[Holly] In the early 2000s,
Hef was dating multiple people at a time.
He was getting a lot of attention for it
and his girlfriends were getting a lot of attention, too.
For Sandy Bentley, living at the mansion as one of Hef's girlfriends,
you get to be the center of attention.
But there's also restrictions too,
and Sandy knew what the redline rules were.
[Bill] Sandy was under contract.
She was to be with Hugh Hefner.
No one else.
[Holly] It wasn't your typical run-of-the-mill
"Oh, I have a rich boyfriend" thing.
It was very unusual.
He did not care about Hugh Hefner.
He didn't care about what Hugh Hefner did, thought, or said.
All he was focused on and obsessed with was Sandy Bentley.
[theme music playing]
[gunshots]
[liquid splashing]
[match strikes, sizzles]
[siren wailing in distance]
[upbeat music playing]
In the late '90s, Hef was in his 70s,
he had just separated from his second wife
and he was looking to date again.
He was going out to the hottest night clubs in LA several times a week.
That's where he first met the Bentley twins.
The Bentley twins are Sandy and Mandy.
Hugh Hefner's always had a thing for twins.
And Sandy and Mandy were perfect twins for him.
They posed for Playboy
and then he started a relationship with them.
And in the early 2000s, they ended up being celebrities.
Please welcome Hugh Hefner and his pals, the Bentley twins.
[crowd cheering]
[Jon] You're sisters?
-Twins, yes. -Yeah, yeah.
-We're sisters. -My mom knows her dad.
-They knew each other a little. -[crowd laughs]
[Steve] They were on Sex and the City,
they were on Two and a Half Men.
-[growls] -There was one--
[hisses]
And it was all through Hugh Hefner.
-[railway crossing chimes] -[train horn blowing]
[Mandy Edmonston] The Bentley twins, Sandy and Mandy,
grew up in Joliet, Illinois.
They had a very strict Catholic upbringing
and they really weren't allowed
to do many of the things that teenagers growing up were allowed to do.
They weren't allowed to drink soda,
they weren't allowed to have junk food.
And most importantly, they weren't allowed to date boys
or even really consider dating boys.
Sandy absolutely loved her mom and had a great relationship.
The big problem that she shared with me many times was about her dad,
that he was an alcoholic.
And, you know, it ripped out her heart
that this was part of her life that she grew up with.
[Mandy Edmonston] The twins attended a Catholic high school
and then went on to the College of St. Francis
and from there,
Sandy moved on to the University of Las Vegas.
[Bruce] And her age might have been 19,
but she was very intelligent, very smart, very wise, very shrewd.
She was very, very driven as far as getting her degree at UNLV
because she wanted to work in the business arena.
In 1997, I dated Sandy Bentley.
I'm a championship tennis player,
so I was on the court
and Sandy Bentley is sitting in the benches right by center court.
And I looked over several times during the match and I thought,
"Oh, my God, she's taken my breath away."
She was from Joliet and she told me that right away.
She told me about her identical twin Mandy.
They were so striking and gorgeous and beautiful
that even though they weren't celebrities,
when people saw them, they craned their heads.
The guys, they craned their heads to see the twins.
So I said to Sandy, "Have you ever thought about modeling?
You're statuesque and you're beautiful."
And she told me that celebrities, sport stars, entertainers,
those were her biggest interests.
[Mandy Edmonston] Eventually, Mandy decides to visit her sister Sandy in Las Vegas,
and the two of them then decided
that they were going to take a road trip to Los Angeles, California,
to the Garden of Eden.
The Garden of Eden was one of the biggest night spots at the time.
It was frequented by many, many celebrities
and it was really the place that you wanted to be if you wanted to be seen.
All the celebrities, the beautiful people, would go.
It was really almost mythical.
Hef used to go there and that's where he first met the Bentley twins.
[Mandy Edmonston] In 1998, when Hef saw the twins from across the bar,
he was just completely struck with their beauty,
he really wanted to get to know them better.
[Holly] For somebody in their 70s,
I would say Hef came across much younger,
you don't see a lot of 70-somethings out at the night clubs
dancing and meeting new people.
Hef starts to invite them to some of the parties at the Playboy Mansion.
The very first party I went to at the Playboy Mansion was in August 2000.
It was a Midsummer Night's Dream Party
and Hef was still dating the Bentley twins at the time and I remember seeing them
and just thinking they were the best-looking women I'd ever seen.
They were really tall, thin, gorgeous, had perfect hair, had the prettiest costumes.
I was just in awe, I thought they were so beautiful.
To walk into your first Mansion party,
even though there's so many beautiful women,
you definitely feel on display,
the center of attention.
It was the biggest, most elaborate party I'd ever seen.
There were celebrities everywhere.
In LA, it was the place to be at the time.
Everybody wanted to get a chance to go.
After the twins got to experience a taste of this completely different lifestyle
than the one that they grew up with, they started to think,
"We could really get used to this."
In 1998, both of them moved into the mansion
and officially became Hef's girlfriends.
My relationship ended with Sandy before she was at the Playboy Mansion.
But knowing Sandy when she has an invitation from Hugh Hefner,
who's one of the most famous people in the entire world,
it's a no-brainer decision that this young girl from Joliet
is gonna live at the Playboy Mansion with Hugh Hefner.
I have no doubt that Sandy as well as Mandy made that decision instantly.
[Holly] Sandy and Mandy were really young, 22 years old.
Mandy was a little more reserved
and Sandy was more confident, assertive, business-like.
She knew how to put herself together
and just had a really bright future ahead of her.
These are my girlfriend.
-Every one of them is your girlfriend? -Yes.
It was definitely a strange gimmick
to be dating two twin sisters at the same time.
I don't know how seriously people took that,
but it was definitely controversial,
it was definitely something that got a lot of attention.
You must feel so special.
We all have a great time together.
-We're all best friends. -Yes.
Early 2000s was kind of pop-misogynistic.
This is the height of the Howard Stern shock jock era.
You had all these shows like The Man Show and things like that.
And you know, Hef's response to that was,
"Look at me, I'm dating three women all at once.
Two of them are identical twins,"
and that got him a lot of publicity.
[Stacy] My name is Stacy Burke and I was one of Hugh Hefner's seven girlfriends.
During the 2000 era.
The Bentley twins were before the seven-girlfriend thing.
This started it.
He was with them. With Sandy, Mandy, and Brande Roderick,
who was a Playmate and Hugh Hefner's main girlfriend
during the Bentley twin era.
Hi, I'm Mandy Bentley.
I'm Sandy Bentley.
-I'm Hef Bentley. -[all laughing]
And I'm Brande Roderick.
[Holly] Living at the mansion as one of Hef's girlfriends,
you get to order whatever you wanna eat at any time of the day,
you're living on this gorgeous property.
But there's also restrictions, too.
There's a curfew, you're not supposed to date anybody else,
you're not really being allowed to do your own thing necessarily.
[Mandy Edmonston] When it came to what Hugh Hefner expected of his girlfriends,
he had a lot of demands.
He wanted all of his girls to always be ready in full hair and makeup.
[Stacy] The Bentley twins got the $1,000 a week
plus when you go out for special events,
Hef has an allowance for outfits, 'cause he knows you have to get dressed up.
We have to have the shoes, you gotta have the hair, you gotta have makeup.
Basically everything is taken care of for you and extra.
If you wanted a boob job, you wanted a nose job.
Anything you wanted was taken care of for you.
[Holly] He ended up putting the Bentley twins on the cover
in the May 2000 issue of Playboy.
[Stacy] Playmates are reserved for up-and-comers.
Playboy wants to be, "This is who we discovered."
They're kind of like the debutante ball.
[Holly] The twins' pictorial was really stunning.
They were on these orange-colored satin sheets,
they were wearing pajamas that were supposed to look like Hef's pajamas.
Like, one of them had the top, one of them had the bottom.
And it showed them in the limo,
it was supposed to give you kind of a feel for,
"What would your night look like if you were dating these women?"
Like if you were Hef and you were dating these women.
To be Hef's girlfriend, basically, whatever's Hef's schedule is your schedule.
You're part of him, you're his shadow, you're his arm candy.
[Holly] You're expected to look a certain way.
When you're asked questions about the relationship,
you're expected to answer in a way that Hef would approve of
and in a way that's only flattering to him.
So you definitely have to keep an eye on everything you're doing.
Even though Hef dates multiple women at once,
all of his girlfriends were expected to be completely faithful to him.
Not only was it a personal thing,
but the concept of fidelity was really tied up into his public image as well.
[Stacy] If you were seeing someone on the side,
it's not good for his image because that's his image,
having these girlfriends at his side, being loyal.
[Holly] There was a definitely a streak of possessiveness.
The other side of moving into the mansion
is it's a world of other things you don't think about,
like private investigators, curfews,
you're being watched all the time whether you realize it or not.
[Bruce] Sandy was driven like a magnet to men who had power.
She absolutely was attracted to men with power.
There's not even a question about it.
[Holly] I think one of the worst things you can do
in a relationship with Hef from his standpoint is be seen with another man.
And Sandy knew what the redline rules were.
A lot of men, whether it was rock stars in the '80s,
or young Wall Street guys in the 2000s, like,
they would look at Playboy Magazine
and pick people out and be like, "I wanna meet her."
And if a woman wanted to meet a successful man,
posing in Playboy could definitely be an avenue
to meeting those kind of men, for sure.
[Brian] In the summer of 1999, in Las Vegas,
Sandy Bentley met Mark Yagalla.
Mark was incredibly successful, was a high roller,
he's buying homes for $1.2 million,
he's got a fleet of cars, an oil company, a race horse.
Mark Yagalla was, in the late '90s...
Best description I could give of him is an absolute runaway train.
Mark was and is brilliant.
In high school, he realized that he could make money in investing.
When Mark was 20,
he had hundreds of thousands turning into millions of dollars.
So, what do you do? You go to Las Vegas.
And that's what he did.
He really could buy anything he wanted.
It wasn't just materialistic things,
it was access to the upper echelon women.
Shortly after, Mark and Sandy begin dating
and their relationship took off like a house on fire.
He flew her by helicopter to a Bentley dealership
and bought her a milk and honey Bentley.
[Bill] The American Express bill for one month,
it was over a million dollars.
That's how much money he was spending on Sandy.
Mark was spending a lot more money on Sandy than Hef was.
[Brian] The understanding was it had to be kept quiet. Sandy was dating Hef.
Mark was never disillusioned
and never thought that Sandy only liked him because of who he was.
The largest part, certainly, was the money that he was spending on her.
[Holly] Mark Yagalla was buying Sandy a million-dollar house,
he was buying her all these jewels.
It was a lot, it was very unusual.
It wasn't your typical run-of-the-mill,
"Oh, I have a rich boyfriend" thing.
But also, it's a bad look. Sandy was cheating on Hef. [chuckles]
[Brian] Mark did not care about Hugh Hefner,
he didn't care about what Hugh Hefner did, thought, or said.
All Mark was focused on and obsessed with was Sandy Bentley.
All was going well in the Mark and Sandy relationship
and one night out in Las Vegas at the Bellagio,
they ran into a friend of Hef's.
And his eyes almost popped out of his head
when he looked down at this short, well-dressed man,
Mark Yagalla, arm-in-arm with Sandy.
[Bill] There were some photos taken
which Sandy got very upset about
because she couldn't afford to have Hugh Hefner seeing those photos.
[Holly] Even after I moved in, I saw women get kicked out
and not let back in the mansion.
All their stuff was packed up and put out the back gate
because they were caught out with another man.
Hef, when he found out, was very, not only hurt,
but pissed off, angry.
[Holly] In the fall of 2000,
Sandy and Mandy Bentley ended their relationship with Hef
and moved out of the Playboy Mansion.
[Brian] After Mark and Sandy's relationship was out in the open,
Mark had the opportunity to have Sandy all to himself.
She was amassing this beautiful jewelry collection
of necklaces and rings and earrings.
She even had a replica of the necklace
from the movie Pretty Woman that was worth $250,000.
And, for all intents and purposes,
living with Mark Yagalla in Vegas.
[Brian] In the summer of 2000,
Mark was respected by people in not just the financial world
but he was respected by celebrities just by virtue of who he was hanging out with
and who was on his arm.
Mark perfected this facade.
But Mark's business became your classic Ponzi scheme.
The bulk of it was going to fund his lifestyle.
[Eugene] In October 2000,
that's when Mark ran out of money
and it all became very clear it was a slam-dunk case.
And so the cops arrested him in his yellow Corvette
and he was arraigned on federal securities fraud charges.
Mark Yagalla is sentenced
to more than five years in prison
and he also has to pay $30 million back to his investors.
[Melissa] To the surprise of no one,
as soon as Mark gets arrested, Sandy drops him like a hot potato.
After everything ended with Playboy and with Mark Yagalla,
Sandy started spending more time
with a man named Michael Tardio.
Michael Tardio was 35 years old,
was a father of two, and was separated from his wife.
He raced motorcycles, he was part of the scene there in LA.
Michael Tardio recently moved to Los Angeles from New York
and he was working there as a part-time model
as well as being doorman at the Garden of Eden club where he met Sandy Bentley.
Somehow they hit it off.
So Sandy and Michael kind of hook up.
Sandy and Michael seemed to have a genuine connection,
they were similar in age, they had shared interests,
nobody could point to this and say it was a transactional relationship.
[Bill] Sandy is still living in Las Vegas,
but Mark Yagalla's been arrested.
He's in a prison down in Florida,
and Sandy's back with Michael Tardio.
Sandy was trying to put everything with Mark Yagalla behind her,
but the SEC wasn't finished with her yet.
[Melissa] When in the effort to recoup some of the money
that Mark had stolen from his investors,
the SEC starts tracking where this money's gone.
[Brian] Every single thing that Mark bought for Sandy Bentley
was with OPM, Other people's money.
Sandy didn't know that Mark was stealing this money to buy her things.
[Mandy Edmonston] In total, it was estimated
that Mark had spent about $7 million on Sandy.
Once it was discovered that much of this money
was actually spent on Sandy and her home, and her vehicles,
her expensive furs and her jewelry,
Sandy was actually ordered to give all of that stuff back.
We settled with her, she agreed to give back all the ill-gotten gains.
We went out to Vegas to retrieve these assets,
per an agreement with Sandy and her counsel.
When we got there and she wasn't there,
obviously that was not a good sign.
The safe was locked, so we had to bring in a locksmith.
As soon as the SEC was able to gain entry and access to the home
and do an inventory of all the assets,
they realized there is no way
Sandy didn't abscond with at least some or all of this jewelry.
[Eugene] Through counsel,
Sandy claimed that some of the jewelry that Yagalla had given her
was stolen well before Mark was arrested.
That was her story and she was sticking to it.
And we weren't really in much of a position to find otherwise.
Um, but we kept looking, we kept digging
and trying to connect Sandy and the stolen jewelry.
And we were getting a lot of pressure from the SEC
because these folks lost a lot of money.
In 2001, after confronting Sandy about the stolen jewelry,
the SEC is at a dead end.
Sandy is living her life in LA
and they cannot prove that Sandy has committed a crime,
so the case goes cold.
[Eugene] In 2002, the detective at LAPD reached out to me
'cause he was dealing significantly with Sandy Bentley.
That's when we first learned about the murders.
[Tim] When I heard a Playboy Playmate was involved in this,
it didn't strike me as anything unusual at the time.
I didn't learn until later how deep that involvement went.
My name's Tim Shaw.
I worked for LAPD for approximately 34 years.
This murder case was very unique and very different
than any case I'd ever worked.
This was a very layered case
with many factors and many players in this investigation.
[siren wailing]
I remember arriving to the scene at about 3:40 in the morning.
I remember the scene being very, very dark.
A black Mercedes SUV in a well-to-do neighborhood
was found completely engulfed in flames.
There were two bodies in the passenger seat of this Mercedes SUV.
The coroner gets there
and at that point they discovered the cause of death.
Both victims had gunshot wounds to the back of the head.
The whole thing may have been set up by thugs
because coroner's office determined that whoever the shooter was,
he was sitting in the back seat with the victims.
And then set the car on fire.
The victims were removed from the vehicle at the scene.
North Hollywood homicide detectives start their investigation
trying to find out who these two people are and why they ended up dead.
The two victims were Chris Monson
and Sandy Bentley's boyfriend Michael Tardio.
[Steve] Michael Tardio and Chris Monson were best friends.
They raced motorcycles together,
they were two well-off men in their 30s
that seemed to be living respectable lives,
they were close to their families.
So the cops were trying to figure out who would want these guys dead.
We ran the license plate number for the black Mercedes SUV.
The vehicle was registered to a rental car company.
We sent detectives to get information on who had rented the vehicle.
It was a repeat customer, Michael Tardio,
who had rented this Mercedes-Benz a couple of days earlier.
Michael Tardio, we learned, was the doorman
at a popular Hollywood night club, the Garden of Eden.
Investigators go over to the Garden of Eden night club to ask questions.
While investigators were interviewing people,
famous Playboy Playmate Sandy Bentley showed up.
Sandy identified herself as Michael Tardio's girlfriend.
Sandy's really worried.
She had made 20 something calls to Michael that morning.
She hasn't heard from him.
But it wasn't until she ran into the homicide detectives at Garden of Eden
that she found out about Michael Tardio and Chris Monson being killed.
[Holly] I first heard about the murders
from one of Hef's friends at the dinner table one night
before Hef came downstairs.
I was like, "What now?"
I never heard Hef say a word about it,
if any investigator ever spoke to him about it, I don't know.
This was two years after Sandy and Mandy had left the mansion.
I just know that Hef would have wanted to keep himself and Playboy
as far from the story as possible.
They ask her, "When's the last time you saw them?"
[Mandy Edmonston] Sandy says that she had seen them the night before
and that Michael had actually gone
somewhere in Hollywood with Chris Monson.
Sandy says Michael told her, "Hey, if something happens, call this number."
This is the guy Michael Jacobs.
And that was all she knew. She didn't know why they ended up dead.
When she told them Michael Jacobs,
the detectives take that name, go back to the station, run up to do a check on him.
On September 27, 2002, we obtain Michael Jacobs' cell phone records.
The cell phone records indicated
that Michael Jacobs was in contact,
the night of the murder, with Michael Tardio.
We find Michael Jacobs at his residence, and his girlfriend.
And Michael Jacobs voluntarily went back to the station
and was interviewed by detectives
while I stayed at his house along with other detectives
and interviewed his girlfriend.
When the detectives talked to Michael Jacobs, he did say,
"Oh, yeah, I knew Michael Tardio and Chris Monson,
but I don't know what happened to them. I was with my girlfriend."
So the murder occurs in North Hollywood
which is on the east side of the valley,
Michael lives over in Woodland Hills.
Michael Jacobs says, "I wasn't there."
Well, why is your cell phone pinging off the tower
that's right next to where the murder happened?
His answer to that, "The telephone company's wrong."
But the phone stuff was so new at the time
that detectives could not hold Michael Jacobs, they had to release him,
but they put surveillance on him.
Then once again, North Hollywood detectives
go down to the Garden of Eden in Hollywood.
On September 23, we interviewed one of Michael Tardio's coworkers
who said that in early 2001, Monson and Tardio had driven to Las Vegas
and collected jewelry and furs worth approximately $500,000
from Sandra Bentley's house
and drove back to Los Angeles in an Escalade.
This was the first time I'd heard of the jewels and furs.
[Eugene] Previously, Sandy had claimed
that the jewelry that Yagalla had given her was stolen.
But once Tardio and Monson were found killed,
that explanation no longer made sense.
[Tim] At this point in the investigation,
it became very clear that Sandra Bentley
is not being forthright and honest with us.
So we started an investigation into Sandra Bentley.
[Bill] When we first got the case,
the investigation at that point had shown
that jewelry was missing from the house in Las Vegas
where Sandy lived with Mark Yagalla back in 2001
and that Michael Tardio and Chris Monson
may have had that jewelry in Los Angeles.
[Tim] Before she left Las Vegas,
Sandra Bentley had given testimony to the SEC
that she didn't know anything about the jewelry
and now it's becoming clear that that jewelry was in fact
in possession of Michael Tardio and Christopher Monson.
We knew that Sandy was the most important person that we needed to speak to.
Sandy's residence was in West Los Angeles.
A nice house, really nice neighborhood.
My partner and I went out to talk to Sandy and she invited us in,
she's all dressed up really nice,
but we sit down and talk to her,
we knew that she was holding back.
[Holly] It must have been really jarring
to go from living at the mansion for two years
where you're very controlled and sheltered
to living the high life with Mark Yagalla
and then the next thing you know,
you're in the middle of this big case
and maybe you don't have, like, the resources or the people to talk to.
And all of a sudden, you know, you feel like you're in big trouble
and don't know what to do next.
[Bill] She denied anything about the jewelry.
She doesn't know anything about why Michael and Chris were killed.
I mean, she was just stonewalling us.
I personally thought
there was so much jewelry stolen from the house in Las Vegas.
She still had to have some in her house in Los Angeles.
I just remember when I left there, telling her that,
"When you see me again, you may not like it."
[siren yelping]
One of Detective Cox's first moves was to execute a search warrant
on Sandy's property.
We went to her house early in the morning.
I was there, the district attorney had come with us,
which they usually don't.
FBI had come with us, and the IRS.
A search warrant was also served on Sandy's sister, Mandy,
on the same day, because one, they're twin sisters,
they stayed with Hef together at the same time at the mansion.
We know that Sandy and Mandy were close,
that they lived close together.
Maybe Mandy is holding some of the jewelry.
Evidence is really what we're looking for.
[Holly] The federal agents came and searched the twins' houses
which must have been absolutely terrifying.
It became clear that Mandy didn't know, really, anything.
So we released Mandy, but in Sandy's house, we found evidence.
A Louis Vuitton bag.
Sandy became my best friend that day
because murder is much more important than tax evasion.
So, we played the good guy and said,
"You know, we can take care of your IRS problem if you play with us."
After that, Sandy told us the whole story.
[Mandy Edmonston] In her confession, Sandy admits to the police
that she and Michael Tardio did steal the jewels from her old residence.
But she says this all spawned because of the financial hardship that she was facing
in the wake of the end of her relationship
with Playboy and with Mark Yagalla back in 2001.
Sandy's really upset about losing this money,
losing her home,
and she speaks to her boyfriend, Michael Tardio.
[Bill] She calls him crying one night from Las Vegas,
saying, "I have to leave, they're kicking me out in the morning
and I will have nothing.
No money, no house to live in, no cars, nothing."
They come up with the idea to steal some of those jewels and furs.
[Bill] Michael and Chris drive to Las Vegas.
Chris stays in the car, Michael jumps the fence in the back,
goes inside the house.
He sees the jewelry that Sandy has there and he goes,
"Oh, no, that's not enough.
We need more."
He takes the jewelry, Sandy also had four furs that were made for her.
Her name was embroidered on the inside of the coats.
They took that, they took some Louis Vuitton bags,
but the big thing was the jewelry and the furs.
[Mandy Edmonston] Sandy and Michael were putting it in bags
which they were then throwing over the fence into the neighbor's yard
where Chris Monson was waiting to collect these items.
Sandy and Michael put all the stuff in the car and they drive back to LA.
[Steve] When that relationship with Mark Yagalla ended,
Sandy needed money and so did Michael Tardio,
and they thought they were gonna pretty quickly be able to sell that jewelry.
But the idea of, "Let's sell this stolen jewelry" is a dangerous game.
[Bill] Michael took it to a jeweler there in Beverly Hills.
He laid out all this jewelry,
he gave a story like somebody had died and left this jewelry.
[Mandy Edmonston] The potential buyer ended up backing out
after she started to think that this deal just looked too good to be true.
[Bill] After a year,
Sandy and Michael were still holding on to the jewelry.
[Mandy Edmonston] Michael had been going to the Garden of Eden
and looking for somebody to potentially buy these jewels
or put them in contact with somebody who can help.
Through these conversations,
Michael Jacobs and Michael Tardio
became acquainted with each other.
[Bill] Michael Jacobs tells Tardio,
"I got a buyer, I can set you up with the buyer."
[Mandy Edmonston] Sandy told Detective Cox that this person was somebody
that was only going by the name of Mr. Big.
[Bill] When Michael Tardio knew he was going to go meet a buyer for his jewelry,
he rented the Mercedes and he wanted someone
that he knew could cover his back in case something happened.
So Chris, just being the good friend he is, said he would go with him.
Sandy says on that day, Michael had gone out to get a money counter.
That's how naive he was.
He thinks he's gonna collect, I don't know, maybe a quarter of a million dollars
and Mr. Big is gonna give him a quarter million dollars in cash.
He even took counterfeit markers to check the bills.
He had all the jewelry cleaned,
he had all the furs cleaned, he picked it all up,
he had it all in the rented Mercedes.
He has Chris in the car with him, it was like 9:00 at night.
They go over to Sandy's house and they tell Sandy, "Okay, we're gonna go."
And they would make contact with each other through the telephone.
The last contact Sandy had with them
was they were driving through the Mount Olympus area in the Hollywood Hills.
Michael tells her that they are getting ready
to go meet up with this buyer, Mr. Big.
And that was the last she ever heard from him.
Sandy said, "You know, I never even thought about them being killed.
That was the last thing that I ever thought of."
[Steve] With jewelry, there's a concrete lead for police,
because you would think that the killer is trying to sell these jewels somehow.
If the police can find the jewels,
they might be able to find the killer.
[Bill] I found out from Sandy
where Michael Tardio had the jewelry appraised back in early 2001,
so we went to the jewelry store which was in Beverly Hills.
A woman at the jewelry store told us about how she had seen
Michael Tardio's appraisal slip.
She wasn't involved in that jewelry stuff, but she had seen it.
Then a month or so later, after Michael and Chris were killed,
she was working when this man comes in.
The man shows an appraisal slip to the man behind the counter
who doesn't know anything about it.
But the girl had seen it.
She recognized it as the same appraisal
that Michael Tardio had brought in just the month before.
Now Michael's dead,
who is this guy who's coming in a month after Michael
with the same appraisal slip?
If Sandy would have been more cooperative
at the beginning,
had been more upfront and honest with us,
we probably would have gotten things done quicker.
[Steve] They still have Michael Jacobs on their radar,
maybe they can find some way to tie him to these murders.
They get him,
they take him to the station and they start questioning him.
[Bill] Now as a detective, you're counting on him giving you something.
Maybe when you talk to him, he may think, "Oh, you know, the gig is up, I gotta talk."
And Michael Jacobs was a complete wreck
because he knew that we were continually doing this case.
So he knew it wasn't going away.
According to Michael Jacobs,
he was just going out to connect Michael Tardio and Mr. Big.
On the night that this all happened, they're in Hollywood,
they're both parked there on the side street waiting for Mr. Big.
So when he saw Mr. Big's car come,
he just says adios to Tardio and Monson and he leaves.
We want to know who Michael Tardio was going to meet.
Mr. Big, who is this guy?
And Michael's gonna tell us 'cause we have him,
we have him right where we want him, he wanted to tell us.
I think he was kind of tired at this point
of always thinking he was being followed
or the case was still being investigated.
He took us right to the point where it looked like he was gonna tell us something,
but Michael Jacobs feared someone else more than he did the police.
He let us down by not saying anything.
And so we had to release him.
We never were able to find out who the man was that came in to try to sell this jewelry.
With so many loose ends,
police are now forced to put together
the last moments of Chris Monson
and Michael Tardio as best as they can.
[Bill] I personally think that whenever Michael and Chris
are driving up through the hills
and they last had contact with Sandy, shortly after that,
they made a stop and this is where they think they're gonna make the deal.
They let somebody in the back seat
who they think is gonna pay them the money
or look at the goods or whatever it is,
but that's not what happens.
[gunshots]
I mean, the thing with Michael and Chris, they had no street smarts.
They had no street smarts, and when you get yourself involved in that,
you're gonna get hurt.
We have no idea who Mr. Big is still to this day.
Even Michael Jacobs says, "I don't know who Mr. Big is."
And Sandy didn't know. It's a cold case.
[Steve] This case has never been solved.
You would think that the paper trail
would have given somebody away.
You would have thought that somebody trying to recover these jewels,
that would have come out somehow
and it's surprising to me that whoever did this got away with it.
It would be different if it happened now, but back in 2002, no.
[Tim] The jewelry may have been melted down and broken apart.
There are some pieces that maybe serialized,
there still may be some hope for those pieces.
But at this point,
the jewelry's never been found.
[Melissa] Meanwhile, Sandy and Mandy Bentley
are doing their best to stay out of the spotlight.
Sandy has decided to settle down, she started a family.
The image the twins had when they were dating Hef, they just looked so gorgeous,
and I know Hef spent a lot more money on them
than he did with like girlfriends that came after.
When I moved into the mansion, things were not as luxurious.
And I think that is because he felt so burned
by that first relationship after his marriage
that he was a lot more careful with his girlfriends moving forward.
[Tim] It's sad when you have a double homicide,
you have families that are torn apart.
Their loved ones that they'll never get to see again
and their special occasions throughout life that they'll never be a part of.
So it's still frustrating
that that closure wasn't provided to the families.
[Mandy Edmonston] While this case has been considered a cold case
for quite some time,
investigators actually did decide to recently reopen the investigation
into the deaths of Chris Monson and Michael Tardio.
[Bill] I know someone that's working on that cold case team.
I think that if anybody can help solve it,
then she will do whatever she can, so...
I'm hoping.
♪
The Playboy mansion is very mysterious.
You're being watched all the time
whether you realize it or not.
If you get the wrong set of eyes on you,
it could lead to something really awful.
I called it the Playboy curse,
because once you were associated with that world
things went horribly wrong.
MAN: When Hugh Hefner has a master plan for you,
you do what he tells you to do.
WOMAN: A beautiful woman. A murder of another woman.
She was accused of something that she said she didn't do.
She was supposed to be at Sharon Tate's home.
The people who murdered her friends were out to get her.
When a girl does Playboy
you never know who you are surrounded by.
MAN: It's one of the most heinous cases I've ever worked.
This is an animal out there that did this.
WOMAN: Sadomasochism, choking, bondage, snuff films.
It's a really sick thing.
We find a female subject lying in the bathroom
clearly had been shot.
Her tremendous success only got them in trouble.
There is a fantasy of being in Playboy
and then there is the reality.