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Speaker 2: Previously on Crook County.
Speaker 4: I got recruited into the mob when I was seventeen
Speaker 4: years old.
Speaker 2: My father, Kenny, lived a secret double life for over
Speaker 2: twenty years.
Speaker 4: I didn't know if he was in the mob until
Speaker 4: maybe twenty years after you guys were born.
Speaker 2: He was also hiding a destructive heroin addiction.
Speaker 5: It's crazy to have someone that was so strong in.
Speaker 1: My life and it was everything.
Speaker 4: So he fucking budged him in the face over drugs
Speaker 4: because he was destroyed our fucking family.
Speaker 2: Until it almost killed him in twenty thirteen, and he
Speaker 2: called my son Kyle and he asked Kyle for help.
Speaker 2: No more secrets, no more lies. It's time I learned
Speaker 2: the truth. My name is Kyle Tequila.
Speaker 6: Welcome to Crook County.
Speaker 4: Yeah, listen, there are girls in and out of there
Speaker 4: for years and years and years and years and years.
Speaker 4: All right, go in there, crap a deal with the client,
Speaker 4: come back to us, pay us our fucking portion, go
Speaker 4: to work, get out quick, and wait for the next guy.
Speaker 4: These girls were pure, pure business, and they made a
Speaker 4: ton of fucking money.
Speaker 2: Episode three, Coming clean.
Speaker 4: My son, Kyle, Justin and Jesse BROI.
Speaker 7: I'll get about Jesse going on.
Speaker 1: Brother Justin lives with me.
Speaker 4: Jesse's the house manager, all right, and I'm the.
Speaker 2: King, the King, okay, perfect, Well, where does the King live? Today?
Speaker 2: I'm visiting my dad for the first time in a year.
Speaker 2: He's showing me around his place of work, a group
Speaker 2: of small apartments that serve as a halfway house for
Speaker 2: people in recovery.
Speaker 1: So this is one of our units here. It's a
Speaker 1: girl's felt all right. How many units are there? You
Speaker 1: got four units?
Speaker 2: That's cool? Well compound, huh. That noise you hear is
Speaker 2: a carpet cleaning crew getting a unit ready for another client.
Speaker 4: Everybody's out of here five o'clock and then go, well,
Speaker 4: you know what, No, you can leave.
Speaker 2: No, he also lives here in one of the units.
Speaker 2: Nice man.
Speaker 7: It's better than the last place.
Speaker 1: I think it's better than the house.
Speaker 2: The house felt like really cramped and your room was
Speaker 2: like in weird in.
Speaker 1: A living room. Yeah, okay, listen, doesn't cost you dying.
Speaker 1: This is marked yes, buddy, Kyle, because this is my son, Kyle.
Speaker 1: This is the kitchen so nasty.
Speaker 2: Real father, real father, real son.
Speaker 1: You know you have a book stock and I look
Speaker 1: at his hands on my head. I know, yes, he
Speaker 1: did well.
Speaker 2: So you got you look from him?
Speaker 6: You look from him?
Speaker 1: No, my mom, I figured as much that.
Speaker 2: It's hard to believe. It's already been six years since
Speaker 2: I dropped him off at rehab. He's still not his old, strong,
Speaker 2: masured self. I don't think he ever will be, but
Speaker 2: he's come a long way from the shaking, broken down
Speaker 2: man I picked up from the airport in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask you guys to leave. Why we do
Speaker 1: this interview because he needs quiet. I'm gonna do come
Speaker 1: and yoga. What are you talking about I'm trying to
Speaker 1: go get laid. All right, go get laid.
Speaker 2: I don't want to interrupt that. I'll bet yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, sounds good.
Speaker 1: Guys.
Speaker 2: Well Sinatra, huh yeah, set the mood.
Speaker 1: I like it feels right that we're talking about the mafia.
Speaker 7: You got Sinatra in the background.
Speaker 2: We decided to do the interview in his room because
Speaker 2: of the noise. It's a tight space with little but
Speaker 2: a twin bed against the wall and a crate a
Speaker 2: cheap lamp on it. I mean, maybe bring a chair
Speaker 2: in here, or you can sit on the bed. It
Speaker 2: honestly reminds me of my freshman year dorm room at
Speaker 2: si U. All that's missing is a Bob Marley poster
Speaker 2: tack to the wall.
Speaker 1: You'll talk it, I'll just sit right there or something.
Speaker 2: And so we begin fill me in here, what are
Speaker 2: you doing these days?
Speaker 1: And where am I right now? Right at the very moment.
Speaker 4: I am the manager of a sober living area where
Speaker 4: we have four apartments that we have clients and that
Speaker 4: are far enough in their recovery, at least sixty days
Speaker 4: of recovery, but they live under my direction and these
Speaker 4: apartments here. Being a drug addict myself, who has been
Speaker 4: sober for six years. I am working with those people
Speaker 4: and we can hold up to six girls and ten guys,
Speaker 4: all in separate apartments, and I run them.
Speaker 1: I'm in charge of that. I babysit. That's basically what
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 4: I babysits, I drug test, I breath alze. I make
Speaker 4: sure they're on t I make sure they're looking for work.
Speaker 4: I make sure there's not too much idle time with them.
Speaker 1: I try.
Speaker 4: What my job is is to get them ready to
Speaker 4: go back out in the world.
Speaker 1: That is what I chose to do.
Speaker 4: We are very, very sick people, and I am a
Speaker 4: firm believer in AA. It saved my life, while on
Speaker 4: the other hand, drugs ruined my life. It ruined everything,
Speaker 4: ruined my family, ruined my homes, ruined my businesses, ruined
Speaker 4: everything because I was a raging addict, a raging heroin addict, believe.
Speaker 1: It or not, at my age.
Speaker 4: So I came out here to California with my son.
Speaker 4: My son got me into treatment six years ago. I
Speaker 4: had a couple of relapses, but they got me so
Speaker 4: over and now, like I said, I've been sober for
Speaker 4: six years and now I work with these people, and
Speaker 4: that is what I do now to to thank God
Speaker 4: for not let me be dead or something else what
Speaker 4: happened to my family. So that's my gift back, that's
Speaker 4: what I do. I'm going to help the people that
Speaker 4: need to help the most because I know I.
Speaker 1: Needed a man, I need it a bad So that's
Speaker 1: what I do.
Speaker 8: Yeah, this is a big moment, one that I honestly
Speaker 8: wasn't expecting. I have never in all my life seen
Speaker 8: my dad cry.
Speaker 4: Anybody that listen, guys, You guys got family members that
Speaker 4: are drug addicts, alcoholics. There's someone in your family somewhere,
Speaker 4: a grandparent and uncle and aunt that Stanetika carries down
Speaker 4: that gene.
Speaker 1: Maybe your kids, maybe some of you kids listening to this.
Speaker 1: Go get help.
Speaker 4: You cannot control this, you cannot. It is the sniper.
Speaker 4: It is the devil. It lays in wait for you
Speaker 4: and it will take you out at your weakest moment.
Speaker 1: Go get help. Save me fucking life. It saved my life,
Speaker 1: that's for sure.
Speaker 7: M Yeah, does anybody does anybody around you know about
Speaker 7: any of the stuff?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: Are you kidding me?
Speaker 1: No one knows anything? Oh my god.
Speaker 4: They have their they you know, they know him from Chicago.
Speaker 1: I know I've got a little bit of an accent.
Speaker 4: They hear it in my they hear words that I study,
Speaker 4: stuff that I say, and.
Speaker 1: I think the snicker behind my back.
Speaker 4: I'm a gangster, you know, from Chicago. But they don't
Speaker 4: know anything. I don't tell many stories. I do not share.
Speaker 4: We do a thing in treatment in AA that's called sharing.
Speaker 4: We share a life story, you know what got us
Speaker 4: into treatment. But I've never shared. That's the one thing
Speaker 4: I haven't done with AA. Share because it's not something
Speaker 4: I really choose to share.
Speaker 2: Starting a few months into his recovery, I would regularly
Speaker 2: visit him. It was during these visits that he started
Speaker 2: opening up about his past. The story here, the memory there,
Speaker 2: but never the whole picture. It seems he's fine, finally
Speaker 2: ready to tell me everything. Thanks for joining me on
Speaker 2: Crook County. For add free listening and exclusive content, dive
Speaker 2: into tenderfootplus dot com right there in the show notes.
Speaker 2: Tenderfoot plus is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts,
Speaker 2: and other podcast players. You'll unlock access to early episodes,
Speaker 2: upcoming bonus material. The tenderfoot podcast library of over four
Speaker 2: hundred ad free episodes as well as subscriber only specials.
Speaker 2: Subscribe now at tenderfootplus dot com. I'm gonna warn you
Speaker 2: this story is very complex, with a lot of characters
Speaker 2: over several decades long. I'm gonna do that I can
Speaker 2: to break it down into easy to digest chapters. Some
Speaker 2: characters may come in and out of focus as the
Speaker 2: story progresses, so I may remind you about them with
Speaker 2: a little description or a previously heard sound bite. If
Speaker 2: you still find yourself getting lost, well that makes me
Speaker 2: a shitty storyteller. So I'm sorry. But if you do
Speaker 2: have questions or just want to say hi, please visit
Speaker 2: us at crookcountypodcast dot com. You can even leave me
Speaker 2: a voicemail which I may play on a future audience
Speaker 2: Q and a episode, so that's cool. You can also
Speaker 2: follow us on all socials at Crook County Podcast. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's jump back to the very beginning. A seventeen year
Speaker 2: old kid named Kenny just got accidentally recruited into the
Speaker 2: outfit for robbing a drug dealer.
Speaker 4: So these two come up on me. I'm sitting down. Hey,
Speaker 4: I'm going I'm thinking of myself. Ah fuck, here we go. Here,
Speaker 4: I'm completely unprepared, came up on me, and the bigger
Speaker 4: guy goes. The older guy goes, is that him? And
Speaker 4: the kid goes, Yeah, that's him. That's the guy that
Speaker 4: robbed me uncle. He ran a fucking crew. So he
Speaker 4: tells me, He goes, are you looking for a job, Well, yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm looking for a job. I'm a fucking starving her.
Speaker 4: That's how I got into a fucking outfit. So he
Speaker 4: was impressed.
Speaker 2: Oh, that reminds me. Before we dive into this, I
Speaker 2: had a serious conversation with a criminal defense attorney about
Speaker 2: all this. He's very worried about this story going public.
Speaker 9: Well, you need to be careful, no matter how much
Speaker 9: you disapproved of what your father did, if you're gonna
Speaker 9: have the SBI breading down your back because he's not
Speaker 9: just a street doug. He's connected to a syndicate. If
Speaker 9: your dad was serving life for murder, the government would
Speaker 9: be far less interested. Please understand that if your dad
Speaker 9: being alive, that means others are a lot. The information
Speaker 9: is too recent. The nineteen eighties is yesterday, and I
Speaker 9: really believe that it's a mistake. I would encourage you
Speaker 9: not to do it.
Speaker 2: I also asked my dad to weigh in on this,
Speaker 2: and here's what he said.
Speaker 4: They're all dead man. Yeah, I have to realize that
Speaker 4: I was really young. That's why they called me kid.
Speaker 4: Everybody was at least ten years older than me. At
Speaker 4: least ten years older than me. And if they're not
Speaker 4: dead of old age, they're dead from a hit, they're
Speaker 4: dead from an overdose, or like I said, dead from
Speaker 4: old age.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's anybody left. I doubt it very much.
Speaker 2: So after talking it through, we both agreed that, for
Speaker 2: his own safety and mine, to give fake aliases to
Speaker 2: everyone involved in the outfit, and to remove or obscure
Speaker 2: any specific identifying details about people, places, and dates. I
Speaker 2: should also know that there's no way for me to
Speaker 2: prove any of this since most of the information was
Speaker 2: never reported anywhere that I'm aware of. I'm going solely
Speaker 2: here on my dad's word and I'll leave it at that.
Speaker 2: So without further ado, let's meet our first character in
Speaker 2: the outfit, the made guy who recruited my dad, Mickey Gennaro.
Speaker 4: He was a powerful man, good guy, businessman, well dressed,
Speaker 4: well kept, well spoken, good looking guy. Always took time
Speaker 4: to say hi to me, always took time to little
Speaker 4: chat with me, just a little bit. I never saw
Speaker 4: him do that with anybody else. Always took a couple
Speaker 4: of minutes out to say hi to me. And I
Speaker 4: like the way he behaved. He didn't act like a gangster. Okay,
Speaker 4: he acted like a normal person. He wasn't a sociopath, narcissistic,
Speaker 4: you know, mobster guy. You know those guys loved to
Speaker 4: play the part, love to play the part of gangster.
Speaker 4: I never could understand that grease ball bullshit. So but
Speaker 4: he didn't do that, so I admired him.
Speaker 2: Mickey was also the son of a notorious street boss
Speaker 2: they called the Old Man.
Speaker 4: And he was at that time in cook Connie, the
Speaker 4: king of the chop shops. They'd heist a car, they'd
Speaker 4: heist a truck with cars on it and bring him
Speaker 4: back to his shops, chopped the shit out of him,
Speaker 4: changed the numbers and shipped them out. They shipped them
Speaker 4: out all over the world, you know, as far as
Speaker 4: Saudi Arabia. I mean, they were going all over the
Speaker 4: world these cars, and it was a big, big, big
Speaker 4: money maker. I only saw him a couple times, kind
Speaker 4: of a gravelly old guy, if I can remember correctly.
Speaker 4: It looked like a typical fucking greasy gangster was to
Speaker 4: put real fucking grease ball, you know. But he was
Speaker 4: a very powerful man.
Speaker 2: Kenny spent his first year working for Mickey until he
Speaker 2: learned the ropes.
Speaker 4: I was an aaron boy when I first started, a
Speaker 4: low level, very very low level, dropping money off, collecting
Speaker 4: gambling money. No hits yet, but you know, doing some beatings.
Speaker 4: But I always had somebody with me, so I was
Speaker 4: like assisting the person that was doing the heavy work.
Speaker 4: So that's that's kind of where I learned how to
Speaker 4: do heavy work.
Speaker 2: It didn't take long for Kenny to prove his worth,
Speaker 2: so Mickey gave him a new job.
Speaker 4: I was so I'd dope for him on the side
Speaker 4: and get a half the key. I'd break it up
Speaker 4: at a scale. Some of it i'd cook up for
Speaker 4: the free based clients, and the rest of it I
Speaker 4: just ate bald up. And I can't remember how the
Speaker 4: freebase sold, I really can't. And that was you smoke
Speaker 4: that shit whatever. Stuff was insane. It was just just
Speaker 4: a rush of euphoria. Would just just just just look
Speaker 4: like a tidal wave, just knock you over. And the
Speaker 4: problem was Now you're chasing that shit all the time
Speaker 4: because you don't get that. After that you get that
Speaker 4: first hit, that's it. You're not gonna find it. So
Speaker 4: you know you're always chasing that first blast anyway, all right,
Speaker 4: But he.
Speaker 1: Wasn't supposed to do that.
Speaker 4: That would have been bad for me, and that would
Speaker 4: have been very bad for him because I was just
Speaker 4: taking an order, all right. I was just obeying orders.
Speaker 4: But you can't do that, man, You cannot do that.
Speaker 2: No selling dope. This is one of the many strange
Speaker 2: rules the outfit had for itself that I find fascinating.
Speaker 2: Their entire enterprise is built on crime, but drugs, so
Speaker 2: where they draw the line.
Speaker 1: We could not sell dope. People, We could not sell dope.
Speaker 1: We were not allowed to sell dope. You got caught
Speaker 1: selling dope, you were big ass fucking trouble because that
Speaker 1: to bring heat on you. The whole thing.
Speaker 4: We don't want to bring any heat on any of us,
Speaker 4: So if you're going to do something stupid like sell dope,
Speaker 4: it's going to bring heat on you. People were coked
Speaker 4: up all the time, so you're dealing with people that
Speaker 4: were fucking high. Twenty four to seven on coked, so
Speaker 4: no one's in her really right mind. You know, no
Speaker 4: one's sober. Everybody's fucked up. And it dictated a lot
Speaker 4: of things. It got a lot of people killed.
Speaker 2: That actually makes good sense, And of course everyone knew that,
Speaker 2: but many guys did it anyway. The money was just
Speaker 2: too good, and Kenny, he was happy to take a
Speaker 2: small slice of it.
Speaker 4: Listen, here's the deal, man, This was quick, fast money.
Speaker 4: All right. This was not my career, and this is
Speaker 4: not what I chose to do with my life.
Speaker 1: I'm seventeen years old, all right. I'm living in a backseat.
Speaker 4: Of my car.
Speaker 1: I'm hungry.
Speaker 4: I'm a survivalist, you know. And it's a job and
Speaker 4: it's income.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: I could start to get some security more in my life,
Speaker 4: at least get an apartment, you know.
Speaker 1: So I'm taking this. I'm jumping on this.
Speaker 2: As I got deeper into the details of my dad's
Speaker 2: life story, I began to wonder just how much of
Speaker 2: this stuff is actually true. The no selling drugs thing,
Speaker 2: for example, how do I even attempt to verify something
Speaker 2: like this or any other inner workings of an organization
Speaker 2: notorious for their secrecy, especially in the seventies and eighties,
Speaker 2: when the mafia moved through the streets with near impunity.
Speaker 2: I thought it would be a good idea to find
Speaker 2: an outside perspective on the inner workings of the outfit,
Speaker 2: a mafia expert that could weigh in when necessary throughout
Speaker 2: this series. So I reached out to veteran crime reporter
Speaker 2: Jeff Cohen of the Chicago Tribune. Jeff is an expert
Speaker 2: on organized crime in Chicago and covered one of the
Speaker 2: largest mafia trials in history, the infamous FBI operation Family
Speaker 2: Secrets that almost single handily took out the entire Chicago
Speaker 2: outfit in two thousand and seven. I sent Jeff a
Speaker 2: few rough versions of these episodes to get him up
Speaker 2: to speed.
Speaker 5: That's quite the family tale you've got.
Speaker 2: There, Yes, unfortunately, Yes it is. Yeah. Thankfully he agreed
Speaker 2: to add his voice to this story. So I asked
Speaker 2: him about the no drugs rule.
Speaker 5: Yeah, as crazy as that sounds, it is actually true
Speaker 5: that most of the time, drugs was not their business
Speaker 5: for variety of reasons. I guess I think it was
Speaker 5: more difficult.
Speaker 2: For them to control.
Speaker 5: I think it is one of the elements that was
Speaker 5: typically a problem. You had large amounts of money moving
Speaker 5: between people that they couldn't necessarily keep their fingers on.
Speaker 5: It was also a real area of heat back, especially
Speaker 5: in the eighties when you had sort of the war
Speaker 5: on drugs.
Speaker 2: It just was not a clean business for them.
Speaker 5: It wasn't something that they could run tightly, make sure
Speaker 5: stayed under the radar, they could get reliable money out
Speaker 5: of it. It was none of those things. Would it
Speaker 5: could go sideways in a minute. You had major federal
Speaker 5: heat on it all the time, and it was just
Speaker 5: more trouble than it was worth, I think a lot
Speaker 5: of times for them, even though it was big, big money.
Speaker 5: But whorehouses, chop shops, any any kind of a legal
Speaker 5: business that's along that line definitely would have been within
Speaker 5: the outfits purview at that time. You know, whorehouses, especially
Speaker 5: anything related to sex advice. They typically had a piece
Speaker 5: of it across the Chicago area.
Speaker 2: Eventually, Mickey saw a new opportunity for Kenny within the outfit,
Speaker 2: something a little more permanent, and introduced him to a
Speaker 2: man named Jack Erickson, a crew boss who would end
Speaker 2: up playing a much larger role in entrenching Kenny within
Speaker 2: the ranks.
Speaker 4: My boss, my crew boss, was Jack Jack Jackie Lemus Erickson.
Speaker 1: A great guy.
Speaker 4: I love Jack Man, it was I really admired him.
Speaker 4: He was a great guy, well kept. Still a gangster,
Speaker 4: but a well kept gangster. You know, his genes were
Speaker 4: even creased.
Speaker 1: You know. He was one of those guys. Everything was
Speaker 1: perfect on him.
Speaker 4: Clean, neat, nails done, manicure, pedicure.
Speaker 1: One of them guys. You know.
Speaker 2: Jack became sort of a father figure to young Kenny.
Speaker 1: Oh he was. He was a mentor. He trained me,
Speaker 1: He trained me. He just took me under his wing
Speaker 1: and he trained me. I was the young guy.
Speaker 4: I gotta remember, I was the absolute youngest guy there.
Speaker 4: These guys had twenty years on me. You know, I
Speaker 4: was the kid. So he just kind of took me
Speaker 4: under his wing and trained me, took care of me,
Speaker 4: you know, make sure I did everything good, you know,
Speaker 4: make sure I didn't get in trouble, make sure he
Speaker 4: had my back.
Speaker 1: You know, I felt safe.
Speaker 4: I just felt safe when I went out to do
Speaker 4: bad work because I knew I had the the you know,
Speaker 4: the mob behind me.
Speaker 1: The outfit was on my back.
Speaker 4: You know, I had that that always to fall back.
Speaker 1: So that kind of relieved a lot of the fear.
Speaker 2: Jack also had a very important job within the outfit,
Speaker 2: one that required a unique kind of personality and responsibility.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he ran the horror houses every night, just bouncing
Speaker 4: from horror house to horrorhouse, checking on the bank, seeing
Speaker 4: how things are going, making sure nobody was selling dope,
Speaker 4: making sure the girls weren't too high because they were
Speaker 4: always high, making sure the guys weren't too high because
Speaker 4: they were always high. You know, just kind of keeping
Speaker 4: things runnable, you know, babysitting basically, kind of like what
Speaker 4: I do now for a living, babysitting a bunch of
Speaker 4: drug addicts and alcoholics.
Speaker 1: That's kind of what he was doing back then. So
Speaker 1: that's that's what That's what That's what Jack did.
Speaker 2: Jack saw a lot of potential in Kenny.
Speaker 4: He he trusted me. He trusted me because I didn't
Speaker 4: steal money. I didn't do dope while I worked, I
Speaker 4: didn't sell dope while I worked. I just did my
Speaker 4: job and my count every night right up there, every
Speaker 4: night for years. Man, it's hard to find an honest
Speaker 4: guy in the fucking outfit.
Speaker 9: I was.
Speaker 1: I was an anomaly. I don't even want to say
Speaker 1: a rarity, an anomaly.
Speaker 2: And so he made him an offer he couldn't refuse,
Speaker 2: running the door at one of the brothels in Cook County.
Speaker 4: So for the years I spent working in the whorehouses,
Speaker 4: the clubs, and they were scattered all over Cook County
Speaker 4: through Page County in Kane County, and we can only
Speaker 4: put them in the unincorporated areas because we had the
Speaker 4: county police pretty much taken care of. We'd rent a house,
Speaker 4: a single family home, and we'd get in there, gut
Speaker 4: it to an extent, put about six bedrooms in there,
Speaker 4: small rooms with little peop holes. They had a peep
Speaker 4: hole in the door and a peep hole in the walls.
Speaker 4: Not everyone could be peeped, but if we could peep them,
Speaker 4: we peeped them. The living room would stay as a
Speaker 4: living room, The kitchen would stay as a kitchen. We
Speaker 4: had a front area where they came in a little
Speaker 4: fourier area there where we would take their id look
Speaker 4: them up in the powered catalog that we had.
Speaker 1: We actually gave them a fucking idea. Can you believe
Speaker 1: that shit?
Speaker 4: Match the id with the pitcher, the picture with the face,
Speaker 4: and then we'd let them in. Now, how did they
Speaker 4: become members. They would come in I want to be
Speaker 4: membered as club. You know, it is a guy. There's
Speaker 4: a million people out there that want to join the
Speaker 4: warehouses or horny bastards. Okay, the people that frequent horror
Speaker 4: houses know where horror houses are. You don't have to
Speaker 4: advertise as shit, They just know where they are. They
Speaker 4: would come in and want to join the club. So
Speaker 4: we would put them through a process. We would make
Speaker 4: sure we're check their employment, to check their ID. We
Speaker 4: even had something with County but the County Vice guys
Speaker 4: where we would have them run something by them.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it was.
Speaker 4: I can't remember, but we would run something with them
Speaker 4: and then after we got him checked out. I didn't
Speaker 4: do the checkout process. That wasn't my job, So I
Speaker 4: can't really expound too much on this. So anyway, they
Speaker 4: became members through a process that we put them through.
Speaker 1: Pictures and verification.
Speaker 4: Basically, we wanted to make sure they weren't vice, the
Speaker 4: honest vice.
Speaker 1: We wanted to make sure they weren't the honest vice.
Speaker 1: How's that sound?
Speaker 2: Uh sounds like my dad was a bona fide pimp.
Speaker 2: That's how it sounds, you know, you'd think, after all
Speaker 2: this time, nothing would shock me anymore. But you would
Speaker 2: be wrong. All right, What was it like?
Speaker 4: Once you got inside, a guy would come in, bring
Speaker 4: them in, introduce them. The girls would be sitting there,
Speaker 4: the girls that'd stand up. I'd introduce them to all
Speaker 4: the girls by name, name Sindy. We did have drinks.
Speaker 1: Wasn't a bar, but they would go you want to
Speaker 1: drink and go back in the kitchen.
Speaker 4: They make a guy a drink, mostly his beer, beer
Speaker 4: and wine, and then they would sit and talk to
Speaker 4: the girls.
Speaker 1: And it could go on anywhere from ten minutes to
Speaker 1: two hours. They could.
Speaker 4: Some guys just came in there and just partied with
Speaker 4: the girls. Sat partied with them.
Speaker 1: We didn't mind. They were members.
Speaker 4: Plus, when somebody else came in, it made that person
Speaker 4: rush a little bit because there was someone else in there.
Speaker 4: That guy that's already in there was going to take
Speaker 4: the girl that this new guy came in, you know,
Speaker 4: I'm saying, So they maybe kick it up a little bit.
Speaker 1: They'd pick up their make their choice a little bit faster.
Speaker 4: So right, come in, chattered up with the girls, decide
Speaker 4: who they like. The girl would take them back to
Speaker 4: one of the rooms and they would negotiate a deal
Speaker 4: so much for whatever sex they wanted. They'd seal the deal,
Speaker 4: the girl would leave the guy in the room. The
Speaker 4: girl would come out, come see me and say one
Speaker 4: hundred dollars for blowjob and missionary sex. She would hand
Speaker 4: me fifty have to take and then she would be
Speaker 4: on her way.
Speaker 1: That was the end of the operation. That was how
Speaker 1: it worked, very simple. Did things ever get out of control?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they got.
Speaker 4: I can sold people come and drunk or all coked out,
Speaker 4: but they didn't.
Speaker 1: They got their asses beat bad. We would make a.
Speaker 4: Phone call and there would be four muscle showing up
Speaker 4: within fifteen minutes, and it was just you know, they'd
Speaker 4: be when we got them to their cars, they'd be
Speaker 4: We'd put them in their cars and they'd.
Speaker 1: Be half hanging, half in, half out and just counting.
Speaker 4: Stopped by and they knew it was a whore house there,
Speaker 4: and but we want to keep them on property. We'd
Speaker 4: get them out on the street in their cars, and yeah,
Speaker 4: they didn't last long. They got they got beat pretty bad.
Speaker 4: They got beat really bad.
Speaker 2: Just the way.
Speaker 4: Who are these people just drunk assholes in members?
Speaker 10: No?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, these These are members.
Speaker 4: Yeah, these are members, or a guest of a member
Speaker 4: or a guest of them.
Speaker 1: Member could bring in one guest, all right, and you know,
Speaker 1: you know, alcohol drugs turns people weird. Man, people go
Speaker 1: stupid sometimes.
Speaker 4: I mean ninety percent of the time it was fine,
Speaker 4: but that ten percent there was, you know, something would
Speaker 4: go wrong. That's just that's just, that's just law of
Speaker 4: average man. Something's abound to go wrong eventually. But we
Speaker 4: jumped on there quick.
Speaker 2: I have to keep reminding myself. He's still only nineteen
Speaker 2: at this point. Everybody else's age is fresh out of
Speaker 2: high school, going to bars and trying to get laid
Speaker 2: without a care in the world. I can tell you
Speaker 2: I was an absolute moron at nineteen, that's a fact.
Speaker 2: But I can only imagine three years selling drugs and
Speaker 2: hanging out beatings at a brothel for the mafia will
Speaker 2: make it grow up real fucking fast. I wonder, can
Speaker 2: you even try to have a regular life?
Speaker 1: What would you do in your free time? So, I
Speaker 1: don't know, hangout. I had friends, you know, some friends
Speaker 1: that I'd hang.
Speaker 4: Out with, do normal guys stuff, you know, watch football
Speaker 4: on Sundays.
Speaker 1: I was just a normal guy. It's just a normal
Speaker 1: young guy.
Speaker 4: That's all go to bars with my friends, you know,
Speaker 4: pick up.
Speaker 1: Chicks, you know.
Speaker 2: He tells me he wasn't looking for a girlfriend, let
Speaker 2: alone anything serious. But one night, as things do, all
Speaker 2: that changed.
Speaker 4: I met her at a club called SLPs some other place,
Speaker 4: and the splains I think it is sa her sitting
Speaker 4: at the end of the bar, beautiful redhead, sexy. I
Speaker 4: fell in love with her pretty quick, so I just
Speaker 4: walked up to her.
Speaker 1: Just as a matter of course of time. We just
Speaker 1: ended up dating.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you've guessed it already, But that pretty little
Speaker 2: redhead at the bar was my mother.
Speaker 4: I thought your mother was beautiful. I think I was
Speaker 4: nineteen when I met her. She was twenty. Yeah, I
Speaker 4: had listen. I hadn't work to get your mother, damn it.
Speaker 4: It wasn't easy. She wasn't like one of the whores
Speaker 4: like you just say, come on, let's go.
Speaker 1: I had to work for that. I didn't work for
Speaker 1: your mom. That was a job. That was a job.
Speaker 1: I was a job. Man who's worth it?
Speaker 2: Them?
Speaker 1: It was well worth it.
Speaker 6: Next week on Crook County.
Speaker 2: Just look at me now and tremble.
Speaker 4: We would have to take bus every once in a while,
Speaker 4: just so Cook County Cops could show that they're making
Speaker 4: some progress here when half the motherfuckers were running their
Speaker 4: own horse on the side out of our fucking clubs.
Speaker 2: Crook County is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Tenderfoot
Speaker 2: TV in association with Common Enemy. All episodes are written, produced,
Speaker 2: and hosted by Me Kyle Tequila. Executive producers are Donald
Speaker 2: Albright and Payne Lindsay. Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set.
Speaker 2: Main title song is called Crush by the band Starry Eyes.
Speaker 2: End credit song is called Trouble, also by the band's
Speaker 2: Starry Eyes. Sound mix by Cooper Skinner. Thank you to
Speaker 2: Orrin Rosenbaum and the excellent team at UTA for their support,
Speaker 2: and to my fearless attorney, Wendy Bench for her guidance.
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Speaker 10: The story continues next week.
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