Surviving Their Poisonous Schemes

Today is August 18, 2024 and I am Evelyn Floris, a.k.a. Evelyn Zumaya the author of Affairs Valentino.

Before my husband Renato's death in March of 2023, we lived in hiding for years and for the most part I still do... When I tell people this situation resulted from my writing, and Renato's publishing, a painstakingly-researched, documented biography of silent film star Rudolph Valentino... well they find it impossible to believe.

I do not think I have explained this predicament to a single person over the years who did not react with visible disbelief. How could such a thing happen? I would then begin to relate in as condensed a way as possible, the unthinkable tale of how my life came to be in danger because of a book I wrote I titled, Affairs Valentino. In hindsight, I can say authoritatively I clearly I discovered way too much about Valentino.

I discovered so much I had to be creative as to how to construct the story which spanned some one hundred years. On the brilliant advice of my literary agent, I wrote the book in two parallel narratives with the beginning and end of the book converging at the time of Valentino's death.

My research became an investigation which led me to locations and archives in Italy, Hollywood, and New York City. Over the course of ten years I met with those ancient survivors of Valentino's life and their descendants and was granted access to previously unknown Valentino archives.

One discovery led to another and this bread crumb quest to solve a mystery resulted in my recovery of a cache of a thousand pages of court records. It was in this way an entirely new story of the star's life became mine to tell. This revised story was a bombshell by comparison to the Hollywood version of the star's life. In 2011 my bombshell was published and detonated with such force my life would never be the same.

I expected some reaction and debate from fans of Valentino. But as deftly as I turned over every stone researching Affairs Valentino, I missed a critical point....the existence of a cult, a Valentino death cult; a seamlessly organized cult with an ensconced leader who fancies himself god of all things Valentino. The leader is a collector of Valentino memorabilia so the value of his collection is his guiding light and power.

This cult is connected primarily online with the leader based Hollywood acting not only as collector but as caretaker of Valentino's crypt. When Affairs Valentino was first published in 2011, the leader was threatened by the true story and his construct of loyalists rallied around him.

They launched an aggressive and sadistic campaign to ruin Renato and me, terrorizing us with such things as publishing my obituary, accompanied by years of morbid, death laden, salacious images. This while they boasted they were working diligently to “keep our books out of circulation”. The leader's loyalists gained favor by doing all they could in this endeavor and while he began years of gaslighting claiming he was the victim.

Affairs Valentino would not be the only nightmare threatening the Valentino cult's leader's status as expert. Renato and I were then publishing a book about every six months based on our Valentino research. The leader faced quite the task censoring and silencing our work.

Each day the situation compounded into the unthinkable as they hounded, trolled, taunted and stalked, to a high degree. They opened cloned versions of our websites and blogs diverting traffic to their defamatory posts and swore as fact complete lies about us and our work.

Renato and I responded with a decade of further research discovering epic stories not only about Valentino but his wife Natacha Rambova, his manager George Ullman, his godfather Frank Mennillo and published our findings in fourteen books. The cult, the leader and his sycophants, could barely keep up and ran blog after blog spewing their lies about and hatred towards us.

They managed to have Affairs Valentino removed from sale on Amazon, left one star hit reviews on our book's sales' pages online, accused us of forging documents, of lying about everything and it made no difference if I posted counter blogs in our honor. Their profound savaging of our work and reputations, ruined us online. When they threatened my family members, I closed the Affairs Valentino main blog and the cult leader immediately opened it as a designated hate blog.

The cult administrates two Facebook Forums on Valentino and have thousands of followers who have nary a clue about what is being censored or what the leader is up to.

I can not over exaggerate the emotional fervor some of these followers attach to Valentino. On those forums some kiss Valentino goodnight in unison, some burning his name as tattoos and giggle how they dream about him and polish his studio generated halo.

There are Rudolph Valentino fans today who believe they communicate with his spirit, some claiming they even have sex with him spiritually. Others believe they are able to transcribe/channel long treatises from the long-deceased star as he basks on the astral plane. There are those who fetishize anything Valentino every owned or touched with the thriving black market of his relics being bought and sold under aliases and in great secrecy.

There are whisperings from credible people alleging Valentino's body has been removed from his crypt and that collectors go to such extremes to own the latest. I could go on but suffice to say there is still a zealous and unearthly tone permeating many things Valentino. Most Valentino afficiandos are sincere and honest folks with most of the fanatical element revolving around the cult leader's forums.

Most all of them believe as gospel... the studio and mostly false version of his life which portrays Valentino as a rags to riches saint.

Affairs Valentino proved the handsome young Italian “Rudy” was no rags to riches immigrant. He was a wealthy nineteen-year-old who was exiled by a furious family because he impregnated a local woman. Valentino contracted syphilis at fifteen from prostitutes and passed this on to the mother of the love child. This love child would be raised as his nephew. As an incorrigible Lothario Rudolph was dispatched to America to save a family's face and there he did not wander the streets hungry, poor and in thread bare clothes. He was met by two wealthy godfathers who promptly ensured he had a tailored wardrobe.

It was never my intent to hurt a family or impugn the memory of Valentino. I shared the documentation Renato and I discovered which told a very true story. One book led to another and our niche library of artful books came into being. Renato published the books through his Italian production company and we were proud of every one.

As we published each new book, the cult tore into action and did and do what cults and the leader do best; restrict cult literature by banning any communication with me or praise/mention of our books. The leader rewarded his faithful minions and sent his vicious dogs after any insubordinates.

As I would learn this was no small operation. Spies were dispatched to act as my ardent fans to pry information from me about our next book, our current research discoveries and worst of all our location. At times my life was, and to a degree still is, a real life version of Mad Magazine's cartoon “Spy versus Spy”.

The Valentino death cult has been around for about twenty five years and has evolved steadily in commitment. Because the leader owns every last scrap of Valentino's earthly remains, he believes himself all powerful before those who love Valentino and his movies.

This because the followers of Valentino, and I would imagine any star, adore the sacred relics. Since the leader owns them all, he has evolved as a magus of the cult, his word undisputed and his favor jealousy pursued.

Although weird, this wouldn't be such a nefarious set up except that the leader has a notoriously short fuse and an ego as vast as the cosmos. Someone once told me they considered him the most “thin-skinned and cruel” person they ever met. He has been swearing his version of Valentino's life as truth if only because he said it. Anyone disputing his word is instantly banished into oblivion and that is where he still hopes to send me. I can say after two decades researching and writing about the subject of Valentino, the leader is most often wrong about Valentino factually, because he adheres to an ancient studio generated narrative which is fairly ridiculous.

Affairs Valentino challenged that story considerably and instead of accepting the new documentation and knowledge with grace and interest, cult leader decided to destroy us, ridicule our work with defamation and censor people from reading or talking about our discoveries and books.

The leader has several hit people; tragic individuals really who are frighteningly loyal to their leader. They were/are the cult front runners who load bloated, daily hit blogs about us, primarily me. Renato heroically captured screenshots for years because my “hater's” daily content became too traumatizing for me to look at and still is. As the leader's pit bulls, these front liners work on short leashes and still do I am told.

So a campaign was launched and still exists to silence and censor me and my work, In lightening speed my online search was destroyed. Anyone Googling my name would believe I was a whore, had a criminal record, did cocaine, had warrants out for me, forged records, wrote about child exploitation and blah, blah, blah. At one point, back in 2011, I was accused of kidnapping Madelaine McCann! Above all they told the world, relentlessly that I was insane; a virtual madwoman.

It might sound amusing and outrageous if their actions were not so death-laden and terrifying. Our location was extremely important to them and our hiding evolved out of common sense. As Renato and I traveled the world we played cat and mouse with our disturbed stalkers who spent their days online trolling us.

We could not make the tiniest move on line or they spotted it and exploited it for the next day's dirt throwing. They did not miss a step. For example, I gave a radio interview and they called the station the minute the show was over to defame me. A Swedish blogger did a piece on Affairs Valentino and they threatened her until she closed her blog.

My husband passed away tragically last year and I somehow in my grief thought they would stop. Did they? No. I am informed about what gets said and not said over there in cult land but I no longer look. Of course I am forbidden to ever become a member of their forums to defend myself and at this point why the hell would I?

Yesterday someone, who is a follower on one of the cult's forums, contacted me to encourage me to sue the leader. I told them I had and have no interest in engaging with the fatuous collector or his fanatical followers. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words have never and will never hurt Affairs Valentino!

The beautiful and truthful books Renato and I researched and wrote live on forever as fresh and fascinating as they were from their inception. The poisonous death cultists will just have to suffer their awesome perpetuity.