Rachel Lee, the alleged “ringleader” of the infamous Bling Ring gang, says she was driven in part by an intense self-hatred and desire to be white and that she takes issue with the “ringleader” label.
What is the Bling Ring? A group of young adults who burglarized a number of celebrity homes in the early 2000s. They were allegedly led by Lee.
“Rachel Lee was 19 when she and four others broke into the homes of Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan, Orlando Bloom and others – noting their whereabouts on social media, and timing their break ins when they were out of town. The group stole goods worth an estimated $3 million, most of which was never recovered,” according to the Daily Mail.
They were eventually caught, after which Lee was sentenced to four years in prison but only served one year and four months. Following her incarceration, she became a hairdresser, tried to live a low-key life, and turned down every request for an interview.
That changed when she met documentary filmmaker Erin Lee Carr, whose empathy convinced her to participate in the following documentary:
“Any other reporter or production, I was always shaking. When I met Erin, I just felt like I was talking to a friend — like a human — and I wasn’t being attacked. I could slowly just open up, and it happened organically through blind faith,” she recently explained in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
During the same interview, she also revealed that she’d become a notorious thief not “to emulate celebrity” but because she simply didn’t like herself.
“I just didn’t like me. I was born here, so I didn’t actually visit Korea until last year, but I knew some idea about my culture because of my grandparents and my parents. I was just such a minority at my schools that I felt too different. And then at my high schools, the word ‘chink’ would just roll off people’s tongues,” she said.
“I didn’t realize how delusional I was about myself until prison. I didn’t realize how much I hated myself, how much I hated being Asian and how much I wanted to be white. I just would ask God all the time, ‘Why did you do this to me? Why did you put me in this position where I look so weird compared to everyone?'” she added.
Thankfully, her time in prison served as a drastic wake-up call.
“It changed me in every single way possible, even physically. One of the biggest things that really changed me from prison was I didn’t realize how vain of a person I was. The physical part of prison, not having mirrors, was very interesting because when I couldn’t look at myself. I asked myself, ‘Who am I?’ And I felt really empty inside,” she told the Times.
“I consider [prison] my birth. I started over because I had no foundation, I didn’t have any moral compass. In there, I got grounded with who I wanted to be. I want to be a good person. I want to be a kind person. I want to be a strong person — I’m working on that. I want to be an honest person,” she continued.
The #BlingRing case — a string of burglaries by young adults drawn to the allure of Hollywood celebrity— is the subject of Erin Lee Carr’s new HBO documentary, “The Ringleader: The Case of the Bling Ring.”
We spoke to Carr and ‘Ringleader” Rachel Lee: https://t.co/3BBGYdUf7t pic.twitter.com/cvfQFzxvzC
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) September 29, 2023
She attributes her “healing” both to God and her family.
“In a time where I thought that my whole family would disown me, they didn’t. I was sober in prison, I was sober out of prison. It helped me be with a sober mind, truly, and to be really conscious about the type of friends I’m bringing into my life,” she said.
“I used to be such an impulsive person, sometimes I still am, but now after getting out of prison, I just was more asking myself, ‘Why are you thinking that? Why did you do that?'” she added.
That said, she does have some issues with the “ringleader” label that’s been given to her.
“I only identified [with] it because that’s what the media called me for so long. They almost convinced me for one moment that I was, but then I had to snap myself back to reality. Everyone is responsible for their own actions. I never forced anyone to do anything. And so to be honest, I feel like it was unfair,” she said.
Carr appears to agree with this. Speaking with Time magazine, she noted that another member of the Bling Ring, Nick Prugo, had confessed “everything” to the police — and in doing so, had implicated Lee as the “ringleader.” But Lee never pushed back at the time because she was “in such serious trouble” and just “trying to fight for her survival in the criminal justice system.”
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V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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