Legendary private eye solves his own murder

Legendary detective Jack Palladino

Credit: Eric Luse/San Francisco Chronicle

A famed and controversial private eye solved his own murder by taking photographs of his suspected attackers as he was mugged.

Jack Palladino’s clients included presidents, scandal-plagued celebrities and corporate whistleblowers.

He died after a brutal mugging while he was trying out a new camera outside his home in San Francisco.

Two men in a passing car tried to steal the camera but he refused to give it up and died in the struggle.

Palladino, 76, was taken to hospital unconscious and died on Monday, four days after the attack.

Police examined the images on his camera and found what they needed to arrest two suspects, who were charged with assault with a deadly weapon.

Sandra Sutherland, his wife, said she told him "Guess what, Jack, they got the bastards, and it was all your doing" as he lay unconscious in a hospital bed.

Jack Palladino photographed in 2007

Credit: Matt Latella

She added: "He would have loved knowing that." 

Together, the couple founded Palladino & Sutherland Investigations in 1977.

Perhaps Palladino’s most known, and controversial, work came when he was hired by Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992 to counter claims by women that they had had sex with the future president.

Palladino worked to undermine Gennifer Flowers, writing in a memo that the aim was to impugn her "character and veracity until she is destroyed beyond all recognition."

His other clients included the Black Panthers, the Hells Angels, and celebrities including Courtney Love, Robin Williams and Kevin Costner.

He once recovered a truckload of stolen equipment for the Grateful Dead, and spent years investigating the mass suicide of the Jonestown cult in Guyana.

Palladino also worked for the family of a 14-year-old boy who won a multimillion-dollar settlement from Michael Jackson after accusing the entertainer of molesting him.

Jackson was never charged with a crime in that case. He also worked for former tobacco company executive and whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand,

Palladino uncovered a deliberate campaign by Big Tobacco to smear the executive following his allegations that tobacco products were spiked with chemicals to make them more addictive.

The private eye later played himself in "The Insider," the 1999 Hollywood film about the case starring Al Pacino and Russell Crowe.

Mel Honowitz, Palladino’s lawyer, told the San Franciso Chronicle: "He investigated his own murder. Those of us who knew Jack are mourning his death but chuckling that it is a fitting way for him to go."