Anderson - Seattle Vice: Strippers, Prostitution, Dirty Money, and Crooked Cops in the Emerald City

Table of Contents

FOR MO

Authors Note

In the eighties, convicted racketeer Frank Colacurcio Sr. told me that mob stories about him were made up. Fairy tales, he said. Twenty years later, with a few more prison stretches to his name, he told me, Organized crime, you just never had it here. If he meant the Mafia, true; if he meant himself, he was likely saying his crimes were sometimes disorganized, as his conviction rate indicates: seven felonies, one reversed.

His mob did incorporate some of the structural elements of the Mafia, or at least the Armyloyal volunteers willing to do mayhem, have sex, and drink beer. As future U.S. attorney general Robert F. Kennedy indicated in the fifties and Seattle mayor Greg Nickels said half a century later, Colacurcio was some kind of godfather. I believe that there is organized crime involved in at least that club and perhaps others, the mayor said of Franks flagship nudie joint in Seattle. Frank laughed. Oh, I think hes just trying to win an election, he told me. Its not the old days anymore, I should know.

He did. In the vaginal valley of Seattle vice, Frank was the polluted river that runs through it. Drawing from the historic tributariesbad cops, corrupt pols, cathouse madams, bookmakers, pornographers, and drug dealers, whose tales flow into histhe stripper king carried us from one Seattle century to the next, meandering through Tacoma, Portland, and the West. In the process, fact has blended with fiction, creating a Mafia mythology. But the preponderance of evidenceFranks central, decades-long role in the vice rackets and as head of an operation that reached into ten Western states and many of their prisonsaffirmed his place as a unique American crime figure. His story is told in hundreds of thousands of pages of law enforcement and court documents and the background interviews Ive had with investigators, attorneys, prosecutors, and Franks friends and foes, in addition to historical research through books and newspapers and my own past encounters with him.

He notched his first felony, a sex-related charge, during the Roosevelt presidency. He was charged with his eighth felony, a sex-related charge, under the Obama administration. It is an endurance record in lawbreaking rivaling, if not besting, New Yorks legendary Mafia godfathers. Really, how many of them could boast they were under indictment at age ninety-three and still trying to get laid?

Prologue

When the task force of government cars and wagons rolled into Frank Francis Colacurcios driveway and courtyard on a Monday morning in 2008, doors flew open and squads of local cops and federal agents poured out. They rushed to the entryway of the $1.2 million, sand-colored home with a swimming pool overlooking Lake Washington. The three-bedroom, quarter-acre ranch house, built in Franks heyday fifties and remodeled in 2004, was tucked into the side of the hill above Sheridan Beach. Its southern exposure looked away from the prying traffic that typically flew past on Bothell Way Northeast in Lake Forest Park. That day, cars slowed outside the compounds wall as drivers gawked at the scene: with all the FBI jackets, it might have looked like a national security incident. In fact, the lead task force investigator formerly worked on the FBIs international terrorism squad. But while Frank may have been considered an enemy combatant of sorts, his record was more that of an underwear bomber.

The front door opened, and the legendary stripper king appeared. The godfather of what might be called Nudity Inc.his half-century-old, once far-flung empire of topless and fully nude dance joints featuring lap dances and hand jobshad been a squat, barrel-chested brawler with wavy black hair and a thing for gold medallions. Now, in the doorway, he was a bent and balding grandfather of ninety-one with chicken-fuzz hair, greeting his landing party in a bathrobe. Search warrant, one of the feds said. No vice-raid virgin, Frank knew the drill. He stood back so the force could swarm in. Then he went to phone the lawyers.

His bathrobe didnt necessarily mean the old man had been roused from sleep. Rolled up in his robe pocket was $10,000, mostly in hundreds. He liked to be prepared. At his age, senior citizens tended to plan their day around activities that cause the least drooling and heart attacks. Frank liked to hit the bedroom floor running, cane in hand, anticipating drop-ins by one of his dancers. He gets laid every night, recalled one of the young women from the strip joints he has been operating for more than forty yearsin more recent times featuring full frontal, and backal, nudity. Dancers said he had a standing (well, laying) offer: earn up to $1,000 a day working at homehis. Its surprising that a guy so old still wants it so much, another dancer had told some of the investigators now pawing through Franks papers and searching his cupboards. He tried to get me to go and have sex with him for $500!

It had to be tempting for his underpaid girls. In the eighties, tired of restrictive state liquor laws and nosy inspectors, Frank converted his dance joints to soda pop clubs. To make up for the lost revenue, he began charging his dancers to strip. They were required to pay rent of more than $100 a shift, which they had to earn back, hopefully with a profit, from table dances and tips. Some werent successful and resorted to the hands-on approach. As one club manager told a dancer reluctant to have sex with a paying customer, Well honey, youve got to get in there and compete.

Frank liked to fish and play cards, but a toss in the hay was life itself. If he couldnt participate, he could watch, sometimes cutting peepholes into walls at his clubs, ogling girls in the dressing rooms or spying on them having sex with customers in the bar. On one occasion, a dancer warned Frank that sex was getting rampantly in and out of hand in the secluded VIP booths at Ricks, his nightclub in Seattle, just up the road from his Sheridan Beach spread. I think a couple girls are bad, she said. They do the real dirty stuff. Frank stopped her right there. Where are they? he asked. I need one!

This was not unexpected from a man whose 38-foot fishing boat was named 4PLAY. In the seven decades that law enforcement had been coming to his door, one way or another it was about sex. In 1943 it was a teen girl he was convicted of raping under the pretense of showing her the ghosts that haunted his familys Eastside farm. Sixty years later, it was a young woman whose nipple he decided to grabbecause he could. He was in his late eighties then and still feeding off the breast. He arose each day wondering how to get girls, or get money to get girls, or how to get girls to sell sex to get him money to get more girls. His wife, twenty-three years his junior, put up with it for three decades, then sent him divorce papers in prison. He had taken to keeping a number of girlfriends and several sets of booksthe ledgers he stuffed in his pockets and the ones he showed the IRS. He devised an accounting system he called ins and outs, as he once explained to a jury, wherein a chunk of the untaxed profits flows in and out and ends up as miscellaneous. That was partly why the feds showed up at his home that morning in 2008. They thought Frank was doing the ins and outs again, known as skimming, which had already earned him two of his five prison terms.

Frank was saying nothing. Maybe he was offended. Having money didnt always mean he embezzled it. His criminal record had forced him into so-called retirementhe preferred to be called a consultant to his own strip businessbut hed paid taxes on a lot of those millions too. Stocks, banks, and real estate could have a bad season, but a nude dancing concession is almost recession-proof, with a built-in stimulus. To Frank, the tax harassmentthis police businesswas petty. Once, in 2007, after hed supposedly retired, one of his club managers was arrested with several dancers for vice infractions at Ricks. The manager called Frank from King County Jail to make sure he knew they needed bail. The dancers were busted for the usual touching and groping violations, the manager said.