Pellicano Trial: Huge Retainers, Cheating Husbands, And More Phone Taps

From the testimony today, it became abundantly clear that before Mr. Pellicano allegedly turned to a life of crime, the government really should have made use of his obviously excellent skills and hired the guy to help them out with their audio equipment. If Mr. Pellicano was on the government side, we might have been spared listening to a hideously inaudible tape of former telephone employee Teresa Wright trying to get defendant Ray Turner to admit to wiretapping. As the muffled sounds of Ms. Wright's conversation with Mr. Turner resonated throughout the large courtroom, you couldn't help compare the poor quality of this tape to the crystal clear conversations that we've heard so far in court of Mr. Pellicano chatting away with his various clients.

Ms. Wright's testimony also highlighted the difference between Mr. Pellicano and some of the little people who worked for him and who are now facing prison because of it. It's sad to say, but even when you're dealing with criminal enterprises, the little people always seem to get screwed. Although Mr. Pellicano was rolling in dough, allegedly receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from clients (over a $1 million from just Susan Maguire alone,) poor Ms. Wright got a relative pittance for providing him with the bedrock of his wiretapping activities. Ms. Wright testified that Mr. Turner only paid her $250.00 for looking up proprietary phone information on former New York Times freelance writer Anita Busch. While Mr. Pellicano was busy charging $25,000 retainers to every client--including Mr. Ovitz who asked the detective to investigate Ms. Busch, the telephone company worker was getting $250.00 of that. No wonder she was crying on the stand.

With her two lawyers sitting in the courtroom, Susan Hughes, the ex-wife of Herbalife founder Mark Hughes, took the stand to testify about hiring Mr. Pellicano. Looking every bit the Hollywood wife with her perfectly smooth skin, long blond hair and abundant lips, Ms. Hughes' visage remained unreadable throughout most of her testimony. Speaking at a glacier pace, Ms. Hughes told the courtroom that she originally hired Mr. Pellicano back in 1997 to find out whether her then husband, Mark Hughes, was cheating on her. Ms. Hughes testified to paying Mr. Pellicano $125,000.00 to investigate her husband. Her voice cracked dramatically as she recalled finding out from Mr. Pellicano that her husband was cheating on her, but she appeared to completely recover her composure before Mr. Saunder's next question was out of his mouth.

Ms. Hughes sought to portray herself as a victim on Mr. Pellicano, noting that she didn't find out he was wiretapping her ex-husband until the investigation was already underway. She described going to Mr. Pellicano's office and being asked to follow him into a room. "He wanted me to listen to something," she explained. She next recalled that Mr. Pellicano played her a recording in which she heard her then brother-in-law talking to Mr. Hughes on the phone, saying "I wanted you to know that I'm on your side." Three days later, she filed for divorce. But, she didn't find any time to tell the authorities about how Mr. Pellicano had wiretapped Mr. Hughes and she also didn't tell Mr. Pellicano to stop wiretapping in the case. Apparently, as she told the jury, she was "in shock." Fortunately, she came out of her shock in time to hire Mr. Pellicano again about a year later to check up on her husband's new girlfriend, Darcy LaPier.

Every time Mr. Pellicano takes a crack at a witness, I can't help but think that the government should be paying him for his help with their case. After Ms. Hughes' slow and often dispassionate testimony about listening to Mr. Pellicano's wiretaps of her then husband, Mr. Pellicano managed to get her to cry a little. "You had great concerns about your husband, didn't you?" Mr. Pellicano asked softly. Although Ms. Hughes' face didn't move, she sounded as if she was crying and she did make a big production out of reaching for a tissue and dabbing at her heavily mascaraed eyes.

At the end of her testimony, Mr. Saunders stood up to set the record straight with his redirect. "You didn't authorize Mr. Pellicano to wiretap Mark Hughes?" He asked. "No," Ms. Hughes shot back. And then, Mr. Saunders ended by asking her a potentially ambiguous question. "You didn't make $150,000 off of wiretapping Mr. Hughes?" He asked. As Ms. Hughes paused, I wondered if maybe she was confused about whether Mr. Saunders wanted to know how much money she made from off of Mr. Hughes from getting the wiretap information or just how much money she made from being married to Mr. Hughes. She never really answered the question, although she did again emphasize that she'd never told Mr. Pellicano to wiretap.

THE NEXT WITNESS WILL BE KEITH CARRADINE, ANOTHER ALLEGED TARGET OF MR. PELLICANO'S WIRETAPPING.

Read all of HuffPost's coverage from inside the Pellicano courtroom