The Curious Case of...

Los Angeles, especially West Hollywood,

is all about image.

It might seem crazy that this is all over facials and waxing.

This is LA.

Our facialist is just as important as our priest,

our rabbi, and our therapist.

It caused an international firestorm because it had

all the elements that make a good headline.

Hollywood facialist who's worked with A-list stars

like Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, who's accused

of hiring a hitman to murder her business competitor.

The other skincare guy, he was gunning for her

and trying to get her out of business.

Anyone who's a success usually has somebody

sort of chomping at your heels.

How do you become more than a friend

is you do something to please them.

You do something to show your worth.

Although he was a convicted felon, and I knew this,

a part of me just felt really sorry for him.

And that is where I made my big mistake.

I don't know what the was going on.

I could not think who would do that to me.

The jury, they were driven by a sympathy for her

because of this stalking that was happening to her.

It was horrific.

Think of this beautiful, glamorous woman

at the top of her game, and then...

They released that mugshot. Just -- holy .

Those roots for miles. Her face was just bloated.

Just awful.

She looks like a hobo, and she's wearing a poncho.

The lead detective was making this seem like a slam dunk

solicitation for murder.

Only in Hollywood, the salon owner to the stars

out to kill the competition, literally.

I was scared, surprised, shocked that my life

had been put in jeopardy for doing skincare.

My name is Dawn DaLuise.

I was a celebrity esthetician for 30 years.

So we are on La Cienega,

a very busy street in West Hollywood.

You know, it's just a whole mecca of hair or beauty

or massage, all those types of businesses.

This is where I learned my technique at The Face Place.

That's where I started with Brad Pitt and Christian Slater

and Meg Ryan and all them, right here.

That's my alma mater.

Now, I'm getting ready to turn left because we're going to go

by my salon now.

This is so creepy and so surreal that I'm going

through all this all over again.

My sign, by the way, was right here, a big sign

that said Dawn DaLuise Skin Refinery.

My business partner called me one night, "Oh, Dawn, I have

"something terrible to tell you.

"I have just been outside picking up flyers,

with your face in a lewd sex scene."

I said, "Oh, my God!"

I was terrified.

The only thing I did know was who I felt was

responsible for it.

Everybody was out to get her. Everybody's out to emulate her.

Everybody wants to be the next celebrity esthetician

because she was the president of West Hollywood skincare.

- -

So this is my ornamental camel.

His name is Toe

because everybody loves the camel toe.

And I try to be original with names.

My name is Edward Feinstein, and I was friends

with Dawn DaLuise for a period of about a year.

I moved to this area six years ago

because I like not being able to reach out

and touch my neighbor, and I have animals.

So this isn't something that you could actually have

in West Hollywood, right? In Beverly Hills.

So this is where I ended up.

So I met Dawn through my friend Nick.

Nick was getting facials with Dawn, and Nick was

talking about me to Dawn.

Dawn was like, "Hey, I wanna meet your friend."

So she invited me to come in for a facial.

Um, so I met her the first time, getting a service

and then from that point, we went out a few times.

We had a budding friendship.

Dawn's studio was in a very central location

in West Hollywood. I'd say it was pretty banging.

Some people would kill for that real estate.

She would always talk about how she had these

celebrity clients, how they were coming in, performing facials

and waxing, Jennifer Aniston, Nicki Minaj, Nancy Reagan,

anybody of any sort of stature, she's claimed to have been

a client of hers at one point in time.

People are willing to murder to get famous,

to become known, to succeed in LA.

My name is Elissa Buchter, and I'm a publicist.

Los Angeles, obviously, is an industry town.

People are really image and beauty obsessed,

and everybody's trying to land the same clients.

And when you read, "Oh, such and such celebrity went

to this esthetician," everybody kind of wants to go

to that esthetician then, because you think

they must have, you know, the fountain of youth.

I feel like having a celebrity clientele in Los Angeles is

definitely beneficial to your business.

Like, my facialist is...

Cher's.

If Cher's looking banging, maybe I will, too.

I'm really vigilant about my skincare,

and I started in my 20s, which was decades ago.

[Beethoven's "9th Symphony, 2nd Movement" playing]

I just wanted to have a decent complexion,

what you present to the world every day.

You gotta cleanse properly.

I usually use a stem cell serum.

Vegans wouldn't like that.

But then a toner, a moisturizer.

You don't use the same moisturizer at night

that you use during the day.

And you don't use the same moisturizer in the summer

as you use in the winter.

I will do something in addition, like the red light mask.

I don't know what it does,

but I'm not gonna stop. OK?

I'm just trying to age gracefully.

And Dawn, you went to her, and she had her own way

of doing it, and you see results.

So, it's, you know, I can understand why she was popular

and she was successful.

[Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker, Dance of the Reed-Flutes" playing]

Dawn came from Panama City, Florida.

It was definitely a little hillbilly

and a little backwoods.

She said her father was a minister, and when she was

younger, she started to enter local beauty pageants

or beauty contests, but she was definitely no Cindy Crawford.

What she was participating in was like mall , right?

Just kind of stomped down the runway, go get a corn dog

and a slice of pizza afterwards.

And then the events on the beach.

Those were definitely some sort of low-end,

$20 cash in the envelope type events.

Dawn wanted to escape Florida,

so she sets her sights on California.

She saved up her prize money, mostly in ones,

and unlike some beauty queens who come to Hollywood,

she actually kind of made it.

I had always wanted to live in California, you know,

where everyone is perfect.

I knew I had to make money. I had to make it fast.

I would end up modeling for Frederick's of Hollywood.

It was very sexy stuff.

It was, I think, the very first lingerie catalog

where you could order out of the privacy of your home.

Several parts of the body were being exposed

through various openings.

In the back of the Frederick's of Hollywood catalog

were also sex toys and things that,

you know, I didn't quite know what they were used for.

And it paid really good money.

You know, I could make a whole month's rent

just for one afternoon doing that.

And that's what I was more concerned about than anything.

Dawn definitely had a gimmick when it came to the facial side

that set her apart from the rest of the competition.

What sets my facial clinic apart is that I actually use

an electric machine.

I pull out this Halloween-looking mask

that's attached to an electric box.

It's a Hannibal Lecter mask, "Silence of the Lambs,"

and she's one of our victims here.

We're gonna see how she handles it.

We take the intensity as high as the customer

can tolerate it.

Different celebrities would talk to the press

about this treatment, so it had some buzz around it.

I was voted the best facialist in Los Angeles back in 2000,

and that's when it just erupted

and everyone was coming to my clinic.

The skincare business was very cutthroat and competitive.

Not everyone succeeds, and you either succeed

tremendously or you fail epically.

There's very little in between, and that can lead to a lot

of problems, a lot of jealousy, a lot of anger,

a lot of fights, and all kinds of things that I've seen

over the years.

Anyone who's a success usually has somebody

sort of chomping at your heels.

Years ago, this person came to my clinic seeking a job,

but I didn't have a job available.

He says, "Well, I won't bother you.

"I see you have a customer. Let me just sit here

in your landing, and I'll wait for you to finish, and we can talk."

And I says, "There's nothing else to talk about -- get out.

"Did you see any kind of a sign that I have a job?

No. Would you leave?"

So I chased him away, and I returned my customer.

And that is when I recognized there's trouble in our midst.

Probably around August or September of 2013,