MODEL’S DOORMAN FEARS – CONFIDENTIAL:
SWIMSUIT MODEL and former Joe Jonas gal pal Juliana Herz has fled her Chelsea apartment, where she claims she was being harassed by a former doorman. And the Costa Rican stunner (photo inset), who was linked to the middle Jonas brother through the first half of 2016, has hired pit bull attorney Sal Strazzullo to get her out of her lease. In a letter to the company that manages the W. 23rd St. high-rise where Herz lived, Strazzullo claims a former employee has hassled the top model verbally and electronically. He also tells us that the former doorman used personal contact information obtained from the building’s records to harass Herz. The “harassment has been sexual in nature” and has “occurred at all hours of the night,” Strazzullo says in the letter. In a recording Strazzullo played for Confidential, a man who he says is a former doorman leaves an aggressive message for Herz on her voice mail. The voice on the phone asks Herz on several occasions to explain specifically how she’s being harassed, then ends the voice mail: “Ask yourself that before you go to bed. How am I harassing you?”
Strazzullo is also in possession of a July 5 text message exhange that he says occured between Herz and the doorman. The former gatekeeper appears to ask the model to keep their correspondence a secret and tells her, “I’ve just been checking! Watching! Observing! All I can say is that I’m impressed.” In that exchange, Herz says she finds the texts inappropriate and asks that they stop.
But according to Strazzullo, when Herz moved her belongings out of the building last Wednesday because she no longer felt safe at the address, the former doorman, who Strazzullo says stopped working for the Chelsea property in July, “inexplicably showed up” and claimed he was there visiting a friend.
Strazzullo tells us that he is seeking “every remedy criminal and civil” to protect Herz.
“Anyone who rents in New York should have their private information protected,” he said.
The building’s management company did not respond to requests for comment.
This isn’t attorney Strazullo’s first defense of a model. In 2014, he defended newly anointed Victoria’s Secret model Roosmarijn de Kok when she was accused of stealing candy bars from a Tribeca Whole Foods. Those charges were dismissed.