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Speaker 1: Captain's fucking Log, Day three, May twenty fourth. Can't imagine

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Speaker 1: any of this is going to be usable on the

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Speaker 1: fucking podcast.

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Speaker 2: A prostitution ring involving eleven businesses in three states, payoffs

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Speaker 2: and money and flesh to a public official for protection.

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Speaker 2: The operation of a dozen truck stops and health centers

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Speaker 2: as bodyhouses. All of these activities are part of a

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Speaker 2: picture painted by a federal grand jury in a sweeping

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Speaker 2: twenty count indictment returned yesterday in US District Court in Lynchburg.

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Speaker 3: You could see the end coming from the beginning. It

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Speaker 3: was one of those wild situations, so dangerous and illicit.

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Speaker 3: It's got goodbye written all over. Hello. The moment these

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Speaker 3: wheels began turning, the end was already set and this

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Speaker 3: could not end well. That's the thing about illicit desire.

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Speaker 3: We know it can't end well, but we can't help

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Speaker 3: ourselves anyway. This story came to me from the locked

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Speaker 3: trunk of a dead woman. Hey, a lot of people

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Speaker 3: don't want to be involved with this podcast. In fact,

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Speaker 3: the person who provided me with my first glimpse into

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Speaker 3: this case a fellow native of my small southern hometown,

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Speaker 3: someone i've known my whole life. She's one of those people,

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Speaker 3: so we'll just my friend. When my friend's mother died

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Speaker 3: and she was tasked with a job of packing up

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Speaker 3: her belongings. Among her mother's many possessions, she discovered a

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Speaker 3: locked trunk. What she discovered inside hundreds of news clippings

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Speaker 3: chronicling a scandal of sex and power that rocked our

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Speaker 3: small hometown nearly fifty years ago. The local press called

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Speaker 3: this scandal Hooker Gate. Welcome to Danville, Virginia, the last

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Speaker 3: capital of the Confederacy, a dying mill town where cotton

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Speaker 3: once was king, but now oxy cottons take the throne.

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Speaker 3: Rearranged the letters in Danville, and it spells evil land

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Speaker 3: atop the black silhouette of the abandoned text plant. The

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Speaker 3: word home once burned into the night. That glowing sign

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Speaker 3: is gone. Now ain't nothing left here for most of us,

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Speaker 3: and most of us have left. When the Hooker Gates

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Speaker 3: scandal was exploding across the headlines, local court clerk Samuel

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Speaker 3: Swanson was asked his opinion on the matter. I admit

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Speaker 3: we were backward, Swanson said, we just didn't move with

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Speaker 3: the times. But that's because we've never had to progress.

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Speaker 3: Maybe it's the lack of progress, or more likely my

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Speaker 3: own personal baggage that keeps me away. But I rarely

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Speaker 3: returned to Danville, except in instances of death, the occasional holiday,

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Speaker 3: and bouts of filial guilt. Picture it the summer of

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Speaker 3: twenty twenty one. My Granny Audrey had just passed away.

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Speaker 3: Among those gathered for her funeral, my friend. After the service,

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Speaker 3: as we drank beers at the local bar, that friend

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Speaker 3: approached me a large, spiral bound notebook under her arm.

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Speaker 3: She plunked that book down on the table in front

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Speaker 3: of me and said, you're a writer, have at it.

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Speaker 3: She flung the book open, flipping through the pages. On

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Speaker 3: each sheet, a xeroxed news clipping half a century old,

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Speaker 3: shouted words like corruption and prostitution and federal crime. Over

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Speaker 3: the next few weeks, I would pour through this notebook.

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Speaker 4: These operators inner state facilities to further the prostitution activities.

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Speaker 3: I was told that it was just supposed to be

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Speaker 3: strictly a massage parlor.

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Speaker 2: The investigation revealed that Holly and Whitehead never paid the

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Speaker 2: girls for sexual favors, and Whitehead bragged about being the

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Speaker 2: Commonwealth attorney.

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Speaker 5: The big shot in Dan wolves Barker.

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Speaker 6: He ran to Dan will operation.

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Speaker 3: He beats me continuously.

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Speaker 5: If you print anything that you hear in the grand jury,

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Speaker 5: you will be put in jail.

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Speaker 2: My boyfriend threatened me and told me that if I

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Speaker 2: didn't get out and go to work, I'd never see

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Speaker 2: my daughter again.

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Speaker 5: And he stated that at this particular time, the only

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Speaker 5: thing they had to offer was coffee and pussy.

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Speaker 3: I never gave any massages. Now this is a story.

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Speaker 3: Why did your mom keep all of these clippings, I

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Speaker 3: asked my friend later. She smiled, half proud, half already

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Speaker 3: filled with regret for telling me any of this. Well,

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Speaker 3: we had people involved. Hell, our phones were tapped, So please,

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Speaker 3: if you published this shit, keep me out of it.

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Speaker 3: Truck shot brothels run by a web of x cons,

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Speaker 3: a commonwealth attorney wasted on whiskey and power protection exchanged

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Speaker 3: for cash flesh.

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Speaker 7: A brash local reporter exposing it all. This is hookergate,

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Speaker 7: criminals and libertines in the South. And I am your host,

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Speaker 7: Doctor Lindsey Byron, author, historian and lifelong wayward woman. This

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Speaker 7: forgotten scandal happened in my hometown. Mean as I use

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Speaker 7: crumbling news Cliffings interviews and dramatic reenactments to bring to

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Speaker 7: life for the first time in nearly fifty years, this

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Speaker 7: wild ride of hedonistic.

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Speaker 3: Corruption, Episode one dangerous to himself prosecution. You may continue

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Speaker 3: your clothing statement.

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Speaker 4: Thank you, Judge. The association between the operators themselves began,

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Speaker 4: according to Janet Barker and mister Boyd back in nineteen

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Speaker 4: seventy two with the Edgewood Donna, where they used to

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Speaker 4: go in there and eat donuts and drink coffee in

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Speaker 4: the morning, and mister doubt It and mister Boyd and

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Speaker 4: mister Henderson, they used to sit and talk about operating

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Speaker 4: bawdy houses. And Barker used to come in there too.

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Speaker 4: He had begun dating Janet, who was working there at

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Speaker 4: the Donna. Then he began pimp and hut at the

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Speaker 4: Hillcrest in the fifty eight, and eventually he made the

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Speaker 4: big time by opening up his own places.

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Speaker 6: I don't know if this is a good idea.

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Speaker 3: Herbert Boyd, a sheepish man in his fifties, shifted in

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Speaker 3: his seat as his cronies conspired around the booth at

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Speaker 3: the Edgewood Diner. Herbert offered a suggestion, how about we

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Speaker 3: just have the girls do massages across the table, Aubrey laughed, massages.

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Speaker 3: Aubrey looked around the table at the three other men.

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Speaker 3: Y'all don't listen to herb He told him. He's afraid

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Speaker 3: of his own shadow. You can't make decisions. Scared, Aubrey

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Speaker 3: straightened his spine the way he learned in the army

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Speaker 3: and continued, Now, look, here's what I think we ought

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Speaker 3: to do and what I know we can to. So

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Speaker 3: we lease out one of these RinkyDink truck stops up

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Speaker 3: here on Ennsday, and we do.

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Speaker 8: It outside the Danville city lines.

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Speaker 3: See, we don't want to fuck with no Bill Fuller

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Speaker 3: and none of these Danville all men. Anyways, we get

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Speaker 3: us a truck stop or two or three, you know,

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Speaker 3: put a few pretty girls in there, sell some coffee,

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Speaker 3: let the fellas come in, and well, you boys know

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Speaker 3: I'm going with this, don't you. From across the booth,

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Speaker 3: Harold Wayne grinned whatever happens between grown adults, say't none

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Speaker 3: of our business? Is it all Greek? Harold Wayne was

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Speaker 3: no stranger to sales selling cars. However, where was the

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Speaker 3: thrill in that? Hell? A lot of folks hold categorical

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Speaker 3: contempt for car salesman, slick dressed, flashy, always trying to

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Speaker 3: separate you from your money. And these things were all

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Speaker 3: true of Harold Wayne Dowdy, but in the best of ways.

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Speaker 3: This rapscallion HWD had been dealing cars for years, and

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Speaker 3: he'p dealing for years to come. But in the meantime

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Speaker 3: he was an enterprising man, a handsome man, a well

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Speaker 3: dressed man of the nineteen seventies with wide lapels and

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Speaker 3: a thick mustache. And HWD had dreams for himself that

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Speaker 3: involved nice cars of his own and a pool in

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Speaker 3: the backyard filled with beautiful women. And therefore, in response

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Speaker 3: to aubreeze proposition, h w D looked up from his

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Speaker 3: coffee and said, boys, I'm in. And then Harold Wayne

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Speaker 3: looked to Tommy, the final man at the table, and asked,

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Speaker 3: what are your thoughts? Tommy was a tall man, a

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Speaker 3: broad shouldered man, physically an imposing fella. Tommy liked to

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Speaker 3: take risks, and Tommy liked women. These were his weaknesses

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Speaker 3: and these were his strengths. He didn't come from much,

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Speaker 3: but he found ways to make something out of nothing.

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Speaker 3: Very few of those ways legal on any other day,

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Speaker 3: at the suggestion of such a more dubious enterprise, Tommy

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Speaker 3: would be enthralled, talkative, scheming, and indeed, soon he would

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Speaker 3: become all of those things. But for now, Tommy's mind

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Speaker 3: was elsewhere, trained on that chest, not maimed waitress, wishing

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Speaker 3: her tail around the diner, filling up coffee at this

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Speaker 3: table and that, and hopefully soon filling up his coffee,

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Speaker 3: hopefully soon filling up his Saturday nights, his bed, his life.

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Speaker 3: Who's that, Tommy asked his compadres. Hell if I know, Harold,

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Speaker 3: Wayne answered, but the name on the tag says Janet.

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Speaker 4: Okay, so Bucca they call you right, that's correct. What

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Speaker 4: caused you to fly in Bucka.

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Speaker 3: I had an appointment to work there at the twenty ninth.

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Speaker 4: First, now, how did you get that appointment?

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Speaker 3: I had a girlfriend that worked down there and called

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Speaker 3: them from Cincinnati and asked them for a booking.

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Speaker 4: And you've got a booking?

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Speaker 8: Yes, call him, she said.

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Speaker 3: Two girls, both eighteen, huddled over a rotary phone in

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Speaker 3: a childhood bedroom.

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Speaker 8: Seriously, I mean.

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Speaker 3: It, the fresh faced blonde urged her friend. Equally fresh face,

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Speaker 3: but harder, dark of hair.

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Speaker 8: An eye.

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Speaker 3: I am ambivalent about making this connection, Very very ambivalent,

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Speaker 3: The dark eyed girl replied to her friend's insistent urging.

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Speaker 3: She seen some shit in her short ears with those

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Speaker 3: dark eyes. But then again, so had a lot of

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Speaker 3: the girls they knew. Those that gather behind the dumpster

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Speaker 3: during math class to smoke joints, those that have boyfriends

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Speaker 3: a decade their seniors, those that live fast and maybe

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Speaker 3: also die young. Ambivalent, what does that even mean? It

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Speaker 3: means I am of two minds. Oh, come on, you

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Speaker 3: did it? Why can't I? The dark haired girl saw.

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Speaker 3: There's things you don't know.

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Speaker 5: She said, just.

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Speaker 8: Call the man. Okay, I'll call the man.

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Speaker 3: The dark haired girl relented. But anything that happens from

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Speaker 3: here on out is on you. And first I want

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Speaker 3: you to listen. I know you think you know it all,

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Speaker 3: but let me tell you a few things that you

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Speaker 3: might not know. There's outfits. Yes, there's money. Yes, there's

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Speaker 3: this sense that you are so attractive that.

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Speaker 8: People pay for access to you.

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Speaker 3: And well there's fun in that to a certain intoxication.

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Speaker 8: Sometimes I think that's more fun than the money.

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Speaker 3: But there's other things too, Other things, what other things, Yes,

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Speaker 3: other things like customers that aren't so nice, like boss

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Speaker 3: men that run you ragged, like boyfriends that take advantage,

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Speaker 3: take your money, break your heart. And there's worser than that.

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Speaker 3: So I can make this call, but you can't blame

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Speaker 3: me for what happens next.

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Speaker 8: Call him and.

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Speaker 3: So Somewhere in Cincinnati, a dark eyed girl with an

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Speaker 3: ambivalent heart picked up a phone, dialed the rotary numbers

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Speaker 3: one by one, ten numbers, a long distance call expensive

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Speaker 3: in the nineteen seventies. What do you want me to

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Speaker 3: tell him? Your name is, she asks, as somewhere in

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Speaker 3: Pennsylvania County, telephone rang.

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Speaker 8: Tell him.

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Speaker 3: The blonde haired girl mused eyes turned to the sky

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Speaker 3: as if in prayer. Tell him, tell him Buckeye.

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Speaker 2: To understand Whitehead's role, one must understand the anatomy of

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Speaker 2: power in this rural county. At the zenith of his power,

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Speaker 2: local officials said, Whitehead nearly ran the county because, in

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Speaker 2: addition to his duties as prosecutor, he gave legal advice

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Speaker 2: to the Board of Supervisors and all other agencies of

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Speaker 2: the county government.

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Speaker 9: Can you read your psychiatric report of mister Whitehead's condition

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Speaker 9: during the period of his involvement with this case? Certainly

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Speaker 9: it says here. Since nineteen seventy two, mister Whitehead has

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Speaker 9: consumed three or four mixed drinks per day on a

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Speaker 9: regular basis, with excessive consumption of a pint or more

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Speaker 9: per day several times a week. He describes himself as

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Speaker 9: a habitually excessive drinker. Drinking would be initiated in the

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Speaker 9: late afternoon and continue into the evening. His explanation of

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Speaker 9: his current status was the acceptance of too many responsibilities,

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Speaker 9: which became an increasing burden for him until he reached

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Speaker 9: a point where he could not function under the pressure.

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Speaker 8: Fuck this shit.

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Speaker 3: Joe had worn the carpet nearly bear with pacing, Fuck

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Speaker 3: this shit.

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Speaker 6: Always having to be on top, everybody looking at you,

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Speaker 6: everybody with their handout to even the people you love,

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Speaker 6: a fucking handout.

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Speaker 3: Sometimes Joe would look at his darling wife, and despite

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Speaker 3: everything she had done for him and all that she

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Speaker 3: had endured, it felt as if even she had a

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Speaker 3: handout too. Not only was he responsible for his wife

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Speaker 3: and the baby, but also for the legacy of his

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Speaker 3: name Whitehead. In the Whitehead family, great men do great things.

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Speaker 3: Joe's father, his uncle's lawyers, judges, big men playing big roles,

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Speaker 3: generation steep. The Whitehead's roots in Pennsylvania County grew from

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Speaker 3: pre revolution Shenary years, blue blood old American royalty. People

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Speaker 3: respected the name Whitehead. People expected glory from the fruits

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Speaker 3: of this family tree. And Joe had delivered, and delivered

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Speaker 3: and delivered, and was slated to take it even further

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Speaker 3: today the Commonwealth Attorney of Pittsylvania County Tomorrow, Hell, maybe

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Speaker 3: even Washington. Why not Washington? Many of his colleagues and

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Speaker 3: supporters had suggested as much. Joe had been striving since

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Speaker 3: his teens at the Hargrave Military Academy, next law school

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Speaker 3: at UVA Hell. He'd even served in the Army.

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Speaker 10: He'd checked all the boxes of a respectable up and

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Speaker 10: co I mean, gentlemen, Yet new boxes kept appearing.

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Speaker 3: Joe woke each morning already out of breath. He paced

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Speaker 3: now contemplating these psychic weights, his bourbon sloshing onto the

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Speaker 3: floor in fact drops. Fuck this shit. Soon he'd attend

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Speaker 3: another Black Tide, and or another mixer, another fundraiser, and

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Speaker 3: he would smile and say all the right things and

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Speaker 3: grant all the right favors while the world forgets. He's

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Speaker 3: a man, a person, not a marble statue in a courtyard. No,

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Speaker 3: he was a man, a person, somebody who'd like to

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Speaker 3: have a little fun sometimes, And Joe was frankly not

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Speaker 3: having that much fun. He gazed scornfully upon his desk

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Speaker 3: strown with papers. It would be nice to call up

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Speaker 3: his buddy Wayne, tell him let's get us a couple

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Speaker 3: of drinks across the county line, where less people know me,

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Speaker 3: and I know myself a little better. Why not call

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Speaker 3: Wayne and say, hey, Powell, let's get a few drinks, hell,

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Speaker 3: maybe a few girls. Joe dropped into his desk chair

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Speaker 3: and picked up the phone, exhausted by the deliberation, liberated

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Speaker 3: at last by his own permission. When on the eighth green,

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Speaker 3: Wayne answered at last, without missing a beat, Joe whispered

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Speaker 3: into the line, Let's do it, Let's get some girls.

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Speaker 3: I asked Rodney Smith, a local reporter responsible for chronicly

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Speaker 3: much of this case, what he thought of Joseph Whitehead.

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Speaker 5: Charismatic, articulate, very smart, and dangerous to himself.

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Speaker 3: Authoring the majority of the Hookergate news articles and certainly

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Speaker 3: the most engaging spirited pieces, was a man named Rodney Smith.

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Speaker 3: And so I hit the internet in search of this

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Speaker 3: man Google produced mostly dead ends. So, like many people

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Speaker 3: in today's day and age, I headed to Facebook, where

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Speaker 3: I posed a question does anyone here know a reporter

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Speaker 3: named Rodney Smith. A few weeks later, I received an

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Speaker 3: email doctor Byron. It read, I'm the Rodney Smith who

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Speaker 3: I think you're looking for. If you'll email me a

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Speaker 3: phone number, I'll give you a call.

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Speaker 5: My name is Rodney Smith, age seventy four. I graduated

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Speaker 5: from Bassett High School in Henry County in nineteen sixty six.

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Speaker 5: Went to Texas A and M University in Conversation, Texas

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Speaker 5: for the first year and a half of my college education,

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Speaker 5: and my first job out of college was working for

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Speaker 5: a number of Congress from Georgia on Capitol Hill as

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Speaker 5: press secretariat, largely doing the Watergate era and attracting much

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Speaker 5: munch attention, of course if you're a number of Congress

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Speaker 5: about the president and your views on that. So that

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Speaker 5: was you know. First year was good, Second year was

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Speaker 5: a good. Third year I was like, Okay, I've done this.

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Speaker 5: I want to go do something.

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Speaker 3: Else leaving DC. Watergate had been exhilarating, but hard on

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Speaker 3: the hearts, hard on the mind. Hell, he was only

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Speaker 3: twenty six years old, but sometimes Rodney felt elderly. That's old,

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Speaker 3: his forty even. It was time for Rodney to get

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Speaker 3: back down South, where his family was, his roots, everything

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Speaker 3: he had known his whole life, until he decided early

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Speaker 3: on that he was going to be a big writer

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Speaker 3: and go write big or writer to things. Indeed, Rodney

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Speaker 3: had known since high school that he would follow this Pith.

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Speaker 5: Tenth grade, tenth grade english teacher. I mean, we had

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Speaker 5: an essay for her. So we all turned in these

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Speaker 5: essays and she asked me to wait to leave the

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Speaker 5: class or everybody leaves. I get up in stea her, thinking,

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Speaker 5: oh no, I'm going to get at NAF on this.

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Speaker 5: And she said, you've got a real talent for writing.

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Speaker 5: Have you thought about what you like to do with

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Speaker 5: your life? And I said, I have not thought about it.

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Speaker 5: She said, well you ought to think about that, because

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Speaker 5: you can definitely write. So that's what started it. Ever

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Speaker 5: since she talked to me, I thought about it. So

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Speaker 5: I went off to college and studied journalism. Never regretted it.

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Speaker 5: I have never regretted.

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Speaker 3: It's a joy to do it, Hoping to maintained the

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Speaker 3: joy he had had for writing, before the high stakes

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Speaker 3: world of Washington sucked it dry. Rodney searched the Virginia Bulletin,

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Speaker 3: a publication where all the journalism jobs were listed, and

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Speaker 3: there he found an opening in a little town called Gretna, Virginia,

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Speaker 3: population one thousand, two hundred, smack dab in the heart

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Speaker 3: of Pittsylvania County, just a few miles up the road

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Speaker 3: from where Rodney was raised. Down there, people talked in

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Speaker 3: ways that were familiar. Down there, life moved slower down there.

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Speaker 3: You had to look for news.

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Speaker 5: Well. I was initially, of course, you're worried about anytime

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Speaker 5: you switch jobs, you get worried about what you're going

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Speaker 5: to be like in this case, At some point in

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Speaker 5: all of this, in spite of my young age, it

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Speaker 5: was like, Okay, you can make this experience anything you want.

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Speaker 5: And the first challenge I had was you gotta find news.

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Speaker 5: You can't have a newspaper and no news.

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Speaker 1: Then it.

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Speaker 3: As he cleared off his desk in Washington, DC, Rodney

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Speaker 3: was unsure of what lay ahead. He stacked his notebooks

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Speaker 3: into cardboard boxes labeled with a sharpie pen. Most people

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Speaker 3: have a job, and it's a job. Rodney had a job,

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Speaker 3: and it was a calling. Sometimes it was as if

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Speaker 3: the stories found him, and one day, soon though he

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Speaker 3: couldn't see it yet, after he had settled into that

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Speaker 3: Gretna office with a great, big picture window and a

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Speaker 3: clear view of the cow field, another story would find Rodney,

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Speaker 3: maybe the biggest story of his life. Thanks for listening.

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Speaker 3: My name is Lindsay Byron, but most people know me

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00:29:09,520 --> 00:29:13,880
Speaker 3: as lux Atl. Learn more about my work tips out,

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00:29:13,920 --> 00:29:19,880
Speaker 3: globe trotting and mansions worldwide at Good Times, Badgirls dot Com.

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00:29:20,480 --> 00:29:25,760
Speaker 3: Follow me on the Gram and TikTok at lux Underscore Atl,

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00:29:26,520 --> 00:29:31,720
Speaker 3: on YouTube at Luxatl, and on substock, where I blog

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00:29:31,880 --> 00:29:37,560
Speaker 3: weekly at Tumultuous True Stories by Lindsay Byron. If you'd

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00:29:37,600 --> 00:29:40,040
Speaker 3: like to hear more about my own experience slang in

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00:29:40,120 --> 00:29:44,280
Speaker 3: companionship across the South, read my memoir Too Pretty to

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00:29:44,360 --> 00:29:48,640
Speaker 3: Be Good by Lindsay Byron. Find it on Amazon, Barnesandnoble

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00:29:48,680 --> 00:29:52,320
Speaker 3: dot com, and anywhere books are sold online. Hey, if

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00:29:52,360 --> 00:29:55,400
Speaker 3: you'd like to continue to listen to me tell stories,

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00:29:55,640 --> 00:29:59,800
Speaker 3: check out my first podcast, Stripcast True Stories from a

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00:30:00,320 --> 00:30:05,080
Speaker 3: with the PhD. Listen on Spotify and iTunes. Follow this

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00:30:05,240 --> 00:30:11,920
Speaker 3: podcast on the Gram at Cookergate underscore podcast. Theme music

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00:30:12,000 --> 00:30:16,080
Speaker 3: and sound design by my long term partner in artistic crime,

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00:30:16,600 --> 00:30:21,480
Speaker 3: Guy Kelly. You the illist GK. Check out his work

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00:30:21,800 --> 00:30:27,000
Speaker 3: at Guy Kelly dot com. While this podcast is based

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00:30:27,040 --> 00:30:31,400
Speaker 3: upon real events, certain elements have been fictionalized for dramatic effect.

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00:30:32,080 --> 00:30:35,360
Speaker 3: I cannot know for certain what exactly was said behind

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Speaker 3: closed doors, so I combine my research and imagination to

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00:30:39,600 --> 00:30:44,520
Speaker 3: dramatize scenes described most often under oath in court and

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Speaker 3: occasionally secondhand via journalistic or personal accounts. Find citations in

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Speaker 3: this show notes. The pitch for this podcast won the

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00:30:54,880 --> 00:30:59,440
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one Next Great Podcast competition hosted by Tongle

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Speaker 3: and iHeart Radio, which is why I'm here now producing

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Speaker 3: this joint my gratitude for the opportunity. Hooker Gate is

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00:31:07,160 --> 00:31:13,800
Speaker 3: a production of iHeartMedia. After the service These fucking dogs

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Speaker 3: out here, y'all shut up, don't you motherfucking do a

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Speaker 3: dog