The intruder forced Francis to lie on his bed with his pants down, then switched on a video camera and is heard on the tape saying, "I'm not a fag, but I am going to make the owner of 'Girls Gone Wild' look like a fag. I am going to put this on the Internet and make money." The video lasts only a few minutes, long enough for Francis to identify himself and mumble that he enjoys anal sex. He made the statement, the police report details, fearing for his life. Police say no sexual assault occurred.

Hands still bound and mouth covered with duct tape, Francis was forced into his Bentley but freed himself after the car was abandoned near Sunset Boulevard.

For the next four days, the gunman called Francis many times, demanding that he be paid from $300,000 to half a million dollars in exchange for the video. Police attempts to identify a suspect through the calls were unsuccessful, since they were made from pay phones.

The case broke last December when a friend of Francis' — later identified by the defense as Hilton — overheard a man at a party bragging about knowing a guy who robbed Francis' home. The partygoer identified the intruder as Darnell Riley, who according to court documents had lived in Lancaster and more recently in Los Angeles. In a police search of Riley's home, the videotape of Francis was found and Riley's fingerprints were matched to some taken from the Bentley and the duct tape, according to the police report.

Riley, 28, is charged with six felonies and has been in custody since his arrest in March. A pretrial hearing is expected to begin in mid-December. His defense attorney, Ronald Richards, says, "We're contesting Joe Francis' description of the incident. Every fact in this case is at issue."

A cornerstone of the defense will be that Riley and Francis were acquainted before the night of the break-in, Richards says. Bill Horn, a spokesman for Francis, says the two men never met before the night Francis was attacked in his home.

The case has been catnip to such gossip and scandal-obsessed websites as Radar Online and Defamer, which have described the video in purple prose. Hilton, a high priestess of celebritydom, has been subpoenaed, and if she testifies, even the pretrial hearing will likely be a media circus.

The district attorney has instructed Francis not to comment on the extortion case, but in an interview with The Times last summer, he said, "Envy makes you a target. People want what you have, and they think they can take what you have."

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