Heads You Win, Tails You Die

Domino Harvey.
Model, Socialite, DJ, Bounty Hunter.

Domino Harvey, daughter of the late British actor Laurence Harvey and supermodel Paulene Stone, led a tormented, eccentric existence. She ran a London night club, worked as a ranch hand in San Diego, then became a "bail recovery agent," hunting fugitives carrying a shotgun she called Betsy.

Domino was born in London in 1969. Her father, born Laruschka Mischa Skikne, took his stage name from the Harvey Nichols brand of department stores. Laurence managed to transcend his impoverished Lithuanian-Jewish background to star in movies such as "Dial M For Murder" and "The Manchurian Candidate," becoming the first Lithuanian actor to be nominated for an Oscar..

Domino's mother was a Vogue cover girl who embodied Swinging London in the 1960s; an image of her that ran in the Daily Express helped to launch celebrated photographer David Bailey's career.

Laurence Harvey died of stomach cancer in 1973, when Domino was 4. He left a sizable inheritance, ensuring that she would be financially well off, however, it did not fill the void created by her father's death. By her teens, Harvey had been kicked out of four elite boarding schools. At the age of 16, she settled down at the Dartington Hall School in southwestern England where she spent her time making canoes and studying martial arts.

In the early 80's, Paulene Stone married Peter Morton, co-founder of the Hard Rock Cafe chain of restaurants, and moved to Los Angeles. Harvey, still a teenager, stayed behind, moving into a flat in Notting Hill Gate. At this time, Domino seemed to be at her most entrepreneurial; as well as modelling for the Ford agency, she designed a clothing line that she sold at Kensington Market and ran one of the first night clubs in the UK to embrace the then burgeoning dance music scene.

Unfortunately, this was also the time when she started battling drug addiction. At the age of 17, whilst visiting relatives in Israel, her cousin recalls her sneaking out to score drugs. At 20, she moved to L.A. to stay in the Hollywood Hills with her mother, and entered rehab. By 1992, she had started a new life in San Diego, working briefly as a ranch hand, and then a volunteer firefighter - a job she loved. Two years later, she returned to Los Angeles to become a full time firefighter, only to be rejected by the LAFD. After taking courses to become a paramedic, and again failing to find work, she read about a two-week course for bail enforcement agents, or "bounty hunters." After paying the $300 course fee, Domino was set to enter the most exciting period of her life.

The course tutor, a Vietnam veteran and ex-gang member called Martinez, introduced her to his boss, Celes King III, a bounty hunter and civil rights activist who ran the Celes King Bail Bond Agency in South L.A. Martinez and Domino became partners, Harvey becoming one of the only female bounty hunters of the time. Harvey helped capture about 50 fugitives, around 10 of them being classed as "dangerous situations." Their work also took them out of state, Harvey being involved in an armed stand-off in Texas, among other tense situations.

Meanwhile, Harvey was still using drugs, especially cocaine and speed, but occasionally heroin, while on the job. She tried to kick her habit on many occasions, eventually becoming friends with Steve Jones, the ex-Sex Pistols guitarist - a former junkie who had now been clean for almost 20 years. Jones and Harvey went hiking in Santa Monica when Harvey collapsed, something Jones puts down to a drug reaction. "I was very angry actually ... I had asked her beforehand and she had sworn to me she was straight."

In the mid-90's, word of an English Rose working the tough streets of LA as a bounty hunter came to the U.K. An article written in one of the tabloids was sent to Tony Scott (director of Top Gun and Beverley Hills Cop) by his business manager. Scott tracked her down and met with Harvey, becoming captivated with the idea that her story would make a great film, eventually buying her life story for $360,000 in 1995. About this time, Martinez left LA, which effectively ended Harvey's bounty hunting career.

Harvey returned to LA in 2000, after spending time in Hawaii's Habilitat long term rehab clinic. She enrolled in computer classes at Santa Monica College and UCLA, and spent some time doing odd computer graphic jobs and DJ-ing at night clubs in West Hollywood. During this time, Domino shared a cottage with her sister Sophie, bought by her mother. In 2003, Domino was arrested for possession of crystal methamphetamine. As a first offender, she was allowed to avoid trial and enter a treatment program. Around this time, Sophie Harvey married a businessman and philanthropist named Richard Butera, and Domino was introduced to his son, Thomas Richard Butera Jr. The sisters began to grow apart, but Domino and Thomas became friends, visiting each others homes in Gulfport, Miss. and West Hollywood.

In January 2005, Butera Jr. was arrested in Gulfport for possession of methamphetamines and conspiracy to distribute. He pleaded guilty to one charge of possession and remains in jail awaiting trial, a trial which could return a sentence of 5 to 40 years imprisonment. In May Harvey was arrested at home on a warrant indicting her and a co-defendant with conspiring to possess and distribute more than 500 grams of methamphetamine, a charge Harvey denied adamantly.

At a bail hearing in May, the judge deemed Harvey a risk, and she had to put up the deeds for her cottage (now worth $1.2 million) and a $300,000 bond, as well as agreeing to house arrest with an electronic anklet and the confiscation of her passport. When Domino returned home, she brought with her four "minders" she had met at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings to keep her off drugs.

June 27. Around 11.00pm, after friends who had visited her left, Harvey went into the bathroom and closed the door. The Sheriff's Department said officers arrived at Harvey's house a little after 11 p.m. on June 27 and found her unconscious. She was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead at 11:28. A department spokesperson later said she had died in the bath.

The cause of death will not be determined until toxicology tests are completed.

Among those who attended Harvey's funeral on July 1 were Mickey Rourke, Tony Scott, Peter Morton and Steve Jones

Domino (cert TBC) is released on 14 October 2005 by Entertainment Film Distributors.
For more information click here.

Article by: Andrew Southern

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