Full Transcript for Anchorage Traffick

suck in air. 00:04:40.404 --> 00:04:45.625 The reprieve from the throat pressure comes only when the man lets one hand go to punch Mary in the face. 00:04:45.625 --> 00:04:47.485 It's all in slow motion now. 00:04:47.485 --> 00:04:47.875 Mr. 00:04:47.875 --> 00:04:51.334 Minivan speaks in threats promising what he's going to do to Jean. 00:04:51.334 --> 00:04:53.675 Mary's head swims from the force of the blows. 00:04:53.675 --> 00:04:57.365 Then Mary does something she's prepared for, but never really thought she'd have to do. 00:04:57.365 --> 00:05:00.605 She reaches down to the knife, clipped in the inside of a right boot. 00:05:00.605 --> 00:05:02.975 1, 2, 3 times she stabs him. 00:05:03.004 --> 00:05:06.154 Twice in the chest and as he grabs the knife, once in the face. 00:05:06.154 --> 00:05:09.605 Mary's sure that the three inch blade went all the way in on our first stab. 00:05:09.605 --> 00:05:10.444 The third cut. 00:05:10.444 --> 00:05:11.105 The one in Mr. 00:05:11.105 --> 00:05:13.031 Minivan's face makes him recoil. 00:05:13.031 --> 00:05:15.940 She uses that instant to back out of the door and run. 00:05:15.940 --> 00:05:20.591 She finds herself plowing through the dark brush, through the sound of branches snapping as they hit her. 00:05:20.591 --> 00:05:21.814 She hears the door open. 00:05:21.814 --> 00:05:22.144 Mr. 00:05:22.144 --> 00:05:23.540 Minivan bellows,"Bitch. 00:05:23.540 --> 00:05:24.915 You fucking cut me!" Bitch. 00:05:24.915 --> 00:05:31.310 I'll kill you." Mary's adrenaline carries her through the woods, barely aware that she's bashing and ricocheting off trees. 00:05:31.310 --> 00:05:35.740 She half runs, half falls down a rocky embankment and collapses flat against the slope. 00:05:35.740 --> 00:05:36.701 Mary hears Mr. 00:05:36.701 --> 00:05:39.161 Minivan walking around in the bushes above her. 00:05:39.161 --> 00:05:41.711 He's panting and starting to moan softly. 00:05:41.824 --> 00:05:46.985 After a few minutes, the sound of movement through the brush subsides and Mary hears the minivan start-up. 00:05:48.964 --> 00:05:50.524 Mary stays on the ground. 00:05:50.735 --> 00:05:51.665 Her face hurts. 00:05:51.665 --> 00:05:52.745 Her throat burns. 00:05:53.254 --> 00:05:55.444 She realizes her nose is bleeding. 00:05:55.850 --> 00:05:59.901 It's very dark, so she can't tell if the blood is just on her face or all over. 00:06:00.380 --> 00:06:02.091 She thinks about how she got here. 00:06:02.331 --> 00:06:03.810 She shouldn't be working the street. 00:06:04.310 --> 00:06:05.480 This is Amber's fault. 00:06:05.901 --> 00:06:07.130 She should have a cell phone. 00:06:07.521 --> 00:06:09.261 That's Ambers fault too, she thinks. 00:06:09.411 --> 00:06:11.000 Well, Amber and Jerry. 00:06:12.110 --> 00:06:16.940 Mary ponders about how it is that she's lying in this dirty dark, hurting and bleeding. 00:06:17.240 --> 00:06:18.891 She is 18 years old. 00:06:20.180 --> 00:06:24.290 When she was 14, she became involved in what she knows now is the game. 00:06:25.281 --> 00:06:27.261 The players are the pimps and the whores. 00:06:27.651 --> 00:06:30.531 A group of hoes working under a pimp is called a family. 00:06:31.310 --> 00:06:33.591 Her family, like all of them has a hierarchy. 00:06:34.685 --> 00:06:35.946 The daddy is the boss. 00:06:36.005 --> 00:06:38.225 And in her family, the daddy is Jerry Starr. 00:06:38.915 --> 00:06:43.235 There's a bottom bitch or Jerry's right-hand girl who helps control the other girls. 00:06:43.769 --> 00:06:50.810 Well, why the top girl is called the bottom bitch has always been a mystery to Mary, but they always say it's because she's the most down with the pimp. 00:06:51.860 --> 00:06:53.839 In Mary's family, the bottom bitch is, Amber. 00:06:54.769 --> 00:06:58.220 Amber is 20 and they say she's been with Jerry since she was 12. 00:06:59.839 --> 00:07:06.362 When she went to Millionaire Joe's house four years ago, Mary didn't know that it was the first step to her joining the game. 00:07:07.322 --> 00:07:12.213 For a while, Mary was allowed to stay at one of Jerry's houses without having to go to work every night. 00:07:12.963 --> 00:07:18.752 She was reserved for the rich guys like Millionaire Joe who dealt with Jerry or Al directly. 00:07:19.473 --> 00:07:22.923 Millionaire Joe's house was good because there was never a shortage of drugs. 00:07:24.017 --> 00:07:25.158 Joe liked his Coke. 00:07:25.247 --> 00:07:27.377 And for a while, Joe liked Mary. 00:07:28.307 --> 00:07:32.987 Over time, Mary noticed that Bambi was swapping her out for even younger girls. 00:07:33.690 --> 00:07:39.630 After that, Jerry allowed her to stay at one of his houses, but she was pressured to work for the escort service. 00:07:41.100 --> 00:07:44.221 With these memories swirling in her mind, Mary stands up. 00:07:45.300 --> 00:07:51.084 Her night vision was good enough to distinguish a different surface about 20 yards away, where the woods were cleared back. 00:07:51.444 --> 00:07:55.795 Walking to it, Mary sees that it is the gravel berm of railroad tracks. 00:07:56.334 --> 00:07:58.675 She walks out of the woods and up onto the tracks. 00:07:58.891 --> 00:08:06.151 She is relieved to see lights twinkling through the trees and several hundred yards up the tracks, the glow of a familiar intersection. 00:08:06.911 --> 00:08:09.391 Sensing no one else on the tracks in either direction. 00:08:09.391 --> 00:08:11.490 Mary begins to walk towards the light. 00:08:14.281 --> 00:08:16.081 Mary continues to take stock. 00:08:16.201 --> 00:08:18.091 She reaches up to feel her face. 00:08:18.961 --> 00:08:22.771 She probably has a black eye, a front tooth feels loose on the left side. 00:08:23.011 --> 00:08:24.540 Her throat is on fire. 00:08:25.350 --> 00:08:29.130 Over the last few years, she's learned to ignore pain of all kinds. 00:08:29.521 --> 00:08:31.891 She thought, I've been in pain since my dad died. 00:08:31.920 --> 00:08:33.721 This whole

shitty life is pain. 00:08:35.595 --> 00:08:38.205 Mary had learned so much about life from pain. 00:08:39.134 --> 00:08:46.215 The pain of losing her family; being betrayed by her mother; the pain of beatings from Jerry, or sometimes a fucked up trick. 00:08:46.965 --> 00:08:49.394 There was also the pain of learning about human nature. 00:08:50.054 --> 00:08:51.134 Mainly, male human nature. 00:08:52.500 --> 00:08:59.663 Most tricks just wanted to get off, but some had freak fantasies they wanted to try and they all think they're the first to have that idea. 00:09:00.863 --> 00:09:12.322 "No, I won't let you put your entire fist at my ass.""No, I won't watch child pornography with you or suck my thumb and call you daddy." Between Jerry and those lost motherfuckers, men could all go to hell. 00:09:13.763 --> 00:09:18.080 The only bright spot in this giant pile of shit was the gram she earned for every trick. 00:09:18.379 --> 00:09:21.860 The rock went straight into the pipe and you could almost forget about the whole thing. 00:09:23.120 --> 00:09:27.590 After Bambi, Joe and that whole group went down, everybody was careful for awhile. 00:09:28.159 --> 00:09:32.299 Mary and the other girls were schooled about what to say if the police tried to talk to them. 00:09:33.110 --> 00:09:36.740 The specter of the torso girls hung like a hammer over them. 00:09:38.120 --> 00:09:45.044 Nobody was openly saying Jerry did'em, but they were both his girls and they'd both been around long enough to see some shit. 00:09:45.585 --> 00:09:50.054 When the old bitches whispered about Deseret and Michelle, it was that they'd seen too much. 00:09:50.384 --> 00:09:51.404 They knew too much. 00:09:51.945 --> 00:09:55.215 There was a rumor that one of them was trying to blackmail one of the rich guys. 00:09:55.738 --> 00:09:57.898 Mary knew that you never relied on what bitches said. 00:09:58.347 --> 00:09:59.457 It was all part of the game. 00:10:01.400 --> 00:10:04.610 Mary thought about the time recently, when she got popped by the police. 00:10:04.941 --> 00:10:06.410 It was a sting in a hotel. 00:10:06.740 --> 00:10:08.030 She hadn't told them jack. 00:10:08.301 --> 00:10:13.250 In fact, she flipped them shit about the cop who got fired for groping one of Jerry's girls, when he gave her a ride. 00:10:13.791 --> 00:10:18.831 The detective she talked to, Barbosa, he was cute, kind of a David Duchovny vibe. 00:10:19.671 --> 00:10:23.000 He was nice and he promised to get her out of the game, but Mary blew him off. 00:10:23.160 --> 00:10:24.571 They weren't going to help her do shit. 00:10:25.921 --> 00:10:30.230 The cops held Mary until T, Jerry's go-to guy, arrived to check up on her. 00:10:31.000 --> 00:10:32.176 They arrested him too. 00:10:32.755 --> 00:10:36.115 T usually did his Ving Rhames enforcer act when he had to come out. 00:10:36.385 --> 00:10:37.765 With the cops, he was quiet. 00:10:39.176 --> 00:10:41.875 Thinking about T brings Mary back to the current moment. 00:10:42.023 --> 00:10:43.432 She wishes she had her phone. 00:10:43.972 --> 00:10:44.842 T could find Mr. 00:10:44.842 --> 00:10:45.413 Minivan. 00:10:45.442 --> 00:10:48.802 And if he wasn't already dead, Mary fantasize about T finishing the job. 00:10:50.779 --> 00:10:53.299 She stepps slowly, carefully placing her feet. 00:10:53.600 --> 00:10:57.145 The last thing she needs is to twist an ankle on the uneven tracks. 00:10:57.363 --> 00:10:58.592 She'd never make it out of here. 00:10:59.163 --> 00:11:03.393 The intersection lights were still distant and foot placement in the dark was tricky. 00:11:04.082 --> 00:11:06.182 Why didn't she have her damn phone? 00:11:07.298 --> 00:11:07.778 Oh yeah. 00:11:08.139 --> 00:11:09.068 That's ambers fault. 00:11:09.818 --> 00:11:13.028 Mary knows that the problem is that Amber is a jealous bitch. 00:11:13.599 --> 00:11:17.288 Amber has made Mary's life hell ever since the Lakeshore Motor Lodge. 00:11:18.389 --> 00:11:21.894 About six months prior, Mary was sent out on a date at the Lakeshore. 00:11:22.291 --> 00:11:24.750 When she got there, a white guy in his forties, let her in. 00:11:25.201 --> 00:11:26.971 The guy, told her his name was Bill. 00:11:27.270 --> 00:11:29.880 Mary could see that Bill had been drinking a lot. 00:11:30.613 --> 00:11:33.613 He told Mary that she was pretty and tried to rub her shoulders. 00:11:34.003 --> 00:11:36.552 She backed away from him and she went through the procedure. 00:11:36.942 --> 00:11:39.222 "Bill, are you a cop?" Bill said,"what? 00:11:39.222 --> 00:11:48.552 No." Mary said,"because if you're a cop, you have to tell me." Bill said,"no, not a cop." Mary said," the fee for time and company is 200. 00:11:48.942 --> 00:11:59.592 And if you want certain special favors, it's a hundred dollars more each." Bill said,"I just want to fuck you." Mary said,"400 and I'll make it worth it." Bill nodded. 00:12:00.702 --> 00:12:02.712 With a level gaze, Mary held out her palm. 00:12:03.222 --> 00:12:09.418 "You have to pay before." Mary watched as Bill went to a shoulder bag, hanging above a suitcase. 00:12:11.118 --> 00:12:13.827 He counted out a few bills and gave them to Mary. 00:12:14.788 --> 00:12:16.197 She started towards the bathroom. 00:12:16.227 --> 00:12:32.648 "I have to call it in and let my people know." Bill looked confused,"wait, are you a cop?" Mary laughed,"no, but if I don't check in some big angry black dude's going to show up, looking for me and neither of us want that." In the bathroom, Mary sat on the edge of the tub, sighed, and dialed the number. 00:12:33.168 --> 00:12:36.677 When a voice on the other end answered, she said"Lakeshore 205. 00:12:36.697 --> 00:12:38.498 It's 400." And she hung up. 00:12:40.298 --> 00:12:42.038 There was nothing unusual about the sex. 00:12:42.158 --> 00:12:45.577 Mary, like always tried to get it over quickly, taking her cues from the guy. 00:12:46.268 --> 00:12:48.618 With Bill, he seemed like he

wanted to talk. 00:12:49.352 --> 00:12:51.513 One of the things he said caught her attention. 00:12:52.173 --> 00:12:53.673 He asked her if she liked Coke. 00:12:53.852 --> 00:12:54.873 She said she did. 00:12:55.052 --> 00:12:58.623 And he said he was there because he was picking up some Coke from the airport. 00:12:58.750 --> 00:13:02.096 He said he wished he had some, so he could suck some lines off her ass. 00:13:02.756 --> 00:13:05.966 Mary played along, but her attention was drawn back to that satchel. 00:13:06.956 --> 00:13:10.437 When Mary left, she called Jerry and told him about the date and the bag. 00:13:10.976 --> 00:13:13.557 He told Mary to wait in the parking lot behind the hotel. 00:13:14.336 --> 00:13:17.990 10 minutes later, Jerry pulled up in his Caddy and T with him. 00:13:18.027 --> 00:13:20.907 Mary described the date again to Jerry and T. 00:13:21.386 --> 00:13:23.427 T asked her more details about the room. 00:13:23.996 --> 00:13:27.417 Jerry asked if she knew what the guy was driving, but she didn't. 00:13:28.379 --> 00:13:29.759 T got out and went into the building. 00:13:30.495 --> 00:13:33.914 A couple of minutes later, Jerry answered his cell and spoke to T. 00:13:34.514 --> 00:13:36.888 Jerry hung up and immediately made another call. 00:13:38.597 --> 00:13:40.638 Mary heard Jerry say"Yes. 00:13:40.638 --> 00:13:45.991 I'm trying to reach room 2 0 5." After a pause, Jerry said"Sir, this is the front desk. 00:13:45.991 --> 00:14:00.957 There's a gentleman here that says he hit your car in the parking lot.""Yes.""An accident""with your car.""We have the plate on your room registration.""Well, I don't know. 00:14:01.258 --> 00:14:02.128 He went back outside". 00:14:04.628 --> 00:14:04.868 "Okay. 00:14:04.868 --> 00:14:07.268 Thank you." Jerry hung up the phone and rolled down the window. 00:14:07.658 --> 00:14:11.607 He inched the car closer to the back door and angled toward the alley exit. 00:14:12.847 --> 00:14:15.082 $17,000 in cash. 00:14:15.232 --> 00:14:16.643 That's what T came out with. 00:14:16.822 --> 00:14:21.990 The only sound Mary had heard had been the muted thump of the door of 2 0 5 being kicked in. 00:14:22.559 --> 00:14:24.840 T ran out and they got away clean. 00:14:25.649 --> 00:14:27.960 Mary got nothing more than Jerry's goodwill. 00:14:29.070 --> 00:14:33.360 He told Mary that they were closer to live in the lives they've dreamed of with this score. 00:14:34.799 --> 00:14:36.090 This was his theme song. 00:14:36.330 --> 00:14:38.220 They were one big happy family. 00:14:38.549 --> 00:14:40.860 The goal was one day to live in a mansion. 00:14:41.279 --> 00:14:43.590 All the girls would drive luxury cars. 00:14:43.590 --> 00:14:47.450 They'd wrap themselves in furs and jewelry, and they'd all be happy-rich. 00:14:48.460 --> 00:14:52.000 Mary didn't believe him, but she did like to hear him talk that way. 00:14:52.539 --> 00:14:53.919 It meant he wasn't mad. 00:14:55.570 --> 00:14:57.820 The other

girls all hugged Mary when they heard. 00:14:58.629 --> 00:15:00.100 All wanted to know the story. 00:15:00.610 --> 00:15:02.899 Everyone was happy, except for Amber. 00:15:03.700 --> 00:15:08.169 The bottom bitch, Amber couldn't stand that Mary had pulled off such a big trick without her. 00:15:08.409 --> 00:15:10.179 So she started screwing Mary over. 00:15:11.799 --> 00:15:17.559 There were times when Amber collected money for Jerry, and he later scolded Mary for coming up short. 00:15:18.190 --> 00:15:19.659 Mary denied it at the time. 00:15:19.659 --> 00:15:20.830 And then it happened again. 00:15:21.370 --> 00:15:24.220 Jerry refused to believe that Amber was lying to him. 00:15:24.669 --> 00:15:28.179 After all, Amber was his most loyal, most trusted girl. 00:15:28.480 --> 00:15:30.639 Amber had stuck with him the longest. 00:15:31.480 --> 00:15:34.509 One night, Mary was sitting on the couch at her assigned house. 00:15:35.169 --> 00:15:37.090 The other girls were there, which was unusual. 00:15:37.600 --> 00:15:41.169 Daddy had called a family meeting for all the girls staying at that house. 00:15:41.799 --> 00:15:43.149 Mary didn't think much about it. 00:15:43.990 --> 00:15:46.279 When daddy came in that night, it started slow. 00:15:46.794 --> 00:15:55.254 With the girls sitting in a semicircle around him, daddy began a sermon about family, loyalty, work ethic, betrayal, and punishment. 00:15:55.735 --> 00:16:00.144 And as daddy's voice rose, Mary noticed that he seemed to be focused on her. 00:16:00.745 --> 00:16:03.835 His anger grew and his eyes flashed wildly. 00:16:04.044 --> 00:16:09.205 Suddenly daddy lunged forward, grabbing Mary by the hair and dragging her forward to the middle of the circle. 00:16:10.075 --> 00:16:11.485 You stealing from us bitch? 00:16:11.725 --> 00:16:17.514 You keep in our money?" Daddy's questions were punctuated by punches to the side of her face. 00:16:18.355 --> 00:16:23.065 Mary was on all fours crawling to keep up, scared that her hair was going to be pulled out. 00:16:23.544 --> 00:16:30.054 The other girls watched in silent horror, his daddy drug her into an adjacent bedroom where he beat and raped her. 00:16:30.325 --> 00:16:32.394 The girls in the living room didn't dare move. 00:16:32.784 --> 00:16:34.625 So they sat and listened to everything. 00:16:35.904 --> 00:16:37.794 Despite the horror of what happened to her. 00:16:37.794 --> 00:16:42.325 Mary counted herself fortunate that she had not received other worst punishments. 00:16:42.955 --> 00:16:47.125 She had seen daddy lock a girl in a small closet they called the box. 00:16:47.424 --> 00:16:49.975 The box was barely big enough to be called a closet. 00:16:50.754 --> 00:16:53.845 It was a solid wood box, just big enough to sit down. 00:16:54.085 --> 00:16:56.738 The girl she saw was locked in for four days. 00:16:57.278 --> 00:16:58.988 She was given water twice. 00:16:59.378 --> 00:17:02.738 After the first day, she cried out calling for somebody to help her. 00:17:02.985 --> 00:17:06.105 Daddy, who only spent a couple hours there a day, heard the girl. 00:17:06.674 --> 00:17:10.005 He opened the door, kicked and punched her, and slammed the door on her. 00:17:10.394 --> 00:17:15.434 Daddy screamed warnings to all the other girls that they'd better stay away unless they wanted to turn in the box. 00:17:16.795 --> 00:17:19.825 Mary thinks about how the rape wasn't Amber's only revenge. 00:17:20.575 --> 00:17:24.954 She made Mary work extra tricks on the street to make up for the money daddy thought she shorted him. 00:17:25.846 --> 00:17:28.336 A few minutes ago, one of those tricks tried to kill her. 00:17:29.267 --> 00:17:32.807 Mary realizes that she's missed how dangerous Amber could be. 00:17:33.586 --> 00:17:37.217 Mary missed it because she has no interest in being bottom bitch. 00:17:37.817 --> 00:17:41.896 Mary doesn't want to be the enforcer, the snitch, the one hustling the other girls. 00:17:42.346 --> 00:17:43.307 Amber can have it. 00:17:44.542 --> 00:17:49.522 Mary continues her walk up the tracks as her mind, wanders back, trying to sort her life. 00:17:50.272 --> 00:17:51.923 The memory of a thousand tricks. 00:17:52.042 --> 00:17:54.202 The memory of Jerry beating and raping her. 00:17:54.923 --> 00:17:56.393 The guy who just tried to rape her. 00:17:56.813 --> 00:17:58.762 Then she thinks of her little sister, Michelle. 00:17:59.692 --> 00:18:02.603 With the thought of Michelle, Mary collapses to the gravel. 00:18:02.992 --> 00:18:07.883 Mary is racked with sobs on her hands and knees in the darkness, the memories wash over her. 00:18:08.663 --> 00:18:11.813 Mary's sister, Michelle was supposed to be safe with foster parents. 00:18:12.522 --> 00:18:16.363 Mary had only seen her once since she left her mother's apartmentf or the last time. 00:18:16.962 --> 00:18:21.913 Mary had walked into a diner and saw her sister sitting with a woman who looked to be in her forties. 00:18:22.903 --> 00:18:24.222 Michelle looked surprised. 00:18:24.833 --> 00:18:27.762 Mary nodded her head towards the bathroom as she walked past. 00:18:28.242 --> 00:18:31.692 When Mary came in, they hugged and questions flooded out of both of them. 00:18:32.442 --> 00:18:37.153 Mary could only answer her sister with lies, but she was satisfied with what she got back. 00:18:37.482 --> 00:18:40.663 Michelle liked the people she was living with and was doing good in school. 00:18:41.623 --> 00:18:47.720 It was a shock to Mary that when she next saw Michelle, she was sitting on the couch in one of Jerry's apartments. 00:18:48.319 --> 00:18:52.849 Her little sister was high and had the familiar look of a girl who hadn't slept in days. 00:18:53.660 --> 00:19:01.259 Mary laid into Michelle,"what the fuck are you doing here?" The sad truth was that Michelle had lied to Mary too. 00:19:01.940 --> 00:19:03.289 The foster home had been a nightmare. 00:19:04.125 --> 00:19:06.825 Michelle hadn't known

that Mary was with Jerry. 00:19:07.154 --> 00:19:10.575 She just knew Mary was somewhere on the street and Michelle had followed. 00:19:11.744 --> 00:19:14.805 Mary had tried to keep Michelle close while she figured out what to do. 00:19:15.045 --> 00:19:17.535 But somehow Jerry had found out they were sisters. 00:19:18.075 --> 00:19:21.255 Only a couple of other bitches knew, but one of them had blabbed. 00:19:23.164 --> 00:19:25.775 Jerry came up with a rule that sisters couldn't stay together. 00:19:25.805 --> 00:19:29.855 So Michelle moved back to the original place and Mary wasn't able to keep track of her. 00:19:30.724 --> 00:19:34.055 In the months that followed, Mary saw Michelle only sporadically. 00:19:34.775 --> 00:19:37.684 Mary knew that Amber and the other girls were keeping tabs on them. 00:19:38.134 --> 00:19:41.494 Each time they bumped into each other, Michelle looked a little more strung out. 00:19:42.035 --> 00:19:43.144 Her skin was pale. 00:19:43.144 --> 00:19:44.105 She was losing weigh. 00:19:44.194 --> 00:19:46.055 Her eyes hollowed out and dark. 00:19:47.134 --> 00:19:50.974 One night, Mary thought Amber was being uncharacteristically nice to her. 00:19:51.755 --> 00:19:58.144 Mary had shields up, so when Amber hit her with the emotional blast, Mary didn't give the reaction that Amber was going for. 00:19:59.015 --> 00:20:05.224 Dripping with fake compassion, Amber told Mary, she was so sorry about Michelle and the baby. 00:20:06.424 --> 00:20:09.335 Mary shrugged it off until she was out of sight of Amber. 00:20:09.454 --> 00:20:15.605 Then she ran up the street to a gas station, caught a cab and was banging on the door of Michelle's apartment 10 minutes later. 00:20:16.474 --> 00:20:19.085 A girl named Jen opened the door with a worried look. 00:20:19.595 --> 00:20:22.384 "Jerry said, you're not supposed to be here.""Come on Jen. 00:20:22.384 --> 00:20:29.075 I need to see Michelle.""Jerry's trying to call you.""I left the phone at my house", Mary lied. 00:20:29.494 --> 00:20:32.174 She turned off the phone in the cab when it started to ring. 00:20:32.224 --> 00:20:38.025 "I got to see her, Jen." Mary was on the verge of tears, trembling hands covering her mouth pacing back and forth. 00:20:38.565 --> 00:20:39.494 Jen frowned. 00:20:39.644 --> 00:20:44.751 Nodded,"okay, but you never talked to me." Jen stepped back as Mary flew past and up the stairs. 00:20:45.412 --> 00:20:47.392 Mary flipped the lights on afraid of what she would find. 00:20:48.067 --> 00:20:49.807 Michelle was lying on her back. 00:20:50.196 --> 00:20:52.987 The bed was small, but she looked tiny in it nonetheless. 00:20:54.656 --> 00:20:56.727 For a moment, Mary thought her sister was dead. 00:20:57.567 --> 00:21:00.747 But her eyes opened and her head lolled to the side so she could look at Mary. 00:21:00.866 --> 00:21:02.186 She gave her a faint smile. 00:21:03.626 --> 00:21:05.757 Mary saw that she was flushed and sweating. 00:21:06.477 --> 00:21:10.797 "Shell, what happened?" Michelle's gaze was flat at first. 00:21:10.923 --> 00:21:18.752 Then her face contorted, tears squeezing out the side of her eyes,"I was pregnant," She choked and then gasped for air. 00:21:20.042 --> 00:21:22.916 Mary closed the distance, falling to her knees beside the bed. 00:21:23.336 --> 00:21:27.656 There was a glass of water on the table next to her, and Mary held it to her; helped her drink. 00:21:29.646 --> 00:21:31.777 As Michelle calmed, she began to talk. 00:21:32.467 --> 00:21:33.457 "It was tiny. 00:21:33.906 --> 00:21:38.106 Dead when it came out." Tears in her eyes, Mary looked around. 00:21:38.106 --> 00:21:47.067 "Where?""Jerry took it." Mary, trying to understand, asked,"did you go to the hospital?""No. 00:21:47.067 --> 00:21:48.147 Jerry said I couldn't. 00:21:48.377 --> 00:21:56.208 Said and get in trouble." Michelle was crying again,"he said they'd think I killed the baby." Mary shook her head again. 00:21:56.238 --> 00:21:57.407 "No, you're bad sick. 00:21:57.407 --> 00:22:03.708 We have to get help." Downstairs, Mary heard the front door open and someone running up the stairs. 00:22:04.117 --> 00:22:08.061 An angry Jerry burst through the door, bitch, I told you, you can't come over here". 00:22:08.157 --> 00:22:12.478 He grabbed Mary by the hair and drug her out into the hallway as Mary struggled to stand. 00:22:12.688 --> 00:22:14.097 "She needs to go to the hospital. 00:22:14.097 --> 00:22:16.077 Can't you see, she's sick!" Mary wailed. 00:22:16.708 --> 00:22:19.468 At the top of the stairs, Jerry shoved Mary down. 00:22:20.067 --> 00:22:23.607 One of the hired guys, Mary didn't know him yet, was down there to catch her. 00:22:24.208 --> 00:22:27.204 The man drug her out the front door and across the grass strip. 00:22:27.634 --> 00:22:34.055 Mary continued to flail and cry at the car until one of them, she didn't know who, punched her full in the face. 00:22:35.464 --> 00:22:41.494 The next thing she knew Mary was lying next to Jerry in the backseat of the car, the new guy was driving. 00:22:42.005 --> 00:22:51.615 When Jerry noticed she was looking up at him, he said,"I've got somebody bringing her some medicine." Hopeless, Mary cried into the seat the rest of the way back. 00:22:52.684 --> 00:22:55.644 When Mary arrived home, Jerry put her in a room alone. 00:22:56.065 --> 00:23:02.305 He took her phone and put a couple of oxies in the palm of her hand, held out a bottle of Sprite, take them," he ordered. 00:23:02.845 --> 00:23:03.505 And she did. 00:23:04.221 --> 00:23:05.721 He said,"your sister's going to be fine. 00:23:05.751 --> 00:23:07.731 I'm going to put T here for a while to watch you. 00:23:08.301 --> 00:23:09.382 He'll give you what you need. 00:23:09.622 --> 00:23:14.061 Don't leave." Mary, let the drugs take her away. 00:23:14.271 --> 00:23:15.951 She was accustomed to being hopeless. 00:23:16.298 --> 00:23:19.057 But what was worse was she had failed Michelle.

00:23:20.107 --> 00:23:28.778 These memories haunt Mary, as she sits on the gravel shoulder of the railroad tracks that divide the center of the city from the west side, two blocks away from the lighted intersection. 00:23:29.241 --> 00:23:31.882 As her tears subside, she no longer feels afraid. 00:23:32.001 --> 00:23:33.172 She feels rage. 00:23:34.031 --> 00:23:35.666 Mary didn't grow up in this shitty life. 00:23:35.666 --> 00:23:37.017 It was thrust upon her. 00:23:37.166 --> 00:23:41.606 She remembers what it was like to live in a home where she felt protected and loved. 00:23:41.936 --> 00:23:50.762 She called out to the night,"fuck Jerry!""Fuck Amber!" Fuck the tricks! They're all going to kill us." Mary stands and ambles down the tracks. 00:23:52.053 --> 00:23:56.163 As she approaches the intersection, she sees a police car parked in front of the liquor store. 00:23:56.913 --> 00:23:59.282 Normally, Mary would have headed in the opposite direction. 00:23:59.913 --> 00:24:01.232 Tonight, she doesn't. 00:24:02.103 --> 00:24:06.603 A patrol officer's just finishing up a robbery report at the Brown Jug Liquor on Spenard Road. 00:24:07.772 --> 00:24:12.363 As he walks out of the store, he sees a lady hobbling off the tracks and into the light of the parking lot. 00:24:13.653 --> 00:24:19.083 Her face and the front of her shirt are caked in blood in her right eye looks like it's about to swell shut. 00:24:20.042 --> 00:24:22.910 As they close the distance, the cop asks,"Hey, are you okay? 00:24:22.910 --> 00:24:26.839 Do you need an ambulance?" Mary says,"Barbosa. 00:24:27.920 --> 00:24:44.819 I need to talk to Detective Barbosa." The investigation of Don Webster, street name Jerry Starr began with the formation of the Anchorage Police Department Vice Unit in 2005. 00:24:45.630 --> 00:24:47.849 The reason for the unit's formation was twofold. 00:24:48.329 --> 00:24:51.759 One, the Boehm investigation put a spotlight on the problem. 00:24:52.462 --> 00:25:03.383 Not only was a prominent, wealthy businessman, able to procure drugs and children in quantity, but he also was a bedded by members of the city's sprawling escort and prostitution network. 00:25:03.759 --> 00:25:10.347 And two, there was a growing recognition that human sex trafficking isn't a uniquely Alaskan crime. 00:25:11.008 --> 00:25:17.008 Just like narcotics, it's a serious national problem that often crosses state and international borders. 00:25:17.795 --> 00:25:20.045 The Boehm case represents the bigger picture. 00:25:20.404 --> 00:25:29.944 The sexual abuse of minors, rape, assault, dead sex workers and drug abuse exact a heavy emotional toll, leaving surviving victims devastated in its wake. 00:25:32.375 --> 00:25:42.755 The Trafficking Victims Protection Act, TVPA, which was first enacted in 2000 provided sizeable grants to help pay for stakeholders to combat the issue. 00:25:43.474 --> 00:25:48.981 Anchorage got its first TVPA grant in 2005, and the vice unit was partially

funded by it. 00:25:49.567 --> 00:25:55.268 In its original incarnation, the unit was staffed with four detectives, a detective Sergeant and a clerk. 00:25:55.837 --> 00:26:00.518 In addition, a special agent from the FBI was attached as a liaison investigator. 00:26:02.307 --> 00:26:07.048 Jerry Starr became the target of APD vice almost immediately upon its inception. 00:26:07.867 --> 00:26:15.028 Starr was a known associate of Boehme and was involved in the same activity that had sent the defendants in the Boehm ring to prison. 00:26:16.077 --> 00:26:28.698 As the owner of several escort services, a label that in Anchorage was synonymous with prostitution, Starr was responsible, not only for selling women for sex, but also for the accompanying host of collateral crimes. 00:26:30.133 --> 00:26:49.207 Human sex trafficking is defined under US federal code as the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the purposes of a commercial sex act, accomplished or accompanied with the use of force, fraud, or coercion. 00:26:50.106 --> 00:26:53.886 Human sex trafficking is often referred to as modern day slavery. 00:26:54.727 --> 00:27:01.386 It involves forcing an individual to engage in commercial sex acts, including prostitution or the production of pornography. 00:27:02.017 --> 00:27:05.196 It can also include human rights abuses such as debt bondage. 00:27:06.326 --> 00:27:14.817 Sex trafficking is associated with levels of deprivation of Liberty and loss of personal freedoms, most often associated with people living in third world countries. 00:27:17.613 --> 00:27:21.962 The detectives at the vice unit started with prostitution arrests in public places. 00:27:22.532 --> 00:27:29.553 The area of any city where street-level prostitution regularly occurs is referred to as the track or the stroll. 00:27:30.542 --> 00:27:36.903 On the track sex workers walk up and down the street, waiting for a customer to pull up and offer them money in exchange for sex. 00:27:37.532 --> 00:27:46.502 Making arrests on streetwalkers is usually popular with residents and businesses because of the optics and the collateral crimes that the sex trade attracts. 00:27:48.953 --> 00:27:56.003 Vice detectives also conducted call-out stings in hotel rooms, targeting the telephone and online escort services. 00:27:56.933 --> 00:28:00.114 More than 100 arrests were made in the first 18 months. 00:28:01.074 --> 00:28:07.433 These were fairly simple to complete, but legally were not much more significant than a serious driving offense. 00:28:08.364 --> 00:28:13.824 The complicated part was convincing the arrestees to talk about the men running the sex trade. 00:28:14.963 --> 00:28:19.673 For the human trafficking charges the investigators would need to prove force fraud or coercion. 00:28:20.003 --> 00:28:24.114 So there was a constant effort to drive interviews toward that end. 00:28:26.503 --> 00:28:32.114 Detectives were looking for any leverage, any string to pull that might unravel the organization. 00:28:32.983 --> 00:28:36.163 Jerry Starr owned at least six apartments or houses. 00:28:37.124 --> 00:28:45.493 Vice detectives conducted surveillance to learn which women stayed at, which houses and used this information in interviews and subsequent search warrant applications. 00:28:47.269 --> 00:28:53.417 There was a particular effort to find girls who no longer worked for Jerry Starr or one that might have a reason to leave. 00:28:54.228 --> 00:28:56.748 Many early arrests and interviews led nowhere. 00:28:56.988 --> 00:29:00.708 But increasingly over time information began to seep out. 00:29:02.728 --> 00:29:13.018 As complex investigations mature, there is a tipping point where the preliminary or readily available details have been processed and new information must be obtained to move forward. 00:29:13.917 --> 00:29:18.138 In the Jerry Starr case, it became clear that some people would talk and others wouldn't. 00:29:18.558 --> 00:29:27.888 The good thing was at that point, what investigators had was sufficient to allow warrants to see Starr's business and banking records and search his six houses. 00:29:29.298 --> 00:29:36.378 Searching houses revealed several properties were being run as little more than storage spaces for commercial sex workers. 00:29:37.578 --> 00:29:40.788 Most of these places were not what one would consider a home. 00:29:41.530 --> 00:29:43.631 These were not rooms used for the business. 00:29:44.111 --> 00:29:47.701 The rooms were austerely furnished with few decorations. 00:29:47.881 --> 00:29:49.912 Some rooms held several small beds. 00:29:50.672 --> 00:29:56.152 Some of the noteworthy items seized include: pictures of women and girls who worked for Jerry Starr. 00:29:56.641 --> 00:30:02.191 These pictures included individual ladies, sometimes groups, and sometimes groups with Jerry. 00:30:02.827 --> 00:30:06.728 Some of the photos showed a gathering with all the women in an outdoor setting. 00:30:07.117 --> 00:30:08.498 Think a high school team photo. 00:30:09.462 --> 00:30:15.163 In the picture, the ladies were scantily clad and Jerry Starr was wearing a flamboyant pimp suit. 00:30:16.752 --> 00:30:20.532 In the houses, pornography and drug paraphernalia were ubiquitous. 00:30:21.853 --> 00:30:25.843 In the interviews, women described being punished by Jerry in various ways. 00:30:26.300 --> 00:30:31.280 One of the ways was being locked in the box, which was described as a closet. 00:30:32.161 --> 00:30:36.711 Investigators found the box in Jerry Starr's house on Thunderbird drive. 00:30:37.371 --> 00:30:41.421 It was a small wood reinforced closet, not much bigger than a cupboard. 00:30:42.050 --> 00:30:48.351 Closer examination of the inside of the box revealed it had blood spatter on the inside walls and scratch marks. 00:30:49.580 --> 00:30:54.486 The marks looks similar to what it would look like when a dog repeatedly

scratches the door to be let out. 00:30:55.355 --> 00:31:01.615 This evidence was so compelling investigators cut it out of the house intact to be used as an exhibit in court. 00:31:03.595 --> 00:31:09.775 While searching Jerry Star's vehicle, one of the detectives opened a briefcase and discovered a human fetus. 00:31:12.454 --> 00:31:17.134 After the search warrants, investigators had a clear picture of the business that Jerry Starr was running. 00:31:17.704 --> 00:31:22.234 It was no surprise, but the escort services were simply fronts for prostitution. 00:31:22.744 --> 00:31:28.025 Starr recruited workers by targeting women and children who were poor, homeless or runaways. 00:31:28.744 --> 00:31:40.835 He hired them to work for his businesses, including Foxy Roxies, Sunshine Girls, American Beauties, Kotton Kandy, Tiffani's, Tickle Your Fancy, and Lickety Splitz. 00:31:42.005 --> 00:31:45.244 Those businesses were advertising online and in local papers. 00:31:46.494 --> 00:31:48.865 The customers were not offered sex services. 00:31:49.105 --> 00:31:52.944 They were told they would only pay for the worker's'time and company'. 00:31:53.484 --> 00:32:02.305 The expression'time and company' was followed by the phrase, which is familiar to prostitution,'anything that two consenting adults do after that is their business'. 00:32:02.994 --> 00:32:10.104 The prostitution business operated on an out-call basis, meaning females would travel to the customer's residence or hotel room. 00:32:10.246 --> 00:32:18.976 The customers had to pay in advance, a fixed hourly rate, plus a transportation fee, and additional cash for sex acts or drugs, which Jerry Starr supplied. 00:32:20.566 --> 00:32:24.915 None of the previously listed activities qualify explicitly as human trafficking. 00:32:25.455 --> 00:32:31.452 Instead, human trafficking occurred in how Jerry Starr treated the women and the girls after they agreed to work for him. 00:32:32.502 --> 00:32:38.301 During numerous interviews, victims told investigators, that Jerry Starr kept the women working through manipulation. 00:32:38.961 --> 00:32:42.546 The ladies had to live in one of six houses, that Starr assigned. 00:32:43.101 --> 00:32:48.141 They could not talk to people, particularly men who are outside the prostitution family. 00:32:49.340 --> 00:32:51.711 He didn't pay escort employees in cash. 00:32:52.161 --> 00:32:58.611 Instead he issued small amounts of crack for every date that they completed and forced them to turn in all the money. 00:32:59.721 --> 00:33:06.800 If a woman didn't do what he wanted, didn't make a quota or tried to leave, he used violence and intimidation to keep them compliant. 00:33:09.240 --> 00:33:11.490 The arrest of Jerry Starr was anticlimactic. 00:33:12.560 --> 00:33:18.046 The man who had terrorized so many, quietly submitted to handcuffs and went off to jail. 00:33:18.945 --> 00:33:28.313 With Jerry Starr off the street, the investigators re canvassed all the identified victims because often with the offender behind bars, victims feel like they can be more forthcoming. 00:33:35.073 --> 00:33:37.502 Jerry Star's trial lasted for three weeks. 00:33:37.803 --> 00:33:43.502 The prosecution case focused on 11 victims: nine adult women, and two juveniles. 00:33:44.012 --> 00:33:48.153 One of the juvenile victims started sex work for Jerry Starr when she was 13. 00:33:49.532 --> 00:33:52.323 The victims gave various accounts along one theme. 00:33:53.103 --> 00:33:58.432 Jerry Starr was a violent pimp who demanded that workers go on 10 dates per day. 00:33:59.122 --> 00:34:02.211 They would give Jerry Starr the money and he would feed them crack. 00:34:02.632 --> 00:34:04.281 They had no regular days off. 00:34:05.001 --> 00:34:08.391 One testified the crack enabled the girls to work long hours. 00:34:08.802 --> 00:34:11.371 Some went as long as five days without sleep. 00:34:13.222 --> 00:34:18.117 The living conditions that Jerry Starr provided were sparse and the rules oppressive. 00:34:18.867 --> 00:34:20.876 He made some of the women call him daddy. 00:34:21.416 --> 00:34:25.677 They were not allowed to have visitors or associate with anyone outside the family unit. 00:34:26.516 --> 00:34:29.637 They could not buy anything or keep money without his permission. 00:34:30.777 --> 00:34:33.356 They were forbidden to speak with men without being paid for it. 00:34:35.246 --> 00:34:38.067 If Jerry Starr became angry, he was unpredictable. 00:34:38.369 --> 00:34:41.219 He might take away a woman's phone and identification. 00:34:41.760 --> 00:34:45.119 He often beat women in front of the others to make an example. 00:34:45.960 --> 00:34:54.449 Victims described being regularly choked, punched, slapped, tied up, strip searched by Starr or one of his hired thugs. 00:34:55.590 --> 00:35:00.389 He regularly threatened to disfigure women by pouring boiling water on them or cutting them. 00:35:01.260 --> 00:35:04.992 In one instance, a victim, left the house without his permission. 00:35:05.351 --> 00:35:08.081 He found her nearby and dragged her back by the hair. 00:35:08.597 --> 00:35:15.086 Several victims talked about a group meeting where Starr became angry and dragged one woman into an adjacent room and brutally beat her. 00:35:16.376 --> 00:35:18.146 The witness said they could hear him beating her. 00:35:18.146 --> 00:35:23.336 And when she came out, she was covered in blood and large patches of her hair had been ripped from her scalp. 00:35:24.777 --> 00:35:31.197 Some women described the punishment of being locked in the box, the wooden cupboard seized during the search warrants. 00:35:31.556 --> 00:35:35.336 A woman might be locked in the box for hours or days without food. 00:35:36.416 --> 00:35:41.036 The victims described Jerry Starr as demanding sex and outright raping them regularly. 00:35:42.746 --> 00:35:51.744 Jerry Starr's defense was that all the victims who testified against him, worked for him

voluntarily and that he never used force, fraud, or coercion on any of the women. 00:35:53.034 --> 00:35:59.693 Starr also denied knowing that the business was a front for prostitution and denied knowing the ages of the younger girls. 00:36:02.954 --> 00:36:25.824 On February 5th, 2008, a federal jury found Jerry Starr guilty on two counts of sex trafficking of a minor, nine counts of sex trafficking of an adult by force fraud or coercion, two counts of distributing crack cocaine to a pregnant woman, four counts of distributing crack cocaine to individuals under the age of 21 and eight counts of distributing crack cocaine. 00:36:26.804 --> 00:36:36.143 Jerry Starr was also convicted of one count of maintaining a premise for the purposes of manufacturing and distributing crack cocaine, and one count of manufacturing, crack cocaine. 00:36:37.134 --> 00:36:41.753 The following August, Webster AKA Jerry Starr was sentenced to 30 years in prison. 00:36:42.954 --> 00:36:48.893 The judge ordered Starr to pay$3.6 million in unpaid worker compensation and damages. 00:36:49.164 --> 00:36:53.344 This figure was calculated from business records and estimates made during the investigation. 00:36:54.423 --> 00:37:03.409 Starr appealed his conviction, insisting that there was no proof of fraud or coercion and that the ladies did things of their own volition, just as he had said in the trial. 00:37:05.068 --> 00:37:06.418 The appeal was rejected. 00:37:06.706 --> 00:37:18.192 The judge acknowledged that the victims may have gotten into the business voluntarily, but the defendant kept them under his control through beatings, choking confinement in a closet and distribution of cocaine. 00:37:19.536 --> 00:37:20.885 Don Webster Jr. 00:37:20.976 --> 00:37:24.246 is currently housed at the federal detention center in Sheraton, Oregon. 00:37:31.505 --> 00:37:36.606 Before we talk about the case, maybe we should discuss why you transferred to the vice unit. 00:37:38.096 --> 00:37:38.516 Sure. 00:37:38.815 --> 00:37:45.936 When I became a police officer, I never thought, you know, I really want to get into drug enforcement, but it's hard to do police work without bumping up against the drug problem. 00:37:46.159 --> 00:37:52.429 It's everywhere in patrol, and I was working property crimes and drugs were a significant element of all of those crimes. 00:37:52.612 --> 00:37:58.461 So in the vice union was formed, I was told that it was going to be street level drugs, street crimes, and prostitution. 00:37:58.822 --> 00:38:00.592 And I thought it would be kind of in that order. 00:38:00.856 --> 00:38:04.695 There were some attractive perks: plain clothes, undercover cars. 00:38:04.876 --> 00:38:07.206 The other thing was the challenge of working undercover. 00:38:10.376 --> 00:38:12.445 What's the difference between plain clothes and undercover? 00:38:12.445 --> 00:38:13.795 Were you working undercover? 00:38:14.469 --> 00:38:19.298 Most officers who work in units like mine, don't actually work deep cover undercover assignments. 00:38:19.568 --> 00:38:26.048 Ones where you would take on that life that's totally immersed in a different persona so that you can infiltrate a criminal organization. 00:38:26.559 --> 00:38:27.938 These are longer-term cases. 00:38:27.938 --> 00:38:29.349 Theyre also very risky. 00:38:29.659 --> 00:38:31.159 You're living life as a criminal. 00:38:31.735 --> 00:38:41.635 Police agencies don't often have true undercover guys because it's easier, faster, and safer to work confidential informants, commonly referred to a CIs or snitches. 00:38:41.681 --> 00:38:47.711 The CIs are people who are already living the life and don't have to overcome some of the trust barriers that an undercover cop might. 00:38:51.161 --> 00:38:52.871 What was working in vice like? 00:38:54.072 --> 00:38:56.081 At first it was a big learning curve. 00:38:56.472 --> 00:39:04.121 In each police assignment you start off slow, but you take skills that you developed in the last job and usually the new one isn't that big a stretch. 00:39:04.512 --> 00:39:07.802 On patrol I was a training officer, so I knew what I was doing. 00:39:08.177 --> 00:39:11.746 I had done a lot of interviews and processed crime scenes. 00:39:12.077 --> 00:39:19.117 So moving into property crimes as a detective, I did a lot of the same things, just more detailed, building more complex cases. 00:39:19.331 --> 00:39:23.561 So maybe I added 20% of my pool of knowledge when I went to detectives. 00:39:24.161 --> 00:39:25.871 Vice was a different bird altogether. 00:39:26.273 --> 00:39:27.414 A lot of things were different. 00:39:27.594 --> 00:39:29.003 You couldn't act like a cop. 00:39:29.393 --> 00:39:30.744 You couldn't talk like a cop. 00:39:31.523 --> 00:39:33.744 You had to place your gear differently. 00:39:34.067 --> 00:39:35.237 The gear thing's a big deal. 00:39:35.530 --> 00:39:40.914 As a uniformed officer, you know exactly where everything is, so you can access it or put it away without looking. 00:39:41.411 --> 00:39:45.800 For example, as an officer, you might draw and put away your pistol several times during a shift. 00:39:46.492 --> 00:39:49.472 You have years of muscle memory that makes us effortless. 00:39:49.952 --> 00:39:52.652 And it's important because if you're in a fight, you need both your hands. 00:39:52.652 --> 00:39:57.663 So accessing or stowing equipment without thinking about it is the mark of an experienced officer. 00:39:58.331 --> 00:40:07.596 Take the pistol example and multiply that across every piece of gear that you either now don't carry or carry in a different place because it has to be concealed, and that makes you feel like a rookie again. 00:40:11.376 --> 00:40:15.786 What I remember about that time is that you were very much a cop, even off duty. 00:40:15.786 --> 00:40:18.516 You were a cop and you looked it, and you acted like one. 00:40:18.965 --> 00:40:20.795 It was such a part of your identity.

00:40:20.795 --> 00:40:23.556 How hard was it to not act like a cop? 00:40:24.396 --> 00:40:25.056 Yeah, it was hard. 00:40:25.286 --> 00:40:32.641 Early on I had contact with people who walked up to my car and after, a brief conversation said, you're a cop and walked away. 00:40:33.666 --> 00:40:37.157 The first streetwalker I picked up asked me so what do you want to do? 00:40:37.847 --> 00:40:38.597 I was nervous. 00:40:38.597 --> 00:40:40.967 And I said, I don't know, what do you want to do? 00:40:42.436 --> 00:40:49.657 Later, one of the other detectives who heard that over the wire made the joke, what she wanted to do was for you to give her a thousand bucks and let her out of the car. 00:40:51.876 --> 00:40:54.657 So I started making an effort to lose my copness. 00:40:54.757 --> 00:40:56.916 I grew my hair out and slicked it back. 00:40:57.036 --> 00:40:58.686 I grew crappy facial hair. 00:40:59.338 --> 00:41:05.009 I made a concerted effort to relax, not to talk like I was conducting an interview every time I opened my mouth. 00:41:05.518 --> 00:41:12.748 Over time, I learned to adapt my operation to be less police-seeming, while still maintaining vigilance where officer safety was concerned. 00:41:13.528 --> 00:41:21.039 What I also figured out after that first street pickup is that it's fine to use how you feel in the moment when working undercover. 00:41:21.389 --> 00:41:26.548 It's okay to be nervous when picking up a woman for the first time or the fifth time, because it's believable. 00:41:27.021 --> 00:41:32.306 I also learned some tricks on how to shut down some of the questioning, like when they asked if I was a cop. 00:41:32.985 --> 00:41:35.516 I'd act scared and be like, no, are you a cop? 00:41:35.516 --> 00:41:36.536 You're making me nervous. 00:41:36.565 --> 00:41:41.065 And they they'd go out of their way to assure me that they weren't police officers. 00:41:41.188 --> 00:41:42.568 You kind of turn the tables on them. 00:41:43.380 --> 00:41:54.900 One of the things that we were told in a spouse class at the academy is that when you see someone you recognize as a cop in plain clothes in the community, you should never acknowledge them unless they acknowledge you first. 00:41:55.447 --> 00:41:58.166 You should never mention aloud who are what they are. 00:41:58.166 --> 00:42:01.527 This was to prevent accidentally outing someone doing plain clothes work. 00:42:01.940 --> 00:42:09.170 I remember being in a store with you late in your vice time, and you looked really scummy, but by then I was pretty used to it. 00:42:09.800 --> 00:42:15.884 We saw a coworker of yours and it became clear during that conversation with him that he didn't know you were advice. 00:42:16.153 --> 00:42:18.463 I think he thought you had been fired or something. 00:42:18.914 --> 00:42:23.474 I can't remember if you told him what was up, but I remember we laughed about it afterwards. 00:42:24.494 --> 00:42:26.833 So what else was different about how vise worked? 00:42:27.235 --> 00:42:29.396 With that people looked at me differently. 00:42:29.644 --> 00:42:37.422 I remember going to a parent teacher conference where my son had obviously told his teacher I was an officer and the lady was a little freaked out by my appearance. 00:42:39.141 --> 00:42:41.362 But the best was a clerk in city hall. 00:42:41.512 --> 00:42:44.302 I applied for Sergeant after a few years in vice. 00:42:44.967 --> 00:42:48.597 The place where you get internal applications was way upstairs inside the building. 00:42:48.942 --> 00:42:57.467 I went up to the desk and said, I needed the application for police sergeant and the clerk looked at me and said, you do know you have to be a police officer first. 00:42:58.697 --> 00:43:00.137 I laughed and showed her my badge. 00:43:00.467 --> 00:43:03.286 She told me that I didn't look like any of the other applicants. 00:43:03.947 --> 00:43:05.277 I took it as a compliment. 00:43:06.914 --> 00:43:14.425 Vice was different than working in property crimes because there, you pretty much work on your own cases and your partner might help you out sometimes. 00:43:14.867 --> 00:43:18.018 In vice, the entire unit often works closely together. 00:43:18.347 --> 00:43:24.168 You might have a primary case officer, which was true in the Jerry Starr case, but everyone's working on it. 00:43:24.588 --> 00:43:30.137 Even if you're investigating something else, you're always on the lookout for information that might relate back to your major case. 00:43:31.458 --> 00:43:37.728 Initially, there are four of us, we're all type A personalities, all thinking we knew the best way to go about things. 00:43:38.748 --> 00:43:44.507 We butted heads a little, but everyone was professional enough to understand that we all benefit by pulling in the same area. 00:43:45.483 --> 00:43:49.862 That being said, I never worked in a unit where there wasn't at least a little drama. 00:43:50.592 --> 00:43:58.722 I learned over the years, the remedy for drama is hard work, that is interesting where everybody is engaged in achieving this particular outcome. 00:43:59.123 --> 00:44:01.083 Under these conditions, very close ties are formed. 00:44:01.646 --> 00:44:06.536 You get to know people's strengths and weaknesses, and you learned to trust them and keep everyone safe. 00:44:09.452 --> 00:44:13.893 The Jerry Starr case was the focus for the vice unit from the very start, correct? 00:44:15.393 --> 00:44:18.782 When I put in for the new unit, I didn't know Jerry Starr's name. 00:44:19.139 --> 00:44:22.260 Of course I knew about escort services and prostitution in general. 00:44:22.817 --> 00:44:27.766 I had dealt with commercial sex workers from time to time, but I really didn't know about the problem. 00:44:27.947 --> 00:44:28.996 And most people don't. 00:44:29.900 --> 00:44:33.260 Here's a quote from the late great comedian, George Carlin on prostitution. 00:44:33.769 --> 00:44:36.949 He said, selling is legal,

fucking is legal. 00:44:36.980 --> 00:44:38.510 Why isn't it selling fucking legal? 00:44:38.980 --> 00:44:41.480 In the Army, they give you a metal for spraying napalm on people. 00:44:41.869 --> 00:44:44.239 Why can you get arrested for giving someone an orgasm? 00:44:44.672 --> 00:44:46.802 This is the kind of attitude I got from my friends. 00:44:47.163 --> 00:44:51.032 Even one of your male coworkers said something to the effect, what's the big deal. 00:44:51.242 --> 00:44:53.612 And to be honest, that's what I thought initially. 00:44:53.960 --> 00:44:57.380 I knew the prostitutes knew a lot about what's happening in terms of street crimes. 00:44:57.409 --> 00:45:00.800 So there were useful in that respect, but mainly I pitied them. 00:45:01.670 --> 00:45:02.179 Think about it. 00:45:02.510 --> 00:45:05.119 You're so desperate for money to buy your drug of choice. 00:45:05.239 --> 00:45:12.427 You're willing to perform a sex act, often putting your mouth on the penis of the next guy who comes down the street, no matter how vile he is. 00:45:13.360 --> 00:45:18.539 In the beginning, I kind of looked at prostitution, part of our mission as a sideshow to the street level drug enforcement. 00:45:21.420 --> 00:45:22.380 So what changed that? 00:45:24.239 --> 00:45:25.139 I went to school. 00:45:25.739 --> 00:45:27.989 I mean, it sounds funny, but that's actually what happened. 00:45:28.739 --> 00:45:32.739 Wisely, the human trafficking grant pays for the education of investigators. 00:45:32.940 --> 00:45:35.510 It turned out to be half schooling, half indoctrination. 00:45:36.195 --> 00:45:38.594 I went to a conference at Northwestern in Chicago. 00:45:39.525 --> 00:45:43.994 A woman there was wearing a t-shirt that said something like"modern slavery is real. 00:45:44.054 --> 00:45:44.985 I was a slave". 00:45:46.215 --> 00:45:48.974 I thought cynically well, that's dramatic. 00:45:49.755 --> 00:46:00.644 The training there and at the national center for missing and exploited children and the conference we went to in Las Vegas and the violence against women act conference made me a believer. 00:46:01.514 --> 00:46:09.344 There was just so much information about human trafficking and how it's happening right under your noses and calling it slavery is not an exaggeration. 00:46:09.722 --> 00:46:14.492 When we were done with the courses and conferences and started to look around our city, we found it. 00:46:14.942 --> 00:46:17.081 Jerry Starr turned out to be low-hanging fruit. 00:46:17.711 --> 00:46:27.034 We found massage parlors with Chinese women working in them who after the establishments were raded, the women were just rotated out to massage parlors in another state. 00:46:27.855 --> 00:46:33.679 Some of these women are picked up off the street in China and sent to the U S with no knowledge that they're about to be prostituted. 00:46:37.510 --> 00:46:42.697 People have said prostitution is a victimless crime and in a perfect world, it should

be legal. 00:46:43.913 --> 00:46:49.242 Prior to working on the problem, I might've said the same thing, but this isn't a perfect world. 00:46:49.422 --> 00:46:56.862 And if prostitution was a great thing to get into the list of attributes that make a person at risk for prostitution, wouldn't all be negative. 00:46:57.432 --> 00:47:13.222 Here's what makes a person more likely to, work as a commercial sex worker, low self esteem, drug, and alcohol abuse, or addiction, domestic abuse survivor, childhood victimization, mental health issues, naivete or teenage rebellion. 00:47:14.092 --> 00:47:20.112 And prostitution can't be looked at as a victimless crime as long as it is associated with all the crimes that are closely linked to it. 00:47:20.443 --> 00:47:39.186 Like sexual assault, like simple assault, homicide, kidnapping, production distribution, possession of child pornography, distribution or possession of drugs, utilizing female human trafficking victims to mule drugs just like in the Boehm case, money laundering. 00:47:41.907 --> 00:47:48.447 You've talked about the dilemma of charging the crime of prostitution while also acknowledging that they're victims. 00:47:49.197 --> 00:47:50.456 Yeah, it's a dilemma. 00:47:51.889 --> 00:47:56.599 In prostitution you're arresting someone, you know, is probably a victim or has been at some point. 00:47:58.101 --> 00:48:04.731 Some of these women are top echelon street predators, some have committed murders, robberies, felony assaults. 00:48:05.302 --> 00:48:15.827 That's true, but mostly they're just women and girls who, for reasons of poverty or domestic abuse, they've fallen prey to people who are skilled at recognizing and exploiting weakness. 00:48:16.398 --> 00:48:21.492 Like I said earlier, street prostitution arrests are popular with the public who have to live around the track. 00:48:21.521 --> 00:48:24.702 They see the street crimes and find condoms and needles in the parks. 00:48:25.195 --> 00:48:29.605 But in the vice unit, the focus was always targeting the people who benefit from the problem 00:48:33.704 --> 00:48:38.054 To get to Jerry Starr you had to first go after those prostitutes that were working for him. 00:48:40.545 --> 00:48:43.635 There were numerous multi-girl pimps working in Anchorage then. 00:48:43.920 --> 00:48:47.010 It turned out that Jerry Starr was the king of the call at services. 00:48:47.963 --> 00:48:50.753 We would set up in one of the several hotels and call out a woman. 00:48:51.219 --> 00:48:58.260 Usually, we'd get two adjoining rooms or at least two rooms that are adjacent, and when the woman showed up, it went exactly as I described in the narrative. 00:48:58.289 --> 00:49:02.849 She would come in, look around, ask if you're a cop, then negotiate sex acts for a price. 00:49:05.909 --> 00:49:08.309 You've mentioned that these investigations are complicated. 00:49:08.309 --> 00:49:09.300 Can you talk about why? 00:49:11.382 --> 00:49:20.443 These investigations, the prostitution, the street call it prostitution investigation that are not complicated, but human trafficking investigations are extremely complicated. 00:49:20.922 --> 00:49:26.983 The investigation's live or die on the victims, telling detectives what's happening, and they're often not cooperative. 00:49:27.132 --> 00:49:28.242 So you have two options. 00:49:28.693 --> 00:49:31.813 You can either scare them to try and get you, give you information. 00:49:32.112 --> 00:49:35.375 Which isn't the best way, or you can try to develop trust. 00:49:35.525 --> 00:49:36.635 And that is the best way. 00:49:37.172 --> 00:49:43.032 Part of that is offering that you can help them out of the life or put them somewhere where they can escape. 00:49:44.697 --> 00:49:48.387 Most sex workers don't like officers and have been conditioned not to cooperate. 00:49:48.538 --> 00:49:49.918 So trust can be difficult. 00:49:50.608 --> 00:49:55.498 They may also be afraid of police because of the crimes they've committed at the direction of the traffickers. 00:49:56.068 --> 00:49:58.407 For example, transporting drugs to dates. 00:49:59.032 --> 00:50:02.472 They may fear the police will arrest them for their own personal drug addictions. 00:50:02.902 --> 00:50:10.010 A lot of victims have mental health issues and have suffered complex traumas, so they can be difficult to communicate with for those reasons. 00:50:10.849 --> 00:50:16.610 A lot of them, maybe most of them don't have stable housing so it's hard to track them down after first contact. 00:50:17.059 --> 00:50:21.170 This matters because full victim disclosure usually requires multiple interviews. 00:50:21.532 --> 00:50:26.987 To get the Jerry Starr case over the finish line, we had to manage the victims and witnesses and that was difficult. 00:50:27.797 --> 00:50:34.373 One of the things I learned in vice that would serve me well in subsequent assignments is you have to get help where it's offered. 00:50:34.889 --> 00:50:38.552 Police officers are often loath to admit they can't handle things on their own. 00:50:38.822 --> 00:50:43.143 This is why so many departments who espoused community-oriented policing don't really practice it. 00:50:44.036 --> 00:50:47.396 There's a place for discretion, the privacy and operational security. 00:50:48.177 --> 00:50:52.646 But I think too often, police hide behind these as an excuse, not to engage broader support. 00:50:53.907 --> 00:50:58.887 In the vice cases, there were charitable organizations and peer advocacy groups that helped with victim handling. 00:51:00.570 --> 00:51:02.159 These girls and ladies needed help. 00:51:02.219 --> 00:51:13.619 And the stronger you can make that net the better, of course, you have to be willing to break through the entrenched attitudes about cops, particularly with advocacy groups, but those attitudes are there because cops have done a crappy job at engaging. 00:51:16.079 --> 00:51:20.909 Each of the girls and women

that cooperated and testified against are considered a save. 00:51:21.389 --> 00:51:26.280 And it's the team effort that got them out and kept them out while we're preparing for trial. 00:51:29.219 --> 00:51:31.880 Did they really believe you had to admit if you were a cop? 00:51:32.840 --> 00:51:33.110 Yeah. 00:51:33.110 --> 00:51:35.733 I don't know where that came from, but they really believed it. 00:51:35.836 --> 00:51:39.407 Almost everyone I ever picked up said, you have to tell me if you're a cop. 00:51:39.980 --> 00:51:44.630 After that question, the operations went like this: we'd negotiate for specific sex acts. 00:51:44.929 --> 00:51:50.025 Then she would usually go to the bathroom, maybe not the bathroom, but, or just call back to the service she was wearing for. 00:51:50.894 --> 00:52:00.699 The whole time, the rest of the team is listening for the take-down signal, which usually it's something funny, something that one of the other detectives dared the undercover guy to say. 00:52:01.414 --> 00:52:06.123 We'd pay for the sex act, and then say something crazy like,"oh, momma ain't gonna like this". 00:52:06.664 --> 00:52:12.731 Or once it was"Look! Flat Stanley." So then the rest of the team came rushing in to make the arrest. 00:52:13.300 --> 00:52:17.867 As the undercover, you try to get the deal as soon as possible, before any clothes come off. 00:52:18.077 --> 00:52:24.166 But there were cagey ladies who wanted to make sure you weren't a cop, so she would make you undress or she would undress. 00:52:24.556 --> 00:52:27.646 So sometimes the team came in on two, mostly naked, people. 00:52:28.041 --> 00:52:30.201 It was embarrassing, but also part of the job. 00:52:30.960 --> 00:52:36.860 Some of the games we played with each other, like making a detective, say a take-down signal signaling, okay, now I'm going to free Willy". 00:52:37.045 --> 00:52:38.576 It was a good way to break the tension. 00:52:40.726 --> 00:52:50.298 After the arrests we're all about the soft interview, trying to figure out how to break through the shell and get information about the pimp, his organization, and any other crimes she might know about. 00:52:50.989 --> 00:52:56.268 Sometimes we got nothing, but usually we could leverage information we already had to get her to say something. 00:52:57.958 --> 00:52:59.878 Did you ever have any that went really bad? 00:53:01.188 --> 00:53:08.494 No, I don't really remember any that went horrible; sometimes the ladies were really pissed, but usually it went off without a hitch. 00:53:08.974 --> 00:53:15.728 I was always worried we'd get somebody who wanted to rob or kill a John, but mostly, that's a concern for street pickups. 00:53:16.719 --> 00:53:19.349 One time I picked up a lady in the mountain view neighborhood. 00:53:19.889 --> 00:53:22.378 It was early evening, still bright sunlight. 00:53:23.039 --> 00:53:25.795 I only had one detective following in a cover car. 00:53:26.097 --> 00:53:28.967 The lady I picked up was in her mid thirties and rail thin. 00:53:29.927 --> 00:53:32.657 She immediately made a deal oral sex for 50 bucks. 00:53:32.657 --> 00:53:34.458 And I thought, well, you know, that's easy. 00:53:34.878 --> 00:53:37.338 I told her I was going to park over by the elementary school. 00:53:37.338 --> 00:53:38.597 And it was about a mile away. 00:53:39.188 --> 00:53:42.137 We were on Mountain View Drive, which was a busy roadway. 00:53:42.713 --> 00:53:48.643 I guess she must have felt really comfortable because as I started driving, she suddenly whipped out a rock pipe and lit up. 00:53:49.663 --> 00:53:52.003 I was suddenly shocked and angry. 00:53:52.355 --> 00:53:54.664 I was worried I was gonna, breathe in some Coke smoke. 00:53:55.085 --> 00:54:02.307 So I whipped the car up on the curb and yelled,"no smoking in here" and I grabbed both of her hands, the crack pipe and the lighter in my right fist. 00:54:02.847 --> 00:54:03.717 I have big hands. 00:54:04.248 --> 00:54:06.867 She immediately is trying to pull away, screaming. 00:54:07.088 --> 00:54:11.157 I was able to control everything, and then she tries to bite me on the back of my arm. 00:54:11.460 --> 00:54:17.871 When I got the vehicle stopped and now I had a free left hand, I had to pin her head against the headrest to keep her stable. 00:54:18.411 --> 00:54:23.751 When Detective Torres ran up and opened the passenger door, it must look like a game of twister going on in my car. 00:54:27.260 --> 00:54:28.880 Is there always a pimp? 00:54:30.150 --> 00:54:31.409 In my experience, yes. 00:54:32.228 --> 00:54:40.088 I know there's stories about women who do it alone, particularly in the age of internet prostitution, but the same dynamics exist online is on the street. 00:54:40.447 --> 00:54:44.527 I'm sure there are men combing those ads out there trying to the intercept, those women. 00:54:45.242 --> 00:54:51.081 We arrested woman at a very upscale downtown hotel once who convinced us that she was working alone. 00:54:51.472 --> 00:54:52.672 She seemed open. 00:54:52.791 --> 00:54:55.942 She gave us information more quickly than they usually did. 00:54:56.402 --> 00:54:59.432 So we shrugged and logged her away as an anomaly. 00:55:00.632 --> 00:55:05.369 Well, a few weeks later, we received a recording from Spring Creek, the Alaska prison down in Seward. 00:55:06.472 --> 00:55:07.492 It was a telephone audio. 00:55:08.181 --> 00:55:10.101 They tape all their conversations. 00:55:10.264 --> 00:55:14.552 And it was the same woman talking to her pimp in unmistakable submissive language. 00:55:14.851 --> 00:55:26.782 Just like we heard in training, he was saying things like, bitch, you better be setting aside all that money for me." and"if I find out you're talking to another motherfucker", she was crying saying,"yes, daddy""no daddy". 00:55:27.322 --> 00:55:29.092 "I'm being your good little girl, daddy". 00:55:29.481 --> 00:55:30.561 This surprised us. 00:55:31.012 -->

00:55:36.771 There are lots of women who refused to give us details, but we never found one that we thought was really a solo operator. 00:55:39.402 --> 00:55:43.242 Did you have pimps show up, looking for women that you arrested in the hotels that you were at? 00:55:45.340 --> 00:55:47.260 That's where that part of the narrative came from. 00:55:48.010 --> 00:55:49.840 We would make the arrest and do the interview. 00:55:50.170 --> 00:55:57.461 After a period of time, the room phone would typically ring we would either answer it and deny knowing anything about it at all, or just not answer. 00:55:58.032 --> 00:55:59.382 One time a man showed up. 00:55:59.492 --> 00:56:04.983 When the detective opened a door crack and said, the woman wasn't there, the guy forced his way in. 00:56:05.432 --> 00:56:08.103 Boy, was he surprised to see the rest of the team waiting inside. 00:56:09.213 --> 00:56:11.492 Another guy showed up carrying a steel pipe. 00:56:13.036 --> 00:56:18.793 One of the things that was intimidating at first, but I liked it over time was a working undercover, was unpredictable. 00:56:19.543 --> 00:56:20.623 And that made you think on your feet. 00:56:21.603 --> 00:56:22.143 One time. 00:56:22.143 --> 00:56:25.384 I picked up a particularly rough looking lady on Spenard road. 00:56:25.833 --> 00:56:28.713 I mean, she looked and smelled like she had been sleeping in a dumpster. 00:56:29.164 --> 00:56:31.623 She was carrying a newly purchased 40 ounce beer. 00:56:31.983 --> 00:56:35.103 She got in and I drove to a vacant lot nearby. 00:56:35.614 --> 00:56:40.324 She refused to make an immediate deal with me and said, I can prove I'm not a cop by drinking with her. 00:56:41.224 --> 00:56:45.634 Call me paranoid, but I did not want my lips to follow her lips onto that beer bottle. 00:56:46.324 --> 00:56:51.693 So I snatched it from her, opened it and proceeded to chug about 20 ounces of beer in 20 seconds. 00:56:52.204 --> 00:56:53.463 I got the response I wanted. 00:56:53.673 --> 00:56:55.474 She yelled, Hey, don't drink all my beer. 00:56:56.164 --> 00:57:00.693 So I handed her back the half empty beer and satisfied, she made the deal. 00:57:01.653 --> 00:57:05.463 When she was arrested, she complained bitterly that a cop shouldn't be able to drink on duty. 00:57:06.603 --> 00:57:12.949 Luckily, we were exempt from the city ordinance while we're on an operation, but one of the guys in the cover car had to drive me around the rest of the night. 00:57:13.338 --> 00:57:16.248 And while we were learning from the women, they were learning from us. 00:57:17.599 --> 00:57:20.389 When they were arrested, they would watch the aftermath of the arrest. 00:57:20.898 --> 00:57:27.798 All of the detectives had matching fabric tool bags that we would download our gear into when it was our turn to be undercover. 00:57:28.128 --> 00:57:32.099 We put these bags behind the passenger seat so we could reach them fast in an emergency. 00:57:32.646 --> 00:57:37.416 Well, one day one of the detectives picked up a woman and she looked behind the seat and recognize the bag. 00:57:37.686 --> 00:57:38.797 Oh, It was over. 00:57:39.887 --> 00:57:43.876 Another time the undercover detective was wearing his badge on a lanyard around his neck. 00:57:45.286 --> 00:57:47.447 The woman made like she was going to rub his chest. 00:57:47.746 --> 00:57:50.146 She said, what's this under your shirt? 00:57:51.137 --> 00:57:53.447 He said, that's my medallion, baby. 00:57:54.286 --> 00:57:55.246 Yeah, it didn't work. 00:57:58.632 --> 00:58:01.302 I am completely confused about the bottom bitch. 00:58:01.331 --> 00:58:03.972 Can you explain Ambers role as bottom bitch? 00:58:05.166 --> 00:58:09.096 The highest ranking woman in the group or family is actually referred to as a bottom bitch. 00:58:09.335 --> 00:58:10.445 The reasons unclear. 00:58:11.346 --> 00:58:13.865 The one I've heard is the one that was in the narrative. 00:58:14.496 --> 00:58:17.376 She's the most down with the pimp, which kind of sounds silly. 00:58:17.766 --> 00:58:21.815 In the narrative, Amber is the bottom bitch and she functioned as a snitch and enforcer. 00:58:22.085 --> 00:58:25.266 This is a real dynamic that goes on and it's fostered by the pimp. 00:58:25.295 --> 00:58:28.980 He wants them to struggle to one up, one another in their worship of him. 00:58:29.190 --> 00:58:30.960 To me, it always seemed like a cult. 00:58:34.659 --> 00:58:37.960 What about the sisters in the story working in that same group? 00:58:38.800 --> 00:58:44.260 Yeah, the sisters are based on a real pair who in their heyday were top echelon street hustlers. 00:58:45.070 --> 00:58:48.940 One died because along with heroin, she injected bacteria that ate part of her heart. 00:58:49.947 --> 00:58:53.487 The other alleged that she was groped and propositioned by an on-duty officer. 00:58:54.927 --> 00:58:58.318 So I was involved in setting up an operation and caught him on film doing it. 00:58:59.038 --> 00:59:06.387 It's not something any investigator enjoys doing, but if you want a department that has good reputation, you have to eat your own when it's necessary. 00:59:07.047 --> 00:59:16.016 I was pulled into a couple of investigations against officers, and I hated everything about it, except that we rid the department and the city of an officer who is a liability to everyone. 00:59:20.007 --> 00:59:23.336 What was the inspiration for Mary's attack in the story? 00:59:24.786 --> 00:59:29.547 I went to an assault victim who was a streetwalker picked up in the neighborhood nearby where it happened. 00:59:30.327 --> 00:59:33.177 And she was dumped on the north side of the JC penny warehouse. 00:59:33.456 --> 00:59:37.626 For those of you familiar with Anchorage, it's like the 3,300 block of Arctic Boulevard. 00:59:38.286 --> 00:59:43.115 And now that I think about it, it's less than a block away from the shack where Della Brown was killed. 00:59:44.016 -->

00:59:47.467 This woman was beaten worse than anyone I ever saw who lived. 00:59:48.188 --> 00:59:52.777 The guy made a deal with her, for sex and for no obvious reason started wailing on her. 00:59:53.197 --> 00:59:55.478 She gave enough information to identify him. 00:59:55.538 --> 00:59:56.947 And we caught him that morning. 00:59:58.057 --> 01:00:03.367 The working theory based on what he said to the victim was that he was angry at another woman and took it out on her. 01:00:05.177 --> 01:00:07.367 But assaults on commercial sex workers are common. 01:00:07.518 --> 01:00:10.967 In the narrative, Mary lists, a bunch of things she had refused to do. 01:00:11.987 --> 01:00:14.358 That came from a real conversation I had with a woman. 01:00:15.318 --> 01:00:16.907 And that woman wasn't unique. 01:00:16.938 --> 01:00:20.057 Every woman who does this kind of work has experienced the worst in men. 01:00:21.139 --> 01:00:24.349 So with the search warrants, did you search all of Jerry Starr's houses? 01:00:25.690 --> 01:00:27.969 Yes, we didn't hit them all in the same day. 01:00:28.360 --> 01:00:32.534 If I remember correctly, we had a couple of the places where he was keeping the girls first. 01:00:33.523 --> 01:00:38.429 I remember one of them was like a condo apartment and I was surprised by how bare it was. 01:00:38.548 --> 01:00:39.838 It had a bunch of beds. 01:00:40.018 --> 01:00:43.650 I thought at the time, this is where Jerry's warehouse, where he keeps a commodity. 01:00:43.775 --> 01:00:47.014 Later, as the investigation was coming to a close, we hit Jerry's house. 01:00:47.445 --> 01:00:49.815 I think it was his primary residence on Thunderbird drive. 01:00:50.074 --> 01:00:51.943 We hit a couple of others on the same day. 01:00:52.237 --> 01:00:58.067 The box was an important discovery because it corroborated a horrifying story that the victims were telling. 01:00:59.056 --> 01:01:05.646 I don't have claustrophobia, but I can tell you, I was freaked out with the idea of spending days locked in what looked like a glorified cabinet. 01:01:07.757 --> 01:01:09.657 And what about the fetus in the briefcase? 01:01:11.083 --> 01:01:11.342 Yeah. 01:01:11.623 --> 01:01:14.853 Uh, the fetus of briefcase was found by Detective Baker. 01:01:15.472 --> 01:01:15.922 He called me. 01:01:15.996 --> 01:01:17.916 Mark! I found a fetus in a briefcase. 01:01:18.536 --> 01:01:19.016 At the time. 01:01:19.016 --> 01:01:24.445 I thought that may be the first time anyone has said those words in that particular order ever. 01:01:25.565 --> 01:01:33.588 So we talked to the victims about that and were told that the women working for Starr regularly got pregnant and often gave birth prematurely. 01:01:34.338 --> 01:01:37.097 My medical advisor says it's probably because of the cocaine. 01:01:37.170 --> 01:01:39.061 These women didn't get prenatal care. 01:01:39.360 --> 01:01:46.456 They were forbidden from going to the hospital, even if they had been allowed, many

of them would not have gone to the hospital because they were drug addicts. 01:01:47.086 --> 01:01:53.056 So according to the women, the ones that would talk about it, Jerry took the fetuses and buried them around his property. 01:01:54.016 --> 01:01:54.407 Think about it. 01:01:55.990 --> 01:02:03.235 Along this topic, I later found out that the many prostitutes never go to the hospital or have any professional care when they get pregnant. 01:02:03.534 --> 01:02:06.054 This is because they fear repercussions of a drug test. 01:02:06.548 --> 01:02:15.463 I learned that the woman who took me to Della Brown's body, I called her Katie, was widely accepted, and this is their term, as the ho midwife. 01:02:15.889 --> 01:02:19.039 She had apparently achieved some level of renowned for her skill. 01:02:22.739 --> 01:02:27.000 You said in the Boehm episode that you would have more to say about the torso murders? 01:02:27.900 --> 01:02:28.349 Yes. 01:02:28.800 --> 01:02:34.320 Here's a piece of an America's Most Wanted interview with the lead homicide detective in the torso murders. 01:02:35.186 --> 01:02:56.782 It reads during their investigation of the Desiree Lekanoff/Michelle Roth case, Anchorage detectives told AMW they came across least five other names of women who had turned up missing an Anchorage between 1993 and 2001: Tracy Vinson, Jerry Brambles, Kelly Dunn, Robin van Sickle, and Samantha Kent had all vanished without a trace. 01:02:57.413 --> 01:03:01.402 Cops think they could all be connected by Anchorage's underground world of sex and drugs. 01:03:01.492 --> 01:03:02.003 Quote. 01:03:02.003 --> 01:03:09.934 We don't know that they're connected to Michelle or Dessiree, and we're not assuming that, Detective Ratcliffe said, And we're not assuming that they're not connected. 01:03:10.106 --> 01:03:13.172 Some of these women could have cleaned up their life, possibly changed their name. 01:03:14.909 --> 01:03:18.208 Both Israeli and often Michelle Roth worked for Jerry Starr. 01:03:18.648 --> 01:03:22.938 Among the photos in the cache we found at Starr's house were pictures of both women. 01:03:24.108 --> 01:03:29.358 Another woman who wasn't mentioned in the AMW article, Sierra Roberts was 25 when she disappeared. 01:03:29.521 --> 01:03:32.141 She lived with Roth at Jerry's Thunderbird house. 01:03:33.045 --> 01:03:38.025 We were never able to find anyone who admitted direct knowledge of what happened to those missing or murdered. 01:03:38.733 --> 01:03:49.972 I think the timing of the torso murders, which coincided with the Boehm and Allen investigations is suspicious, Allen was being blackmailed about his involvement with the same girl that was caught up in the Boehm case. 01:03:50.543 --> 01:03:51.503 Is there a connection? 01:03:52.072 --> 01:03:53.213 I think possibly. 01:03:54.282 --> 01:03:56.802 The torso victims were discovered in 2003. 01:03:57.373 --> 01:04:05.443 In 2007, as the Jerry Starr case was wrapping up the rumors about what had happened four years prior was almost folklore on the streets of Anchorage. 01:04:06.039 --> 01:04:10.150 So many rumors were swirling around that was almost impossible to cut through them. 01:04:12.210 --> 01:04:17.849 What effect do you think putting Jerry Starr in prison for 30 years has had on the prostitution scene in Anchorage? 01:04:19.469 --> 01:04:21.269 I think it definitely had a deterrent effect. 01:04:21.329 --> 01:04:24.809 When we started there had been no real enforcement for years. 01:04:25.380 --> 01:04:26.940 Starr had a large organization. 01:04:26.940 --> 01:04:29.250 He wasn't really concerned about repercussions. 01:04:29.820 --> 01:04:35.519 These guys really thought that the, are you a cop and you're paying for time and company bullshit was going to protect them. 01:04:36.059 --> 01:04:39.989 Pimps certainly think that their power over the women is so strong they wouldn't dare speak out. 01:04:40.539 --> 01:04:44.378 Jerry Starr found out how weak that sounds in full daylight, inside the courthouse. 01:04:44.394 --> 01:04:50.125 So I think this case and a couple others like it, that happened after sent a strong message of deterrence. 01:04:52.485 --> 01:04:55.394 So is human trafficking that big of a problem? 01:04:56.505 --> 01:05:04.784 According to the U S department of justice, federally funded task forces on human trafficking open over 2,500 investigations on human trafficking annually. 01:05:05.442 --> 01:05:08.621 82% of the incidents reported involve sex trafficking. 01:05:09.161 --> 01:05:12.822 11% involve labor trafficking and 7% unknown. 01:05:13.512 --> 01:05:17.202 83% of the victims of sex trafficking incidents are US citizens. 01:05:17.775 --> 01:05:23.005 The estimate of how many children are at risk for commercial sex exploitation in the U S is about a quarter million. 01:05:23.936 --> 01:05:28.945 So a quarter million kids in the U S and people hear those statistics and think it has to be happening elsewhere. 01:05:29.666 --> 01:05:32.186 While prostitution as a business occurring everywhere. 01:05:32.840 --> 01:05:36.206 And child prostitution is just a smaller subset of that business. 01:05:41.030 --> 01:05:48.190 We're going to link in the show notes to an excellent article by a woman who eventually got out of the game and is now dedicated to helping others. 01:05:48.940 --> 01:05:57.820 She put it this way, if prostitution is okay then why aren't you recommending it as a career path for your sisters or your daughters? 01:05:58.541 --> 01:06:00.371 And I thought that summed it up pretty beautifully. 01:06:06.097 --> 01:06:11.956 if you have a question about police procedure, that you want me to talk about, or I have an interesting case you'd like me to cover. 01:06:12.347 --> 01:06:13.097 Please email me. 01:06:15.327 --> 01:06:16.556 Thank you for listening to us. 01:06:16.956 --> 01:06:18.936 If you haven't already please subscribe. 01:06:18.996 --> 01:06:22.117 So you don't miss an episode and recommend us to your friends. 01:06:22.570 --> 01:06:29.679 You can email us at crimeravenpodcast@gmail.com and check out our website at crime raven.com. 01:06:30.130 --> 01:06:37.900 Crime Raven with Mark Rein and Marcy Rein is also produced by us and Ethan Rein and is a 3 little birds LLC production.