An attempted street robbery in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood seriously injured and sustained the famous private detective Jack Palladino from San Francisco.

The 70-year-old investigator, who had clients from Hollywood stars to Black Panthers to whistleblowers for decades, stepped outside his house on Page Street shortly before 5 p.m. on Thursday when a car pulled up, a man jumped out and tried Um stealing his expensive camera, police and witnesses said.

“When the suspect pulled the camera on, the victim fell on the sidewalk,” said SFPD spokesman Robert Rueca. Police had few other details and said no suspects were arrested.

The robbery attempt resulted in Palladino, an avid photographer, falling and hitting his head on the sidewalk, resulting in a traumatic head injury, his stepson Nick Chapman told The Chronicle. Chapman said his stepfather would “not survive” after doctors performed an operation to stop the massive bleeding.

Palladino had one last case he handled, Chapman said, but he’d pretty much joined his wife and fellow detective, Sandra Sutherland, in retirement. The couple had been investigating their Victorian home for decades and had notable clients including Don Johnson, Kevin Costner, Robin Williams, Huey Newton, Snoop Dogg, automaker John DeLorean, and a 14-year-old boy who won a civil settlement of several Million dollars against Michael Jackson for alleged abuse.

He also worked for former President Bill Clinton, who hired the couple in 1992, according to a top aide, to quell rumors about his extramarital affairs, and Harvey Weinstein, who used investigators to quell allegations of sexual misconduct.

One witness, Parisha Pak, said she was walking down Page Street when she heard a car moving fast. Next she heard a loud bang and saw a man being pulled by the car. She ran to him.

Jack Palladino and his wife Sandra Sutherland had been investigating their Victorian house on Page Street in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood for decades.

Chris Stewart / The Chronicle 1984

“He was in bad shape,” she said. “He was bleeding from his head and nose.”

A group of passers-by crowded around Palladino. Someone pulled a coat over him to keep him warm and another person stopped a passing fire truck. A young woman held his hand.

“I looked into his eyes and told him he would be fine,” said Pak. “I’ve repeated that over and over again.”

The avid photographer had just left home to use his new camera, a long-standing hobby, to capture honest shots of people in his neighborhood, Chapman said.

“He had just stepped forward,” said Chapman. “The front door wasn’t even completely closed.”

Palladino had a successful career that began even before he graduated from UC Berkeley when he was hired by Patty Hearst’s family to assist in their 1974 abduction by the Symbionese Liberation Army.

He and his wife founded a private detective agency Palladino & Sutherland and quickly found high-profile cases.

He spent seven years investigating the 1978 mass suicide of more than 900 members of the People’s Temple religious cult and interviewing surviving members and their families.

In the 1980s, he helped defend DeLorean, the inventor of the flashy sports car on charges of cocaine trafficking, to help fund his business. After more than 200 interviews with witnesses, the jury acquitted the car maker.

In the 1990s, he conducted a counter-investigation into the tobacco industry’s campaign to smear whistleblower Jeffrey Wigan. Palladino’s work protected Wigan’s credibility as an expert witness in a lawsuit that resulted in a $ 200 billion settlement, the first successful win in the courtroom against Big Tobacco. He would play himself in the subsequent film, The Insider, about the Wigan story.

Work and personal life often merged. Chapman recalled that Hell’s Angels leader Sonny Barger had taken him to school in a lemon yellow limo as a child. The biker gang were customers.

“He was incredibly good at what he did,” said Chapman. “He and my mother were once the leading private detectives.”

After the porn king of San Francisco, Jim Mitchell, killed his brother Artie in 1991, Palladino was hired by Jim Mitchell’s defense team and worked with private detective Eric Mason on the sensational murder case.

Rocker Courtney Love hired Palladino to speak to journalists to investigate whether she was involved in the 1994 death of her husband, singer Kurt Cobain.

When the film mogul Weinstein leaked allegations of sexual misconduct in 2017, the New Yorker explained how a “spy army” set up by lawyers was preventing victims from speaking. Palladino was one of them.

The normally talkative Palladino sent The Chronicle a brief statement at the time, in which he said: “The credibility of witnesses and the verifiability of allegations are always controversial in litigation. This is not only the special expertise of our company as an investigator, but also our legal and ethical obligation to properly process our customers. “

Chapman said he had no details about his stepfather’s work for Weinstein but knew where to draw the line, especially with potential abuse victims.

“We weren’t a company that was interested in doing shady things – for no one,” Chapman said.

Palladino read more non-fiction and short stories and went into his neighborhood to take photos of the congregation.

Matthias Gafni is a contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @mgafni Nora Mishanec is a contributor with the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @NMishanec