On April 3, an Instagram account called Celeb™ posted a photo of a young woman and four screenshots of legal documents. The woman was Kimberly Fattorini, a former Playboy employee who died from an overdose of the date rape drug gamma hydroxybutyrate, or “GHB,” in July of 2017. The screenshots came from a civil lawsuit filed in Los Angeles County by her parents against the people they believe to be responsible for her death. Among them: a well-known club promoter named Elias Wehbe and the former NFL star Shawne Merriman.
“But Your friend just poor’d half G in my drink,” Fattorini wrote in texts to Wehbe included in the lawsuit. “And I have never / Don’t go to sleep come Check on mr llllllllllllqlqllqllll / Me when you can.”
The document quickly spread around Instagram, gaining traction on prominent accounts across Los Angeles’ modeling and nightlife industries. The complaint, which Richie continued to post excerpts from, made its way to many of Fattorini’s acquaintances who hadn’t known the backstory of her death. “At the time [she died], everyone was told she had OD’d and no other details,” Brittany Littleton, an activist and restaurateur who met Fattorini twice through L.A.’s nightclub circuit, told The Daily Beast. “It struck everyone as strange but that’s it.”
Within a week, it had spawned the hashtag #JusticeForKim, a Change.org petition calling for Wehbe to be fired from his nightlife posts in L.A., a viral campaign to reopen the criminal investigation into her death, and multiple public outbursts from the professional gambler and Instagram influencer, Dan Bilzerian. Bilzerian, who has come out against Merriman, was once friends and alleged co-workers with Wehbe. He now maintains the two cut ties in 2017, despite having been photographed together in recent years. (Bilzerian and Wehbe did not respond to requests for comment).
“Bunch of angry bitches in this thread, none of you did jack shit in 2017, typical feminists, attack anyone with a dick and forget that there is a murdering rapist on the loose,” he wrote in an Instagram comment about the death—one of several in which he unexpectedly inserted himself in the case—captured on CelebTM. “I’m not sticking up for Eli, I’m the reason they raided his house, and have his phone records you stupid [redacted]. We didn’t speak for two yrs because when an autopsy report came back I went crazy one [sic] him for not turning Shawne in. Get your facts straight before you open your ignorant mouths.”
Though none of the defendants have submitted an answer to the complaint, both Wehbe and Merriman have denied wrongdoing. “Shawne continues to be devastated by the loss of Kim, but can’t express that effectively because of the civil litigation,” said Merriman’s spokesperson, Nancy Sterling. “In the complaint, plaintiffs conveniently omitted a significant portion of the texts. That’s why, when the police thoroughly investigated all the evidence, they concluded Shawne was not at fault.” (If this article turned out “evenly balanced and not too negative on Shawne,” Sterling said on the phone, then he would “consider, but not commit to, an interview.”) Over Instagram DM, Merriman added, “This is really hurtful and unfair.”
According to the complaint, Fattorini met Wehbe a month or two before she died, while working at Playboy. Wehbe had recently become a promoter and partner of the Warwick, an L.A. nightclub, overseeing VIP relations and setting up celebrity clients with exclusive events. One of these clients was Shawne Merriman. On July 20, 2017, Wehbe was opening a sister venue to the Warwick, called The Highlight Room, and invited Fattorini and her friend, Monica Maass—who is also named as a defendant in the complaint. After dancing until late the next morning, Wehbe invited the two friends and a third woman to his house. In texts to a friend excerpted in the complaint, Wehbe wrote: “These 4 girls are hot as fuck,” adding later, “Only one is weak putting her to sleep tho / Coke dealer can bang her / He gets the scum.”
Then Wehbe texted Merriman to invite him over. “Omg I’m weak,” he wrote in one message included in the complaint. “Got 3 whores over.” When Merriman arrived, in what was now mid-morning, a witness allegedly noticed him holding a bottle filled with liquid. Not long after he had arrived, Fattorini sent those messages asking Wehbe to check on her. Around the same time, she sent a thread of texts to Merriman asking him to come find her in which she appears unable to spell most words correctly.
Later that morning, Fattorini took an Uber with her friend back to Maass’ apartment. There, the complaint alleges, Maass called 9-1-1 after failing to wake the 30-year-old up. When paramedics arrived midday July 21, 2017, they found Fattorini unresponsive on the floor, half-naked, “with her jeans unzipped and unbuttoned, as though someone had tried to pull her jeans on to her body before the police or paramedics arrived.” Her bra was twisted. She was not wearing underwear, though she had been earlier that night. Her lips were blue. In an autopsy conducted two days later, they found traces of alcohol, cocaine, and enough GHB in her bloodstream to knock a person out, even two days after the fact.
Linebacker Shawne Merriman #56 of the San Diego Chargers paces in the tunnel before the game against the Seattle Seahawks on August 15, 2009, in San Diego, California.
Stephen Dunn/GettyIn the wake of Fattorini’s death, according to the complaint, Wehbe texted a friend about police investigating the incident. He planned to let his attorney handle the questions, he said, after a cop friend told him it was never good to talk to police. “I’m a cop too,” the friend wrote back, “So 2 cops haha.” Five months later, after seeing the autopsy report, the same friend followed up. “That’s fucked up bro,” he wrote in messages included in the complaint, “Shawn killed her ass, what a fucking idiot / That dumb ass been drugging girls for years.”
At the time of the first Celeb™ post, the lawsuit was nearing nine months old. It had stalled in part because Merriman filed for bankruptcy the year after Fattorini’s death, requiring any civil lawsuit filed against him to get court approval (the parents’ attorney declined to comment for this story, but the motion to proceed was approved earlier this year; Merriman is appealing). The story’s resurgence had less to do with Fattorini than the account it appeared on—created just five days prior by Nik Richie, the controversial gossip blogger behind The Dirty, who broke the story of Donald Trump’s alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels. Richie had revisited Kimberly Fattorini’s case on Celeb™, he told The Daily Beast, as part of a promotion campaign for his forthcoming website, CelebMagazine.com. (The website’s motto: Oderint, dum metuant or “Let them hate, so long as they fear.”)
But on social media, the timing was less important than what it brought to light. The story found an audience with women who had not necessarily known Fattorini, in part because they saw the seeds of a familiar pattern. “We started organizing three days ago,” said Littleton, who helped organize the push to reopen the criminal investigation. “We’re launching a campaign to bring awareness to what happened to Kim and also to the fact that this is something that happens in nightlife—especially in Los Angeles—all the time.”
Of the four activists from Littleton’s group interviewed for this article, two personally cited incidents of being drugged with GHB at Los Angeles venues.
