01x02 - Sins of the Father

[bunniefuu]

My grandfather

lived in Holmby Hills,

which is the neighborhood

right between Wilshire

Boulevard and Sunset

in Westwood.

It's the elite of the elite.

And now, we're gonna

come up on the right side,

is my grandfather's house.

There's his house,

and we would park

right here in front,

and then we would get

up and race up the stairs.

And that front window

was Grandpa's office.

As president

of Occidental Petroleum,

Armand Hammer turned it

into the 11th largest oil company

in the United States.

The Hammer name

wielded a lot of prestige and power.

And the two grandchildren,

Michael and Casey,

would you please stand up?

We were always hanging

out with royalty at these parties,

and we would get training,

and we would learn how

to address the royalty.

It was just this kind

of secret society,

kind of inner

circle of the elite.

How on Earth do they expect us

to get anything done

without money?

People were so

curious about that lifestyle,

about all that wealth.

On the outside, we

were a perfect family.

- Hi, Casey!

- Come on in.

Watch your step.

But beneath it all was

a dark world of deceit,

betrayal, and corruption

and that's why I'm

coming forward now.

It's time to stop the cycle.

So, this is a picture

of the Hammer family,

and there's my father, Julian.

I'm standing behind him.

You have my brother, Michael,

and then, in the

center of the shot

is my grandfather,

and he's holding Armie.

How did Armie Hammer

go from Hollywood golden boy

to an alleged ab*ser

in the space of one

evening in January?

When all this

came out about Armie,

I was not shocked.

Sexually graphic texts and DMs

of dominating, BDSM,

and even cannibalism

began trending.

This behavior, it's deep-rooted.

My father, Julian Hammer,

is Armie's grandfather.

When my mother met my father,

they ended up in Tijuana,

drunk on the back

of a motorcycle,

and getting married.

And my mother had no idea

that my father was

Armand Hammer's son.

Had no idea about the wealth,

had no idea about any of it.

And then, when my

father got married,

my grandfather decided

that my father needed

to be responsible

now that he had a wife.

I was born in 1960.

We moved to Pacific Palisades,

which was near the

coast in California.

But my father was such a mess.

He was always drunk,

and you just never knew

what kind of condition he was in.

There was a lot going

on behind closed doors.

Christmases were probably

my favorite time of year.

It was a big deal.

It was like a department store.

We all got piles and piles

of Christmas presents.

That's my brother, Michael,

Armie's father

and there he is,

riding a little motorcycle.

I should be somewhere in there.

I remember one year,

it was Christmas Eve.

I was young, maybe five,

and I still believed

in Santa Claus.

After I had gone to bed,

I heard screaming.

My father and

mother were fighting,

and he was

threatening to k*ll her.

My father slapped

my mom really hard,

and I just remember

seeing blood splatter.

She made me go back to my room

and told me that everything

was gonna be okay,

and if I didn't

go right to sleep,

Santa Claus wasn't gonna come.

As a little girl,

when you're seeing your

mom get beat up by your father,

and blood running down

the front of her body,

and her screaming,

you don't really understand

what's happening.

I can't tell you how many times

I would get under my

covers as a little girl

and put my fingers

in my ears and sing

because I didn't

wanna hear the noise.

I didn't wanna hear

the screaming

because you can't make it stop.

As we got older, my father

He just got worse

and worse and worse.

In the middle of the night,

my mom would collect me,

and we would grab what we could

and get in the car

and drive down the hill

and go to a motel

and wait until

the sun came up

until my father cooled down,

and then we would

go back to the house.

That happened a lot.

It always escalated.

You didn't know what

was gonna happen next.

My mom had been

threatening to leave.

But my grandfather always said,

"If you leave my son,

I'll ruin you and make

your life miserable,"

and, you know,

"You won't have a penny."

My grandfather had very

powerful attorneys back then.

The public persona turned into,

"I can take everything

away from you

with one stroke of the pen."

So it was a frightening,

scary energy

that my grandfather had.

The Hammer family

name had to be pristine.

You couldn't be the

reason for the black mark.

While my grandfather was alive,

you played by his

rules, or you got cut off.

We were taught that Big

Brother's always watching.

You can't get away from it.

My grandfather had files on anybody

you dated or any of your friends.

You would

pick up your phone to talk to someone,

and you would hear a click,

and you knew you

were being recorded.

You didn't make a move

without thinking about,

"What if Grandpa finds out?"

Casey's

grandfather controlled his family.

He controlled everything.

That has to be scary,

to know that there are people

watching you all the time.

"Walk the straight and narrow.

I see you.

You don't see

me, but I see you."

I like to say that our

lives were like a chessboard,

and my grandfather basically

controlled all the moves.

But I had no idea

about half of the things

my grandfather did

and how powerful he really was.

Well, look who is here.

He happens to be

president and CEO

of Occidental Petroleum

in Los Angeles.

Maybe I should say he is also one

of the wealthiest men in the world.

Please welcome

Dr. Armand Hammer.

My grandfather

built an oil empire

that up until his death

was, I believe, the 16th

largest company in the world.

Well, that's a pretty

good hand for a rich guy.

Everything he

touched turned to gold.

I worked for

Armand Hammer from 1986 to 1989

as one of his political

and media consultants.

And I saw him exercise

access around the world

which was unparalleled

for a private individual.

He could, at will,

enter the Kremlin.

I help him, he helps me.

It is mutual.

We do not discuss

secrets, just business.

Buckingham

Palace, the White House

They were all at his disposal

and at his bidding.

- Mr. Hammer?

- Yes?

Oh, this

is the President, how are you?

Oh, hello, President

Kennedy, I'm glad to hear from you again.

I remember once

asking my grandfather

why he wasn't President

of the United States,

and he laughed and said

there wasn't enough power in it.

I mean, even now,

people are still so fascinated.

This stuff didn't

start with Armie.

He is the great-grandson

of Armand Hammer,

an oil tycoon whose son, Julian,

who would be Armie's

grandfather, was insane.

He beat the living

daylights out of his wife

I was definitely

pulling in eyeballs,

like, just by sharing the

things that I was looking into.

I had so many tips coming in,

and it wasn't just

tips about Armie.

It was just tips about

the whole family.

By virtue of sharing the story,

Candice and I found

each other on Instagram,

and we started

talking about the case.

I didn't even know who

Armand Hammer was,

and looking into

him and his son,

and his son after that,

and then Armie,

it was so many people in this

family that had a sort of history.

People were

absolutely dumbfounded.

What are the odds

that there would be

so many generations of a family

behaving so badly?

What became

readily apparent to us

was that there was still

a lot of things to uncover.

My mom had always said that she

stayed with my father as long as she did

because of my grandfather.

So, it was a never-ending

cycle for a very long time.

But then finally, I was

11, and she'd had enough,

and we went down

the street to the motel

and this time,

we didn't go back.

When my parents got divorced,

my grandfather kept to his word,

and my father destroyed

my mother in court.

My father ended

up only paying, like,

$200 a month's child support.

My mom said that the

biggest regret of her life

was letting Michael decide

to stay with my father.

It was a while before my mother

let me go down and visit my father.

I just remember,

it was the house I grew up in,

so it was familiar,

but yet, there

were tons of people.

It was a lot of drinking

a lot of smoke-filled rooms,

a lot of screaming,

a lot of loud music

a lot of drugs.

He always had, like, 16

or 17-year-old girls around,

not much older than I was,

five or six years older,

and he called them

his "housekeepers."

It was code for his girlfriends.

I believe it was

sexual, in a sense

where they were usually

sitting on each other's laps

or kissing or

fondling each other.

It was almost like giant orgies.

Michael, my brother, would

bring his friends up to party,

and they would

hit on them, as well.

The drugs were free-flowing,

so it was a very

free atmosphere.

Casey was one

of my best friends.

I don't remember

when the first time

I met Mike was,

but he was always around.

Casey and I would

go to Julian's,

her father's house.

As you walk in,

there was a big bowl of cocaine

and a very, kind of,

"help yourself" attitude.

It was an environment

where old men

and young girls

and cocaine, and

It was shocking.

Your parents aren't

supposed to do that.

One time at a party,

I had come out of my

bedroom the next morning,

and everyone was

passed out all over the floor.

I remember walking by the couch,

and there were polaroid pictures

of one of my father's housekeepers,

and at the time, I thought

she was eating an ice cream,

because that's what you

did when you were little.

I kept looking at the pictures

trying to figure out

what was happening,

and that's how I realized

that it wasn't an ice cream,

that it was attached to a man.

One of the pictures,

in the background was

this figure in the corner,

in a chair, watching.

I recognized that

that was my father.

Being born in that family

and watching the behavior,

it was my normal.

I mean, how do you know it's

wrong when that's all you know?

So, when my father

and my brother

surrounded themselves with

young, impressionable women

that would basically do

anything that they asked

that was the mentality I saw.

Women were disposable

in the Hammer family.

So, I had to move rooms.

They had to move my room

'cause of some, like, noise

complaints or something.

I think they said it was 417.

Oh, here it is.

A major

news publication posted a video,

and it showed Armie

holding his phone,

walking into his room.

All right, so far, so good.

Uh, that bed looks pretty comfy.

He just glosses over

a woman on all fours in lingerie

and goes out and

shows out the balcony.

Yeah, boy!

It's like, "Look how

much power I have.

I have a lady just

sitting right here,

waiting for me to do

whatever I ask her to

and she's staying quiet."

I was getting

information via DMs

saying that this is

his Finsta account,

"el-destructo-86."

Finsta just means

"fake Instagram."

and these are often

used by celebrities

that have a private account

separate from their public ones.

On this private

Instagram account,

he basically posted

anything he wanted.

Where his public

one was very curated,

this one, he was posting videos

of him engaging

in sexual things,

him doing drugs.

It was pretty wild.

He really wasn't hiding

what he was doing.

He had posted a

picture of him on the toilet

with a drug test, saying,

"All negative. My body is a finely

tuned toxicant processing unit."

Indicating that he definitely took

drugs and he passed a drug test.

sh*t's getting weird.

More, one more.

Yep, got it all.

It's just such a reflection of how

above the law this man thinks he is,

that he is not only

in a car taking drugs

and drinking while driving,

but videotaping it

and posting it,

because he thinks it's

cool to show his friends.

Ah.

It seems like each generation

was impacted with

a number of women

who had been wronged

by the Hammer family.

Armie, looking

up here. Right here, over here for me.

It's hard to imagine

one person behaving that badly.

To hear that it's been going

on for so many generations

is kind of unimaginable.

There we go.

My name is Edward Jay Epstein.

Everything okay?

In 1980, The New

York Times came to me

and asked if I wanted to write

a profile on Armand Hammer,

so I did.

I began traveling

with Armand Hammer.

I went all over

the world with him,

got to know him pretty well.

One of the things that

intrigued me about Hammer

was that his public persona

was purposely divorced

from his private activities.

Armand controlled

everyone, including women,

and Hammer in his

life had three marriages.

Well, you haven't been

unlucky in love then?

The first was

in Russia with Olga.

She wanted a career in Hollywood

and I was here in New York.

It didn't last.

We were divorced.

The second was with Angela

Unfortunately,

she was an alcoholic,

and after ten years

of putting up with her,

I divorced her.

Armand's wife, Angela

in her divorce

testimony, she said that he,

"willfully, maliciously, and deliberately

pursued a course of conduct,

employed techniques,

tactics and practices

calculated and designed

to destroy her will.

He threatened her with serious

bodily violence and injury,

and to beat her brains out

by brandishing a metal pipe.

'I feared my husband.

He is a master of

psychological warfare.'"

My present wife, Frances,

we've been married 31

years and this is the happiest

31 years of my life.

Well, what's the

moral of this story?

Well, we must never give up.

Armand Hammer

considered his relations with women

as a means of getting something.

They served a purpose to him.

He married Frances

for her money.

She gave him the

money that allowed him

to go into the oil

business in a big way.

Dr. Armand Hammer

and his third wife, Frances,

took a $100,000 gamble

when they invested in

Occidental Petroleum,

a small and

struggling oil company.

As far as the

public was concerned,

Armand did not have

extra-marital relationships.

But in truth, he

always had mistresses,

and he always womanized.

He looked for young women

who he could control completely.

You have this page,

you got a lot of pictures of

the different women in his life,

but this page, I wanna

show the picture up here.

That's a woman named

Martha Kauffman

It was Martha Kauffman, yes.

- But down here, the same woman is Hilary Gibson

- Right.

Who are these two people?

Are they the same person?

I interviewed Martha Kauffman

also known as Hilary Gibson,

one of Hammer's mistresses.

She told me that his

wife, Frances, found out

she was having a

liaison with her husband.

Frances laid down

the law and said,

"you have to get

rid of this woman."

So, rather than

give up his mistress,

he found a solution that was typical

to the kinds of solutions he found.

He had Martha Kauffman

change her name.

Hilary Gibson.

Wear a white wig

and pretended to his wife

that she was a different woman.

And Frances,

his wife never figured it out?

No.

What he demanded was

control of every part of her life

including her identity.

It was all in his nature

of a man who totally

wanted to control

a woman that he

viewed as a object

not as a human being.

"Martha Kauffman,

Armand's mistress,

had to be available to meet

his schedule at short notice.

He gave her two beepers

to alert her to his calls.

He prohibited her

from seeing other men,

and to make sure of her

whereabouts in Los Angeles,

he had a homing

device installed in her car

and a tap placed on her phone."

He had my location

on his phone

"He also controlled

her vacation schedule.

She had to submit

to his sexual demands

even when she considered

them extremely humiliating."

something is very

degrading, very belittling

Unfortunately, not shocked.

This is exactly

the kind of things

I experienced. This is

extremely humiliating.

I resonate with that.

Armie is so consuming.

He does whatever

he wants, but

you're his.

Completely.

I kept looking more into

the archives of newspaper articles

trying to find more content

relating to the overlaps

and parallels between

each generation.

"Son of Armand Hammer Seized.

Julian Hammer, 47-year-old son

of industrialist Armand Hammer

was arrested at his Pacific

Palisades home Thursday night

for allegedly threatening a

man in his home with a shotgun.

Hammer brandished the

weapon after returning home

and finding 19-year-old Gary

Bowers there with Cathe Boal, 28.

Hammer reportedly

said to Bowers,

'hold it, take another step

and I'll blow you apart.'"

Stop!

You're welcome and

Casey's welcome.

I'm doing this for Casey.

I met Julian Hammer

in the mid-70s.

He needed someone to

come and clean the house

and he offered me the job.

I had just had a child,

so I was able to

bring my son up there

while I was cleaning the house.

The first day I came to work,

there was a big party going on.

It was a gambling party,

it had been going on for

a couple days, apparently.

Everybody in Pacific

Palisades that lived there

knew about Julian.

He was always in really nice

pajamas and a beautiful robe

and slippers and stuff.

That's how he entertained.

Because he was the Hugh

Hefner of Pacific Palisades.

As days went on, he started

kinda opening up to me

about the real him

instead of being the phony

with all of the people coming

up and partying and stuff.

He was a real charmer,

he knew how to get his way,

and he was just suave, you

know, when he wanted to be.

As time went on we

just got real close.

When my son was nine months old,

Julian convinced me that I

should leave my husband.

We had probably been seeing

each other around six months or so

and we, um, got engaged.

He seemed to be more

possessive as time went on.

He didn't want me

to have any friends.

Just him.

I was naive, really, I

guess you might say,

but I thought if I could

give him enough love

that maybe I could change him.

Which, of course, you

don't change anybody,

but I didn't know that then.

One night, I convinced him that

it was time for him to take me out.

And after we had dinner,

he wanted to stop at a bar.

Julian started hanging

around with the guys in there

and kind of flirting

around with the guys.

I got jealous, I

didn't like the idea

that he's flirting

with these guys.

"Why aren't you flirting with me?

Why are you flirting with these guys?"

Then I started realizing

it was a g*y bar.

He did not want to leave.

I just got so upset, I

just walked out of the bar,

walked across the

street, put my thumb out.

Within, like, five minutes,

this really nice guy pulled over

and he took me

to Julian's house.

And as he started to

leave, Julian pulled up.

And that's when

everything escalated

'cause Julian saw

him at the door

and got upset that a

man had brought me home.

The go-to was always a g*n.

That was his thing when

he got mad like a little baby.

"I'm gonna go get my g*n

and I'm gonna sh**t you."

That was his way to get control.

Oh, boy.

"Julian Hammer, 47, son of

industrialist Armand Hammer,

was arrested on suspicion of

as*ault with a deadly weapon

and released on a $1,000 bail."

Somehow or another I

always would give into him

thinking, "all right, this time it'll

be better, this time it'll be better."

Unfortunately, it never was.

Few days later, we

got in an argument,

and I saw the g*n in

his hand and I just said,

"you are not gonna

pull that g*n out on me,

you're not gonna

point it at me,"

and that's when I

went for the g*n.

The g*n went off.

My nine-month-old son

was in the same room.

He was only a few feet away,

and so it could have ricocheted

and hit him and k*lled him.

So, that was it, I left,

that was it, it was over.

There's no consequence.

Well, what message

are you sending?

"So what? What's gonna

happen to me? I'm a Hammer."

Nothing ever happened to Julian

because Armand Hammer had

the money to make it go away.

Bottom line, he

could do whatever he wanted.

He could get away with m*rder.

And he did.

Armie Hammer's

great grandfather, Julian,

was arrested for

manslaughter in 1955.

His old friend, Bruce, came

to LA to celebrate his birthday,

and reminded him that

Julian owed him $400,

and then Julian

shot him two times.

This all happened when Sue was

pregnant with Armie's father, Michael.

The story that he

told us was self-defense,

but my mom was

very quick to tell me,

"no, your father just m*rder*d

someone in cold blood."

Armand Hammer got a phone call

saying that his son

had just shot someone.

And so, to save not his son,

but to save his

own reputation

he actually delivered

$50,000 in cash to his lawyer,

basically quashing the

charges against his son,

stopping his son from

going to prison for m*rder.

And he didn't even

seem like he was really bothered

in that he shot his friend

over the gambling debt.

He talked to me just

nonchalant about it.

You could get away

with m*rder, you could do anything.

There was no accountability.

Each generation,

the men learned very early that

money makes things go away.

It keeps people quiet.

After the m*rder,

Julian was given a

position by Armand Hammer

at Occidental Petroleum

out of the public eye.

Julian eventually began

doing things for his father,

ill*gal things like

helping his father

surreptitiously

record conversations.

Julian set him up with

a hidden microphone

and wired 'em up as

we've seen in police movies.

So, he became part

of the secretive world.

A spy world, if you want.

Armand Hammer

understood the criminal mind.

That if you're wired and

have someone on tape,

you have control over them.

The perception

of Hammer in the early 1980s

was that he was a humanitarian,

a philanthropist,

he was a billionaire,

basically, whose mission in life

was to bring about world peace.

A few of us who were

writing about Hammer

were finding out there

was this story there

that the press had

not gotten a hold of.

How do you do,

ladies and gentlemen.

Hammer had successfully

buried the story of his past.

In the Hammer family tree,

you have Armie Hammer

and his father, Michael,

his father, Julian,

his father, Armand,

and his father, Julius.

I'm here to talk about Julius.

Julius Hammer

had come to America

like many of the Jews of Russia.

He was also a doctor,

but more than that,

he became an active politician.

Julius Hammer was a founder

of the American Communist Party.

When his son in 1898 was born,

he named him Armand

Hammer after the symbol

of the Communist

Party in Russia.

The arm and the hammer.

The Russians

used the Hammer family

through Julius Hammer to

channel money into New York,

fund the Communist Party

and then steal technology,

and trade secrets

from the United States.

After years of research,

the CIA concluded

that Armand Hammer

was used to collect

information for the KGB.

He was an agent

of the Soviet Union.

Armie's great

grandfather, Armand Hammer,

goes to Moscow to take over

what his father had built there.

Armand Hammer became

an agent of his father's company.

He was a money

launderer, he was a courier

for funds that were channeled

to Soviet espionage

in the United States.

It was secret, it was

ill*gal, it was dangerous.

Behind every

great fortune is a great crime.

Certainly behind

the Hammer fortune

there were a great

number of great crimes.

The time for

successful capitalists

earning profits in the height

of communism was over,

and Dr. Armand

Hammer decided to leave

because he realized his

businesses would never triumph

under Stalin's crushing rule.

When Hammer arrived

in the U.S. in the early 1930s

there was still this fear

of Russia and communism,

so, one of his most

important missions

was to bury his past.

Dr. Hammer, I must show

this audience a picture of Olga.

This is your first wife here.

There she is.

What didn't fit

in with his legend

of being an American who

just happened to be in Russia

was that he had a Russian

wife and a Russian child

born in Moscow, Julian.

So, he tried to create as

much distance as he could.

He even had a

paternity test taken

in the hopes that it would

show that his son, Julian

was not really his son.

It was very sad when

I heard the whole story

from Julian's point of view.

He knew he was always

thought of as an embarrassment.

An albatross.

So, the relationship

between Armand and Julian

was a relationship of

a father trying to hide

his son.

And his only son from the world.

My father and

brother hated each other.

They constantly were arguing

and bickering and fighting.

But on the outside

in front of Grandpa,

they were patting

each other on the back

and being so phony

and superficial.

My brother wanted

to surpass my father,

but my father wasn't

gonna let that happen.

Julian was very

jealous of Michael. That I saw.

He was very jealous, he

was very rough on Michael.

Very mean to Michael.

I did see a pattern there.

That Julian, I think,

was hard on his children

because Armand

was hard on Julian.

The second trip I

took from Washington

down to visit my father

everyone was

drinking way too much

and my

father offered my brother

$1 million for his girlfriend.

My brother, it was like

a monster unleashed.

They both said, "I'm gonna

k*ll you," and they ran outside,

and when I finally

circled the building,

I saw police had separated them.

The cops didn't arrest

either one of 'em,

and let them both drive

away intoxicated as they were,

and Michael's girlfriend

ended up going with my father

quote unquote to

tame the situation.

She was older than

most of the girls.

Probably 19.

She ended up living with my

father for, like, another eight months.

When I graduated from high

school, my grandfather said,

"you're now going to the University of

San Diego because your brother's there."

USD was a Catholic

private school,

2000 students, so,

it was very small.

Michael was larger

than life on the campus,

meaning he had a reputation.

Him and his friends are partying

and just, um, all kinds of things.

Michael was the

life-of-the-party guy.

He was the leader of the guys.

When their group would come in,

Michael would always

be front and center.

He was almost the stereotypical

wealthy kid that you

see in teen movies.

What was his, uh, slogan?

I think he even wanted T-shirts made

that said, "Decadence, a way of life."

He kind of

always had a different girl.

It would be one of those

things where, you know,

"Do we really have

to get to know her?

There will just be a

new one next week."

It didn't matter

what room he was in,

he commanded your attention,

he wanted your attention.

Almost every single one

of Casey's closest friends

ended up sleeping with

Michael at some point or another.

One night, I had found

a photo album in his closet.

And it was a lot of naked people

in the pictures, like an orgy,

and there was cash,

and there were drugs,

and there was a g*n

in the closet as well.

Michael was mirroring my father

and showing early signs

of what my father was like.

It was scary.

My name is Wendy Williams.

Casey Hammer and Michael Hammer

are my cousins.

I thought that they

were just wealthy,

they had this wonderful life,

when it was not

like that at all.

Michael was pretty reckless

when he was younger.

I remember Armand Hammer

coming in to

intervene with Michael.

He was making very

specific demands

of how Michael's

life was going to be.

Basically, there

would be no money

unless he cleaned up his life

and did what Armand

wanted.

Which was, come

work for the company.

It always appeared that Michael

was the Hammer heir.

And Casey was,

for a lack of a

better way to say it,

"Just be nice and be pretty

and we'll take care of you."

Michael had gotten back

into graces with my grandfather

and then was hired at Oxy.

And so, Michael saw

he could try and

manipulate my grandfather,

or get, you know, above

my father's hierarchy.

Grandpa would

throw parties all the time.

We would get invited,

and it was a select few

2,000 of his closest friends.

And it was who's who in

Hollywood if you got invited.

It's now my great privilege to

introduce Mr. Gregory Peck.

It was a huge

deal when they were like,

"Armand Hammer is hosting

Prince Charles and Lady Diana."

So, yeah, it was pretty cool when you

got to tell people that you were there.

My father was forced to show up

at a function or a party,

and just didn't wanna

have anything to do with it.

Whereas my brother

wanted it so deeply

to take his place as

heir apparent to the throne.

I tried watching the

HBO show Succession.

I got through three episodes

and I had to turn it off.

Everyone's

brown-nosing each other

and saying fake stuff, and everyone

hates each other on the inside,

but on the outside they're

all pretending to get along.

Magnify Succession

a million times,

and it was literally my family.

Michael was 27,

28, when he first met

Armie's mother, Dru.

He was flying first class

and he was really drunk,

and I guess Dru was

sitting next to him.

And she said before

she got off the airplane,

she was planning to marry him.

She was very religious

and very not like what

Michael goes out with.

So when he got off the airplane

and he was saying,

"I met someone,"

we were all like, "Sure, okay."

And then when we met Dru,

we just thought, "Oh,

that's never gonna last."

But my grandfather rolled out the

red carpet for her and her parents.

He wanted Michael

and Dru to get married,

because this was a

wholesome, Tulsa, wealthy family

that was very religious,

and my grandfather believed

that Dru could change Michael.

After we got out of college, Michael

came over one night to Casey's house

and introduced this woman as

his fiance, and we got to know her.

But then he was with other girls

who went out with us,

and, you know, we

would ask questions like,

"Oh, did you break

up with your fiance?"

"No, no, she's fine. She just

couldn't come out tonight."

When they got married, it

was a big, elaborate, to-do in Tulsa

where who's who was invited.

It was a giant wedding.

When Dru gave birth to Armie,

they would parade him

around to Grandpa's.

Everyone fawned all over him.

I remember being at Michael

and Dru's house in the Palisades.

Armie, just this little,

cute towhead little boy,

comes up to me.

And Michael says,

"Are you gonna give

your aunt Casey a hug goodbye?"

And he kicked me in the shins.

I was like, "You're

such a little brat."

But God forbid you touch

or say anything bad to Armie.

He was given Armand Douglas

Hammer, after my grandfather.

He was the prince, the crown,

the continuation of

the Hammer name,

so the whole Hammer

family could live again

in a whole another generation.

- Armand Hammer

- Dr. Armand Hammer

Self-made millionaire

Armand Hammer is dead.

He died last night

at the age of 92.

I was living in

Hawaii when I got a phone call

that my grandfather had passed.

And

it was the phone call

that you never thought

was gonna happen.

It was from Michael.

I remember dropping the phone

and the room spinning.

Armand Hammer, philanthropist,

art collector, and industrialist

It was a huge deal. The

coverage was incredible.

From 1921,

Hammer was making deals

I just remember being at the

airport getting ready to board my flight,

and on all the monitors and TV

screens, "Armand Hammer Dies."

Armand Hammer,

the son of one of the founders

of the American Communist

Party, acquired Occidental

You couldn't get away from it.

It was just surreal.

I hope that when I pass

on, I will have left the world

a little better than

when I found it.

Michael had called me,

and Grandpa was

still dead on the bed

while he was looting the house.

There were five vans out front,

and Michael and Dru

bringing down tapestries

and taking things

from the house.

I had flown in that morning.

I rented a car and I remember

driving to my father's house.

I was just trying to

make sense of everything.

Few days later, we were called

into Arthur Groman's office,

who was my grandfather's

best friend and attorney,

and that was where the

reading of the will was.

Michael was on my right and

my father was across from me.

Arthur Groman's reading

through it and saying,

"And I leave my granddaughter,

Casey Layne Hammer,

$250,000 in cash."

Let's see what else.

"And I leave Julian

Hammer, my son

$500,000.

Pay off his house

and car and debts.

And I leave Michael Armand

Hammer the Rolls-Royce."

And then the

last paragraph or so was,

"And the executor of the estate

is Michael Armand Hammer

and his wife, Dru Ann Hammer."

My grandfather had

$40 million of cash left.

I got $250,000,

my father got $500,000

everything else got

passed on to Michael.

At that point, you're

like, "Wait, what?"

You don't think

you're hearing any of it.

And my father starts going off,

"What do you mean,

you get the Rolls-Royce?

I want the Rolls-Royce."

And I'm like,

in my mind, thinking,

"You don't even understand

the gravity of what just happened."

It made no sense.

And when I asked when

the new will was signed

it was in October.

Forty days later,

my grandfather died.

The expectation

of his family members

was he was a billionaire.

And then when

his will was read

they learned that he wasn't.

He had given away

most of his money.

So, the Hammer family was left

basically fighting among themselves.

Michael decided he would

grab as much of the money

and as much of the

power as he could,

and as executive, there were

very few people to oppose him.

It was like checkmate.

Michael was putting the

screws to my father and I,

and my brother told my mother,

"Casey's just a casualty,"

because he hated

my father so much,

he wanted him out on the street.

To have Michael, who professed

himself as a man of God,

doing this to my

father and myself

it's not about the inheritance

as much as it is about

just being acknowledged.

I was completely left out.

That's really sad

when you realize that

you don't have

any family or anybody who love you.

I don't know how

to process all of that.

I just, um

yeah.

It didn't end well.

Armie talked a lot

about the evilness

of the men in his family.

His dad, his grandpa,

his great-grandpa.

But he didn't sound like

he was ashamed of it.

It's almost like it

was a badge of honor.

After the Sedona

night with the ropes,

Armie's pulling me even closer.

We go to Dallas

and meet his mom.

He warned me that it

would be interesting.

And that, it was.

She's just like Armie, she's

gorgeous, tall, really beautiful.

They both command a room.

You know, they have a presence.

At dinner, Armie was talking

negatively about his father.

And she just blurted out, "You

need to give him some slack,

because this happened to him

when he was younger."

And it was something that I

should not have been there for.

Nobody could have been

prepared for what I heard that night.

It was just some

deep-rooted family trauma.