that FOMO,” she recalls within the Max documentary “The Ringleader: The Case of the Bling Ring,” airing and streaming Sunday.
It’s the primary time Lee, now 33, has ever publicly spoken about being the ringleader of the notorious Bling Ring: a band of LA teens who went on a Hollywood crime spree between October 2008 and August 2009, robbing celebrities including Lohan, Paris Hilton, Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green, and Orlando Bloom of greater than $3 million in luxury goods — Louis Vuitton luggage, Rolexes — in addition to handguns.
Within the documentary, Lee recalls her last adrenaline-filled heist, during which the group made off with $130,000 value of clothing, jewelry, and private items from Lohan’s Hollywood Hills home.
Lee knew she was on the LAPD’s radar after TMZ had dropped surveillance footage of the teenagers burglarizing “The Hills” star Audrina Partridge’s home. But not even the danger of being caught could quell her addiction to the fun of getting away with it.
“I remember pulling up [to Lohan’s house] … the stakes were so high because there was already surveillance of us,” she says. “At this point, we were, like, just on the actual edge — I feel there was a component of me that was like ‘I’m going to complete strong.’”
But not everyone could take the pressure.
One in all her friends, then-18-year-old Alexis Neiers, ratted out Lee and Nick Prugo, 18, to police in an anonymous phone call. The dominos quickly begin to fall, as Prugo, Diana Tamayo, 19, and Courtney Ames, 18, were all arrested for connections to the burglaries.
Within the documentary, Lee recalls talking to Prugo, her best friend, after the Lohan robbery.
“I said to him, ‘This is actually bad, what’s happening to us. I don’t know what’s going to occur to us’ — I remember I put my hand on his shoulders — ‘but I really like you a lot. ‘I’ll never betray you,’” she says.
A day later, Lee says, she got a phone call from Prugo asking for her father’s address in Las Vegas, where she was staying.
“Me and Nick were still best friends. I remember once I answered the phone it wasn’t our usual vibe,” Lee remembers. Moments later, she heard pounding on her father’s front door.
“Nick betrayed me. The door swung open as if it was a bomb squad,” Lee says.
In accordance with the book “The Bling Ring” by Nancy Jo Sales, Lee believes she had gotten rid of any evidence that might tie her to the crimes. When police discovered Lohan’s coat and topless photos of Hilton, taken from the starlet’s secure, Lee is claimed to have melted down in hysterics — gagging as if she were going to vomit.
“They were like, ‘We got her – we got the evidence we wanted,’” Lee says within the film. “The detective said to me, ‘It is a game of musical chairs and we’ve already talked to all your folks and also you’re the just one with out a chair.’”
Prugo — who admitted to police that the group had Miley Cyrus, Zac Efron, and Hilary Duff, amongst other celebs, of their sights — copped a plea deal and received two years in prison. Tamayo and Ames got probation after admitting to robbing Lohan and Hilton. (Two others also served time for connections to the crimes.)
In a coincidence, Neiers pleaded no contest to residential burglary, was sentenced to 180 days in prison, and ended up on the identical cell block as Lohan, who had violated her probation for a necklace theft conviction.
Lee accepted a plea deal of 4 years in a California state prison for burgling Patridge’s home and served 16 months.
Over time, a number of the teens gave interviews as their story took on mythic status — there was a “Bling Ring” movie starring Emma Watson and directed by Sofia Coppola, in addition to a Lifetime version with a pre-“Elvis” Austin Butler, and a Netflix docu-series last yr that re-ignited interest within the story
But Lee kept quiet.
“Rachel was so scared and he or she was the individual that got a state prison sentence of 4 years. Her mom said not to talk, and he or she listened,” Erin Lee Carr, who directed “The Ringleader,” told The Post.
“She thought that by just talking about it, it could proceed to reveal her, and her life could be more difficult in consequence. She finally felt like she was in a secure enough place to do it.”
The opening scene of the documentary shows Lee working at a hair salon, with crystals lining her workstation, having earned her cosmetology license in 2018. Lee got sober in prison and stays clean, she told the Los Angeles Times. Today, she lives within the Los Angeles suburb of Sherman Oaks; nevertheless, details of her personal life are scarce within the film.
She recalls her struggle to seek out work as a convicted felon, having come home from prison to a mattress on the ground, a phone, and a meager box of belongings.
It was an extended fall from her privileged upbringing in Calabasas, the rich LA suburb that’s home to varied Kardashians and Jenners, in addition to Will Smith and Justin Bieber.
Her mother was an attorney, and her father was an accountant. Lee drove an Audi A4 in highschool and wearing designer clothes — but gripes within the film about living within the “smallest house” within the ritzy zip code.
She also says she felt “so ashamed” of being a Korean-American in her predominantly white neighborhood, which led her to mask the insecurity with material luxuries.
“I wanted my mom to all the time buy me something designer. I feel it made me feel wealthy. It made me feel ‘I’m a part of this material world,’” she says.
Lee says she began doing drugs at age 14, adding that Xanax became “a catalyst for quite a lot of things. It took away my emotion and since I didn’t care I could act the way in which that I all the time desired to.”
The very first thing she ever stole was a pair of Uggs. She was sent to another highschool for troubled teens, Indian Hills, where she met Prugo.
“It made no sense why a young person would put herself at that much risk unless there was extreme mental health issues or dependency on drugs,” Carr, who also directed “Britney Vs Spears,” told The Post.
“She desired to be bad. She felt like an outsider and he or she used drugs to numb herself — was it the entire reason? Is it the missing key? No, it’s not. It’s some added context for people after they think, ‘Why would any individual feel comfortable going into any individual’s house at night?’”
Lee compares her crimes to a drug, describing the push it gave her as “adrenaline after which, when the crime was over I felt so high and clear-headed. I actually liked that feeling so much.”
The high also numbed her to the implications.
“Once you rob you understand you could possibly go to prison, but she [Lee] maintained to me that it didn’t really consider. She was like, ‘I didn’t really care about life so if I get caught, whatever, I’m going to die.’ It was so mind-boggling for me,” Carr told The Post.
However the director believes prison has helped Lee to reconcile her attachment to materialism and find herself.
“She felt like a special version of her. She credits prison for helping her. She found herself in being incarcerated and fortunately she was secure in doing so,” Carr said.
“This was any individual who wanted the whole lot and nothing was ever adequate and all the time wanted more … and [now] she starts crying because she’s like, ‘I even have the whole lot I want.’”
