Randy and Evi Quaid reportedly believe there is an evil sect of Hollywood trying to kill them. It is the same shadowy organization that killed Heath Ledger, David Carradine, and Chris Penn. This sect is also responsible for extorting millions from their bank accounts, while running them out of the country. The impetus for the seemingly paranoid descent into madness has several starting points depending on who you ask. Friends and relatives point to the 1989 marriage of the Quaids as the beginning of the end for the Golden Globe winning actor. Others say it manifested back in 2006, when they were approached by law enforcement for disturbing the peace (more on that later). Perhaps, it was when the world became aware of their self-destruction, when Randy was blackballed from a would-be Broadway play for allegedly verbally and physically attacking cast members, among other undignified behaviors reported by those on hand. For the Quaids though, specifically Randy, the trouble with what he calls the “Star Whackers” began back in 1983. The following is a chronological account by family, friends, law enforcement, and the Quaids themselves, of how Randy and Evi became fugitives from the law, and how they descended into a state of apparent delusion that only few can understand. A Match Made In Madness Randy had a bright career ahead of him. The lumbering, 6 foot 4 inch doughy-faced older brother of Dennis Quaid had become a breakout star when, in 1974, he received an Oscar nomination starring alongside Jack Nicholson in The Last Detail. By 1983, Quaid had starred in critical and commercial hits like Midnight Express, and National Lampoon’s Vacation. Throughout the decade, Quaid would go on to star in Saturday Night Live, another Vacation film, and a Lyndon B. Johnson TV movie that would win him a Golden Globe. From the outside, it seemed that Quaid was blazing his own path, playing well-defined character roles that would become the highlight of many films. But, according to an aborted 220-page lawsuit that he filed in 2010, something sinister was swirling in the background of his budding career. The Star Whackers, Quaid’s name for the evil Hollywood Illuminati thwarting his success, allegedly began dipping their hands into his fortune in 1983, after the success of the first Vacation film. Using a fake probate file, they created an identity from a deceased Santa Barbara woman — named Ronda L. Quaid — and used a fake trust fund to deposit and cash Randy’s royalty checks. Only, Ronda L. Quaid was real; she died in 2005 and was worth about $1.5 million. Yet, you can’t tell that to Evi. Ronda L. Quaid never existed! No one ever has met her. She was supposedly a schoolteacher. But you go to the county and you pull the probate file and it’s $7 million in cash. How would a schoolteacher have that? It’s Randy’s royalty stream. I’ve researched everything. There’s no body. They’re just trying to merge the two identities in order to cash the checks. Evi Quaid was a 24-year-old model and production assistant when she met Randy in 1988. She was assigned to drive actors to the set of Bloodhounds of Broadway, a film starring Madonna. On the day she met and drove Randy to the set, they got lost, eventually ending up at a Chinese restaurant where Randy proposed to her on the spot. She said yes, and they ended up spending the night together.

Evi was born a socialite — her uncle was a founder of Revlon, her mother already wealthy from the family’s connection to a trucking company in New Jersey. After she married Randy, she appeared twice in Vogue, highlighting her fashion and extensive wardrobe that few in L.A. could compete with. In 1989, Evi and Randy bought a $1.35 million home in Montecito, California. Then, in 1991, the Quaids would sell the home, but what they didn’t know at the time is that the sale would become the stimulus for a long, winding road of instability. The Snowball Effect Things were relatively quiet for the Quaids throughout the 90s. Randy was making a lot of money and Evi was spending it on clothes and furniture. Randy’s odd behavior began escalating in 2005, when he sued the producers of Brokeback Mountain for underselling the film and, in turn, causing his payday to be a bit more lackluster than he would have preferred. Then, in 2006, the producers of the HBO show Entourage, called the police to the Quaids’ residence. Their neighbors were having a party, so in retaliation, Randy and Evi installed speakers into their treetops and began booming a song that Randy had sung in the 2004 animated film Home on the Range. An episode of Entourage was filming a few shorts blocks away. In 2007, things really got out of control. Randy was cast in a Broadway musical: Lone Star Love. Producers of the play had loved Quaid during the auditions; he was jovial, professional and generally a pleasure to be around. …Randy had been entirely charming and won the creative team over in the casting process. Then, Evi joined him for rehearsals. She designed his outfit complete with dyed-red hair and a cod piece. She filmed rehearsals despite it being against union rules. She sent condescending e-mails to producers. And, for the coup de grâce, she sent a naked photo of herself holding a gun to several key players in the production. For Randy’s part in the mess, he smacked a cast member’s head four times during a rehearsal, later claiming he was just in character. I am guilty of only one thing: giving a performance that elicited a response so deeply felt by the actors and producers with little experience of my creative process that they actually think I am Falstaff. The cast had had enough. The members of the cast, and the producers, filed a complaint with the Actors’ Equity Union, and Randy was fined over $81,000 and banned from the union for life. Lone Star Love shut down and never made it to Broadway. The backlash from the ban was more than anyone could’ve imagined. Evi hired a detective to look into the backgrounds of all the cast members, claiming that they wanted to kill the married couple. Evi demanded that I harass [the cast]. I observed Evi’s paranoia increase and she was convinced someone was going to murder Randy and then Evi to make it look like murder-suicide… Becky Altringer, the private eye that the Quaids hired, even let them stay in a mobile home she rented out. Three weeks they rented a mobile home from me—it was my partner’s mom’s—after we kicked them out of our house. I was literally going insane from Evi and her dog. She let it urinate in the house; she took our dinners out to the dog—roast beef. She woke up in the morning and said the mob was here—they have chainsaws and shovels; they’re going to bury us. I said, Evi, that’s the gardener. In 2009, the Quaids skipped out on a $10,000 bill at the San Ysidro Ranch Hotel; it was just the beginning of their legal woes. They were arrested after the hotel lobbied a complaint, and after paying a $20,000 bond, the Quaids would skip five court hearings. Authorities would eventually catch up with them in Marfa, Texas, where they were in the process of erecting a museum dedicated to Randy.