Las Vegas Weekly

January 5, 2010 · 4:25 PM

Media turn their focus to VIP party girls in Tiger Woods coverage

By Robin Leach

The Strip.

Photo: Tom Donoghue/www.donoghuephotography.com

Where in the world is Tiger Woods? It’s been 40-plus days since the golf superstar disappeared. We know for certain that he’s not in Las Vegas! However, our town has become a fertile hunting ground for investigative TV reporters, their cameras and national magazine writers and news gatherers with big checkbooks trying to pry secrets out of the Las Vegas VIP party girls linked to the story.

TV cameras, field producers and reporters are crawling all over town building sensational segments for February sweeps programming. The writers are here on assignment for scandalous cover stories. I’ve turned down all their requests to provide them with leads. In fact, I know none of these VIP nightclub hostess girls and have never been offered nor asked for their services!

The saddest part in all of this for Las Vegas is that Tiger’s Tiger Jam charity at Mandalay Bay that supports underprivileged and at-risk local youth has been jeopardized as sponsors give up on him. Sadder is that his two young children will one day grow up knowing how their dad cheated on their mom. Britain’s News of the World reported this past weekend that as many as 18 women were involved with him and that Tiger’s wife Elin Nordegren had banned his mother Tida and him from visiting the kids over the holidays.

If he winds up paying Elin $300 million, half of his fortune, in a divorce, as the London tabloid reported, will he ever get custody of them? The National Enquirer says video that exists of Tiger in a compromising tryst in a Las Vegas parking lot would scuttle that --probably permanently. TMZ is reporting today that a sex tape of Tiger has been offered to adult movie company Vivid, and we will grill the company’s execs when they arrive here in the next 48 hours for the annual Adult Entertainment Expo.

Tiger, who turned 34 last week, has already said he’s taking a year off from golf tournaments, but my London newshound friends say that’s now being extended to 2012. Ever since Las Vegas divorcee Ashley Samson and her gal pal blew the whistle on Tiger’s torrid affair with Tao VIP hostess Rachel Uchitel some 40 days ago, there’s been an almost daily torrent of Las Vegas girls linked to the golf star. He’s been in hiding since Thanksgiving when he fled his Florida home after fighting with his wife and mother about the self-confessed transgressions.

The list is far ranging and involves other club hostesses, strippers, party escort girls and even a provocative porn star for good measure. I’ve now learned the identity of the Las Vegas party girl who appeared on NBC’s Dateline wearing a brown wig. For now, I’ll just use the initials M.J. and ask, “Is she the ringleader in all of this?”

She’s certainly very close with Ashley, and she’s jumped around nightclubs in three hotels on and off the Strip. I’m reliably told that not only was she best friends and a roommate with Ashley, but also that she’s now at the center of the inquiries as to who recruited all the girls who hung out at Tiger’s tables when he came to town.

One nightclub hostess also told me it was common knowledge between the party girls that they’d always wind up in a highly exclusive Strip resort area reserved solely for high-rollers, even though he would have a suite or villa reserved at a different hotel when he came to play here.

Meantime, as Tigergate escalates, the war of words between the women boils over with extraordinary and sensational charges. “It’s their feuding that will blow open Tiger’s indiscretions even further,” one Las Vegas party insider told me. “Not only are they demanding money to spill the hidden secrets, they’re hiring lawyers to defend themselves from tabloid reporters stalking them, simultaneously offering their stories for sale, and now even threatening to sue each other.”

Ashley allegedly told the New York Daily News while she was interviewed at the Hard Rock Hotel’s Pink Taco that she should have taken the $200,000 she claims to have been offered to keep quiet about Rachel’s romance with Tiger that wound up on the National Enquirer cover on Thanksgiving, and thus setting off the extraordinary series of events leading to his downfall. MSNBC reported this week that Tiger allegedly had tens of thousands of dollars regularly paid to the girls to buy silence about their shenanigans.

Rachel left her VIP hosting duties for the more lucrative Manhattan nightclub scene. Insiders say that there she could have been earning as much as $250,000 a year for work, plus whatever Tiger gave her. It’s been well reported that she played their cell phone love messages and texts to her Las Vegas girlfriends turned enemies.

I already know of at least one tell-all book in the works about the dark side of the Las Vegas party girls and their sex-fueled lifestyles and liaisons with Tiger, other sports stars and A-list celebrities. “These girls don’t think of themselves as hookers,” I was told. “They’re quite happy to decorate nightclubs and restaurants as agency models and be available when a VIP invites them to their table. It’s a known fact here that many hotspots book models just to decorate the place or invite gorgeous girls to hang around for free food and drinks in case a VIP walks in.

“But this isn’t happening just in Vegas. It’s going on in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, London, Paris and the South of France. So don’t think it’s just a Vegas phenomenon. Anywhere you find buzz, action and excitement like South Beach or the French Riviera, you will find pretty girls willing to party with headline names in exchange for clothes, jewelry, plastic surgery, airline tickets or whatever other bills need to be paid, like rent and phones. It’s been like this since the nightclub explosion began flying high 10 years ago.”

As Fox News reported, “It’s a world where anything goes. The VIP host is a concierge, marketing director, point person or celebrity pimp. If the VIP wants something, they’ll get it whatever it is and whatever it costs.”

My inside source summed up: “It’s all about the secrecy, though. Keep everything under wraps and nobody knowing anything. Once that’s out in the open, everybody is finished -- as we’ve now seen.”

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

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