By Randy Economy
February 20, 2011
2:25 a.m.
Hollywood, CALast night, CBS News "48 Hours" did an INCREDIBLE job and report on the unsolved murder case of Michael Tardio and Christopher Monson. If you lived in Hollywood, or Los Angeles around 9 years ago, you will PROBABLY remember what happened.
This episode "Playing With Fire" takes an inside look at this unsolved case that featured a former Playboy Playmate. A Multi-Millionaire Ponzi Schemer. An aspiring male model, and his unsuspecting friend. Sex. Drugs. An infamous Hollywood night club called the "Garden of Eden." Missing jewels valued int he millions of dollars. More sex. Yikes. This bad boy of mysteries had it all.
BTW. I have placed the entire episode of "48 Hours: Playing With Fire" here on my blog for everyone to watch. Pass this around to all your friends. Post this on your FB, MY SPACE, TWITTER, BUZZ sites. I want you to WATCH this 40 minute program, and watch it all the way to the END, so you can see where this case stands today.
In the meantime, law enforcement is literally ONE clue away from solving this case, and now you have a change to help solve this case once and for all.
$75K REWARD OFFERED!
On Friday, Los Angeles City Council member Paul Krekorian (w2g Paul!) introduced a City Council motion calling for a $75,000 reward in helping crack the case.
“For nearly a decade, the Los Angeles Police Department have pursued this case and they haven't given up. But now, they need your help,” Councilmember Krekorian said in a written statement to the media on Friday.
You can say that again, Councilman.
Here are the facts of the case.
At around 1:40 a.m. on Sept. 2, 2002, the charred bodies of Michael Tardio and Christopher Monson were discovered in a burning Mercedes SUV on the 11600 block of Woodbridge Street in Studio City. Tardio was a part-time model and doorman at The Garden of Eden – then, Hollywood’s hottest nightclub – and his friend, Monson, 31, has riveted Hollywood while hesitant witnesses have stymied the investigation.
Yagalla also frequented the Garden (I think I might have gone into that place maybe once in my lifetime) and Bentley's boyfriend, Tardio, was the doorman there. In fact, police believe Tardio found the people at the Garden of Eden who ended up killing him over the jewelry deal.
The segment on "48 Hours" also centers on ex-Hollywood Madame Michelle Braun, a friend of Sandy Bentley's who supplied Yagalla with a steady stream of escorts, frequented the "Garden of Eden" and met many of her wealthy clients there. I am tellin' you. This case is incredible. Someone has to do a movie on this one case.
WATCH this episode. Anyone with information about this case is urged to call the LAPD at 1-877-LAPD-24-7, 1-877-527-3247.
1 comment:
Sandy Bentley reportedly received nearly $750,000 worth of jewelry from Yagalla, who was her lover in the summer of 1999. The jewelry connects Yagalla to the gruesome 2002 double murder of Michael Tardio and Christopher Monson, who were found shot to death, in a burning Mercedes SUV on Sept. 2, 2002, in Studio City, California. However Yagalla is not a suspect. Sandy Bentley, who was dating Michael Tardio, is not a suspect either. The sudden interest in these two characters can also be explained by the fact that they were the subject of the “48 Hours Mystery” show Saturday night.
Sandy, together with her identical twin sister, Mandy, was one of the Playboy’s acclaimed “Bentley Twins.” The sisters lived with Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion, – both as his lovers. Back in 2000 they appeared on some of television’s most popular shows, like “Sex and the City,” “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and on “Two and a Half Men,” where they played party girls. Since 2000, however, the twins have fallen out of the limelight.
The CBS show “48 Hours Mystery: “Playing with Fire” was aired on Saturday night and has inspired fresh interest in the killing of 35-year-old part-time model and doorman at the Garden of Eden (at that time, Hollywood’s hottest nightclub), Michael Tardio and his 31-year-old friend, Chris Monsoon. The pair was found in a Mercedes SUV shot at close range. The culprit had attempted to burn the car.
Detectives could not find any identifiable fingerprints or any useable evidence they could use and no one in the neighborhood had heard shots fire, giving rise to the belief that the murder took place somewhere else and the bodies then driven to another location.
Tardio and Monsoon are believed to have been trying to secretly sell $750,000 worth of jewellery on the night they were killed. These jewels belonged to Tardio’s then-girlfriend and former Playboy bunny Sandy Bentley, whom he met on the Hollywood club scene. The pin-up girl had acquired the valuable items from ex-boyfriend and Ponzi schemer Mark Yagalia before his $40 million ponzi scheme Asbury Capital fund collapsed, who claims to have been “madly in love” with her. She, in turn was “madly in love with his money”.
Yagalia estimates that he spent between $6 or $7 million on Bentley during the 13 months they dated. The money went on a house, furs, cars, Rolex watches and jewellery, including an exact diamond and ruby replica of the necklace and earring set Richard Gere gives to Julia Roberts in the film Pretty Woman, costing around a quarter of a million dollars.
Before meeting Yagalia, Bentley was a live-in girlfriend of Hugh Hefner at his Playboy mansion, together with her twin Mandy. According to Hef’s other girlfriend Izabela St.James, who went on to write a book about her experiences at the mansion, Sandy did not treat the octogenarian well and cheated on him repeatedly.
But in the late summer of 1999, while still at the Playboy Mansion and long before Sandy Bentley began dating Michael Tardio, she quietly became involved with multimillionaire Mark Yagalla, a self described Wall Street whiz kid.
Yagalla had big dreams. And Sandy Bentley quickly became a part of them when he was introduced to her by another Playboy model.
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