Jesse James Hollywood

Jesse James Hollywood (born January 28, 1980) is an American former drug dealer who kidnapped and ordered the Murder of Nicholas Markowitz in 2000.

His father moved the family to Colorado in an attempt to run a restaurant in the mid-1990s, but returned to West Hills in 1995.

Hollywood also played baseball when he attended El Camino Real High School.

During his adolescent years he started power lifting and ingesting muscle supplements to help build up his muscle mass.

His coach would later describe him as an "emotional kid" who was later expelled for erupting into a violent fit of rage at one of his teachers near the end of his sophomore year.

He transferred to Calabasas High School where he played on the varsity baseball team until he injured his back and leg, forcing him to give up the sport.

Investigators believe he started selling illegal drugs a year before he ordered the Murder of Nicholas Markowitz.

He recruited his former high school friends William Skidmore, Brian Affronti, Benjamin Markowitz, and Jesse Rugge to dispense narcotics for him and build up a profitable illicit drug operation.

He had been a close friend of Benjamin Markowitz, playing on the same junior baseball league and would visit the same Malibu, California gymnasium to exercise together.

On August 6, 2000, Hollywood and some of his crew, including Jesse Rugge and William Skidmore, kidnapped Nicholas Markowitz.

Nicholas was half-brother to Ben Markowitz, who owed Hollywood $1,200 in drug debt.

The intention was to use Nicholas as leverage in order to get Ben Markowitz to pay the debt.

Nicholas was taken from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, and held for three days.

Hollywood became concerned about his circumstances after consulting a lawyer who told him that anyone involved with the kidnapping was looking at a life sentence.

Hollywood ordered Ryan Hoyt, one of his subordinates, to kill Markowitz, giving Hoyt a TEC-9 automatic pistol with which to do it.

On August 9, Hoyt and other associates of Hollywood took Markowitz to a rural location in the mountains north of Santa Barbara and killed him, burying his body in a shallow grave.

The body was found three days later.

When Ryan Hoyt was arrested, Hollywood fled the country into Canada and then went to Brazil with help from his father, his godfather Richard Dispenza (who was unaware he was a fugitive at the time), and his girlfriend.

Law enforcement agencies and the Markowitz family offered a reward of US$30000 for information leading to Hollywood's capture, an amount which was later raised to US$50000.

Hollywood lived on Copacabana Beach, where he assumed the identity of "Michael Costa Giroux".

He claimed to be a native of Rio de Janeiro, and later on, of Saquarema.

To blend in, Hollywood learned the Portuguese language.

He earned money in Brazil by putting up posters advertising a nightclub and later got jobs teaching private English language classes and as a dog walker.

Yet the bulk of the money he lived on came from a US$1200 monthly stipend from his father.

He was profiled on America's Most Wanted in September 2000 and June 2004, and twice in 2005 after he was captured, as well as Unsolved Mysteries in August 2001.

The story was also featured on NBC's Dateline.''

He developed a relationship with Marcia Reis, and in November 2004 she got pregnant.

Hollywood thought her pregnancy would prevent him from being extradited to the United States, as he believed Brazilian law included a provision that protected the father of a native Brazilian from extradition.

This had been true, but the law was changed after the international controversy involving fugitive criminal Ronnie Biggs.

Additionally, since he had arrived in the country with a false passport he was an illegal immigrant, which meant he could be deported regardless of his fathering a child with a native Brazilian.

United States authorities worked with Brazilian agents and discovered that Hollywood was planning to meet a cousin at a mall.

He was arrested in 2005 and is serving life without parole at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, California.

Jesse James Hollywood was born to Jack and Laurie Hollywood and was raised in West Hills, a neighborhood in the western San Fernando Valley region of the City of Los Angeles, California.

As a child he was involved in junior baseball league.

Hollywood attended Pinecrest Woodland Hills, in Woodland Hills, California, where he excelled in reading and baseball.

Here, he also became best friends with another boy from an affluent family and the two of them became a duo, referring to themselves as "The Pros."

They were often seen wearing baggy jeans with that moniker spray painted along the legs, as was fashionable at the time.

He was arrested by Brazilian authorities in Saquarema in March 2005.

In July 2005 Reis gave birth to Hollywood's son, named John Paul Hollywood-Reis.

In 2005, on the same day Jesse James Hollywood was arrested in Brazil, his father was arrested for manufacturing the illicit narcotic GHB, but the charge was later thrown out of court.