Curt:  Photos of the female on the ad were young in nature. And we just decided to target this particular ad at the time. And at that time, I posed as an undercover customer and placed some recorded phone calls to the phone number on that particular ad.

[phone rings] [music]

Kelly:  Hello?

Curt:  I just was looking at the ad. And that was your dream come true or your dream girl?

Kelly:  I’m a dream girl.

Curt:  You’re the dream girl.

Kelly:  Yes.

Curt:  You’re available?

Kelly:  Yes. I will look forward to talking to you later.

[Small Town Dicks Theme]

Yeardley:  I’m Yeardley.

Zibby:  And I’m Zibby. And we’re fascinated by true crime.

Yeardley:  So, we invited our friends, Detectives Dan and Dave-

Zibby:  -to sit down with us and share their most interesting cases.

Dan:  I’m Dan.

Dave:  And I’m Dave. We’re identical twins and we’re detectives in small town USA.

Dan:  Dave investigates sex crimes and child abuse.

Dave:  Dan investigates violent crimes. And together we’ve worked on hundreds of cases, including assaults, robberies, murders, burglaries, sex abuse and child abuse.

Dan:  Names, locations and certain details of these cases have been altered to protect the privacy of the victims and their families.

Dave:  While we realize that some of our listeners may be familiar with these cases, we hope you’ll join us in continuing to protect the true identities of those involved-

Dan:  -out of respect for what they’ve been through. Thank you.

[Small Town Dicks theme]

Yeardley:  Today on Small Town Dicks, we have the usual suspects. We have Detective Dan.

Dan:  Great to be here.

Yeardley:  Detective Dave.

Dave:  Good morning, gang.

Yeardley:  And we’re very excited to have our special guest, Detective Curt.

Curt:  How’s it going?

Yeardley:  Great.

Zibby:  Good, I think [Curt laughs].

Yeardley:  So, Curt, tell us how this case came to you.

Curt:  So, I’ve been a detective for a while and my duties over the last several years have been focusing on sex trafficking in our area and the human trafficking problem that we have in our city. So, part of my job is to monitor the advertising sites that these folks involved in the prostitution enterprise utilize. One of the main websites during the time of this investigation was craigslist.com.

Yeardley:  Oh, wow.

Curt:  Which is, as you know, basically an online advertising website. So, around the time that we were working these cases, we got information that there were some underage girls that were engaging in prostitution in our area and that they were likely being pimped out by some other folks that were unknown to us at the time.

Yeardley:  Can I ask you a question?

Curt:  Yeah.

Yeardley:  Do you distinguish between prostitution and sex trafficking? Are they different?

Curt:  Well, it’s a good question and a lot of people, when they hear the term sex trafficking, think of third world country trafficking in humans, moving people from place to place, it is that. But for the purposes of this investigation kind of what it means more to us locally is that it’s a scenario of prostitution where there’s some other component, like a force, fraud or coercion component, where they’re not doing it by choice or where the person being prostituted is a kid, basically.

Yeardley:  Oh, wow, okay.

Zibby:  Right. So, where do you even begin when you hear that underage girls in this small town are prostituting?

Curt:  So, I go to craigslist.com and they have a section at the time called “Adult Services or Escort Services.” It’s an actual link that you can go to on that webpage where when you get in there, there’s just tons of ads for prostitution. The typical advertisements that you might see when you pull up one of those links, they’ve got a title, generally an age. Now keep in mind, Craigslist tries to be above reproach where you have to claim at least that you’re 18 years old or older to post an ad. And so, none of these ads are going to scream out, “Hey, I’m a minor, when you’re reviewing them.” Also, when you look at the ads, usually they have pictures, sometimes they’re risqué or pornographic in nature, sometimes they’re real photos of people, sometimes they’re fake.

 So, we got to try to view those photos and see if we can tell by looking at them whether or not it looks like somebody who’s a minor or if they’re obviously an adult, we might change our focus.

Yeardley:  How can you tell if you don’t even know if the picture is real? Like the person advertising is actually the person in the photo?

Curt:  Well, that’s a good question. I mean, sometimes you just make an educated guess. You look at the photos, if they’re young looking, then those are the ones that we’ll kind of narrow in on. Sometimes, when you’re dealing with a minor, the folks behind the advertisements, the pimps or their other underling workers know that they don’t want to get caught for prostituting a minor because it’s got serious consequences. And so, when they use a photo of a kid, oftentimes they’ll put a little emoji or a star or something over their face. So, they’re hard to recognize. But for us, sometimes that’s a clue also that we may be dealing with a minor when we’re looking at an advertisement.

 And then also, of course, when you have the ads that they give a little bit of a summary of whatever services they might be willing to offer, some prices that they would charge, and then there’s a phone number that allows you to reach out and contact them.

Zibby:  May I ask one more question about that? Because I’ve always wondered about this, Craigslist and other sites that seem to so unabashedly advertise prostitution. Prostitution is illegal, so how can anybody get away with those ads?

Curt:  Well, and they try to be discreet when they do their ads, and so they’re not overtly advertising sex when you look at an ad. For example, they have a lot of their own language and slang terminology that they might put in an advertisement to represent certain sex acts. So, unless you’re savvy to the language that they’re using, or I guess fluent in that language, you wouldn’t otherwise maybe pick up on the services that they are offering. For example, the ad’s not going to say, “Hey, I’ll sex with you and you pay me this much money.” An ad might typically say, “I’m full service,” which means they’re willing to participate in any sex acts. They might be even more specific. Some of the terms they use would be French, which is a reference for oral sex, Greek, which is a reference for anal sex. But those are some of the things that we key in on when we’re reviewing some of those advertisements.

Zibby:  What’s the difference between an escort and a prostitute?

Curt:  Escorting, I would describe as just companionship, where it’s somebody that can go on and claim that they’re just simply looking for a date, maybe a trip to a movie, a dinner out. And so that’s kind of the guys that they hide behind. They might also have some disclaimer in their minds, protect themselves against law enforcement, where they say, “You pay me for my time and anything else that happens is companionship between two consenting adults.”

Zibby:  Got it.

Curt:  So, if you read between the lines, you kind of know what that means.

Zibby:  Yeah.

Curt:  Around the time of the investigation, the way it kicked off is I come across an ad that sticks out to me. Photos of the female on the ad were young in nature and we just decided to target this particular ad at the time and I guess in essence hope that we come across the person that we’re looking for so we can offer that intervention and offer them out from the dangerous situation that they were finding themselves in. So, at that time, I posed as an undercover customer and I’m using an undercover phone and place some recorded phone calls to the phone number on that particular ad.

[phone rings]

Kelly:  Hello?

Curt:  Hi. How are you?

Kelly:  Good, how are you?

Curt:  Pretty good. I didn’t get your name.

Kelly:  [beep]

Curt:  That’s a nice name.

Kelly:  Thank you.

Curt:  I just was looking at the ad and that was your dream come true or your dream girl or something?

Kelly:  Always. I am your dream girl.

Curt:  You’re the dream girl.

Kelly:  Yeah.

Curt:  [laughs] Self-proclaimed.

Kelly:  What is that?

Curt:  Self-proclaimed or do you have any reviews or anything?

Kelly:  No, I don’t have reviews.

Curt:  No. Cool. So, are you like still around [beep] then or still dating?

Kelly:  Am I still what?

Curt:  Still available for dating?

Kelly:  Yes.

Curt:  Right on. Do you full service.

Kelly:  Yes.

Curt:  You are, cool. What are your rates?

Kelly:  Donations? 150 half and 200 for full.

Curt: 150 for a half hour? 200 for a full hour?

Kelly:  Yes.

Curt:  All right. You speak foreign languages or anything like that?

Kelly:  No.

Curt:  None?

Kelly:  I speak some German but– Oh, wait, dog commands. I can command you like a dog.

Curt:  Oh, well, I don’t know if I want to be commanded like a dog.

Kelly:  Yeah.

Curt:  I don’t speak German, so I probably wouldn’t respond very well. No, I was at French, you know, like–

Kelly:  No, I don’t.

Curt:  You don’t do any of that? Do you provide everything or do I need to bring anything?

Kelly:  No.

Curt:  No.

Kelly:  Having the money?

Curt:  Well, money, yeah, I just mean protection and whatnot.

Kelly:  Yes.

Curt:  You provide protection. Cool. Now you do out call too, right?

Kelly:  I don’t do out call. My car broke down.

Curt:  Your car broke down?

Kelly:  Yes.

Curt:  What if I was able to give you an extra hundo or something and see if somebody could drive you over?

Kelly:  Where is your luggage?

Curt:  I’m just staying in a hotel on business and I’m not real familiar with the area, so I’m up here.

Kelly:  Which hotel?

Curt:  It’s a new one by [beep].

Kelly:  I don’t know that would drive out there.

Curt:  Oh, shoot. What about a cab or something?

Kelly:  Not comfortable with a cab.

Curt:  Not comfortable with the cab?

Kelly:  No.

Curt:  So, where would you–

Kelly:  I live downtown.

Curt:  Downtown, like where downtown? Like, at a motel or do you have a house?

Kelly:  I stay in a motel.

Curt:  Okay, what motel are you staying at?

Kelly:  I am [beep].

Curt:  Okay, what’s your schedule like tonight in case I– [crosstalk]

Kelly:  Available.

Curt:  You’re available?

Kelly:  Yes.

Curt:  Okay, I may try to call you back tonight.

Kelly:  What’s your name?

Curt:  Curt.

Kelly:  Okay, then I will look forward to talking to you later.

Curt:  All righty. Thanks.

Kelly:  Bye.

Curt:  Bye.

Yeardley:  That phone call.

Zibby:  Ugh, it’s so disturbing.

Yeardley:  It’s so disturbing.

[Break 1]

Yeardley:  And after speaking with her, do you get the sense that she was indeed underage?

Curt:  She definitely sounds young to me. I’m thinking we’re on the right track because I would have gauged definitely that she was under 18 at the time.

Zibby:  Okay, so that ad led you to a real underage prostitution situation. What next?

Curt:  I gathered my team, my partners and other detectives and initially we went out to the hotel and started doing some surveillance for the area because at that point we hadn’t specified a room number or anything. It was one of those situations where she said, “Hey, when you get here, text me or call me and I’ll let you know what room number and you can come in.” The goal at the time was to see if we could see people coming and going that might fit a description of somebody that we’re looking for. So, we set up surveillance maybe a half an hour in advance of the meeting time and just started watching. Generally, when somebody is a minor and they’re prostituting a majority of the time, I’d even go as far as saying 90% or more of the time, they have a pimp.

 And we know that going in. And so, we’re trying to get as much information or intelligence that we can before we actually go make contact so we’re safe, and we keep them safe. So, we key in on the motel, and we see a room that’s got a lot of activity, and we see an older white male that leaves the apartment with an obvious adult female. Shortly, after that, I reach out and say, “Hey, I’m in the area. Where do I go?” And sure enough, this gal gives me the room number that we had been watching. So, now we know we’re on the right track.

Zibby:  And that’s the same room that the adult male and female had left from?

Curt:  Yes.

Zibby:  Okay.

Curt:  So, we assign a couple of our detectives to keep an eye on the male and the female who left the room, because we know that they’re involved at this point to some extent. And then I ended up going up to the room in plain clothes as an undercover customer, and the other half of my team was keeping an eye on me and ready to follow me into the room once I got inside.

Zibby:  Is that weird for you? I know you have experience as an undercover officer, but still, you’re walking in pretending to be a customer.

Yeardley:  To have sex with an underage girl. I mean, it’s– [crosstalk]

Zibby:  What is that like?

Yeardley:  Yeah, my heart would be beating out of my chest, I think.

Curt:  It’s an interesting dynamic, for sure. And you’re right, I mean, I’ve had experience doing undercover operations for prostitution like this particular case, I’ve done drug deals. I’ve sold fake drugs, the gamut. And so, I’m sure you might have some experience in acting. And so really, that’s all it is.

[laughter]

Yeardley:  Well.

Zibby:  Just a little bit [crosstalk] but still, it’s hard to imagine because you’re dealing with real people.

Dan:  When you go into that situation. A, you’re trying to cover the elements of the crime, but you have to also be aware that maybe they’re setting you up to rob you. So that’s definitely in the back of your mind. So, you’re trying to meet all these criteria during your conversation, but you have to be cognizant that there’s a chance you might be walking into a robbery.

Curt:  That’s exactly right. It’s sometimes the strategy for these folks is just to rob you, take your money, your wallet. And they know that if they rob a prostitution customer, there’s really not very likely situation that they report it to the police anyway. So, for them, it’s definitely a crime of opportunity. So, we have that in the back of our mind when we go in. But as far as feeling one way or the other about doing that in an undercover capacity, I just put myself in the mindset that I’m playing that role for that particular moment and I guess detach myself from the reality of what it is.

Dave:  Are you wired up?

Curt:  Yeah. So, we have the ability to do audio surveillance. Sometimes, we’re doing video surveillance just so my partners, who are keeping an eye on me, their main goal is to make sure I’m safe, so if something goes bad, that they’re ready and able to react.

Dave:  And you got a safe word and all that.

Yeardley:  You have a safe word?

Curt:  We do have some safe words that we use. So, for some reason there was an emergency I needed their help immediately. I’d probably just start screaming for help, but– [crosstalk]

laughter]

Yeardley:  [laughs]Just help. What? Not like pizza?

Curt:  Cinnamon. Cinnamon.

Yeardley:  Cinnamon

Zibby:  I mean, I know you have a whole story to tell, but I’ve always been curious, what is that initial exchange when you knock on the door, she opens it. Is she clothed? Is she not? What do you say to each other? Can you just walk us through that a bit? Because it’s so bizarre to me.

Curt:  Sure. And so, part of it is building the case. We’re trying to make it as strong of a case as we can. So, on the backend, when it comes time for court and trial and everything, that we’re setting ourself up for success. And so initially, the first thing that I do is knock on the door of the hotel room, and the girl answers. And she’s obviously a kid. She’s wearing a little Tinkerbell T-shirt and some jeans.

Yeardley:  How old?

Curt:  She’s 17 at the time.

Yeardley:  Okay. Does she have a name?

Curt:  Yeah, her name is Kelly. And of course, she was posing as something different, like dream girl, something to that effect on her advertisement because they don’t ever use their real names. But she answers the door, and so I verify with her that she is the alias dream girl or whatever that I had been speaking with on the phone. And so, she confirms that further in my mind, lets me know that I’m definitely at the right place because she gave me the room number, and now I’m talking to the same female that I’d spoken with over the phone.

Yeardley:  And what’s the expectation then? Do you get right down to business or–

Zibby:  Yeah, like, she’s wearing jeans and a Tinkerbell T-shirt, not a teddy. That’s a very different image than what the ad suggests you’ll be greeted with.

Curt:  Yeah, and I’ve seen it from a bunch of different angles. I mean, sometimes they do answer in a teddy. Sometimes, they answer the door naked this particular time and more often than not, they’re wearing fairly normal clothes. And so, she invites me inside. So, I go inside, and we start just a small talk conversation.

Zibby:  Is she trying to be sexy?

Curt:  No, I don’t think so.

Zibby:  Are you small talking about the weather, or is it, “So, what do you want?”

Curt:  Yeah, no, this particular occasion, it was basically just a summary of our phone conversation, just to reiterate that the idea was that I was there for sex and confirming with her the fee that she was charging at the time. And so, we get those small talk details. And that’s about the time that I give a signal to my partners that they should come in, because we’re at the point now where we’re going to identify ourselves as police officers and then have a conversation with her.

Yeardley:  And what’s the signal? Is that the safe word cinnamon or something?

Curt:  Yeah, something like that.

Zibby:  So, you just folded into your conversation with her and the people on standby are listening for that word?

Curt:  Yes.

Zibby:  Okay.

Curt:  So, I’m standing there in the room with her, and my partners knock on the door. Of course, she’s surprised to a certain extent, because they’re not expecting company at that moment. And we open the door and my partners come in, and they’re wearing police mark vests and identifying themselves verbally as police officers. And so, they come in and simultaneously, if you remember, the male and female who left. Bob was the guy’s name who left right before I showed up. And so, a couple of my partners made contact with them.

Yeardley:  Was Bob her pimp or were he and the other woman customers of some kind?

Curt:  He was actually the pimp at the time for Kelly. And so, we are again on the right track and just started building our case there with some interviews.

Zibby:  Was she freaked out when she realized she was caught.

Yeardley:  Or was she relieved?

Curt:  I got the sense that there was a little bit of both. She was kind of like, “Oh, crap, I’m caught,” and worried in regards that she was going to be in trouble and that she might go to jail. That was her initial concern, I think, which she expressed to me. And I should say that when we do these investigations, we’re not looking to arrest as many people for prostitution as we can. We don’t want to see these people go to jail for committing prostitution, because what we do know is that they’re not usually doing it by choice. Nobody wakes up one day and says, “I want to have sex with as many strangers as I can and then give all that money to somebody else.”

 So, in that sense, I explained as much to her and told her that we are there to help and that my focus was to offer her services if she wanted a way out and also to make a criminal case against the people that were involved in making her prostitute.

Zibby:  So when did she start to open up about what she was up to and who Bob was to her?

Curt:  She told me that she had been prostituting for Bob for only the past three months and that she had met him through some mutual acquaintances and confirmed all the usual things that go along with a pimp-prostitute relationship. As far as it goes, she admitted that she was engaging in sex acts at his direction and that when she would collect money from customers for these sex acts, that all the money that she got would be immediately given to him upon completion of the sex acts. And that it was just an ongoing money-making scheme. Money making, in regards that Bob was the one who got all the money and she basically got nothing.

Dave:  So, in your situation, you arranged to. I don’t know what the sex act was, but how much money was going to be exchanged with your transaction?

Curt:  I believe she was charging about $250 for the hour.

Dave:  Okay. And so, the 250 goes from her hands straight to Bob’s hands?

Curt:  Yes.

Dave:  What does she get in exchange for this? She gets food, housing, clothing, that type of thing, just the basic necessities.

Curt:  Basically, that’s it. Just the bare minimum to survive off of, to remain nourished enough so she can continue to go out there and keep prostituting.

Dave:  Doesn’t seem like a great deal.

Zibby:  Wow, it really doesn’t.

Yeardley:  How long has she been living like that?

Curt:  We go into the history a little bit of how she got started about a year previously, and she said that she had worked for a different pimp just prior to Bob.

Yeardley:  Was she a runaway.

Curt:  At that time,I believe she actually was a runaway. I talked to you a little bit earlier about some of the signs that we look for. That’s not always something that we know going in because we don’t know the real identity of who I’m going to meet at the time. Once we get her true name and birth date and all that. We look into her history locally and find out, lo and behold, that she is a runaway, which is a common theme among kids that end up in prostitution.

Zibby:  She said she’d been prostituting for about a year, but only working for Bob for a few months, right?

Curt:  Right. She tells me that she was prostituting previously for a different pimp. She identified the guy as Pete, who goes by the loving nickname of Bug.

Yeardley:  Bug.

Zibby:  Bug. Bug.

Curt:  Yeah, Bug.

Yeardley:  Was he already known to you? Had you heard of him before and knew he was not a good guy?

Curt:  We did know Bug. I know the law enforcement agencies in our area were all very familiar with him and knew that he was a gang member. We knew that he was involved with pimping girls. We also knew that he was involved in selling drugs. And so, this was not a new name for us by any means.

Zibby:  Did she seem to have a disdain for both of them or what was the nature of her offering that information to save her own ass or sort of like, “Oh, thank God, I can tell on them?”

Curt:  Well, that’s a good question. She’s definitely not just coming right out and divulging all this information. There was a period of conversation that we had where we’re trying to do some rapport building and I’m trying to make her as comfortable with the situation as possible because obviously she’s worried about going to jail. She’s worried about retaliation because it’s common in the prostitution world that the pimps are able to maintain a leverage over these gals as a way to keep them out there prostituting for them. And so, a lot of ways that they do that is by fear tactics. They make threats towards the girls themselves.

 Oftentimes they’ll know a little bit about the girl’s families, and so they’ll make threats directed towards the families, such as, if you stop prostituting for me, I’m going to hurt your son or I’m going to hurt your mom or something along those lines. And so, in the back of her mind, she’s got concerns that if she talks to police that something might happen bad towards her or her family. So, it wasn’t immediately that she starts divulging this information, but luckily, I was able to talk to her enough and put her at ease enough to where she starts providing me with those details.

Zibby:  And was this whole interview taking place on site in the motel room?

Curt:  Yeah, I’m sitting inside the room. My partners are still a little bit on high alert because you never know when somebody’s just going to show up. Oftentimes, there’s a pimp involved. In this case, we had Bob detained in handcuffs talking to my partners. But they keep tabs on these gals, and they’ll send them a message like, “Hey, are you okay?” If they don’t hear back immediately, then their senses are up, and so they may just come to the room to try to make sure, A, that the customer who’s meeting their prostitute isn’t doing something mean or violent to them, or B, that the police haven’t intervened.

Yeardley:  Right. Or C, perhaps the prostitute hasn’t made off with the money.

Curt:  Definitely, yeah. So, my partners are still keeping an eye on the parking lot outside, and I can see through the open doorway out into the parking lot that a car pulls up out front, and it’s got a large male driving in the vehicle, and he’s by himself. He gets out. At this time, all my partners are less obvious that they’re police, I would say. So, they’ve taken their vests off. I can see that my supervisor at the time is standing outside the doorway when this car pulls up, and he gets confronted by this male who is in the vehicle. He’s talking to him, “Who are you? What are you doing here?” So, the male turns out to be Bug. It’s getting heated. He’s obviously upset and he’s a very large guy.

 And so my supervisor wisely decides to identify himself as a police officer and say, “Hey, we need to talk to you.” At which point, Bug slams on the gas and literally peels out of the hotel parking lot and leaves the area.

Yeardley:  Oh, shit.

Zibby:  No way. So, do you guys go after Bug?

Curt:  At the time, all of our resources were tied up talking to Bob, and I’m talking to the girl, and my other partners are out of their cars and in the parking lot on foot. And so, we had no opportunity to follow Bug as he fled the area at the time.

Zibby:  So, that happens because you see it in TV and I’m always like, “Yeah, but how are they actually going to get away?”

Dave:  You’re hoping that maybe there’s a patrol car in the area that might just happen to cross paths with Bug as easily.

Zibby:  Right.

Dan:  And you’re probably still going to get the car chase out of it, especially with Bug and his kin. They all run, every one of them.

Yeardley:  So, you know of them as well.

Dan:  Dave and I. I’ve arrested Bug. I’ve arrested multiple members of this family.

Yeardley:  Wow.

[Break 2]

Yeardley:  Why does Bug show up at Kelly’s room if he’s not her pimp anymore?

Curt:  So, that leads to the next interesting facet of the case. To summarize, Bug ends up getting away. We did relay the information to dispatch and other officers in hopes that somebody would be in the area and be able to make a traffic stop of him. Unfortunately, he ended up disappearing and weren’t able to catch him that day. But luckily for us, we were able to verify via the license plate and my seeing the driver and my sergeant seeing the driver that we were able to confirm indeed, that it was Bug. So, I had just freshly had the conversation with Kelly where she’s telling me, “Hey, my previous pimp is Bug. And so, it makes us ask the same question you just did is why is here if he’s not the pimp right now?” And so, I asked Kelly and she says, “Yeah, that’s Bug.”

 And what she says is that she had left Bug about three months prior, obviously without his blessing because that’s money out of his pockets whenever one of his prostitutes leave. And so, he’s angry. And he takes it upon himself to monitor the same advertisements that the police look at.

Zibby:  No way.

Curt:  And finds out, “Hey, my old prostitute has got advertisements up. I’m going to go see what’s going on.”

Yeardley:  Oh, my God.

Curt:  And so what she surmised, and it kind of makes sense to us, is that he had reached out to her posing as a customer, and discovered that she was staying at this hotel in the room that she was staying at. And so, he was going to go, we think, to probably try to take her back.

Yeardley:  How do you do that?

Zibby:  Yeah. And wouldn’t Bob have something to say about that?

Curt:  So, what we learned is that he was there earlier, before we had got there, unbeknownst to us.

Yeardley:  Bug was.

Curt:  Bug was. And Bug and another one of his gang member buddies had actually made contact with Kelly and Bob at the hotel room and got violent and aggressive with him. Bug had a confrontation with Bob about stealing his prostitute, roughed him up a little bit and said that he was going to either take her back or Bob was going to have to pay for her, buy her out.

Yeardley:  Oh, God.

Curt:  And so, while there’s this altercation in the hotel room between Bug and Bob, the other gang member is grabbing Kelly around the throat and holding her up against a wall so she can’t do anything. And for one reason or another, this altercation stops and Bug ends up leaving with his gang member buddy, from what I understand, is that he basically told Bob, “Hey, I’m going to be back and there’s going to be problems.” In our world, what that means is he’s going to come back and he’s going to do harm. Whether that means he’s going to beat him up, whether he’s going to shoot him, who knows?

 But after hearing the story and after seeing Bug roll up while we’re in the middle of this operation, it becomes clear to us that luckily for everybody, we were there because Bug was probably coming to finish off what he had started previously.

Zibby:  I can’t believe the timing. It’s remarkable. I mean, you all unwittingly intercepted what could have been potentially a lethal showdown.

Yeardley:  Could have been a homicide, I guess. Right?

Dave:  It’s absolutely within Bug’s realm of violence to go to that level.

Zibby:  Wow.

Dave:  Yeah.

Yeardley:  So, what happens to everyone after this successful sting operation? Where does it lead?

Curt:  So, we put Bob in jail for compelling prostitution. That particular crime is a mandatory prison sentence that goes along with it. So, he’s sitting in jail. He’s not going to be getting out anytime soon.

Zibby:  What about the woman that was with Bob.

Curt:  The woman that was with Bob, was supposedly Bob’s girlfriend. We didn’t have any indication that she was involved necessarily with the pimping of Kelly or any other girls, for that matter. So, we basically had a conversation with her about what was going on and what she knew about the pimping and prostitution.

Yeardley:  Did she know?

Curt:  She did know. She was aware that it was going on. Of course, in that world, it’s just not her place to speak up. Her man is doing whatever his hustle is, whether that’s selling girls or selling drugs, and she’s just along for the ride. The interesting thing that we learned about Bob is that he was also a member of a gang, and he had some swastika tattoos on his body, which is consistent with some white power type people that he likes to associate with, which would have some other abrasive views for Bug, considering he’s a black male who already has a beef with him.

Yeardley:  And what happens to Kelly?

Curt:  I ended up putting her back in touch with her family.

Yeardley:  Did she want to go home? One assumes she ran away because things weren’t great there.

Curt:  Well, ultimately, we end up finding her another housing option in a city that was just outside of ours and something a little bit more stable where she can go and learn basic life skills. She had a child at the time who was very young.

Yeardley:  Kelly did.

Curt:  Kelly did.

Yeardley:  Oh.

Curt:  So, she was housed with her child. So not only could she learn to care for herself, but she could learn how to be a mom. So that was a good thing for her. And as she went through that program of rehabilitation, I remained in pretty regular contact with her. Again, because our goal is to make the case against Bob and Bug. And the only way to really do that and be successful is to have somebody who’s willing to be a victim in a criminal phase or a trial phase.

Zibby:  That’s a really key phrase, willing to be a victim. I bet you come up against that a lot with prostitution and sex trafficking.

Curt:  We do. And to be honest, that’s our biggest challenge. The hard part is not finding the pimps and putting them in jail. The hard part is working with the victims and keeping them in a mind frame that they’re going to be safe. We do our best to keep them safe, but they’ve been trained and mentally manipulated for so long that in the back of her mind, she’s thinking, “Well, now they know I’m talking to the cops. What’s going to happen?” As the case progressed, we have court appearances that she responded to. And so, I stayed pretty close with her to have that familiar face in her life. She knew she could trust me, and I helped her get to her various appearances that she was required to be at. And so that worked out pretty well for us.

Zibby:  Was she living with Bob at the time that she was prostituting for him? And also, was the baby there or where was the baby when she was working?

Curt:  The baby was with family. She didn’t have full custody at the time. And so, the baby was not present when we were doing this case. Living with Bob, I guess, is a relative term. Basically, they were just hotel hopping. And she didn’t have much of a personal life. Again, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, she was advertising for prostitution. And so, she would take as many customers as she could possibly get during that time.

Zibby:  Oh, God.

Yeardley:  Is there some protocol for birth control with prostitutes?

Curt:  Her particular strategy was to require her customers wear condoms all the time. I know she’s also on the pill, which a lot of times is a protection measure that even the pimps will make them do, because as long as a girl is not pregnant, the ability to continue to prostitute is easier. And so, they take whatever measures they can to ensure that they’re still there, available to work as long as they can.

Zibby:  So, Bob is in jail, Kelly is rehabilitating, and she’s cooperating with the investigation. And Bug is– [crosstalk]

Curt:  As far as Bug goes, like I said, we were familiar with him, so we knew him. I knew where he lived. We did a bunch of surveillance over the next several months trying to find Bug and build a stronger case against Bug. Because right now what we have is a 17-year-old girl’s word against Bug that he was involved with pimping her. But our job is to gather as much evidence to prove that what she’s telling us is actually true. And so, the surveillance was successful in regards to being able to learn some of his everyday patterns. We are watching him meet with a bunch of different people, some of which we were able to identify later as being involved in this prostitution enterprise that he was running.

Yeardley:  He was running an entire prostitution enterprise in your small town?

Curt:  Yeah. He had several other girls that he was pimping as well, some adults and some minors.

Yeardley:  Oh, God.

Zibby:  Good Lord.

Curt:  We identified a couple of gals. One gal, she’s an adult female. Her name was Lafonda, and she was a longtime adult prostitute herself. And in this particular group, she was considered one of the bottom bitches for Bug.

Yeardley and Zibby:  What is that?

Curt:  So, a bottom bitch is a term that they use in the prostitution world to reference a seasoned prostitute who is ready and able to take over the operation if for some reason Bug were not otherwise able to. Let’s say Bug went to jail, the girls need to keep prostituting for him, and they need to keep making him money. So, to keep the business going, Lafonda would be somebody who could step in and make sure that they were going on calls and make sure that the money was coming in and to make sure that the money was then going to Bug.

Yeardley:  How does the money go to Bug if he’s in jail? Do they put it on his commissary?

Curt:  Yeah, there’s a couple of banks that they can put money on, but yeah, so his jail books, essentially. We also learn of another bottom bitch. He had two at the time. Her name was Cammie. And they’re there to keep the operation running smoothly, and they’re also there to keep prostituting so they can make money to give to Bug.

Zibby:  Wow. And you say there were more minors that were being pimped out by Bug?

Curt:  Yes. Rather than just try to jump right in and prosecute him for Kelly’s situation, we want to find out who these other minors are so we can offer them the safe escape that Kelly had. And to further strengthen our case against Bug, because we don’t want to leave any victims behind. So, we learn a short time later that one of Kelly’s friends, she was 16 at the time. Her name was Tanya. Her mother had reported her locally as a runaway. And her mother, when I spoke with her, also said, “Hey, I’m concerned that Tanya is prostituting. She had been hanging out with Kelly, and I’m concerned for her safety.” So, now I know that we’re looking for this Tanya girl because there’s a pretty high likelihood that she’s involved with Bug’s organization.

Yeardley:  How long had she been missing?

Curt:  She was reported missing, I want to say, just within a few days after we had our interaction with Kelly.

Yeardley:  Oh.

Curt:  And so it’s all kind of like dominoes falling into place for us at the time. So, we find out that she’s possibly at a hotel in our area. So, immediately we drop what we’re doing and we go out and me and my partners start doing surveillance on this motel room, trying to see if we can find Tanya and whatever else may be going on at the time. Within short order, we end up seeing Tanya. Recognized her from some of the photographs that her mom had given us, and she’s with another very young-looking girl who we ultimately identify as Tiffany, she’s barely 14 at the time. And we see two males and one of them is a younger male. He looks to be a minor as well. Turned out to be, I want to say he was like a 15-year-old boy. We end up going and making contact with them at their door.

Zibby:  All four of them?

Curt:  All four of them are in the room together. So, we knock on the door, no surprise here. We’re not doing a sting or anything like that. We’re just working off of the information that we had at the time and trying to help recover this now runaway child. So, we identify ourselves as police officers, we divide up the interviews. So, I end up talking to a bunch of the people there. There’s a lot going on as far as we’ve got Tanya, who’s a runaway, Tiffany who’s a runaway, which we later confirm. And some of my partners are working with, getting a hold of their parents to see if we can get them back home safe. And then we’re also working our investigation.

Yeardley:  Are the two men who are in that room the 15-year-old and the older adult male customers?

Curt:  No, they’re not actually. The other male that we contact, his name is Andrew. And what I learned about Andrew was primarily from an interview with him. Fortunately for me, I guess I was able to build a decent enough rapport with him. He was 18 at the time, so barely an adult. I explained to him that we were working this investigation and that I believe that they were involved in prostitution. And he spills the beans. He has a full conversation with me and tells me that he himself was involved with pimping these two girls out of this hotel room and that he also works for somebody he identified as Bug.

Zibby:  So, little baby, 18-year-old Andrew gets involved in pimping, he spills the beans. Do you think because he was nervous and scared, did you get the feeling this was like a first-time encounter with the police?

Curt:  It was definitely not his first encounter with the police.

Zibby:  Dan’s nodding.

Yeardley:  Dan is nodding.

Dan:  Yeah, I’ve arrested Andrew on multiple occasions. The thing about him, he had a very strong female in his life. His mother really ran the show. He did not mess with his mom. And Andrew got into trouble a lot. But he was always respectful to me and I think he just wanted respect. If you’re an asshole cop to him, he’s going to give it right back to you. But if you were respectful and treated him like a man, he’d show you the same.

Zibby:  How funny.

Yeardley:  And the 15-year-old he was pimping as well, was he the protege or what?

Curt:  We like to call him a pimp in training, I guess. He was there– [crosstalk]

Zibby:  These little babies.

Yeardley:  Wow.

Curt:  There’s a little hierarchy. I guess. So, Andrew has taken ownership of his involvement in prostituting both Tiffany and Tanya out of this motel room. And he in all regards is saying that this 15-year-old boy, he’s not involved, but he’s clearly there self admittedly to see how it goes. And if he could learn enough, he was definitely interested in becoming more involved. And Andrew for that regard is kind of, we call him a baby pimp because he was fairly new to the lifestyle as far as taking control and having these kids out there prostituting and getting money. But that’s how we learn more about now we have these two new young kids who are prostituting and that they’re falling under Bug’s hierarchy.

Yeardley:  Why does Bug need people under him to pimp when Bug is the guy?

Curt:  And that’s a good point. Andrew was definitely keeping some of the money and then some of the money he was giving to Bug because it’s Bug’s organization. So, Andrew was seen as a buffer between Bug and law enforcement.

Yeardley:  I see. So, he would take the hit and Bug would then just be like, “What? I don’t know that guy.”

Curt:  Exactly. And in my conversation with him, that’s kind of the spin that I took with him is that, I appreciate you telling me this story about all these bad things you’re doing to these kids, but you’re going to be the one that takes the fall, not Bug. And so that’s when he decided to open up more about Bug and how Bug was ultimately in charge.

[music]

Zibby:  Oh, man.

Yeardley:  Oh, boy.

Yeardley:  Small Town Dicks is produced by Zibby Allen and Yeardley Smith, and co-produced by Detectives Dan and Dave.

Zibby:  This episode was edited by Soren Begin, Yeardley Smith, and Zibby Allen.

Yeardley:  Music for the show was composed by John Forrest. Our associate producer is Erin Gaynor, and our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell.

Zibby:  Ifyou like what you hear and want to stay up to date with the show, head on over to smalltowndicks.com. And become our pal on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @smalltowndicks. We love hearing from our Small Town Fam. So, hit us up.

Yeardley:  Yeah. And also, we have a YouTube channel where you can see trailers for past and forthcoming episodes. And we’re part of Stitcher Premium now.

Zibby:  That’s right. If you choose to subscribe, you’ll be supporting our podcast. That way, we can keep going to small towns across the country and bringing you the finest in rare true crime cases, told, as always, by the detectives who investigated them. Thanks for listening, Small Town Fam.

Yeardley:  Nobody’s better than you.

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