Rachel Uchitel, 34, is the current media darling, thrust instantaneously into the limelight of infamy, and she doesn’t like it one little bit … or, so she claims publicly in her BlackBook write-up: “I don’t appreciate my name or what people think of me being dragged through the mud by people who don’t even bother to research what or who they’re talking about … they should research who these stories are coming from, who they’re believing as a credible source. Not to mention that it’s in the ‘National Enquirer.’”
To aid her cause and, no doubt, to take on the massively powerful and private Tiger Woods‘ camp, Uchitel has enlisted media-savvy maven, celebrity attorney Gloria Allred, 68. The pair met up Sunday, Nov. 29, at Los Angeles International Airport, after the alleged mistress of Woods flew in from New York. Watch video of her departure from N.Y.:
Watch video of her arrival at LAX:
In an explosive story, the tabloid magazine “National Enquirer” claims, via information supplied by an alleged Las Vegas friend of Uchitel, named Ashley Samson, that Uchitel and Woods have been enjoying a months-long affair. The gossip columns have been ablaze with speculation that Wood’s suspicious one-car accident happened after he fought with his Swedish wife, Elin Nordegren, over the allegation / revelation. Samson, whom Uchitel asserts is not her friend and has met her only twice before, cashed a $25,000 Enquirer check for her info. Uchitel stringently denies any truth to the Enquirer’s story:
“I totally deny the Enquirer story. They did contact me about it, but they didn’t use any of my quotes or any of the information I gave them. They make it sound like I said those things, but it’s all other people saying I said things.”
Uchitel, an accomplished hostess in upscale nightclubs, ranging from New York to Las Vegas, is presently employed as Director of VIP Operations for Pink Elephant in Southampton, The Hamptons. She started her career in 2002 as a television producer at Bloomberg News, before heading to Las Vegas in 2006 to help launch Tao nightclub and restaurant, which became the world’s top grossing venue. Then she returned to New York as VIP Operations boss of the salubrious Stanton Social, Marquee, Tao Bistro, Dune, and others.”
She appeared on the cover of “The New York Post” clutching a photograph of her fiancé, James Andrew O’Grady, 32, who had been killed in the World Trade Center by the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
She has dated a famous baseball player, a Broadway star, a musician, and various film and television actors, but her lips are sealed on revealing details, choosing instead to let the tittle-tattle rags run rampant and potentially awry with tell-tale yarns from possibly dubious sources, and – of course – hiring an omnipotent feminist lawyer renowned for her media control techniques.
Allred, on her website, is self-described as “most famous woman attorney in the nation,” and is a time-served master-manipulator of transforming publicly berated women into sympathetic victims of a sexist male-dominated world. Her clients include Carrie Prejean the self-righteous and disgraced former Miss California caught in homophobia and sex tape scandals; Amber Frey who was girlfriend of married murderer Scott Peterson; Heather Mills who was the media monster of the day following her much publicized divorced from Paul McCartney; Paula Jones who sued Bill Clinton for sexual harassment; and she represented the Nicole Brown Simpson family during the O.J. Simpson trial.
Uchitel recently was linked romantically to Los Angeles based married TV actor David Boreanaz, who plays Angel in teen supernatural drama “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” and lead role in the spin-off television series “Angel.” He is also co-star of the crime-comedy-drama “Bones.”
She married her former childhood friend, Wall Street trader Steven Ehrenkranz, in 2004 at Cipriani in the Flatiron District of Manhattan, New York City. Just four months later she sought a divorce and headed back to Vegas, where she owns a pad in the ultra-luxurious Turnberry complex, a block from the Strip. While there she jumped into the life of another childhood friend, wealthy and powerful nightclub owner and promoter Jason Strauss, 35, who gave her the job of running Tao’s VIP door – he co-owns the popular spot.
A source who attended Uchitel’s and Ehrenkranz’s wedding says Uchitel has a “history of being with married men,” and described her as being “self-destructive.” Meantime, the Enquirer is hitting back at her claim to not know Samson well, by issuing pictures snapped on a recent vacation they took together in Spain (see below, Samson is the blonde on the left, and Uchitel the brunette to the right) and promises to expose “a slew of contradictions” between her denials and their article. [Digital Cheeseburger, however, would like to point out that the photos below are undated, so we cannot confirm their age or whether they are the result of Photoshopping.]
