One of the daughters of the late porntrepreneur Artie Mitchell who owned and operated the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre with his brother Jim until his infamous 1991 murder at the hands of his brother is currently on the lam for her alleged role in a major identity theft ring, and a statewide manhunt is in effect. Jasmine Mitchell, who was 13 at the time of her father's killing, is wanted in connection with the identity theft operation that was being run, at least in part, out of an apartment near the San Pablo Lytton Casino in the East Bay. But as KTVU reports, the operation was "so far flung that the Secret Service may eventually take over."
The Sonoma County Sheriff's office is one of several local law enforcement agencies that have been investigating Jasmine Mitchell over the last few months, after they received a tip last Tuesday that Mitchell was living in the apartment with accomplice Roy Kim. The two were wanted in connection with multiple identity thefts, as SFGate reports, and there was evidence in the apartment of their operation including credit card embossing machines. Detective James Percy told KTVU, "The amount of victims could be thousands or hundreds of thousands of people."
Sheriff's deputies arrested an associate who was in the apartment, and found Kim in a taxi nearby, but Mitchell managed to escape.
As detectives were on scene, Mitchell drove into the apartment complex parking lot in a white Mercedes, [Sgt. Michael] Raasch said.“When detectives attempted to arrest Mitchell, she rammed an unmarked police vehicle with her vehicle, and she struck another parked car before escaping,” Raasch said.
As Raasch put it, "I think she would do anything at any cost to get away."
Jasmine Mitchell is one of six children of the late Artie Mitchell, whose brother Jim killed him in his home in 1991. The murder and subsequent trial was big Bay Area news, with "porn king" being the frequent moniker used to describe both men. They opened the O'Farrell Theatre which is still being run by Jim's daughter Meta Jane Mitchell Johnson in 1969 and in addition to producing the pioneering X-rated flick Behind the Green Door starring Marilyn Chambers, they were instrumental in getting a law passed making copyrights applicable to pornographic films. By 1991 the brothers were feuding over the management of the business, with Jim being told by associates that something had to be done about Artie's drug and alcohol abuse. Jim responded by committing fratricide. At trial he ended up getting convicted of voluntary manslaughter and only served six years in prison. By 1997 he was back running the O'Farrell, and died of a heart attack ten years later, in 2007.
Jasmine Mitchell's cousin, James Mitchell, was convicted in 2011 for the murder of his girlfriend, Danielle Keller.
One of Artie's other kids, Liberty Bradford Mitchell, is a yogi and playwright down in L.A., and she recently wrote a one-woman show about her life in the Mitchell clan called The Pornographer's Daughter. She performed it at Z Space in San Francisco this past winter to decent reviews.
It's unclear if her sister Jasmine came to see it, or if she was too busy living the high life next to that casino in San Pablo.
