When Sita White, 43-year-old

daughter of the late British

industrialist Lord Gordon White,
dropped dead in her Santa Monica
yoga class last May, her life was
in complete disarray. There were the
drugs she used and her questionable
“financial advisers.” There was
her child with Pakistani politician
Imran Khan (now divorced from
heiress Jemima Goldsmith). There
was the bitter struggle with her
half-brother and stunning young
stepmother for a larger share of her
father’s fortune. VICKY WARD
investigates

WHITE
 PARENT TRAP
Imran and Jemima Khan in London
in 1996. Inset, Sita White with
Tyrian in 1995. Just weeks before her
death, Sita wrote a letter to
the Khans demanding $10 million,
but she never sent it.
INSET BY JON FREEMAN

MISCHIEF

O
n May 24, a
gloriously sunny Monday afternoon in Los
Angeles, a funeral service was held at the
St. Monica Catholic church for Ana-Luisa
(Sita) White, the 43-year-old daughter of
the late Lord Gordon White, flamboyant
head of the American arm of the giant
industrial conglomerate Hanson P.L.C.,
which he co-founded. On the morning of
May 13, Sita had dropped dead right be-
fore the start of a 9:15 class at the Yoga
Works studio on Main Street in Santa Mon-
ica. She had been there with her step-
mother, Victoria White O’Gara, a stunning,
392 VA N I T Y FA I R
raven-haired, 41-year-old former model.
Forty or so mourners were at the church
service, none of them blood relatives of the
deceased; Sita’s mother was not in atten-
dance, nor was her sister, her half-brother,
or even her daughter. Nor was her step-
mother. The pallbearers were led by one
John Ursich, 41, a strikingly handsome
Argentinean-born waiter, who had wed Sita
in June 2002, but who was divorcing her
at the time of her death. She claimed in
legal papers that he had been abusive to
her. (He denies this.)
Two nights before the service a group of
Sita’s friends, including London financier
Nicholas Camilleri, former British race-car
driver Rupert Keegan, former model Inge
Hazebroek, and real-estate investor Ali Win-
ston, had sat sipping champagne at Mr.
Chow in Beverly Hills. They were confused.
“Who sent that e-mail?” asked one of Sita’s
friends, referring to a missive outlining the
complicated funeral arrangements. “Who’s
coming?” No one could give answers.
The eulogy was given by Camilleri, 44,
an intense, rosy-cheeked man, who surpris-
ingly, given the occasion, had a bitter tone.
Camilleri railed about the fact that Sita’s 48-
year-old sister, Carolina, had called friends
and family that morning to say she was not
going. In fact, she had even gone to court
to try to stop the funeral. As an alternative,
Carolina was holding her own private vigil
at four o’clock at Sita’s pretty $2 million
home, on the top of a hill at the end of a
cul-de-sac in Beverly Hills.
Camilleri had had a stormy relationship
with Carolina for many years, and he was so
angry that in the end he felt that he hadn’t
said enough nice things about the deceased,
which he later regretted. “I wanted to say
how generous she was,” he says. But, he be-
lieves, she would have enjoyed the mayhem
surrounding her death: “She was a drama
queen!”
Ironically, Sita’s death got her the atten-
tion she had craved and been denied in
life—not only from her father, who had pro-
fessed to be disappointed in her and her
sister, but also from her onetime lover for-
mer Pakistani cricket star Imran Khan, who
refused to publicly recognize their daugh-
ter, Tyrian, now 12.
A
t six feet, Sita had been
a striking woman, with
blond, curly hair, big blue
eyes, and a slim figure,
which she maintained ob-
sessively all her life. In
recent years, fast living,
drugs, cosmetic surgeries, and endless fast-
ing had taken their toll, but in her late teens
she had been considered a beauty—not per-
haps as stunning as her older sister, Caroli-
na, who modeled, but nonetheless a beauty.
Sita was a garrulous, vivacious soul,
who loved to laugh, and her laugh was in-
fectious. She wanted a life of excitement—
it was in her genes. At one point she drove
a Ford Econovan, the interior of which
she’d had outfitted like a Learjet. Before
 ONE FOR THE MONEY
Lord Gordon White with Victoria Tucker
at Heathrow Airport, 1992. Opposite: left,
Sita outside her house in Beverly Hills,
December 2003; right, Sita at home, with
photos of Tyrian and Imran,
December 2003.
L E F T, B O T H BY F E R G U S G R E E R ; R I G H T, BY D AV E PA R K E R

“Here I am,
the bearer of bad news.
As always. It’s mind-
boggling,” says Victoria.
TWO FOR THE SHOW
The Khans in 1997. Opposite:
top, Sita with Imran; bottom, Lord White
with his son, Lucas, at Sita’s wedding
to Francesco Venturi, in 1986.

“This is not
about revenge,
it is about justice,”
wrote Sita
to the Khans.
 her death she drove a Hummer. A lesser
vehicle would not have done.
After the service Sita’s body was neither
buried nor cremated; rather, it was returned
to the morgue, where it remained on ice
until the autopsy results came in because
the L.A.P.D. had still not ruled out homi-
cide. Only two months later, after careful
examination, was it determined that she
had died of natural causes, specifically an
embolism in the lungs. The embolism had
most likely been the result of a poorly dif-
ferentiated sarcoma, a cancer that develops
in the soft tissues of the body. Surprisingly,
perhaps, given Sita’s history, there were no
traces of drugs.
That Sita and Victoria White O’Gara
had been together in yoga class seemed pe-
culiar to many people, since it is recorded
in a legal document—and her friends also
say—that Sita had disliked her stepmother.
Victoria had been married to Lord White,
40 years her senior, for three years when
he died, at age 72, in 1995. “Think Steph-
anie Seymour, but five times as gorgeous,”
says one person in describing Victoria. Sita
felt that Victoria (along with her and Car-
olina’s 29-year-old half-brother, Lucas) had
taken her share of what Sita estimated to
be a $400 million estate. (According to Lu-
cas’s spokesman, both the allegations and
estimate should be treated with caution
Sita told a confi-
dant that as a tactic
to get her fair share of
the estate she intend-
ed to befriend her step-
mother. Her father, says
a source, had taught her
to “keep your friends
close, but your enemies
closer.” After separating
from O’Gara in 2002,
Victoria moved back to
L.A. from Idaho, where
she’d been living with him
on a 4,000-acre ranch. Ac-
cording to the divorce pa-
pers, she had felt isolated
and lonely there. Once they
lived closer, Victoria and Sita
started talking regularly on
the phone. Sita even displayed
Victoria’s photograph among
those in her house.
But Sita was biding her
time, waiting for the financial
resources to target her step-
mother. She planned, among
other things, to try to halt a
Christie’s sale arranged by Vic-
toria of furniture, paintings, and artifacts
from Sita’s father’s estate.

and skepticism.) Sita and Carolina had
each been left a house in California, togeth-
er worth about $2.25 million, but these
technically remained the property of Pana-
manian trusts. The two also received month-
ly payments of around $13,000 each from
an offshore trust, the principal of which
they could not touch and, they claimed,
never knew the details of.
In addition, they had gotten “accelerat-
ed” payments of approximately $500,000
each, in exchange for signing papers that
stated they accepted the fact that the British
part of their father’s estate was worth noth-
ing. The sisters signed, so Sita said later,
under great pressure and without fully un-
derstanding what they were doing.
S
ita had, over the years, con-
fided her concerns about her
inheritance to her father’s old
friend Thomas Corbally, a
devastatingly handsome man
who had once been an intel-
ligence agent and a roué. He
had reportedly romanced heiresses Doris
Duke and Barbara Hutton and fashion
designer Mary McFadden, among oth-
ers, and he had informed the U.S. am-
bassador to the U.K. about the Profumo
affair in 1963. Throughout his life he
had maintained a close but discreet
relationship with Kroll Associates, the
giant private-investigation and security
firm.
Corbally had been a kindred spirit

L
ord White died in 1995 at
U.C.L.A. Medical Center,
where he never woke from
a coma brought on by years
of failing health due to lung
disease. Assisting in his care
was Victoria’s mother, Dixie
Tucker, a nurse. Lord White’s death certifi-
L E F T, BY C A N N G U Y E N
with Lord White, who had come to
America in 1973 as plain Gordon White,
with just $3,000 and a telex machine. White
had used Corbally’s professional services
to help do due diligence on nuts-and-bolts
companies that needed paring down to
achieve greater value. White helped build
the Hanson empire by acquiring and
that he was concerned to
the end that, even though Sita was extraor-
dinarily high-strung, some of her accusa-
tions should be investigated. Renee says,
“Tom knew that Gordon White didn’t in-
tend for the daughters [Sita and Carolina]
to get the bulk of the inheritance. He felt

cate is missing from the Los Angeles Coun-
ty recorder’s office. Shortly after her hus-
band’s death, Victoria moved her former
boyfriend, Tom O’Gara, into her and White’s
Bel Air mansion. She married him on New
Year’s Eve 1996.
S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 4
streamlining them. Like Corbally, he had
an eye for the ladies, in his day squiring
such famous beauties as Grace Kelly, Joan
Collins, and Ava Gardner.
Corbally died at 83, just a month before
Sita did. His widow, Renee, 60, confirms
they couldn’t handle money well, and he
was disappointed in them. But Tom did
think that there had been more money left
for them than they got.”
In November of last year Sita and Ca-
rolina concluded C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 4 1 4
VA N I T Y FA I R 395
 Monarchy of George II
sponsibility for the daunting task of restoring
order there. It is far from clear what the
outcome of the planned elections in Iraq—
or in Afghanistan—will be. There is certainly
no guarantee that the winners will be friendly
to the United States.
Bush has made it clear that he will not
complain if this year’s presidential election
becomes a referendum on his foreign poli-
cy—even if that means he loses. “[What] if
this decision [to invade Iraq] costs you the
election?,” Bob Woodward asked him in
December of last year. “The presidency—
Sita White
an agreement
C O N T I N U E D F RO M PAG E 3 95
with Lucas, who, in recent years, had suc-
cessfully battled cancer. The sisters received
final settlements of approximately $3 mil-
lion each from the family trust. In return,
they would no longer receive their monthly
income payments. It wasn’t anywhere near
the $150 million Sita had told people she’d
hoped for, but it was something. In a sur-
prising twist, one of the reasons Sita was able
to get this settlement was that documents
were made available to her by Victoria and
her attorney.
A ccording to a sworn legal statement
made by Sita a few months after she
had received the news of her settlement, she
was invited to Victoria’s new, $6.1 million
Beverly Hills house, next door to that of leg-
endary film producer Robert Evans. At the
gathering, Victoria introduced her to Cam-
eron Saxby, whose child attended the same
private school as one of Victoria’s three chil-
dren by Tom O’Gara (Jack, six; Helen, five;
and Thomas, four). Cameron is a matronly
type, with shoulder-length graying hair and
tired eyes. According to Sita, she agreed to
let Cameron and her husband, Richard Sax-
by, a plausible-looking and -sounding busi-
nessman, invest her money. It was an intro-
duction that Sita would come to believe
caused her ruin.
The Saxbys have been involved in numer-
ous lawsuits. Richard was the C.E.O. of Key-
stone Energy Services, Inc., an “electric ser-
vices provider,” where he was accused of hav-
ing inflated the trading prices of its stock; in
that case the stockholder plaintiffs decided
not to pursue the matter further because, ac-
cording to Lionel Glancy, a lawyer hired to
represent them, “there was no insurance and
nothing to collect.” (The Saxbys did not re-
spond to requests for comment.)
Following Victoria’s introduction, the Sax-
414 VA N I T Y FA I R
that’s just the way it is,” replied Bush. “Ful-
ly prepared to live with it.”
Whatever the result—and it is too close to
call right now—the American electorate will
have passed its judgment on the Bush pres-
idency before the year is out. Historians
generally have rather longer to make up their
minds, but this one has already reached a
provisional verdict. Like Henry V, this pres-
ident has shown a great deal more mettle
than his youthful conduct led the world to
expect. He has waged not one but two vic-
torious wars. Yet his achievements seem
flawed and fragile. It is far from clear that
he is the strong, decisive ruler his advisers
would have us believe he is. He has waged
bys and Sita became inseparable with un-
nerving speed. Carolina had turned to more
traditional money-management firms about
what to do with her settlement. Even though
Carolina and Sita had filed their joint law-
suit against Lucas, their relationship with
each other was up and down. In fact, Car-
olina, who now lives quietly on a ranch in
Central California, has told a friend that she
and Sita reconciled only a month before
Sita’s death.
In February, Sita and Cameron Saxby
paid a visit to the Los Angeles law offices
of estate-planning expert Elizabeth Nixon, a
straight-talking 36-year-old redhead, in or-
der to draw up a will and a trust for Sita.
In that will, dated February 27, 2004, Sita
appointed Cameron her executor and the
guardian of Tyrian. In Sita’s trust, Cameron
was named co-trustee. At the time, Sita had
known the Saxbys less than four weeks. In
the will she stipulated that none of the fol-
lowing were to be guardians of her daughter:
“My mother, Elizabeth Kalen De Vazquez,
my sister, Carolina Teresa White, my broth-
er, Lucas Charles White, my step mother,
Victoria Ann White, also known as Victoria
White Ogara, nor Imran Khan or Peter Sven-
nelson [Sita’s then boyfriend, according to
Nixon].”
Something about Cameron at that meet-
ing—and at subsequent ones—bothered Nix-
on. “I asked Sita, did she not have any other
friends? Why was she giving so much con-
trol over to this one person?” she says.
Nixon sent Sita for tax advice to Wendy
Barlin, a Los Angeles C.P.A., but Barlin
declined to handle Sita as a client after just
one meeting because, Barlin says, in their
meeting and then on the phone, Cameron,
always present, was so rude and aggressive.
“It was f this and f that,” Barlin says. “Sax-
by riled Sita up until Sita railed against ab-
solutely everyone in her life: her stepmother,
her mother, her brother, her sister . . . ” The
day before she died, Sita called Barlin back
to apologize for both her and Cameron’s
war with too little regard for the legality of
the means and too much confidence in the
sustainability of the ends. Above all, he has
brought the nation’s finances to a parlous
pass. Political expediency has repeatedly
been allowed to trump economic rationality.
But then, why should George II care—
any more than Henry V did—what a mere
historian thinks? Let Bob Woodward, the
Shakespearean Chorus of this modern his-
tory play, have the last word: “‘History,’
[Bush] said, shrugging, taking his hands
out of his pockets, extending his arms and
suggesting with his body language that it
was so far off. ‘We won’t know. We’ll all
be dead.’” ■
behavior and scheduled an appointment
to meet with her the next day.
O n April 1, Sita and Cameron met with
the Corballys in New York. According to
Renee, Cameron had drawn strange brown
marks on her cheeks and introduced herself
as “Elizabeth Marx.” Later, a sheepish Sita
claimed that Cameron had asked to go to
the meeting under an alias. At the meeting,
Sita wanted Tom’s advice on how to pursue
Lucas for yet more money. She seemed des-
perate.
“Her appearance changed dramatically
between February and May,” says Nixon.
“She became very, very thin.”
Tom told her he’d think about how she
should proceed, but Sita was the impatient
type. Back in Los Angeles, she drafted two
letters, which she then faxed to Gregory
Ehrlich, a young associate of Tom’s in New
York whom he had said she could trust.
The first letter, to Lucas, read:
Dear Lucas; Brother,
Nearly nine years of torture has finally come
to an end. As good as it feels to have this be-
hind us, I am equally saddened by the lack of
an emotional bond between us.
I know you have had the resources all along,
and I had always believed that you would come
to our rescue and do the right thing.
I have to wonder if you ever really knew the
extent of the tribulations we were left to en-
dure, as you knowingly turned your back on
Tyrian and myself. You have shown virtually
no compassion when you clearly had the finan-
cial resources to put an end to our plight.
We have been forced to live like gypsies in
our own home, moving from room to room
to escape the perils (leaks and extensive dam-
age). How many times I pleaded with you as
a custodian of the trust to provide necessary
funds for taxes and repairs that have escalat-
ed to nearly one million dollars. . . .
There is a handwritten postscript:
I asked you to settle for 6 million and sign
everything away, and you said you would do
it . . . yet nothing came.
S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 4
 (According to one of Lucas’s attorneys,
over the years Lucas had assisted his sister
generously. Lucas’s spokesman adds, “As
you’d expect from a brother, he did assist his
sister financially from time to time.”)
The second letter was to Imran Khan
and his wife of nine years, British heiress
Jemima Goldsmith. (On June 22, it was
announced the two had divorced.) Imran is
famous both for his dazzling good looks
and for having led Pakistan to the World
Cup cricket title in 1992. The son of an en-
gineer, he attended Oxford University. In
1995, after romancing a series of English so-
ciety beauties, he met Jemima, the daugh-
ter of billionaire financier and industrialist
Sir James Goldsmith and Lady Annabel
Vane Tempest Stewart. He
was 42, and she was 21.
They were instantly smitten
and married within months.
After the wedding Jemi-
ma converted to Islam, and
the couple moved to Paki-
stan, where Imran formed
his own political party. In
2002 he was elected to Par-
liament, but his party has
had little impact. The cou-
ple have two sons, Sulaiman,
now seven, and Kasim, now
five.
Illegitimacy is frowned
upon in Pakistan, and Im-
ran has never admitted pub-
licly that he is Tyrian’s fa-
ther. In 1997 Sita filed a pa-
ternity suit and a Califor-
nia judge declared him the
father by default, since he
didn’t show up to contest it.
Sita’s letter to the Khans
read:
Dear Imran and Jemima,
I feel the time has come to
address the issue of Tyrian’s
future. I want to make it clear that I have re-
moved myself from the equation. This is not
about me, this is not about revenge, it is about
justice; justice for Tyrian.
As we have been unable to come to any
agreement in the past, I have taken the sole
financial and emotional responsibility for Tyr-
ian’s up bringing for the past eleven years.
Acknowledgement of your obligation and re-
sponsibilities is long over do.
I am proposing that a Trust in the amount
of 10 million dollars be established for Tyri-
an. . . . This proposal is a final offer to bring this
issue to a close without legal intervention. . . .
Refusal to respond is not acceptable.
I am in contact with a lawyer in Pakistan
and people of substance who are greatly dis-
turbed by your lack of willingness to do the
GILES HARRISON
right thing. They are standing by to inform the
proper authorities and institute the action nec-
essary to force the acknowledgement of Tyrian’s
existence and your financial obligations which
could have enormous political implications.
S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 4
I am requesting a response within 7 days.
Should you choose not to respond and agree
to these terms, the fall out from media inter-
vention in both Pakistan and the U.K. will be
certain and out of my control.
Appalled, Ehrlich told her not to send the
letters (she never did), and to be wary of the
Saxbys if this was the advice they were giving.
Nixon says Sita had confided to her plans
to pursue Victoria as well. “Cameron Saxby,
strangely, was the one encouraging her in
this,” says Nixon.
T his spring Sita made out two checks
amounting to approximately $2.4 million
to the Saxbys, which, she claimed she was
told, would be invested and would double
ORPHAN IN THE STORM
Sita White with Tyrian in 2001.
Tyrian will now choose whether to live in
London with Jemima Khan or in Central
California with Sita’s sister, Carolina.
within five years. On April 15, Tom Corbally
died. Sita and Cameron flew to New York,
where Sita attended the funeral. According
to Sita, during the trip Cameron asked her to
exchange blank checks, as a matter of trust.
Cameron later made out one of Sita’s to
herself, for $2,500—which she said was for
travel expenses. Sita claimed she was puz-
zled, since she was already covering these.
At Tom’s funeral Sita had bumped into an
old friend of her father’s, Nancy Bretzfield,
described by The New York Times as “a
fixture on the Southern California social
scene.” Back in L.A. the two women had
dinner, and Sita told Bretzfield that she was
beginning to have doubts about the Saxbys.
Bretzfield told Sita to visit her lawyer im-
mediately.
“I said, ‘How could you have done this,
Sita? How could you have put your money
in something you know nothing about?’” re-
calls Bretzfield. Sita looked helplessly at the
older woman. Finance had never been her
forte.
According to Sita, after Nixon told her to
ask the Saxbys for documentation of her in-
vestment, she went over to their ramshack-
le rented bungalow in Beverly Hills, where
Richard had her sign two documents, which
he said were proof of her investment in
an entity known as Zacky Farms. When
she took them to Nixon on
May 4, the lawyer identified
them as a promissory note
and an indemnification.
Nixon told her the Saxbys
had not invested her mon-
ey, they’d borrowed it,
and that she was to receive
$20,417.67 each month as
interest on the loan.
That afternoon Sita and
Nixon walked to the Bank
of America in Century
City, where Sita had two
accounts, and closed them.
The next morning, at nine,
they walked to a branch of
Preferred Bank, also in Cen-
tury City, where the Sax-
bys had an account. Sita
and Nixon succeeded in
getting the Saxbys’ funds
there frozen for three days.
Robert O’Brien, a high-
power litigator hired by
Sita, followed up, obtain-
ing an injunction to prohib-
it the Saxbys from with-
drawing or transferring any
money from their account. Of the original
$2.4 million, $1.6 million was still in the ac-
count; around $800,000 was gone.
By this point Sita was hysterical and call-
ing just about everyone—including Victoria,
who says, “She was under a tremendous
amount of stress. I was on the telephone with
her every day—I think 5, 10 times a day.”
T hat same day Sita revoked her will and
amended the trust, removing Cameron
as trustee and Tyrian’s guardian. She named
Nixon as her executor. The trustee was now
Citibank. Cameron faxed over a letter to Nix-
on’s office, saying she was resigning as co-
trustee because of evidence of “perpetual
illegal drug use” by Sita.
Sita had been known to dabble in co-
caine, crystal meth, and other psychoactive
substances—particularly while she was mar-
VA N I T Y FA I R 415
 Sita White
ried to John Ursich, who says that during
their eight-month cohabitation he had felt
at one point as if he were “staring death in
the face.” (On June 5, 2003, almost four
months after Ursich filed for divorce, he and
Sita testified in a hearing called to address
her request for a restraining order against
him. She claimed he had abused her several
months before, but Ursich said the charges
were fabricated. He said that Sita had been
strung out on booze and cocaine on the
date of the supposed incident, and that it
was she who had been abusive. He claimed
that on the day in question he stopped her
from drinking a bottle of vodka, and that he
gave her money for a cab; Sita’s battered ap-
pearance in photographs taken shortly after
the incident, he said, were due to a rash, co-
caine abuse, and anorexia. The judge sided
with Ursich; no restraining order was issued,
and the case was dismissed.) Still, several
acquaintances say, to depict her as a drug
addict is wrong. “She was certainly not high
most of the time,” one person recalls. Nancy
Bretzfield remembers her as being “clear-
eyed and lucid. I couldn’t see she was on
drugs.”
In the matter of Tyrian’s guardianship
Sita replaced Cameron with Jemima Khan.
Sita had never met her, but she wanted her
daughter to be closer to her father—she had
even had Tyrian’s name changed last year
to Tyrian-Jade Brittania Khan-White.
T he day before she died, Sita called Bretz-
field to say that she’d received worri-
some phone calls from the Saxbys and that
she was terrified the Los Angeles child-
protective services would arrive to remove
Tyrian, whom she adored, because of Cam-
eron’s accusations of drug use. Sita was
also frightened of Ursich, who that night
had turned up on her doorstep. She became
hysterical, called people, and did not let
him in.
The next morning, after dropping Tyrian
at school, Sita turned pink and fell to the
floor at the yoga studio. Victoria recalls, “I
saw the whole thing. I mean, she was hap-
py, happy, smiling, and the next thing she
was down. The yoga class was to start with-
in a minute.”
Sita was pronounced dead upon arrival
at the hospital. Victoria went to Tyrian’s
school to give the news to the sweet-looking,
dark-haired child, who people say is wise
beyond her years—the type to choose Time
magazine over teen publications at a news-
stand. Meeting Victoria at the school was
Cameron, who, according to legal papers,
wanted to pick up Tyrian and assert her
(by then defunct) guardianship rights. Nix-
on assumed that Saxby had heard of Sita’s
416 VA N I T Y FA I R
death from Victoria, but when asked about
this, Victoria told Nixon, “I’d rather not say.”
Eventually someone from the Department
of Children and Family Services took Tyri-
an from school, and in the evening her aunt,
Carolina, arrived to take her. Imran Khan
jetted in from London.
T hough he still did not publicly acknowl-
edge Tyrian as his child, he and Jemi-
ma issued a statement saying they were
prepared to be her guardians. However,
Carolina quickly hired a lawyer, who peti-
tioned the court to get temporary guardian-
ship of the little girl and so that, follow-
ing a trip to London this summer, Tyrian
could choose whether to live with Jemima
or with her aunt. (In December Jemima had
moved back to London with her sons, in
order to pursue a master’s degree.)
Imran, it turns out, is now supporting
Carolina’s bid to be Tyrian’s guardian. He
speaks to Tyrian once a week, and he sent
her flowers on her birthday. Apparently,
father and daughter get on fine. Jemima,
meanwhile, speaks to Tyrian by telephone
daily, though, according to Nixon, Jemima
now feels Tyrian’s family is the best place
for her to be.
According to Nixon, Sita knew that Je-
mima and Imran were in the process of di-
vorcing, but made Jemima Tyrian’s guard-
ian anyway. Tyrian lived in London for
nine months in 2003 and six months in
2002, and though she had stayed with Nich-
olas Camilleri, she had gotten to know the
Khans—and Jemima’s mother—extreme-
ly well. “Sita felt like she knew Jemima,
through Tyrian,” explains Nixon. “And Tyr-
ian loved spending time with Jemima and
her sons.” People describe Jemima as lev-
elheaded and generous to a fault. Many in
Britain had predicted that her marriage to
Imran would never survive the test of time,
that the age gap and the religious and cul-
tural differences would prove to be insur-
mountable barriers. Her own father, Sir
James Goldsmith, had shrugged off the
alliance by saying Imran would make “a
wonderful first husband” for Jemima. The
critics proved to be right. Jemima frequent-
ly got ill when she was living in Pakistan.
Just a few months ago, while studying for
exams at London University, she was hos-
pitalized for an illness she had picked up
there.
Since her divorce, Jemima has been spot-
ted with Hugh Grant at the London night-
club Annabel’s (named after her mother)
and at the annual garden party given by
British television personality David Frost.
But a romantic relationship has been denied
by her friends, one of whom was quoted in
the press as saying, “She now wants to just
enjoy the single life for a while and meet
people. No doubt she will be linked to every
man she speaks to.” For his part, Imran
told The Sunday Telegraph that he was “al-
ready thinking about looking for a second
wife, saying: ‘ . . . I’ll see if I’m able to find
someone by my next birthday.’”
M eanwhile, John Ursich’s attorney, Vicki
Roberts, called Nixon to tell her that,
assuming attempts to recover Sita’s money
from the Saxbys were successful, he wanted
half. Nixon was appalled. “That is Tyrian’s
inheritance,” she says. “It’s all she has.” The
battle lines were drawn.
The day of the funeral, Nicholas Camil-
leri says, he called Victoria to ask her about
Sita’s last moments and to inquire if Victoria
would be attending either the funeral ser-
vice or Carolina’s vigil. Victoria said that
she was too busy to talk and that she was
taking her children on a field trip, so, no,
she would not be attending either event. She
later told Vanity Fair that she’d been freaked
out by all the calls she’d gotten from people
she’d never heard of. She downplayed any
connection she had to the Saxbys and any
role she might have later had on the day of
Sita’s death: “I don’t know anything about
the Saxbys,” she says. She adds, “They’re a
couple. . . . I can’t get that far involved. I
can’t talk about it right now, because there’s
just a whirlwind of stuff going on. But I can
tell you the whole thing is so sordid. . . .
Quite honestly, it’s funny that you’re call-
ing. . . . We have more people coming out
of the woodwork than you could imagine,
just wanting a piece of the money . . . and
then here I am, the bearer of bad news. As
always. That’s how I am with the family. It’s
mind-boggling.”
She seemed to view the situation with the
detachment of an outsider. “Imagine the
guilt that Lucas feels,” she says. “He never
had the chance to make it up with her.”
(Lucas’s spokesman said, “Lucas’s feelings
upon his sister’s passing were of extreme
sadness.”) And yet, Victoria White O’Gara’s
own role in this complex, multi-layered saga
is hardly peripheral.
V ictoria was the fourth of five children.
Her parents were divorced, and the chil-
dren were raised mostly by their mother,
Dixie Tucker, whom people describe as be-
ing very close to her daughter. All the chil-
dren were blessed with extraordinary good
looks. Victoria’s sister Terry, now married
to Kevin Kelley, the president of the Hard
Rock Hotel & Casino Las Vegas, is described
by one person as “very gorgeous, like her
sister.” A brother, Tim, is described as a
blond version of Victoria.
But the real standout was Vicky—as some
people used to call her, when as a teenager
she made the rounds of the clubs in L.A. Ac-
cording to a close friend of Gordon White’s,
she visited the Playboy Mansion when she
S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 4
 CREDITS
Page 224: Clockwise from top left: from Topical
Press Agency/Getty Images, by Chitose Suzuki/A.P.
Wide World Photos, from A.P. Wide World Photos, by
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Film Magic, Jon Kopaloff/Film Magic, from Hulton
Archive/Getty Images, by Bruce Glikas/Film Magic,
from Central Press/Getty Images, by Debra
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Reuters/Corbis (memorial), from U.S. Army
Signal Corps/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images (Yalta).
Page 236: Inset from Getty Images.
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Dunne.
Pages 242 and 251: Production by Jo Matthews.
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from the Boston Herald/Polaris.
Page 256: From left: from Yale University, from
University of Wyoming via Casper College/A.P. Wide
World Photos, from A.P. Wide World Photos.
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A.P. Wide World Photos.
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Page 274: Top, from Getty Images; bottom, from
Patrick McMullan.
Pages 292–93: Production by Emily Roth; props
by Nick Tortorici.
Page 294: From Polaris.
Page 296: From the Potomac News/Polaris.
Page 308: Top, from Zuma Press; bottom, from
Polaris.
Page 312: From AFP/Getty Images.
Pages 320–25: All photographs courtesy of
Aperture Books.
Page 332: Props styled by Terry Wong; from
A.P. Wide World Photos (Osama).
Page 338: Props styled by Terry Wong. From
A.P. Wide World Photos (Bush Sr., Osama), by
Charles Dharapak/A.P. Wide World Photos (President
Bush), Rick Wilking/Landov (Texas ranch).
Pages 348–75: Production by Lawrie Bird,
Jeannette Shaheen, Stacey Hug, Tara Rehak, Nick
Gallery, Thanis Maretis, and Boris McNertney.
Photo assistance by Joel Griffith, Shane Sigler,
Bryan Firestone, Michael Murphy, and Jeff Tautrim.
Special thanks to Maryann Ridini; Heather Watts;
Chelsea Black & White Lab; Boylan Studios, N.Y.C.;
Carol Taylor and the staff at the Beverly Hills Hotel;
Smashbox Studios, L.A.; Altour Travel; Barbara
Derwin; the University of Miami, Diving; YMCA
Aquatic and Family Center, Orlando; and the Palm
Beach Polo Equestrian Club. A very special thanks to
all the athletes who participated, their representatives,
sponsors, and the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Pages 376–81: See credit for cover.
Pages 390–91: Large photograph from Alpha/
Globe Photos; inset from Rex USA.
Page 392: Both from Icon International.
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USA; bottom, from Alpha/Globe Photos.
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(8), from Bettmann Corbis (2, 4, 5), from Black Star
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418 VA N I T Y FA I R
Sita White
was 15—something that Hugh Hefner found
out about only afterward. “She didn’t look
15—I can tell you that,” says someone who
was there.
When she was 18, Gordon White, then
58, spotted her one evening. He later told
his close friend the actor George Hamilton,
“I just have to have that.” “He was com-
pletely smitten,” says Hamilton. “He pur-
sued her.” Four years later, when she was
22 and he was 62, they began dating. At
the time, Victoria had already met and fall-
en for Tom O’Gara, a handsome, wealthy
entrepreneur from Ohio, who had been run-
ning a Rolls-Royce garage in Beverly Hills
and who was starting to be very success-
ful in the armored-car business. O’Gara
is almost universally described as “a really
nice guy,” but eventually Victoria allowed
herself to be drawn into White’s web, though
she remained friendly with O’Gara—some-
thing that came to haunt White, according
to a friend of his.
Despite his age, Lord White cut a glam-
orous figure. He kept a string of racehorses
in Ventura County; in addition to his Old
Hollywood–style house, Beverly Park, in
Beverly Hills, and other California houses,
he kept a New York apartment on Park Av-
enue; there were endless private planes and
helicopters. “He was the type of man who’d
absolutely insist on landing on the lawn, rath-
er than the helipad,” says one old friend.
White was six feet four inches and ath-
letic. He learned to ski at 54, making it down
a black-diamond run only nine days later.
The son of a publisher, he loved that he’d
been knighted in 1979 and later given a peer-
age and that, even so, the British upper class
looked down its nose at him.
B y the time he met Victoria, Carolina
and Sita (from his first marriage, to Eliz-
abeth Kalen, a half-Swedish, half-Venezuelan
society beauty) were older than Victoria. Lu-
cas, whom he had by his second wife, the
actress Virginia Northrop, was in high school
in England. White was a busy man, and al-
though he made time for a fairly hectic so-
cial schedule, he never did manage to make
much time for his family.
His daughters had become a source of
torment for him. Left to their own devices,
they’d raid the secret drawer in his bath-
room in the Park Avenue apartment, where
he kept a stash of drugs and condoms. “Ev-
erything was in that drawer,” says someone
who saw it. “The girls learned how to pick
the lock.”
“He just wrung his hands in despair,” says
a close friend. While Carolina went clubbing
and dated rough boys he did not like, Sita’s
undoing, in her father’s eyes, came in the
form of Imran, for whom Sita left her first
husband, the photographer Francesco Ven-
turi, in 1986. White was, to put it bluntly,
racist, and, according to one of his friends,
he told Imran that if he married Sita they
would not get a penny of his money. None-
theless, Sita had Imran’s child, the result, she
would always say, of one last act of love-
making in 1991, after the relationship had
run its course.
In July 1992, to his friends’ astonishment,
White, then 69, married Victoria, then 29.
“He always had made it clear that he never
wanted to do that,” says a friend, pointing
out that he had married Northrop only when
she was pregnant with Lucas.
Most people think he changed his mind
because of a bizarre incident that had oc-
curred in Aspen just six months before,
on New Year’s Eve. White was staying in
George Hamilton’s house. Sita was there,
as were Lucas and Victoria. That afternoon
Victoria had had a bad fall on the slopes
and had bruised her neck and back. Re-
portedly, she later took painkillers and a
strong drink. The police were called, and
White—who soon after this, according to a
friend, had bruises on his face—spent the
night in jail because Victoria claimed he’d
beaten her up. Tom O’Gara reportedly
sent his plane to pick up Victoria, who de-
clined to press charges and soon returned
to White, claiming that the painkillers had
been to blame and that she had been mis-
taken to think he had hit her. (Victoria de-
clined comment on certain subjects for this
piece.)
“Gordon was very frail at this point,” re-
calls a friend, whose account is echoed by
others. “He’d been told by his doctors he
was dying.” Evidently, White never wanted
to discuss the matter with anyone. “He was
the type who’d fall on his sword if he had
to,” explains Hamilton.
Whatever transpired, White married Vic-
toria the following summer. Skeptical friends
were quickly excised from his life. They
also disapproved of the fast lifestyle he was
now living. “I couldn’t bear to see what was
going on in that house [in Bel Air],” says a
close friend. “It was no way for a sick man
to be living.”
D ocuments obtained by Vanity Fair show
that Victoria was to receive the Ventu-
ra ranch, some art, and the horses, and she
was to live in the Beverly Hills house after
White’s death only until she could pur-
chase a new house out of the $10 million
settlement she would receive. She was then
required to put the remainder in a trust,
from which she would get a monthly income
of approximately $15,000. She was not to
have access to the principal. Lucas, who was
then 20, was to be the main heir to his fa-
ther’s great wealth.
S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 4
 Lucas, by this point, had grown into a what we are to receive or how we are to de- an outsider observes. Victoria, meanwhile,
tall, virile, handsome young man, with dark rive income.” has reportedly gone on a few dates with the
curly hair and a genial disposition. White The O’Garas’ marriage fell apart in 2002, wealthy but perpetually single New York
was particularly proud of his son’s prowess soon after Tom O’Gara suffered a substan- financier Teddy Forstmann.
on the polo field, something he had never tial reversal in fortune following an ill-fated Victoria says that the reason she is holding
had the opportunity to achieve himself, giv- merger of his armored-car business with a sale of artifacts at Christie’s is that without
en his middle-class origins in Yorkshire, Kroll in 1997. Once the divorce was final, it she is not sufficiently liquid to pay off a
England. “Gordon wished he’d paid more last year, the mud between Victoria and Tom $2.5 million mortgage on her Beverly Hills
attention to Lucas,” says Hamilton. “In fact, started to fly in a particularly ugly custody house. In her divorce records, she claims that,
just before he died he said to me that if battle over their three small children. She, excluding the White trust, whose principal
he had two last wishes it would she can’t touch, she is worth
have been to have gotten to approximately $15.6 million.
know Lucas better, and to have
a horse farm.”
After White died, problems
remained. According to docu-
I
n the months before Sita died,
she went over to her stepmoth-
er’s house “a lot,” according to
ments, various disputes arose Victoria.
about his estate. Still, says one “She was really very lonely,”
old family friend, White would Victoria says. Boyfriends came
have enjoyed the turmoil he’d and went but did not mean
created—he liked to exercise his much. In the spring, as the re-
power over people. lationship with the Saxbys was
But some of his friends were unwinding and she deeply re-
appalled by his treatment of gretted her intense involvement
his daughters. “It was unfair with them, Sita told the accoun-
for Gordon to leave the girls tant Wendy Barlin that all she
the way he did,” says a family had to live for was her daugh-
friend. “They were not the sort ter, Tyrian. It was almost as if
of girls who could cope without she had had a premonition that
money.” she might die.
The vigil held by Carolina

T o the day she died Sita had

no real idea of her father’s
net worth. The $400 million fig-
for Sita was, according to Sita’s
friend Samar Ahmadi, an emo-
tional occasion. “It finally made
ure named in her and Carolina’s the long journey from Bahrain
2001 lawsuit against Lucas was worth it,” Ahmadi said. Like
a guess based on the Hanson others, she’d found the funeral
share price. “She had suitcases “disappointing.”
and suitcases of documents in “I walked in that door [of
a secret room in the basement the vigil service], and all I could
of her house,” recalls one friend. OH DAD, POOR DAD see was Sita laughing, laughing,
“You knew that the key was in them some- Lord White and Sita in England in 1990. laughing,” she says. The bizarre circum-
how. But she didn’t have the means or re- Friends say he was disappointed in stances surrounding her friend’s death were,
sources to find it. She was the kind of per- his daughters and believed they couldn’t for a few moments at least, banished.
son who spent her monthly allowance by handle money well. The small group held candles and sat in
the middle of the month each month. She a circle, telling stories about their friend.
never had enough money.” for example, alleged in her court papers that Perhaps the most poignant anecdote came
On August 16, 2001, she even wrote a he once threatened her with the car. from Tyrian, who said that her mother had
letter to her father’s old business partner, A source has confirmed to Vanity Fair once been walking down the hill and seen a
Lord Hanson. It read in part: “We have that a few months ago Victoria hired a pri- homeless man. “I’m going to help you and
RICHARD YOUNG

never even seen a complete version of our vate investigator to dig up information on get you a job,” she told him. She did. “She
father’s will and only bits and pieces of his Tom. A few weeks later Tom asked the same got him back on his feet,” said Tyrian.
will and various trusts. We have never seen investigator to turn the tables and investigate The great pity was she couldn’t do as
any section of any will in which it is stated Victoria. “They’re trying to break each other,” much for herself. ■

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