Don Johnson

Don Johnson’s place in the diaries is defined by an Interview feature that crossed the boundary between celebrity coverage and a real criminal investigation. What began as an issue Pat Hackett found lively for its images of clubs and youth culture became a source of leads in the case of Ronnie Levin, who had disappeared and was believed to have been murdered.

A feature in Interview

In August 1986, Pat Hackett brought Andy Warhol a newly arrived Miami and Las Vegas issue of Interview. He found it exciting, particularly its art and its coverage of young people, clubs, and the contemporary scene. The response mattered to him enough that Fred Hughes urged him to tell the magazine’s staff, and he passed on his approval as he encountered them. Don Johnson was the issue’s interview subject, placing his account within the magazine’s broader work of presenting public figures through interviews and images.

Don Johnson and Ronnie Levin

The issue brought forward a connection from Johnson’s earlier life. Warhol recorded that during his down-and-out period, Johnson had been involved in scams in Los Angeles with Ronnie Levin. Levin had disappeared and was probably murdered; the diary does not establish what the scams involved or Johnson’s precise role in them. It does, however, make clear that Johnson’s account of knowing Levin would later attract the attention of investigators.

The interview becomes an investigative lead

In September 1986, the Beverly Hills police detective in charge of the Levin case contacted Interview after reading Hackett’s interview with Johnson. The defendants in the so-called Billionaire Boys Club murder trial were claiming that Levin was still alive somewhere. Hackett gave the detective the names of two people in Los Angeles whom he might contact to help determine whether that claim was true. The diary records neither the identities of those people nor the outcome of the detective’s inquiry, so the interview’s contribution remains a lead rather than a reported resolution.

Public image and consequence

Johnson’s appearance in the magazine thus acquired a significance beyond the issue’s fashion and nightlife coverage. His recollection of an acquaintance from his difficult earlier years became useful to a detective trying to test a consequential claim about a missing man. In the diary’s account, the chain runs from a published interview, to a reader in law enforcement, to information offered by its interviewer: celebrity media briefly served as an unexpected channel into an unresolved investigation.