The late investigative journalist and former NYPD detective John Connolly's entire archive is up for grabs. For decades, he was a thorn in the side of Hollywood’s bad boys and fixers. And now the late investigative journalist and former NYPD detective John Connolly’s entire archive is up for grabs.
Connolly’s longtime partner, music industry veteran Dorothy Carvello, tells Page Six Hollywood that she is shopping a vast trove of his reporting and intellectual property culled from the hard-hitting journalist’s famed career.
Dorothy Carvello and John Connolly on January 26, 2005 in New York City. Patrick McMullan via Getty Images Most recently, Connolly, James Patterson and Tim Malloy co-authored the 2016 book “Filthy Rich: A Powerful Billionaire, the Sex Scandal that Undid Him, and All the Justice that Money Can Buy: The Shocking True Story of Jeffrey Epstein,” which Netflix adapted into a hit docuseries in 2020.
But well before Connolly began investigating Epstein, he was one of the most feared men in Hollywood. He wrote high-impact exposés on Steven Seagal, Heidi Fleiss, Donald Trump, Michael Jackson and Arnold Schwarzenegger for publications including Spy, Vanity Fair, Premiere, US Weekly, Radar and New York Magazine.
So, what exactly is Carvello — the executor and recipient of the archive — sitting on? She says all of Connolly’s notebooks, Rolodexes, tape recordings, computers, books, published stories and legal threat letters. (Spy and Premiere are defunct.)
“His arch nemesis was Marty Singer, and he used to joke about letters as long as books that he received from him. He was great for Marty’s practice,” Carvello says of the prominent Hollywood attorney, noting that the relationship between journalist and the legal eagle was always mutually respectful and never personal. “We kept hearing, ‘Release the Epstein Files.’ It’s time now to release the Connolly Files.”
Carvello is working with an attorney that she declined to name to explore film and TV possibilities for the cache in her possession. At the time of his death in 2022 at the age of 78 following a brief illness, Connolly was working on a mostly completed book on notorious LA private eye Anthony Pellicano titled “The Sin Eater.” A man who kept secrets, Pellicano spent 16 years in federal prison for wiretapping and racketeering as well as federal explosives charges. Before he landed behind bars in 2003, Pellicano’s clients included a who’s who of Hollywood power players like the late Paramount studio boss Brad Grey, former CAA power agent Michael Ovitz and the scandal-prone “King of Pop” Jackson.
Considering the breadth of the archive, Hollywood should be terrified. Or salivating at the “Ray Donovan”-esque possibilities.
Carvello offered us a small taste of what she has in her possession including letters written by several actresses in support of Schwarzenegger before Connolly dropped the hammer on the “Terminator” star in a 2001 Premiere magazine story titled “Arnold the Barbarian.” The exposé detailed allegations that Schwarzenegger groped women, engaged in extramarital affairs and used steroids. Following publication, Jamie Lee Curtis wrote to Connolly and Premiere: “Your smear campaign failed… He has a ribald sense of humor and sense of play but never in the time of my relationship with him has he ever shown me anything like the behavior you describe in your politically motivated hatchet job. You should be ashamed of yourselves.” (The actress appears to be referencing the actor’s plans to run for California governor, likely the last time she went to bat for a Republican politician.)
Curtis certainly wasn’t alone. Everyone from Rita Wilson and Kelly Preston penned similar letters defending the action star. “Then it comes out he screwed his maid,” Carvello says of a 2011 Los Angeles Times report involving Schwarzenegger and his housekeeper.
A Post obituary at the time of Connolly’s death lauded “the cop-turned-scribe [who] was known among media insiders for his unending Rolodex, and a unique ability to mix among Hollywood execs and stars, Wall Street rainmakers, pols, police and wiseguys alike.”
While trawling through her partner’s work, Carvello solved one mystery that has vexed Hollywood for decades: the identity of Celia Brady, who was the dreaded Hollywood gossip columnist for Spy magazine back in the days when Ovitz and Ron Meyer ruled the town. Brady was none other than Connolly, who was writing under a pen name. “All the Hollywood idiots would try to figure it out,” she says. And apparently, they never did. Even Graydon Carter referenced Brady’s feared byline and secret identity in his 2025 memoir “When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines.”
Dorothy Carvello, shown here with John Connolly, in 2013. Patrick McMullan Writing under his real name was fraught with danger. Carvello says actor Steven Seagal “put out a hit” on Connolly, but it was foiled because the journalist was “tipped off by a capo” in the Gambino crime family.
“A few years after the hit threat, I found myself seated at the same table as Seagal at Clive’s Grammy party,” Carvello recalls of the famed Clive Davis pre-awards bash. “I introduced myself. The look on his face was one of utter disbelief.”
Ultimately, Connolly was never rattled by any of his angry readers.
“He was never afraid of anyone who threatened him about writing stories,” adds Carvello, who was Connolly’s partner for 27 years. “He had some great editors that believed in the stories.”
