Private Investigator was a Donnie Brasco-style agent who risked his life to get inside the Cosa Nostra
- Danno Hanks blows the lid on his roller-coaster life as a Private Investigator in his new book Hollywood Detective.
- Hanks has been Tinseltown’s top gumshoe for 50 years – and knows ‘where all the bodies are buried.’
- The Vietnam combat veteran has worked for all the big stars, including Michael Jackson.
- He also infamously spied on Meghan Markle.
- Now her husband the Duke of Sussex has turned to him for help in his cases against the tabloids.
- Hanks was praised last year by a British High Court judge for his evidence.
- Today Hanks reveals his risky past.
By Graham Johnson
Editor of Byline Investigates & Expose News
A key ally of Prince Harry is hiding a wild past – after toppling a top mafia gangboss.
Danno Hanks today is an important witness for the Duke of Sussex in his court cases against tabloid newspapers.
But the former private investigator has revealed that he once went undercover against the Gambino crime family in the US.
Hanks, 78, who lives in Los Angeles, said: ‘I infiltrated the mob for four-and-half years for the FBI and the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) to expose their illegal billion dollar-a-year bookmaking operations in California.
‘Of course, the Gambino crime family weren’t happy that I had tapped their telephones and then testified in front of a grand jury.
‘I put their top bookmaker Ron ‘The Cigar’ Sacco in jail.’
Hanks’ knife-edge sting has been compared to Donnie Brasco, the movie starring Al Pacino about a real-life FBI agent who spied on the New York Bonanno syndicate after winning the trust of gangsters.
However, Danno – a former Vietnam combat veteran with a Purple Heart medal – has never looked over his shoulder.
The Tinseltown bounty hunter added: ‘The mob saw me as a cop – a legitimate enemy – rather than a rat, so I was given a pass.
‘Here’s the deal: I wasn’t exactly a ‘made man’ who had betrayed them from the inside the family – so they never put a contract out on me.
‘The mafia are very calculated in the sense of who they take revenge on. I just carried on my business as normal.’
That business added up into an extraordinary life, which has included adventures that seem more at home in a blockbuster movie.
‘I’ve had many movie people approach me to make a film about my career,’ Hanks said.
‘The first was writer and director George Gallo (Midnight Run, 29th Street) and the latest is British comedian John Cleese – but inevitably we end up buddies and they wind-up asking me to be in their movies.’
‘George Gallo got me to play a role in The Comeback Trail. I got to act opposite Robert De Niro, one of my heroes. I am getting residual cheques from that job to this day.
‘John Cleese got me in his documentary Targeted and then got me on his talk show The Dinosaur Hour.‘
Now Hanks has written about working for Hollywood’s top stars including Michael Jackson’s family and blowing open the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
He became well known in America for exposing the Hollywood sex ring run by ‘madame’ Heidi Fleiss and investigating OJ Simpson, the controversial ex-American football star accused of murdering his wife.
‘In my life as a Hollywood detective, I have worked with all kinds of people,’ Hanks admits, ‘from criminals to prostitutes, movie stars to down-and-outs, porn stars to big-shot producers. Many of them have lived lives you can hardly believe. Before you judge them, I suggest you walk a mile in their shoes.’
Last year Hanks flew to London to give evidence for Prince Harry at the High Court in his case against Mirror Group Newspapers for unlawful information gathering.
Hanks told the court how he was regularly employed by the Mirror papers – including the Daily Mirror under Piers Morgan – to fraudulently access databases.
He has given evidence for the Duke against The Sun, which tasked him to unlawfully probe his wife, Meghan Markle.
And the Mail which allegedly commissioned Danno to spy on Prince Harry and other VIPS.
Both News Group Newspapers and Associated Newspapers Limited either deny or not admit any illegality.
In his memoir Hollywood Detective, Hanks writes about he became intertwined with the OJ Simpson scandal.
Simpson, an American football legend turned actor, was contentiously acquitted of murdering his wife Nicole Brown – but was heavily condemned in the court of public opinion and fell on hardtimes.
Hanks caught Simpson on covert video performing in a mob-funded flop porno movie whilst high on drugs with X-rated actresses.
Hanks recalls in Chapter 27 of Hollywood Detective: ‘Everyone knew that OJ was hard-up. He had been ordered to pay $33.5m to the families of the victims – although no jail time.
‘Infamous mobster and member of the notoriously criminal Lucchese family, Don Brown, had commissioned the film and was planning to finance it. He was currently in witness protection down in Santa Monica, and somehow or other he’d become friends with OJ.
‘OJ sat on the side of the bed, head a little bowed. ‘Then he reached into his pocket and brought out a bag of coke and a bag of grass.
‘After that he couldn’t get it up. He was too paranoid too perform.
‘Not long after the shoot, I heard a rumour that Don Brown was just about to put a hit out on him, when Don collapsed after a huge heart attack and died. ‘Maybe it was the stress of the shoot, who knows. But somehow, OJ avoided justice once again – albeit this time through a less official form of redress.’
Hollywood Detective by Danno Hanks is published by Yellow Press £6.99 on Amazon and Kindle. Click here.