[music]

Zibby:  The Classifieds is a case we cover over two episodes. This marks Part 2 of 2.  Previously on the Classifieds Part 1.

Curt:  I go to craigslist.com and I come across an ad, photos of the female on the ad were young in nature and we just decided to target this particular ad. I ended up going up to the room as an undercover customer. The girl answers and she’s obviously a kid. She tells me that she was prostituting previously for a different pimp who goes by the nickname of Bug. We did a bunch of surveillance over the next several months trying to find Bug. We were 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. He had several other girls that he was pimping as well, some adults and some minors. The other male that we contact, his name is Andrew. He spills the beans. He tells me he works for somebody he identified as Bug.

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

[Small Town Dicks Theme]

Yeardley:  What’s Andrew’s story?

Curt:  Andrew grew up in the local community. He’s gone to school with a lot of these young kids, and so that’s how he knew him and how he recruited them into Bug’s world or his world is right here from our local middle school and high school scene.

Yeardley:  Oh, God.

Curt:  So, Andrew tells me about several other young girls that have prostituted for him. He identifies a girl named Missy, who was his girlfriend growing up in high school, and how she prostituted for him and ultimately for Bug. One of her really good friends, Lori, was also prostituting for him. Both of those girls were 16 years old. He tells us about another girl named Leslie, who is also 16 years old. So, basically just a circle of his high school friends that he had turned out into prostitution. And of course, they’re giving all their money to him, which ultimately, he ends up giving some to Bug.

Yeardley:  Have they quit school?

Curt:  A lot of them were not regularly attending school. Like I said, in this world, they’re there to go out and make money. And so that’s what they were doing. They didn’t have time for school.

Dan:  And is addiction part of this also?

Curt:  Addiction plays a role. I mean, I end up talking to all these kids, and they don’t see sex as something sacred. So, they’re addicted to sex and then they’re also using drugs. Many of these kids were using methamphetamine at the time. A lot of that methamphetamine was supplied by Bug.

Zibby:  Don’t meth and sex addiction go hand in hand?

Dan:  Wherever we find meth, we find pornographic stuff.

Zibby:  Right. I’ve heard that.

Dan:  Sex toys, things like that.

Zibby:  So that does speak to a question I had. You interviewed all these girls, and I wonder what it was, the enlisting factor for them, like, how did they get so enrolled in becoming prostitutes? Was it primarily out of need? Was it out of the allure because their friends said, “Hey, you can make money?”

Curt:  There’s a lot of manipulation that happens to get them to even consider doing that. When they ultimately get recruited into it. There’s a wining dining phase where they’re shown this glamorous lifestyle, promised expensive, fancy things, whether it’s cars, houses, jewelry, or even something as simple as, “Hey, I’ll take you to get your nails done once a week.” And then they fall into that trap. And talking to some of them, like I said, for them, sex isn’t something that’s sacred. It’s something that they enjoy and they can make money doing it. And so, it’s a win-win situation.

Yeardley:  It seems impossible to me that you could continue to enjoy sex just doing it for the money. And by the way, you’ll soon find out that that whole lifestyle turns out to be not true after all. After they’ve wined you and dined you and recruited you, and now you have no money and nobody gives a shit about you and they’re just pimping you out.

Curt:  And that’s exactly true. And so, by the time they find themselves in that reality where they might come to that understanding, they’re in so deep that they can’t get out. And the pimps know that too. And so, one of their strategies of what we call the maintenance phase, keeping that girl out there, prostituting as frequently as possible, they will use that as leverage and they’ll blackmail them or say, “If you quit now, then I’m going to put nude pictures on the Internet. Or, if you quit now, I’m going to hurt your family. Or if you quit now, I’ll call the cops and you’re going to go to jail because prostitution is illegal” and they’re afraid of going to jail.

Dave:  Yeah. The coercive nature of these guys, like sex offenders, they’re master manipulators, they’re opportunists. And they go after the fringe or the vulnerable population. These kids are open to that lifestyle at first. They get sold a bunch of goods that doesn’t turn out to be the reality for them. And then we’ve got the methamphetamine issue. They get hooked on that. They bait them with that, keep them supplied with methamphetamine. So, they’re high and this is now their new normal and their new lifestyle. So, these guys are really good at manipulating situations and people.

Zibby:  It’s terrifying. I mean, because I think of the susceptible teenager.

Dave:  You think about at one high school, the population that could fall into this category. It’s enormous. Bug’s got all kinds of high schools in the area to pick from.

Curt:  Many of the kids that I talked to were no longer actively doing prostitution for the group by the time I finally came into contact with them. A lot of the information I got from Andrew was that it was somewhat historical, I suppose.

Yeardley:  How did they get out?

Curt:  I think they just phased themselves out. With Andrew, he didn’t seem to be as controlling in regards to, if you leave, then I’m going to hurt you. He was more of along the lines that if I’m making money at the time, great. If you choose to leave, so be it. And so, since a lot of these girls had somewhat of a buffer between Bug and themselves, they didn’t have that same concern that Kelly found herself in or that Tanya had found herself in.

Yeardley:  I see.

Zibby:  That must have been a crunchy situation to bring the parents into it with these other girls. And we can call them victims because, let’s face it, they are. But just because I can’t imagine that very many of the parents were aware or that those victims would be so willing to talk about it or am I wrong?

Curt:  No, you’re not wrong at all. And again, that just goes back to how difficult these cases are to work, is getting somebody to not only own up to maybe some criminal activity that they’re involved with, may it be drug use or prostitution, but to then talk about some of the people who are involved with doing that to them, when they know in the back of their mind that there could be repercussions.

Zibby:  Do you have counselors or is there another department that helps facilitate those conversations with parents? Or is it you that walks in and sits down with the parents and the teenagers?

Curt:  It’s me and my partners that talk to the parents directly. We do work pretty closely with some victim services that we have in our community, and so we can plug them in if they need it for the long haul, so to speak. But on the front end, in the middle of the night, when we’re talking to these people, it’s me. I’ll call the mom or the dad and say, “Hey, I need to talk to you.” And this is kind of what’s going on.

Zibby:  What are those responses like?

Curt:  A lot of it is shock. And then unfortunately, some of them are not surprised at all. They maybe feel in their hearts that there’s something like that going on. And clearly, if there’s a scenario when these kids are running away from home, then they’re not able to keep tabs on what they’re doing during those times. And so, I think some of them feel that they might be doing something that’s not right. But to the extent of what we find ourselves in with this case, I couldn’t tell you.

Zibby:  Wow.

Dave:  What about dads? I’m curious about a dad reaction to finding out his daughter, who he always looks at as a little girl, is being just completely objectified and used. How do they react?

Curt:  Well, the dads that are still actively involved in these kid’s lives are usually irate, as I think would be a normal response. That’s another hurdle is now we got to protect Bug- [crosstalk]

Zibby:  From angry dad.

Curt:  -in uncertain terms from angry dads. And so, the dads and the moms for that matter, they get some of the story, but they don’t hear the whole story. And part of that’s intentional because I’m not going to go out of my way to say, “Hey, Bug’s pimping your daughter and this is where he lives.” Although that may feel good.

[laughter]

Curt:  It’s ethically probably not the right approach to take.

Yeardley:  So what’s the culmination? You’ve gathered all this evidence, you have all these girls, you have Andrew singing like a bird. Where does it take you next?

Curt:  We do a little bit of work on some of the customers. First, there’s one fellow who is a business owner in our community. His name is Wong. Wong is a prolific customer, and he is a sexual predator in my mind, because the way you hear these folks talk about Wong is that he would reach out to Andrew and ask him specifically for kids. He was seeking out underage prostitutes to have sex with.

Yeardley:  Oh, my God.

Zibby:  Awful.

Curt:  So, we quickly put together a case against Wong. I write a search warrant for Wong’s house and cars. I contact him, interview him, and he admits that, “Yes,” although he minimizes quite a bit of detail that he had sexual interactions with all of these kids.

Yeardley:  So, Wong was arrested.

Curt:  Wong was arrested and convicted of several sex abuse-related crimes for his interactions with these girls as well as prostitution. But as far as a sentence was concerned, we weren’t all necessarily satisfied with the amount of time that he had to spend in prison.

Zibby:  How much was that?

Curt:  He got eight months.

Zibby:  That’s it?

Curt:  That’s it.

Zibby:  How is that possible?

Curt:  Well, the way that the sentencing guidelines are in our area, the crimes that we were able to successfully convict him on didn’t carry much weight as far as the legal penalties, I guess. And so, ultimately, what they did is they convicted him of eight different sex acts with some of these minor victims and the charge that were stuck with was a variation of a sex abuse. He got his eight months in local jail. He didn’t even go to prison. He was fortunately required to register as a sex offender after that. Last I heard, is he lost his stake in the business, although I believe it stayed in the family. But as far as that goes, is definitely not a very satisfying result as far as Mr. Wong goes.

Yeardley:  Did the girls have to testify against him?

Curt:  No. And that was the good thing, is that he was quick to take a deal in the court system. And so, his particular role in this case never ended up going to trial.

Yeardley:  And does Andrew get in trouble and are you able to use statements he gives you against Bug?

Curt:  Not necessarily. We did use his interview and he was on standby ready to go for a trial testimony if it got to that point. But for the time being, we just left it at that. Andrew ended up going to jail that night and he remained in jail through the extent of the trial phase and then he was ultimately sentenced in the case. But with Andrew, he was one where I knew where he was at. He wasn’t going to go anywhere since he was at jail. I could go down there and talk to him and get more details as the need arose throughout the investigation.

Break 1

Zibby:  So you’ve arrested Bob, Wong, and Andrew. You’re aware of several other underage girls who’ve been trafficked by Bug’s enterprise. When and how do you finally close in on Bug?

Curt:  What we did with Bug was entertaining. We had been, like I said, conducting pretty regular surveillance on him and the group and trying to Identify all the different players who are participating in this organization. And I thought that it would be a good time to try to put him in jail, because we have the ability to listen to jail recorded phone calls. And like I said, the bottom bitches will step in and take over when their pimp is incarcerated. So, we wanted to also see how the organization morphed if he were to find himself in jail. Like I said, he’s got a lot of different criminal enterprises that he participates in. And so, my partner saw him on a moped at his house.

Yeardley:  Wait, Bug rides a moped?

Curt:  Yeah. It was very comical to see this large man on his moped.

Dave:  Get 72 miles to the gallon on that hog.

[laughter]

Curt:  The interesting part was not to watch him riding this moped around, but when we were able to see the license plate, run it through our system, we find out that the moped is stolen. And so now we’ve got him for unauthorized use of a vehicle, which is a crime in our area. It’s not a huge crime when you look at this whole case, to put it in perspective. But what it did is it gave us the ability to put him in jail for something. And then the other interesting piece is that he had a bunch of prior criminal convictions that allowed us to put him in jail for a longer period of time for this unauthorized use of a vehicle.

Zibby:  Was that because he was on parole or I don’t understand.

Dave:  Repeat property offender.

Curt:  Yeah.

Dave:  Yeah.

Zibby:  Oh, so his prior convictions included stealing property before. So, now this repeat makes his sentence longer.

Dan:  Yeah, I actually arrested Bug. Well, I didn’t arrest him. I got a warrant. I locate this stolen car one time. I just happened to have passed a business about a block earlier before I see this stolen car parked in this empty lot, and I saw Bug. Bug was the guy standing in the middle of this parking lot. And we all know what he looks like. So, I see him, I drive another block, and there’s a stolen Honda sitting in this parking lot. I ended up lifting a fingerprint off the inside of that Honda on the window. And months later, when we get the lab results back. Whose fingerprint?

Zibby:  Bug.

Yeardley:  It’s Bug.

Curt:  It’s Bug’s. So, he’s a car thief. He wears a lot of hats.

Zibby:  He can’t help himself.

Dave:  So, a person’s criminal history builds their point value at the jail. And so, the higher up on that list, the more amount of points that they got because of previous convictions means the less likelihood they’re going to be released.

Zibby:  Got it.

Curt:  Yeah. So, we see him riding the stolen moped along and call officers from the neighboring agency that he happened to be riding around in and say, “Hey, can you stop this guy? He’s on a stolen moped.” And so, we’re following him around. We vector in the patrol officer who tries to stop him. And in true Bug fashion, he jumps off of the moped and starts running from police and hopping fences. Eventually, he gets caught, he gets arrested, and he gets put into our local jail for this unauthorized use of a vehicle charge.

Zibby:  And you mentioned before that you all had hoped his jail calls would give you some intel as well, right?

Curt:  Right. And so, what I learned is he made several calls when he was in jail, many of them to some of his bottom bitches, La Fonda and Cammie. And these calls were very telling with how he interacted with these people. You can hear him very angry at times, yelling at him, calling him all sorts of evil names, and ordering them to do certain things for him, like keeping the motels rented for prostitution, keeping the phone bills paid so the prostitutes could keep having a means to contact their customers, basically running his prostitution enterprise from within the walls of the jail. And all of that’s very good evidence for us because you get to hear how evil this guy really is when he’s talking to the people that he supposedly cares about and interacts with.

Zibby:  Doesn’t he know it’s being recorded?

Yeardley:  Yeah.

Zibby:  They all know.

Yeardley:  They all know jailhouse calls are recorded.

Curt:  They do. And a lot of them just in one ear and out the other. Fortunately, for us, they’re not smart enough to realize they should probably keep their mouth shut, and they give us some of the best evidence that we can get in our cases. Also, historically, we have access to some of these calls. And some of the calls that I’m listening to are around the time that Kelly gets recruited to prostitute for the organization. And so, Bug and Cammie are talking, and she’s excited, telling them about how they’re making money and prostituting. And then she spits out, “Hey, I got you a new bitch.”

Yeardley:  And this is when she’s saying, the new girl is Kelly, right?

Curt: . Right.

Cammie:  I have a surprise for you.

Bug:  What’s your surprise? You got my bicycle?

Cammie:  No, [laughs] no. I got you a girl.

Bug:  Girl?

Cammie:  A new one.

Bug:  A newbie?

Cammie:  Yep. And she’s ready. And she’s– Oh, yeah.

Bug:  Who is she? Does she know me?

Cammie:  No, she’s untainted. Well, now she– I put my fingers in there, but you know–

Bug:  Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Cammie:  No, not like that–

Bug:  Whoa, whoa. I just heard a beep on the phone. Did you hear that too? Yeah.

Cammie:  Yeah. No. What was that?

Bug:  Did you [unintelligible  or anything?

Cammie:  Nope.

Bug:  Swear?

Cammie:  Yep.

Bug:  Okay, so they listening to our conversation.

Curt:  Their conversation’s somewhat coded, but she explains that she’s recruited this 16- or 17-year-old girl to prostitute for the group, identifies her and says, “Hey, why don’t you talk to her? She’s here.” And so, during one of these jail calls, Kelly gets on the phone and says, “Hi, this is who I am, nice to meet you.” And he exchanges some brief like, “Oh, hey, how’s it going?” And again, that’s good evidence for us because we’re showing the relationships.

Zibby:  Again, it’s a recorded call. The lack of discretion is staggering. I mean, they’re literally putting themselves on tape for you to hear.

Dave:  Right. You meet your boss in jail over the phone?

Zibby:  Yeah, I mean it’s wild.

Yeardley:  That is wild. Wow. And does she give her real name, did you say my name is Kelly? So, you have further direct evidence of or.

Curt:  No, they’re calling her, I think by a nickname, Itty Bit, which through investigations we’re able to do interviews. Ultimately, I interview all these people and we learn Itty Bit is in fact Kelly. And so, we were able to connect the dots that way after the fact.

Yeardley:  Was he physically and sexually and verbally abusive to all of his girls?

Curt:  I know a lot of them, he was. Cammie was his girlfriend, I guess, if you will. Granted, she’s also his bottom bitch. And so, they had a relationship as such, where they might have one-on-one relationship, but at the same time, she’s also his prostitute and she’s also in charge of helping keep his organization running while he’s in jail.

Yeardley:  What is Bug’s story? How did he become this big-time prostitution entrepreneur in his small town?

Curt:  Bug was a longtime criminal, like we mentioned. I think all the local law enforcement agencies had interactions with him. He’d been in and out of jail since he was a kid. He grew up locally, so he’s not implanting from some other community. So, we’re very familiar with him. And I think for him prostitution was just another way to make money, another hustle. I believe his mother was a prostitute. So, it’s a world that he grew up thinking is normal, I suppose. And if you think about it too, I told you, he sold drugs, he’s in a gang, and now we find that he’s selling kids. For him and– what I know about prostitution is that it’s a renewable resource for him.

 And so if you think about it, in regards to drug dealing, if he’s got an amount of drugs that he sells, he makes money one time, and the drugs are forever gone to whoever the consumer is. Whereas if he sells a kid, he can sell them hundreds of times and keep making money off of them. And so, for him, that was his new schtick, I guess, a way to keep making money.

Zibby:  That’s so dark. Were there more underage girls or more customers that you discovered throughout this investigation?

Curt:  Yeah. So, a couple of weeks after we end up finding Tanya, Andrew and all of them at the hotel, I get information about another girl who’s prostituting, and she’s 15 at the time. Her mom reports her as a runaway. This girl is Valerie. And so, what we learn is that mom says she runs away, she’s concerned, she’s prostituting. And that’s the extent of the information that we have. And so, at the time, we didn’t know if she was associated to Bug or his associates or Andrew or any of them. Turns out she wasn’t directly connected to Bug or his organization. But that led us down the rabbit hole of another underage kid prostituting. And through that, we were able to identify quite a few other customers of hers.

 Some of them were local men. One, I think, was a local taxi driver who she would provide oral sex to, to get rides to and from her prostitution calls. So, ultimately, she’s committing prostitution with him to further her prostitution activities, if that makes sense.

Yeardley:  Wow.

Zibby:  Do you go arrest these guys when you find out who those customers are, do you just go straight to their door or place of work and arrest them right there?

Curt:  We do. Yeah. So, as soon as I was able to identify for sure who these folks were, we would start off by going and having a conversation. And many times, they would just admit to what they were doing. Their typical strategy is not to say, “Oh, yeah, I had sex with an underage prostitute.” They would admit to the prostitution, but then maybe claim, oh, I thought she was so old or whatever.

Yeardley:  Yeah. Of course.

Curt:  So, then our job morphs into proving that he actually did know that they were kids and how we know that. But, yeah, we don’t neglect the customers at all, by any means, because they’re the driving force. I mean, without a demand for sex or money, there wouldn’t be a supply of it.

[Break 2]

Yeardley:  How long does it take to build this case against Bug before you go to trial?

Curt:  A good couple of years. From day one where we end up contacting Kelly and starting the investigation into him to the time that he was finally indicted on some of these charges. And again, a lot of that was us going back and finding all this historical evidence that we could use against him in a trial.

Yeardley:  Is he in jail the entire time those two years?

Curt:  Yeah, Bug stayed in jail locally for the moped incident. He was there long enough for us to get our case to where we were comfortable with it. At which point he gets indicted federally and he is charged with two counts of sex trafficking of minors. You’re probably thinking two counts doesn’t make sense since we’ve talked about all these underage kids. The difficult thing that I mentioned before is finding someone who wants to be a victim or willing to be a victim. So, when it all shook out, we had enough evidence to prove our case that he was directly involved with prostituting both Kelly and Tanya, and both Kelly and Tanya were willing to assist us with our case against Bug.

 As far as the other girls go, the evidence wasn’t as strong, maybe, or they were not willing to have any further contact with us on the law enforcement or prosecution side. And so many of them we just weren’t able to keep track of.

Yeardley:  I’m just curious, how come the feds get involved? It seems unusual. Usually don’t you guys just prosecute it on your own through your own agency? So, I wondered, is it because there are minors involved?

Curt:  Yeah, exactly.

Zibby:  And where were Bug’s so called bottom bitches, La Fonda and Cammie during this whole thing? Did you end up going after them as well?

Curt:  It’s a tricky situation because if you really look at it and you understand the dynamics of that life, which is hard to do, it’s hard to wrap your head around it.

Zibby:  Yeah.

Curt:  But you have a bottom bitch like La Fonda and Cammie, and they are victims in and of itself as well. They’re being forced to prostitute, and they probably don’t want to.

Zibby:  Right.

Curt:  However, they’re also involved with prostituting out kids, which is a bad thing also. So, where do you kind of weigh that out? I guess it just depends. For this particular case with La Fonda and Cammie, they were two different types of people. So, within the organization, La Fonda was kind of the angry, mean one that all these kids would describe. She was the one that would yell at them. She was the one that would push them around, and she was the one that would be mean and make them go out and prostitute, whereas Cammie. Cammie was like the soft, gentle, had a motherly touch, I guess. She would try to help them feel better when La Fonda was being mean and try to make them feel okay. And so, she had a different role. And it was almost like a good cop, bad cop scenario that they used against these kids.

Zibby:  Were they cooperative with your investigation?

Curt:  Cammie turned out that she decided to cooperate with us. And so, she, being deeply involved in the organization, had all the intimate details that we wouldn’t otherwise have. She provided us over the course of the investigation with some really good evidence that helped solidify our case against Bug.

Yeardley:  Like what?

Curt:  She had access to email accounts, phone records, laptop computers that they use to create these prostitution ads and post these prostitution ads. She had some financial records that helped support Bug’s role and the other folk’s role in the case. And so, she had all that detail that we wouldn’t have otherwise been able to obtain unless we were to come to some an agreement with her.

Yeardley:  And I’m assuming this wasn’t easy for Cammie because she’s also a victim of Bug, and talking to the police would mean some serious repercussions for her, right?

Curt:  Right.

[music]

Curt:  I am telling you now that whatever cooperation you’re going to give is going to be for you and you only, it’s ain’t for [beep] benefit [beep ] screwed.

Cammie:  I’ll do anything. I’m an open-minded person.

Curt:  I just want you to understand that in a way, I guess it is kind of telling. But it’s telling to help yourself out now.

Cammie:  Okay, but I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to–

Curt:  What do you got? You got your kids, right?

Cammie:  Huh? No, I don’t even have them.

Curt:  So you told me you wanted to see your kids, right?

Cammie:  Yeah.

Curt:  Okay. All right. You want to make a life for yourself. Everything else. Curtis and Rick laid it out before, okay. And they did a very good job that they’re trying not to be mean or anything else. They were honest with you.

Cammie:  [crosstalk] work with you guys.

Curt:  They were honest with you. They laid it out as it is, what they knew. Again– crosstalk]

Cammie:  I don’t want to live my life in fear because you guys have opened this and open that. “Oh, hey, by the way, [beep] do you guys understand where I’m coming from? That’s my problem.

Curt:  Do you think you’re the only one that’s going to be in fear?

Cammie:  It’s not about everybody else. I’m talking, remember? We’re talking about me.

Curt:  You.

Cammie:  I don’t like that. That’s pretty much like the only family I have. It’s the only place I’ve been accepted, the only anything. Okay, so you say. Okay, so Bug says this, that and the other. To hell with Bug right now.

Curt:  Yes, I know.

Cammie:  I still love [beep]. I still love [beep]. I still love [beep]. You guys don’t understand. I didn’t grow up with my family. I don’t have nobody. I don’t have nobody. My best friend that has my daughter. Do you think I get to talk to my daughter? No. Hell no. I can’t even pick the phone up and call my baby. I don’t have nobody and I can’t take the chance. And you guys screwed me over again just to put a fucking name on a paper to say that somebody told. You don’t understand.

 This is why when I had my mom call, I’m like, “You guys cannot say you talk to me. You can’t.” I don’t have nowhere else to go. You guys want me to stay here and cooperate? Are you guys going to pay for my hotel room and put it in your name and make sure that I’m safe and hiding? No. At least there I have a home. I have a family. I have people who I think care about me. And even if they don’t, being a stupid individual or dumbfounded or a weak minded whatever you want to call me? I don’t have anybody else, and my mom sure as hell can’t catch a flight up here to have her daughter back.

Zibby:  Wow.

Yeardley:  I didn’t expect that to get to me that way.

Zibby:  Yeah. And so, did she agree to help ultimately? Did she get any deal of some sort?

Curt:  Yeah, in this case, she agreed to testify and basically help us in whatever way we needed through the course of the investigation. And in return, she received a way more lenient sentence than some of the others. So, when it all was said and done with Cammie, she was convicted, but sentenced to a probation kind of situation. She never went to jail, never went to prison, and she was offered a second chance at life to try to do better for herself.

Zibby:  Do you know if she did?

Curt:  The last I heard is that she moved out of the area. She was clean from drugs, hadn’t been reoffending or committing any crimes. She was actually trying to become more involved with providing positive direction for other kids that might find themselves in a sex trafficking situation. So, trying to do right and trying to help these kids out so they could avoid falling into some of the same traps that she had herself.

Yeardley:  Oh, that’s good to hear. And what about La Fonda ? What happened to her?

Curt:  With La Fonda, she ended up not even showing, really any remorse. She didn’t think what she was doing was wrong in the least bit. Although she owned up to her role in the investigation, she was subsequently charged and convicted for sex trafficking of a minor. She got eight years in prison.

Dave:  Did Bug go to trial or did he plead?

Curt:  Bug pled out. When it was all said and done, we had mounds and mounds of evidence against him. And so, when the negotiations were occurring between the U.S. Attorney and Bug and his lawyer, it was one of those situations where, “Hey, we have this. You could be facing an even steeper sentence in prison, or if you plead out, we avoid trial, then you could take this lesser sentence.” And so, his lesser sentence that he was ultimately offered was the 17 years.

Zibby:  17 years. Were you disappointed that he took the plea instead of going to trial?

Curt:  No, I wasn’t, actually. We keep the families involved and the victims involved. And so, we ran through these scenarios with Kelly and with Tanya and their families. And one of their biggest fears all along was having to sit up in trial and testify against Bug with Bug in the room and watching and listening to it. And so, to avoid the whole scenario where they were put in a position to do that and have to recount all these terrible details that happened to them in their lives. They thought that 17 years was a fair trade when it came to not having to face him in a court situation.

Yeardley:  What about Andrew?

Curt:  Andrew also went to jail. We locked him up that day that we encountered him with the two little girls at the hotel room. I told you that he was very forthcoming with information. I continued interviewing him. I’d go to the jail and interview him several other times during the investigation. And with Andrew, he was self admittedly facing the same crimes for four or five of these girls that he directly admitted to pimping out. The same sort of thing happened where he and his lawyer started working with the U.S. Attorney’s office and the state prosecutor, and he agrees to testify against Bug and some of the others. He agrees to do whatever we needed to help him. And so, he ultimately negotiated a deal as well.

 The end result for Andrew is that he ended up getting convicted for several of these crimes and sentenced to eight years in prison.

Zibby:  So, once you removed Bug from the streets and you dismantled his organization, do you feel like that put an end to it? You know, because I’ve heard that sex trafficking of minors is really everywhere. So, do you ever feel as though you’re in a whack a mole game where you take down one bad guy only to have another one pop up over there doing the same bad stuff?

Curt:  Yes, I do. Unfortunately, it’s never going to go away. I don’t think. The way we approach it is to help as many people as we can. And so, in this particular group, when Bug went to jail and then ultimately to prison, he was removed from the equation. So, I felt good about that. He wasn’t allowed to directly victimize these people, although, he continued his jail calls and everything. But once we had some of these interventions with Kelly and Tanya and the other girls and said, “Hey, we’re the police. We know what’s going on. You need to stop or you need to get help or whatever.” We removed them from the equation as well. So, the organization pretty much fractured at that point. And we haven’t seen that any of them continued to be victimized at that point. But you’re exactly right.

 I mean, we just move on to the next Bug and the next Andrew and whoever. You just change the names and faces. But the activity that occurred in this case is continuing to happen in our community and elsewhere.

Zibby:  Based on your extensive work with the issue of sex trafficking of minors, what can you tell listeners who may not be aware of how much of an issue this is?

Curt:  Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, it’s something that a lot of people don’t know happens in our community. And this was certainly an eye-opening experience for us. Even, we know this stuff happens, we investigate similar crimes. But it’s when we really realized, I think, that there was a big problem in our community. And so, I actually started getting asked to do presentations for various groups, other law enforcement, other civilian groups, asking the same questions like, “Hey, what can we do to help? How can we try to reduce this from happening?” And so, one of the things that I think is the most important would just be to have that awareness that how easy it is for these kids in this particular case to get recruited right out of their high school into this seedy world that they can’t find themselves out of.

 Pay attention to your kids, like know what social media they’re using, know who they’re talking to and what kind of stuff they’re talking about. Granted, you probably have to do it in a way that your kid doesn’t feel like you’re spying on them, but in fact you are.

Yeardley:  Yeah, get nosy.

Curt:  Yeah, get nosy. But just knowing that it happens and how easily it can happen I think is just probably the best step to take. And then certainly if you find yourself in a situation where you think somebody’s involved in sex trafficking, report it to somebody. If you’re not confident to report it directly to the police, maybe tell someone at the school, tell a teacher or a school resource officer, tell your neighbor for that matter. But until we find out about it as law enforcement, we can’t start a process of getting an intervention with these folks.

Dave:  Just being involved, engaged parent.

Zibby:  Yeah. That’s powerful. And I think being an involved parent is different today than it was in the 90s when it just meant you pick up the landline down in the kitchen while you’re listening to your kid talk to their friend and make arrangements. Now you’ve got all these social media apps and outlets and it’s really easy to hide behaviors.

Dave:  It’s so much more complicated now. I mean, I can’t imagine having a cell phone in high school.

Yeardley:  Yeah.

Dave:  What trouble I could have gotten into. I mean, kids make bad decisions.

Yeardley:  Yeah. You especially.

Dave:  Me especially.

[laughter]

Yeardley:  Thank you so much for sitting down with us today, Detective Curt. We really appreciate it.

Zibby:  Yeah. What an eye-opening case.

Yeardley:  Indeed.

Curt:  Yeah, you’re welcome.

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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