She may be the famously bodacious, designer-wearing bombshell star of “The Real Housewives in Beverly Hills,” but for the last 20 years reality television personality and dance-pop entertainer Erika Girardi, aka Pretty Mess Erika Jayne, has made her home in a particularly posh pocket of Pasadena, a traffic-thronged 22-mile drive east of Beverly Hills.
That chapter has, however, come to an end, and the Mediterranean mansion she shared with her soon-to-be-ex-husband, once high-flying and now legally embattled and financially beleaguered attorney Thomas Girardi, has sailed onto the market with a $13 million price tag. Once the sale is finalized, Girardi will be forced to vacate the home within 15 days and the proceeds of the sale used to pay off some of the couple’s ocean of debt.
The May-December former couple— he’s 81 and she, his third wife, is 49, who met at the L.A. restaurant Chasen’s, where she was a cocktail server, seemed to put on a happy public face until last November when, seemingly out of the blue, Erika filed for divorce. But, that’s only the beginning of the sordid story.
What’s followed the surprise filing is an avalanche of allegations of embezzlement and infidelity. Just a month after they split, they were served in a suit that alleges Tom (and Erika) skimmed settlement money that should have been paid to victims in order to finance their unabashedly profligate lifestyle. (Remember, kids, these ballers once had two airplanes and Erika revealed on “The Wendy Williams Show” that she ponied up a staggering $40,000 a month on clothes, hair, makeup and her multi-person glam squad.) The suit additionally claims their pending divorce is but a tactic to protect their finances.
As if that isn’t all bad enough, Erika has publicly accused Tom of cheating on her with multiple women, Tom’s law license was revoked, his assets were frozen and two Chapter 7 involuntary bankruptcy petitions have been filed — he owes nearly $57 million to law firms and other creditors, according to the Chapter 7 trustee overseeing Tom’s estate. In February Tom was placed in conservatorship due to persistent short-term memory loss, and in March he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Meanwhile, Erika, who is no doubt going through an emotional and financial wringer, continues to spoon feed her 2.2 million Instagram followers periodic glam photos of herself while she promotes the upcoming premiere of the 11th season — her sixth — of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”
Designed by architect Myron Hubbard Hunt and completed in 1928, the Girardi’s stunning, Tuscan-style mansion is sequestered down a private lane above the Annandale Golf Club on nearly 1.75 acres. There are four bedrooms and five full bathrooms, plus four powder rooms, throughout the mansion’s close-to 10,300 square feet.
The listing is being managed by Ted Clark and Heather Lillard of Compass.