Police say two men have been arrested in connection with a robbery attempt that left famed San Francisco private investigator Jack Palladino in life support
SAN FRANCISCO – Two men have been arrested in connection with an attempted robbery that left famed San Francisco private investigator Jack Palladino in life support, police said Sunday.
Palladino himself may have inadvertently helped detectives arrest after recovering photographs from a camera that the suspects tried unsuccessfully to steal, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Palladino, who worked on high-profile cases ranging from the mass suicides in Jonestown to political and famous scandals, suffered a head injury in the January 28 violent attack.
Lawrence Thomas, 24, of Pittsburg, and Tyjone Flournoy, 23, of San Francisco, were jailed Sunday, according to police. It was not immediately known if they have lawyers.
Palladino, 76, remained unconscious, but on Saturday night received news of the arrests of his wife and private detective partner Sandra Sutherland.
“I said,‘ Guess what Jack, the bastards got it, and it was all yours, ’” Sutherland told The Chronicle Sunday.
Palladino had just left his San Francisco home to test his new camera when a car got up and a man jumped to grab it, police and stepson of detective Nick Chapman told the newspaper.
When the suspect grabbed the camera, Palladino fell and hit his head against the pavement. Palladino was not expected to survive after being operated on to stop the massive hemorrhage, the Chronicle said.
Palladino was finishing one last case before joining his retired wife. Since the 1980s, the two have conducted investigations outside their Victorian home in the city’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, on behalf of the famous and powerful, as well as the underprivileged.
His clients included Bill Clinton, whose 1992 presidential campaign hired Palladino to quell rumors about his extramarital affairs, and Courtney Love, who hired Palladino to talk to reporters investigating whether he played a role in the death. of her husband, rock star Kurt Cobain, in 1994.
In the 1990s, he led a counter-investigation into the tobacco industry’s campaign to soil whistleblowers Jeffrey Wigand.
Palladino’s career began even before he graduated from law school at the University of California, Berkeley, when Patty Hearst’s family hired him to help him investigate his abduction of the Symbol Party. Liberation (1974).