The new season of Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” launched with a chilling episode Wednesday, chronicling the burglary of cast member Dorit Kemsley’s Encino, California, home last October.
Season 12 opened with security-camera footage showing two men approaching the home Dorit and her husband, businessman Paul Kemsley (known as “PK”) share with their children Jagger, 8, and Phoenix, 6. The family (minus PK, who was in London) was home at the time of the invasion.
The episode then rewinds to three days earlier before returning to the break-in. Dorit, 45, recounts the evening as security footage shows one man with a flashlight looking around. Then a person can be seen exiting the premises with what appears to be stolen goods gathered in a duvet cover.
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“When they came into my bedroom, when he had the gun to my head, I thought, ‘This is it. This is how I’m gonna die,'” Dorit says. “I begged them, and I told them, ‘Let me help you. I’ll show you where everything is. Just please, please God, please don’t hurt my kids. They need their Mommy. Don’t hurt them. Don’t hurt me.’”
The episode continues, showing reactions from Dorit’s castmates. “I called PK. He was sobbing, ‘I wasn’t there. Kyle, I wasn’t there,'” says Kyle Richards, the only remaining housewife remaining from the show’s original 2010 cast. “I don’t know how you recover from that.”
“They could’ve killed her. They could’ve killed those kids,” says Erika Girardi, who uses the stage name Erika Jayne.
Former soap actress Lisa Rinna assures her fellow housewife Crystal Kung Minkoff that Dorit’s children “know nothing. They didn’t hear anything.”
The evening that followed the robbery, most of the housewives gather at Kyle’s, where Dorit shares more details of the order with Kyle, her husband, Mauricio Umansky, Erika and Lisa.
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Dorit says she was in bed and heard the door open. She immediately thought it was her kids de ella, but she was confused because she did not see them. “So I get out of my bed, and that’s when I saw, not a little person, but a big person,” she says. “When he saw me, he panicked, and he charged at me, grabbed me, put me down . ‘Get down on the (expletive) ground! I’m gonna (expletive) kill you!’ Put a gun to me, and I was just hunched over, hunched over sobbing, going, ‘Please, please I have little babies, please I’m a mother, please I beg of you. My kids need me, please, please, please, please. My kids need me. Por favor. And I was begging and begging and the other guy was going, ‘Just (expletive) kill her. Just (expletive) kill her.’”
Dorit says one of the intruders was grabbing the loot and asking for watches and cash. The other instructed her to “‘Get up. Show us where everything is.’ I said, ‘OK.’ I stayed very, very calm, ‘Take everything you want, but please don’t kill my babies. Please don’t let them see you. Please don’t let them see their mommy like this.”
She continues. “I thought, ‘This is it. I’m gonna die. He’s gonna pull the trigger,’ and then I envisioned them killing me and then going and killing my kids.”
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Actress Garcelle Beauvais arrives at Kyle’s in time to hear Dorit recount how she got the burglars out of her home. She says that, after 20 minutes, she told the intruders, “You guys, you took a lot. Get out now while you can, please.” She called the police and says they arrived at 4 am
(The Los Angeles Police Department said in November “the two suspects exited the home with the items wrapped in bedding, met up with a third suspect, and all suspects fled in a black 4-door pickup truck.”)
Dorit described the bags and jewelry stolen as “irreplaceable items” but says “it doesn’t matter to me whatsoever. I will always thank God for protecting me and the kids.”
The episode also captures Dorit’s meeting with PK, who heads to Kyle’s house after arriving from London. Dorit greets him at the door, repeatedly assuring him that their family is OK. He says he keeps thinking about what could’ve transpired and begins to cry because he wasn’t there.
“It was very difficult to process, and I’m all this way away,” PK says about learning of the robbery. “We’re OK,” he adds. “We’re gonna get through this.”
Dorit shares his spirit of resilience. “I just want to get to the other side,” she says. “I know it’s not going to happen overnight, but I know that I can get there.”
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism