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00:00:02
Speaker 1: A former Commonwealth's Attorney and prominent Democratic Party official, has come under investigation by a grand jury probing prostitution and public corruption in this bucolic backwater of southside Virginia. The hint of scandal has upset the people of Pennsylvania, a community located in one of the most conservative areas of the state, which has always prided itself on the unquestionable integrity of its elected officials. Now the county is under a cloud as a federal grand jury, with the help of the FBI and Internal Revenue Service agents, presses its investigation into what the US Attorney describes as prostitution, public corruption, conspiracy, perjury, misprision of felonies, and obstruction of justice.
00:00:44
Speaker 2: Truck shop brought those run by a web of X cons a commonwealth attorney wasted on whiskey and power protection exchanged for cash and flesh. A brash local reporter exposing it all. This is hooker Gate, criminals and libertines in the South. And I am your host, Doctor Lindsey Byron, author, historian, and lifelong wayward woman. This forgotten scandal happened in my hometown. Join me as I use crumbling news clippines, interviews, and dramatic reenactments to bring to life for the first time in nearly fifty years, this wild Ride of hedonistic Corruption, Episode nine, The Storm.
00:01:37
Speaker 3: You say you were afraid to travel back here to Virginia to testify? Is that correct, Missus Barker, Yes, sir, it is. And why are you afraid to be here today?
00:01:49
Speaker 2: Missus Barker? I am deathly afraid of my husband and will continue to be for the rest of my life.
00:01:56
Speaker 1: I cannot turn over and put my back towards the door.
00:01:59
Speaker 3: You can go home and sleep anyway.
00:02:01
Speaker 4: He won't.
00:02:02
Speaker 2: All I know is he's going to testify here, and my name was placed on the news last night.
00:02:08
Speaker 5: He upset me.
00:02:10
Speaker 3: Did he be you regularly? Once a week or every other day, or once a month, sometimes before breakfast, sometimes after.
00:02:32
Speaker 2: Her Mama always warned her not to drive in a storm, and so Janet flooded the gas she get out run this one. Dark clouds gathered on the horizon in her rear view. She knew a man in Texas who would be happy to help her give her a job ReSpectacle work back at a front desk. She didn't care if it was a carnival she was working at. Nothing was beneath her. If it got her out of here, she thought this shit would be glamorous, and she couldn't lie. Sometimes it had been fancy clothes, fur coats, everyone saying how pretty you are all the time. She was leaving all of that too, hanging in her closet, the things, the baubles, the stoles, and the stars, and the fucking compliments, as a reminder to Tommy of what he was losing, what he couldn't buy with gifts, furs, compliments, expensive apologies. Janet was driving out of this town with nothing more than a suitcase and fingers crossed, leaving the police with their questions, the FBI haunting her door, Tommy with his tension, Tommy with his love, Tommy with his hands, Tommy with his promises, promises that never came through. If we leave now, maybe we can avoid testifying, Janet whispered to some of the other girls one night in the dwindling end times.
00:04:39
Speaker 3: Of the truck stop brothel circuit.
00:04:43
Speaker 2: They debated and decided all night, and now mourning had come, and with mourning had come a storm, dark and rumbling, threatening to crack O in the sky, Connie.
00:05:04
Speaker 3: Packed her back.
00:05:06
Speaker 2: She'd travel down the circuit into Florida, or maybe she'd head upwards into Philly, penn Connie would go whichever the way the wind blew.
00:05:18
Speaker 3: But she won't go and stay here. Buckeye packed her bad.
00:05:26
Speaker 2: She'd heard good things about the Pacific, heard life moved slower the farther up the West coast you got. She'd come here to the Deep South and tested what her friend had told her back in that girlhood bedroom in Ohio. Whatever happens, her friend had warned, don't blame me. Well she didn't. She didn't blame her. She didn't blame nobody but herself. Kitten her bag, her man would come, get her driver to a new place, a different stay place, a different obstacle between her and her child. Or maybe she'd take one of these girls up on their offers. Maybe she'd hitch a ride away from all this, save money her own way, hire a lawyer. At the vanguard of this exodus, Janet sped and the sky erupted the moment they all drove.
00:06:38
Speaker 3: Out of town.
00:06:56
Speaker 1: According to Danville officials, a man was found dead of a drug overdose in Thomas Barker's house. No charges were filed against Barker in connection with the death.
00:07:15
Speaker 2: Tanita didn't care what the other girls had to say about danger and risk.
00:07:23
Speaker 3: Tanita was staying.
00:07:25
Speaker 2: She wasn't going to leave without her man, Her man. She thought of him as she rested her head against the passenger window of Tommy's sedan six am. Another customer satisfied, Well, wasn't too many customers nowadays, nor too many girls, and everything had to be done, so damn careful.
00:07:57
Speaker 3: I've been thinking of going to Vegas.
00:08:00
Speaker 2: Blurted as he drove, a thought spoken out loud to no one in particular. Tanita continued to stare silently out the window as Tommy piloted them to his place, a nice brick house, uh way station for girls like her.
00:08:22
Speaker 3: The few that remained, most of them were scared, runned off.
00:08:28
Speaker 2: Even Janet House was quieter without Janet.
00:08:33
Speaker 3: Tommy quieter too.
00:08:38
Speaker 2: Across the bridge in the earliest light of dawn, that red sigh burned home into the sky.
00:08:51
Speaker 3: Home. What was home?
00:08:57
Speaker 2: Well, it wasn't a place, And if if it was one, then she'd never had a home to speak of. As a girl
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bounced from relative to relative, as a woman, from this man to that one, this state to that state. Another shitty trailer, another shitty apartment, another chair with wobble legs, another cabinet dotted with road shit.
00:09:26
Speaker 3: No home wasn't a place home? Was this man? Amen? Any man?
00:09:39
Speaker 2: She didn't know much about this man. She would rather not know. She didn't want to know his arrest record, his mama's name, his dark secrets, if he had.
00:09:53
Speaker 3: Any, He didn't seem like he had any. He was light. She wanted only light.
00:10:02
Speaker 2: She wanted only his pretty face, his patience, soft touch. He sold what he had to sell, and he put his own money into their pot. No man had ever done that, helped out a lifetime supporting these bastards, not this one. Though, I won't let nobody hurt you, he had told her.
00:10:29
Speaker 3: No one had ever told her that.
00:10:31
Speaker 2: She didn't care if it won't true, if it won't possible for that to ever be true, But she did appreciate the sentiment.
00:10:45
Speaker 3: It was of him, she thought.
00:10:48
Speaker 2: As Tommy parked the car in the driveway, of him, she thought, as Tommy turned the lock to the back door.
00:11:03
Speaker 3: Of him, she thought.
00:11:06
Speaker 2: As a fellow working girl met her and Tommy at the door, The young woman's face was red, tears streaked. We got a problem, Tommy, she said, what kind of problem? The girl bit her lips, choking back a sob.
00:11:30
Speaker 3: That man, that man, Tanita, your man, he's well. I found him. I found him, Tommy.
00:11:40
Speaker 2: Tanita gripped the door frame, her head spinning, swaying on her feet. No, found him, found him, Tommy in the closet, and he's dead. He's in that closet and he is dead. Tommy had a suitcase packed before the coroner had the body bag zipped.
00:12:16
Speaker 3: A man could reinvent himself in Vegas. A man could even disappear.
00:12:28
Speaker 1: Did there come a time when you had a conversation with Defendive Whitehead with respect to the testimony of your husband, Wayne.
00:12:35
Speaker 3: Dowdy, Yes, sir.
00:12:38
Speaker 4: After my husband was incarcerated, mister Whitehead came down to my house and he had been drinking, and before he made his remark that really upset me, he'd been crying about his kid. He didn't know what he was going to do, and he had asked me if my husband had turned a state's evidence, which at the time he hadn't, and we hadn't even really thought about it. And then he made the statement that Wayne could really hang him. And I got upset and I went to my room. He came in there after I had locked the door, and he came in there and he sat on the bed and I told him to get off my bed. He asked me how came, and I said, because it's mine and my husband's. And I believe he got a little bit hot because I didn't say it nicely. And he turned around and said Robin was mad and walked out.
00:13:36
Speaker 2: They'd arrested Harold Wayne again on a petty annoyance, another pimpede charge, another few granded bail money, another set of knocks at the door, lawyers, policemen, and.
00:13:55
Speaker 3: Now even the FBI talk. They told her.
00:14:03
Speaker 2: But Robin and Harold Wayne, well, they didn't know what to do, what was the right thing for them. She felt pulled in a million directions. Robin surveyed their home, ran her hand across the kitchen counter. A home, a nice, solid, regular place to return to.
00:14:37
Speaker 3: Sure there was a pool in the.
00:14:40
Speaker 2: Backyard, nice cars in the driveway, but those those are just things Robin could afford to lose. Things which she could not afford to lose was home, the walls echoed without Harold Wayne Robin hadn't prayed in years, but today.
00:15:16
Speaker 3: Robin would pray. Jesus, Lord, she whispered, Please please show me the way, Robin, Robin.
00:15:41
Speaker 2: Robin's head shot up from her reverie peered down the hallway outside her front door in the broad daylight of mid morning, stood Joe Whitehead, just up banging, or should we say leaned Joe Whitehead. He was, of course drunk again. Let me in, Robin, he pleaded from the doorstep.
00:16:13
Speaker 3: I just want to talk.
00:16:17
Speaker 2: For so long now, following this man's demands, fulfilling his needs, he lost his damn law license, resign from Commonwealth attorney. What power could he possibly have over her now? And yet why did he feel every bit as intimidating as ever? Why did he feel like a dog on a chain, foaming and furious?
00:16:56
Speaker 3: Go away?
00:16:59
Speaker 2: Robin muttered miserably from her side of the closed door, Please Robin, go away. My God was the man crying. She peeked through the window. He held his head in his hands, shoulders quivering.
00:17:38
Speaker 3: Lord, Jesus, please show.
00:17:42
Speaker 1: Me the way.
00:17:46
Speaker 2: Compassion, kindness, redemption, and also fear. Robin opened the door. Your the Lord is my shepherd today, Joe get inside.
00:18:05
Speaker 3: He entered her home and began pacing. Did you talk is what I got to know. What do you mean? Please? Robin? No games? Did you talk?
00:18:20
Speaker 2: I haven't spoken to anyone. The FBI came by my office this morning, Robin. Did you know that, Robin? The FBI? How would I know that? I'm just wondering. Who told him to come to me?
00:18:39
Speaker 3: Is all?
00:18:39
Speaker 2: That's all I'm wondering right now, Robin. I'm just wondering who told him to come to me?
00:18:47
Speaker 3: Robin? Are you insinuating Harold?
00:18:53
Speaker 2: Wayne's locked up as we speak, Robin. What's to keep him from talking, Robin? When the come his way, if they ain't already, What's to keep him from talking, Robin?
00:19:07
Speaker 3: When the Feds come his way? Robin? He could hang me, Robin, he could ruin me. Oh my god, fuck you too.
00:19:32
Speaker 2: He froze in his pacing, panting, his red rimmed eyes filled with tears.
00:19:42
Speaker 3:
I'm sorry, Robin, leave, you need to leave.
00:19:49
Speaker 2: It's just.
00:19:52
Speaker 3: My child, Robin. I have a baby. You know my wife.
00:19:58
Speaker 1: What will she do?
00:20:00
Speaker 3: What will they do? Robin? Sounds like a personal problem, Joe. He collapsed on her couch and groaned, I fucked.
00:20:18
Speaker 1: Up.
00:20:23
Speaker 2: She stared evenly at him, stone cold. She had trained her whole life to hide her heart. You can't see me, but I can see you. Joe, you really do need to leave. He looked up, face swollen. I've been through hell, Robin, we all have.
00:20:54
Speaker 3: Joe.
00:20:58
Speaker 2: Can you please just give me a couple minutes to get myself.
00:21:02
Speaker 3: Together, then I'll get out your hair. Sure, thank Joe, see yourself out.
00:21:14
Speaker 2: Robin petted into her bedroom, the one with the keen bed and the satin sheets, the one she shared with her husband, her husband who, at this very moment, suffered.
00:21:27
Speaker 3: Away in some jail cell.
00:21:30
Speaker 2: It seemed every few weeks since the raid, here come Deputy Moss and his boys with another charge, another reason to take him in, another opportunity to grill him, intimidate him, offer him incentives. I bet you will say shit, Deputy Moss had prophesied that day.
00:21:55
Speaker 3: Of the raids.
00:21:57
Speaker 2: And maybe the Moss was right, Maybe none of this was worth it. Take the pool, take the cars, hell, take even the mink coat, although she loved it. But don't don't take this man, Don't take this love. Don't take this home. Robin sank to her knees beside that king bed and prayed for the third time that morning. Show me the way, Oh Lord, get us out of this mess. Let this cup pass away. Just then, Joe opened her bedroom door, strolled on in, and sat down on her bed, right next to where she knelt, a familiar position. Robin sprang to standing. She loomed above him. Now get off, she ordered, Robin. Why I just came in here to say goodbye?
00:23:20
Speaker 3: Get off my bed.
00:23:25
Speaker 2: All the time she'd spent on anonymous mattresses with this man and many others, work labor, a silent mind, gritted teeth. Goddamn, how long must a woman grit her teeth, all her damn lies, power through endure.
00:23:46
Speaker 6: Except this bastard in your bed, that bastard in your bed. Except except no, not no, not today, not this bed, not her bed, not the bed she shared with the man she loved, with the man that loved her.
00:24:08
Speaker 2: Lord Jesus, please, she prayed, show me the way. And then she grabbed that man by his collar and hefted him to his feet. This is the bed my husband and I share, she told him.
00:24:29
Speaker 3: Get off of it and get out.
00:24:34
Speaker 2: Joe slunk away, chastened and not the least bit comforted. Women could be so cruel. By the time Harold Wayne was released on bail that evening, the Lord had made his will clear to Robin.
00:24:57
Speaker 3: We're talking, she told him, and Harold Wayne agreed.
00:25:05
Speaker 1: County residents get much of their news from the Danville Register and the Lynchburg News, but it is a weekly in Gretna, the Gazette, that probably has done the most to encourage investigations of prostitution.
00:25:19
Speaker 3: Something outside that window again.
00:25:22
Speaker 2: Rodney got up from his desk and peered into the night. That's the problem with working by lamplight. You alone are visible. Those who roam in the shadows can see those in the light. Those in the light, however, are blinded to everything beyond themselves.
00:25:52
Speaker 3: The darkness into.
00:25:53
Speaker 2: Which we cannot peer, peers into us freely. Rodney laid the proof of tomorrow morning's paper across his desk under the desk lamp's golden glow.
00:26:10
Speaker 3: His words on the front page stared back at him.
00:26:15
Speaker 2: I am not stating that Joe Motley Whitehead is guilty of anything, but I sincerely believe the federal grand jury should be allowed to complete its investigation to find out if Whitehead is in fact the poor, innocent, little lamb he claims to be. Stop talking had been the injunction, first from whispers in town, then even preachers joined in. Next the man himself, the man who could cause you trouble or make trouble, go away. Cut that shit out, Joe Whitehead had warned Rodney in that middle of the night phone call. And yet Rodney had not cut that shit out. He had kept going instead. Sometimes he didn't know why, sometimes he did.
00:27:18
Speaker 5: Part of it was my journalism education, and a big part of it was Remember now, I was in Washington, d C. During Watergate with Woodward and Bernstein. So when I went to Granta and all this started, I thought, they didn't back down. Why shouldn't I keep going? You're honest them here.
00:27:46
Speaker 3: So part of it was that.
00:27:48
Speaker 5: Part of it was just, you know, the male ego, which is capable of any number of goofy things. Part of it was just being hard headed. The more you tell me I can do it, the more I'm going to try to do it.
00:28:05
Speaker 2: He had promised his family he would make this move worth it, had promised mister Walmack that he'd make this paper a success. Had promised himself that he'd be the real thing, a man to be proud of, a man with a purpose, a man of the people, a man with a pen mightier than the sword.
00:28:28
Speaker 3: He never thought he'd be here. He never imagined this.
00:28:33
Speaker 2: A miniature mafia in the heart of tobacco country, the rural backwoods, where UFO sightings were news and Sunday socials after church provided the entertainment.
00:28:48
Speaker 7: Rodney thought he was escaping high stakes drama when he moved to Gretna, population one thousand and two hundred, Main Street, flanked by a field of bovines.
00:29:00
Speaker 2: He had been wrong. Outside the window again, motion another paranoid hallucination. Time to go home. Rodney packed his bag. He knew he was
doing the right thing. The boys who investigated Watergate didn't back down. Why should he. He grabbed his keys from a hook on the wall next to the door. Do the job when it matters, and he had. Rodney smiled, the weary smile of the battle worn. All that digging, dangerous investigations, late night threats, fear doubt. Can I hack it? He'd wondered, Sure, he'd wondered it, But hack it he had, and now a federal investigation underway. Rodney's suspicions confirmed his reportage instrumental in the takedown.
00:30:29
Speaker 3: Well, a man could have a moment of pride, couldn't.
00:30:32
Speaker 8: He He'd done the job when it mattered, and now the job was done.
00:30:45
Speaker 2: You should be a writer, his high school teacher had told him. I can make this work, he promised his wife.
00:30:56
Speaker 3: Keep going.
00:30:58
Speaker 2: He'd vowed to himself all words that had marked him, all words that had come true. And so yes, Rodney allowed a smile to cross his face as he stepped into the night, pulling the door of the Gretna Gazette closed, Wrestling to fit the key into the.
00:31:22
Speaker 3: Lock, it jammed. Dropped to his feet.
00:31:29
Speaker 2: Rodney bent down, patting the ground like a blind mouth. It's over, he thought to himself, with a smile. As prostrate he searched.
00:31:48
Speaker 3: It's really over, Rodney.
00:32:08
Speaker 2: He didn't know how he ended up flat on his back, A rain storm of broken glass beat jeweling his body from above a bullet hole the height.
00:32:21
Speaker 3: Of Rodney's head. It's over, yo. Did you like my storytelling? Dude? I hope so it's me your girl.
00:32:41
Speaker 2: Lindsey Byron and that's the end of season one. Other than some bonus episodes, I'm about to have come at you next season. It all falls down courtroom drama time. Thanks for listening. I appreciate your attention. Learn more about my work tips out globe trotting and mansions worldwide at Good Times Badgirls dot com, follow me on the Gram and TikTok at lux Underscore Atl on YouTube at Luxatl, and on substot where I blog weekly at Tumultuous True Stories by Lindsaybyron. If you'd like to hear more about my own experience slanging companionship across the South, read my memoir Too Pretty to Be Good by Lindsaybyron. Find it on Amazon, Barnesandnoble dot com and anywhere.
00:33:43
Speaker 3: Books are sold online.
00:33:45
Speaker 2: Hey, if you'd like to continue to listen to me tell stories, check out my first podcast, strip Cast True Stories from a Stripper with the PhD. Listen on Spotify and iTunes. Follow this podcast on the ground at hooker Gate. Underscore podcast theme music and sound design by my long term partner in artistic crime, Guy Kelly, you the illist GK. Check out his work at Guy Kelly dot com.
00:34:18
Speaker 3: While This podcast is based upon real events.
00:34:21
Speaker 2: Certain elements have been fictionalized for dramatic effect. I cannot know for certain what exactly was said behind closed doors, so I combine my research and imagination to dramatize scenes described most often under oath in court, and occasionally secondhand via journalistic or personal accounts. Find citations in the show notes.
00:34:46
Speaker 3: The pitch for this.
00:34:47
Speaker 2: Podcast won the twenty twenty one Next Great Podcast competition hosted by Tongle and iHeartRadio, which is why I'm here now producing this joint. My gratitude for the opportunity Bikergate is the production of iHeartMedia.
00:35:07
Speaker 9: When the Feds come, Shit, sorry, I'm not something ever. Hold On, I got to go get some chicken at the oven. It's got to be burned. Hold on, I'll be right back.
00:35:18
Speaker 2: I'm going to get to my chicken lunch out of the oven before I record the final seed.
00:35:26
Speaker 3: Oh chicken lunch, I'm coming for you now,