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if that isn’t all bad enough, Erika has publicly accused Tom of cheating on her with multiple women, Tom’s law license was revoked, his assets were frozen and two Chapter 7 involuntary bankruptcy petitions have been filed — he owes nearly $57 million to law firms and other creditors,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.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com Iron gates hung between towering stone pillars swing open to a parking lot-sized brick-paved motor court where a pair of palm trees and two stone lions stand sentry next to the solid bronze front door.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com Guests are greeted in a long and wide, travertine floored and walnut paneled entrance gallery that includes one of the elegantly staid mansion’s only Erika Jayne-style flamboyances: a cheeky tiger-patterned runner on the gracefully curved staircase.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com At one end of the entrance gallery, a vast formal living room with ruby brocade furnishings and parquet wood flooring showcases hand-rubbed plaster walls, a coffered ceiling, a palace-worthy fireplace and floor-to-ceiling French doors that open to the gardens. At the opposite end of the hall, the formal dining room, with baronial stone fireplace, is wrapped in delicate butter yellow silk wall coverings.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com Less formal and more intimate gatherings might more comfortably be held in the paneled library that has a long wall of built-in bookshelves and two fireplaces, one at each end of the uncommonly long room.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com Expensively equipped with up-to-date appliances, including an imported range that costs as much as a gently used Suburu, the kitchen is a homey relaxed space configured around a butcher block topped island and open to a casual dining area with wood beams on the high ceiling.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com A main floor guest suite includes a private entrance, and two more guest bedrooms share a wing of the upper floor with a laundry room and den that is easily converted to an additional bedroom. Also upstairs is a tiny and opulent private chapel under a groin-vaulted ceiling.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com The sprawling primary suite occupies a wing of its own and comprises a private sitting rom with a wall of carved wood built-ins, a bedroom with an antique carved stone fireplace, a small study/office and dual bathrooms and dressing rooms.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com One bathroom is paneled in burled wood and sheathed in chocolate-brown marble with a multi-colored stained glass window in the oversized shower space, while the adjoining haberdashery-style dressing room is lined with paneled wardrobes.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com The second bathroom in the primary suite, the one used by the former lady of the house, features Chinoiserie accents, a built-in shampoo bowl and a soaking tub set into a niche lined with blood-red tufted silk panels. Erika Jayne’s giant closet, once jampacked with a department store’s worth of Gucci, Fendi, Balenciaga and Valentino and often shown on “The Real Houswives of Beverly Hills,” is now empty.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com Just outside the formal living room, a loggia gives way to a large terrace where a series of fountains cascade down to the swimming pool.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com Beyond the pool, stone columns enhance the open-air dining pavilion that is flanked by vine-draped pergolas.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com Encircled by a walking path that links rose gardens, grassy lawns, wisteria covered pergolas and more patios that Erika Jayne has wigs, the estate’s extensive formal gardens are sprinkled with figurative bronze sculptures. Even the three-car garage oozes with grandeur thanks to filigree iron doors and chandeliers hung from vaulted ceilings.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com Tom Girardi, 81, remains in residence — for now — but Erika Jayne moved out months ago to a significantly smaller rental home in L.A.’s tony Hancock Park area. At just over 2,000-square feet, the updated 1920s Spanish bungalow is just 20% the size of her former Pasadena manse. Last available at $9,500 per month and most likely to be featured in the upcoming season of RHOBH, the three-bedroom spread has a gated courtyard entry and, in the lush, tropically landscaped backyard, a camera-friendly Moroccan-style poolside cabana.