There was no one the Los Angeles A-list trusted more with their precious faces in the early 2010s than Dawn DaLuise, with celebrities regularly breezing through the doors of her West Hollywood salon until an ugly scandal left her reputation in tatters.
The esthetician, then 55, was arrested in 2014 after authorities accused her of ordering a hit on a competitor. DaLuise spent over 10 months in prison awaiting trial, before a jury found her not guilty after just 40 minutes.
“The miscarriage of justice is insane and overwhelming,” she told People magazine. “My life is decimated. [Authorities] shot first and asked questions later.”
Best known for her signature galvanic facials, which used small electrical currents to help beauty products penetrate the skin, DaLuise’s reputation as the woman behind Jennifer Aniston’s glow helped her launch a skincare line. Business was going great until Gabriel Suarez planned to open his Smooth Cheeks spa in the same building as her Skin Refinery Salon in 2013. The pair got into an altercation over the noise as he renovated his space.
Within weeks of their heated exchange, DaLuise started to receive a barrage of dirty calls and texts from men she didn’t know. These were eventually traced back to a series of ads that had been placed on Craigslist. “Mature woman, celebrity facialist, wants no-strings-attached sex,” one read.
The harassment quickly escalated into cyber abuse and stalking, with incidents that included men pounding on her front door and her car tyres being slashed. Then, her daughters started to be targeted as well. DaLuise went to the police and pointed her finger at Suarez.
“I told them I knew who was doing it,” she told Los Angeles magazine. “I got the same answer each time: ‘We have a big case load; stalking crimes are very hard to prove,”’ she recalled the officers saying.
Two months later, DaLuise was woken in the middle of the night as police burst into her home and charged her with solicitation to commit Suarez’s murder. She was further accused of orchestrating her own cyber-stalking as part of the plot.
At the heart of the case was a text she’d sent to friend Edward Feinstein saying she had “found someone who is going to take Gabriel out”. Former NFL player Chris Geile, the man she was accused of hiring for the hit, testified that DaLuise had never asked him to kill Suarez. The message she’d sent to Feinstein had been “venting”, she claimed.
After deliberations were quickly over, DaLuise was free, but the damage was done. Her business was gone, and during her time in custody, she’d developed colorectal cancer. She later sued the LA Sheriff’s Department for wrongful imprisonment and failing to diagnose her with the disease, and settled for an undisclosed amount.
Investigations eventually revealed it was Feinstein, the police informant, who had been behind DaLuise’s harassment all along. He and friend Nick Prugo, a member of the infamous Bling Ring theft gang who targeted the homes of high-profile celebrities, including Paris Hilton, were sentenced to 350 hours of community service and three years of probation each on stalking misdemeanour charges.
Despite the verdicts, the debate over whether DaLuise is really a victim or the villain continues to rage online, with Feinstein fanning the flames. In a 2021 YouTube video, he said he regretted taking the plea deal and also claimed DaLuise fabricated the stalking incidents. “I want him just to go away,” DaLuise recently told CNN.
With its twists and turns, DaLuise’s story has the makings of a good Hollywood thriller – and has recently been adapted for the screen, with Elizabeth Banks playing a character inspired by her in Netflix’s new thriller, Skincare
“I was stunned and in awe of how precise everything [was],” DaLuise said of the movie.
