Victor Paleologus set out to prey on women while posing as a top Hollywood photographer, but some of those very same women would ultimately lead police right to the dangerous predator after a 21-year-old woman disappeared. 

Kristi Johnson, 21, believed she was getting the break of a lifetime when she was approached by a man at the Century City Mall in Los Angeles on February 15, 2003 and invited to an audition for a new James Bond movie. 

“She was all excited because she was gonna do an audition that was gonna bring in some big dollars,” Santa Monica police Detective Virginia Obenchain told Dateline: Secrets Uncovered‘s “The Girl With the Hibiscus Tattoo” episode.

Kristi never returned home from that audition. As the search for her intensified, women began to come forward with eerily similar stories, leading police straight to a conman with a violent past. 

“She had to be real sultry and sexy. That’s what they were looking for… And they were going to give her a necktie to wear,” Johnson’s roommate Carri later told police.

Johnson drove off in her white Miata to make it to the 5:30 p.m. audition in Beverly Hills, but she’d never return to her Santa Monica apartment.

Johnson and her mom, Terry Hall, usually spoke on the phone every day, so it was unusual when two days passed without any word from her daughter. Hall’s concern only grew after she learned that her conscientious daughter also hadn’t shown up to work on Monday, Feb. 17, 2003. 

“When I got her answering message on her work phone is when I became very alarmed,” she said.

Hall immediately called Santa Monica Police, who jumped into action.

Surveillance footage from the mall captured Johnson purchasing a miniskirt, but there was no footage of her talking to the mystery man in question. Cell phone records showed her phone last pinged at 5:32 p.m. the day she disappeared in Laurel Canyon in the Hollywood Hills.

Women report similar eerie encounters with man named “Victor”

Police got a break in the case five days after Johnson disappeared, when a woman named Susan Murphy spotted an article in The Los Angeles Times about the case. 

“It mentions this beautiful young lady who disappeared after going to meet a photographer and — and that’s all it says,” Murphy remembered. 

Murphy said there was something about the article and her own “women’s intuition” that struck her. 

“I just knew,” she said. “My heart dropped.” 

It turned out that just weeks earlier, Murphy had a similar encounter at the Century City Mall with a man who called himself “Victor Thomas.” The man claimed to be a director of photography and told her that he was looking to cast someone for a new James Bond movie. 

“He said, ‘We’ve been casting all day and you’re the look we want. You’re perfect.’ And I had enough experience to kind of know this was a come on, a pick up,” Murphy remembered.

But Murphy was still admittedly “very intrigued” and didn’t want to miss out on the potentially life changing opportunity. She agreed to go to an audition in West Hollywood, wearing that same distinctive outfit Johnson had worn — but Murphy took her boyfriend along with her for protection.

When they got to the address the man gave Murphy, she was surprised to discover it looked like an abandoned building. Then, Murphy asked the man for some identification and he told her that he’d “left it on set.” After spotting her boyfriend waiting in the car, the man quickly told Murphy she was “not right” for the part and took off running.

Murphy agreed to work with a sketch artist to create a sketch of the man. Once it was disseminated through the local media, other women began to come forward with similar encounters, including Alice Walker.

Walker was working as a waitress at a restaurant in the Century City Mall when a man named “Victor” approached her with the same con. She met him several times at an abandoned building in West Hollywood wearing that same distinctive outfit, but each time the movie director didn’t show up and the meeting was cut short. 

The day Johnson disappeared, Walker told police that “Victor” left her a message saying he was “really trying to get a hold of” her. 

“He just sounded strangely frantic,” she remembered. 

Walker never returned the message, but she was now beginning to wonder if she’d narrowly missed a grim fate. 

Suspect Victor Paleologus is identified

Police believed they had identified their suspect, but the man had given Murphy the name “Victor Thomas” and that person seemingly didn’t exist. 

Obenchain said that detectives finally got the break they needed after a parole agent saw the sketch and recognized the man as her parolee, Victor Paleologus.

Less than a month before Johnson went missing, Paleologus had been released from prison after serving time for sexual assault. 

He’d also been acquitted in an earlier rape case and had once broke into the home of a woman he was dating and chased her with a ligature. A real estate agent told police in the days before the disappearance that Paleologus had been searching for sound-proof homes in the Hollywood Hills, where no one could hear you scream.

None of it looked good for Johnson.

Santa Monica Police set out to search for Paleologus and, luckily, it wasn’t hard to track him down. He was behind bars at the county jail, after trying to steal a BMW from a car dealership in Beverly Hills during a test drive. 

With Johnson still missing, detectives rushed to the jail to interview Paleologus, but the 40-year-old refused to divulge any information.

“He said nothing about Kristi,” Obenchain said. “Every time we asked about Kristi he changed the subject and said, ‘I don’t know anything.’”

Kristi Johnson’s body is found

Police got another break when Johnson’s Miata was discovered parked in the valet parking at the St. Regis Hotel, right next to the Century City Mall. The attendant said the car had been dropped off by a man, but there was no record of who that was and Johnson’s car had been completely wiped clean of DNA or fingerprints outside one print belonging to her. 

Then, Johnson’s family’s worst fears were confirmed after someone out hiking in the Hollywood Hills spotted a body in the ravine of a steep hill.

Obenchain was lowered down into the ravine herself with a rope 16 days after Johnson disappeared and confirmed it was the missing woman after recognizing the distinctive hibiscus tattoo she had on her back.

Johnson was discovered with her hands and feet still bound. She’d been strangled and had a radiating fracture to her skull. Authorities believe she was still alive when she was tossed into the ravine.

“Those horrific last moments, we will never know exactly what happened,” Hall said of her daughter.

Rain had washed away any DNA evidence that could definitively link Paleologus to the crime, but authorities still believed they had enough to make an arrest in May of 2023 due to all the women who had come forward with similar stories about his predatory behavior. 

His trial began in 2006, but after woman and after woman took the stand against him, Paleologus agreed to plead guilty mid-trial. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison, with the possibility of parole as part of his deal with prosecutors.