Last month, we told you about a pair of lawsuits filed by someone named Katie Johnson, who claims that Donald Trump raped her when she was 13, at a party hosted by notorious celebrity pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The claims, as we told you at the time, are being backed by a group of men who have made Johnson difficult, if not impossible, to contact. One of them appears prepared to make some money from the situation.
The key person trying to sell pieces of the Katie Johnson story to Gawker Media called himself Al Taylor in his communications with us. He identified himself as someone who had worked with Inside Edition, and also said he did PR for the wonderful-sounding Erotic Heritage Museum in Las Vegas.
Today, the Guardian’s Jon Swaine unearthed compelling evidence that “Taylor” is in fact a former Jerry Springer Show producer named Norm Lubow who has long been accused of (and denied) making outlandish claims about celebrities, sometimes under assumed names. A few of those claims were outlined in a 1998 Variety article:
Earlier this month, a group of former “Springer” guests accused Lubow of staging their fights and encouraging them to fabricate wild stories.
Last Friday, the New York Post reported that Lubow himself made the tabloid TV rounds in 1995 as a drug dealer who claimed to have sold drugs to O.J. Simpson on the night his ex-wife was murdered. Lubow vehemently denied that he was drug dealer “Ron X,” just as he has denied coaching “Springer” panelists to lie or brawl.
Swaine says that Lubow also appeared, wearing a fetching purple mask, in Kurt and Courtney, a controversial documentary that suggests Courtney Love maybe paid to have Kurt Cobain murdered:
Also in 1998, Lubow appeared wearing a disguise in the controversial documentary film Kurt and Courtney under the name “Jack Briggs” alongside Bowman, the minor Hollywood promoter whose photograph was later used by “Al Taylor” for television interviews. Bowman said “Briggs” was Lubow.
In the film, director Nick Broomfield said Lubow and Bowman had introduced him to Eldon “El Duce” Hoke, a Seattle-based musician who claimed Courtney Love offered him $50,000 to kill her husband Kurt Cobain, the singer and guitarist in the rock band Nirvana. The allegation about Hoke, which became lore among some Nirvana fans following Cobain’s suicide in 1994, was denied by Love.
Taylor adamantly denied to Swaine that he is Lubow. But Swaine writes that Taylor communicated with him using a phone number that has also been used by Lubow, and that a “longtime associate” of Lubow’s confirmed that Lubow has used the name “Al Taylor” in the past.
While Taylor told Gawker Media that he had worked with Inside Edition, I could find no evidence that anyone named Al Taylor or Norm Lubow ever worked for the show.
Although we can’t be entirely sure it’s the same person, a former Jerry Springer producer using the name “Al Taylor” claimed in 2011 that he’d met with the elusive Casey Anthony, a claim reported on skeptically by true-crime host Nancy Grace at the time. According to Inside Edition, Taylor claimed he offered Anthony $1 million for a tell-all interview, which never materialized. At the time, Taylor refused to tell Nancy Grace where he’d met with Anthony:
“Mr. Taylor, you met with her in Palm Springs. Where in Palm Springs?” asked Grace.
“It was a hotel in the Palm Springs area,” said Taylor.
“What hotel?” asked Grace.
“I can’t say,” replied Taylor.
“Why?” asked Grace.
“Because then the media descends on the hotel,” said Taylor.
Swaine wrote that Taylor “became threatening” when asked about his identity: “Just be warned: we’ll sue you if we don’t like what you write. We’ll sue your ass, own your ass and own your newspaper’s ass as well, punk.”
That was an interesting piece of information for me, because Taylor was very unhappy with the story I published about the lawsuits. I learned this after receiving a text message from someone claiming to be Katie Johnson, whom I had been trying to reach with no success for several days as I reported the story. When I called back, “Taylor” answered the phone and threatened to sue for $1 million before inviting me, angrily, to suck his dick.
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