Attorney in Vicki Morgan Case Pleads No Contest

Beverly Hills attorney Robert K. Steinberg pleaded no contest Friday to a criminal contempt charge stemming from his refusal to answer questions dealing with the purported Vicki Morgan “sex tapes” during a 1983 court appearance.

Steinberg, who attracted national attention when he announced that summer that he had obtained videotapes showing sadomasochistic sex parties involving Morgan, her longtime lover, the late Alfred Bloomingdale, and Reagan Administration officials, never produced the tapes. Bloomingdale, co-founder of Diners Club, was a close friend of President Reagan.

Beverly Hills Municipal Judge Andrew J. Weisz imposed a six-month suspended sentence on Steinberg and fined him $1,190 on the misdemeanor criminal contempt charge.

Bludgeoned to Death

The negotiated plea, lawyers said, should serve as the official conclusion of the bizarre episode, which began several days after Morgan, a model, was bludgeoned to death July 7, 1983, by a friend, Marvin Pancoast, at her rented condominium in North Hollywood. Pancoast was later convicted of first-degree murder.

Steinberg, who briefly represented Pancoast, told police that on July 9 he acquired three videotapes showing the sex parties from a woman who had refused to identify herself. The attorney said he planned to destroy the tapes,which, he claimed, included footage of a U.S. congressman and four high Reagan Administration officials and friends, none of whom he identified, unless White House officials wanted to see them. But three days later, hours after the district attorney’s office asked that the tapes be preserved as potential evidence in the Pancoast case, Steinberg reported them stolen.

Steinberg was initially charged with filing a false police report, but that complaint was dropped in exchange for Friday’s plea.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lawrence Longo said in an interview that the false report charge is difficult to prove because two key witnesses who worked for Steinberg’s telephone answering service--both of whom had testified before the grand jury that indicted Steinberg--are no longer available to appear at a trial. One witness is dead, he said, and the other has disappeared.

Seen as Implied Admission

“We had to prove a negative--that the things never existed,” Longo said. “We had to show there was never a phone call or a mystery woman.”

Longo said he considers the plea an implied admission that the tapes never existed. But one of Steinberg’s attorneys, Peter Brown, said: “It’s my opinion there were tapes . . . but our investigation never turned up those tapes in the possession of our client.”

Brown said Steinberg agreed to plead no contest partly as a means of avoiding having his right to practice law immediately suspended in case he was found guilty of filing the false report.

With the contempt charge, Brown said, Steinberg will still face a disbarment hearing but will not be automatically suspended.

The contempt and false report charges carry the same maximum penalty of six months in jail, Longo said.