The Sex Market

CHAPTER III

THE SEX MARKET 

FOR A GOOD TIME in a hurry there was no place like Phenix. For the thousands of soldiers from Fort Benning who made The trip across the Chattahoochee River, to Phenix, a good time was synonymous with women.

Few places in the United States could offer the lonesome soldier or well-heeled civilian the choice of female companionship he could find in Alabama's bedroom city.

During the period from 1945 to 1954 there were over a thousand prostitutes plying their trade in Phenix City and immediate environs. This figure was verified by National Guard investigators from work records seized in the various assignation houses after military rule was clamped on.

One of the most notorious of these houses was Cliff's Fish Camp, or Highway 80 Fish Camp, operated by Cliff Entrekin. The Camp featured a small place in the front for serving catfish and hush puppies— a treasured southern dish— and an upstairs compartment which catered to another kind of trade.

Entrekin's Camp was located about six miles west of the city limits of Phenix City, on the highway to Montgomery, the capital of Alabama. It was constructed of plain unpainted concrete blocks.

Entrekin was first and last a business man. He garnered from eighty to one hundred thousand dollars a year from the efforts of the girls who worked for him. His was considered one of the high class houses in that area, where commercial sex could be found at price ranges to fit the individual pocketbook.

The Fish Camp did not cater to the shirt-sleeve trade. The minimum for a date was ten dollars, and the going price for a "straight date" was calculated on the basis of one dollar per minute which the customer spent behind closed doors with the girl of his choice.

Most of the patrons of the camp were officers and enlisted men from Fort Benning, though many of them could afford no more than one or two trips a month to this mecca of pleasure. On the nights that soldiers were paid at Benning. business at the Fish Camp was so rushing that girls had to be booked in from the syndicate. The syndicate was a highly organized prostitution ring which operated in a circuit that included Miami, Jacksonville, Savannah, New Orleans and Phenix City. It employed only young, beautiful girls, usually ranging in age from seventeen to twenty-three.

The capacity of the Fish Camp was twenty-four girls at a time. But when business was rushing, tables with mattresses on them were pressed into service and on some occasions a large dwelling house about a mile from the Camp was adopted as emergency quarters. The house was used at other times when, for any reason, the heat was on at the Camp.

When a customer went through the door at the back of the restaurant he found himself confronted by a husky bouncer whose job it was to keep order and to hold the watch on the customers. A signal from the house-man would bring all the unoccupied girls to the doorways of their respective rooms, where the buyer could make his choice.

Although the minimum was ten dollars, the customer was charged additionally for each minute over time and no customer was allowed more than thirty minutes. However, if a half-hour was contracted for ahead of time, a special rate of twenty-five dollars was offered. For her part, the lady uncovered only that portion of her body specified on the contract. It cost extra for the female to disrobe completely.

in addition to the "straight dates," special customers could obtain special services, which were paid for at rates of two and one-half times the regular tab. Work records on the girls showed that one such specialist earned eight hundred dollars in a single night, which she split fifty-fifty with the house. That was the regular division. The house got half of the earnings of each girl, and the girl contributed an additional ten per cent of her take for "overhead" operations.

The girls worked under strict house rules, and for any infraction of discipline, definite fines were imposed. The rules were posted for all to see, and Guardsmen found them still tacked to the walls when they raided the Fish Camp two months after the lid was clamped down on the notorious sin city. These rules prescribed a fifty dollar fine for drinking on the job; up to one hundred dollars for being late or for staying away from work without adequate excuse. Girls were not allowed to leave the premises during working hours without special permission, and the house had an iron-clad rule against the husband of any girl being at the establishment while his wife was working.

Strange as it seems, husbands often brought their wives to work at the sex-camp and picked them up after their shifts were over. In some instances, the girls had families in addition to a husband, and sometimes traveled in expensive trailers pulled by equally expensive automobiles.

The syndicate girls, or "circuit riders" as they were sometimes called, worked the Camp on special order. Of the approximately one hundred and fifty known prostitutes who worked the Phenix City territory at a given time, about thirty-five were members of the syndicate's stable.

The proven veteran wasn't the only kind of employee Entrekin hired. A twelve year old girl from Langdale, Alabama, was taught the fundamentals of the trade at Cliff's after a business associate brought her into the brothel. (This child was subsequently jailed briefly, the house having been notified early in the evening that a raid was pending, and the girls would have to remain for a short time in the lockup.)

A girl who eventually became one of Cliff's most sought after employees first went to the Fish Camp with her parents to eat, not knowing what occurred behind the closed doors.

"My first customer I had was a sergeant that Cliff brought over to me, and Cliff told the sergeant that I was a new girl and the sergeant replied that I was what he wanted," the girl related. "I went in the room with the sergeant and started to have an intercourse, when I started crying and got up and went out and sat on a bench the rest of the night. Cliff came out and talked to me and told me chat I would get used to it. After the second night working there," she added, somewhat poignantly, "it was not too hard on me."

When bullets from the gun of a lurking assassin blasted out the life of Albert L. Patterson just seventeen days after he had won nomination as state Attorney General, the syndicate was first to sense the full implication. Within two days the word had been passed down and the syndicate girls, along with scores of independent operators, began the trek across the river to Columbus. The syndicate members left by train, bus and plane for new assignments somewhere along the circuit. The other prostitutes began competing for business in Columbus or made connections in nearby towns and cities in Georgia and Alabama. Some of them stopped in Aiken, S. C, site of the U. S. Government's huge hydrogen bomb plant.

Catering to a high paying clientele, the Fish Camp felt obliged to offer the best merchandise that could be obtained. The girls were recruited from cities and hamlets over an area of five states and a "talent scout" devoted full time to the job of finding and obtaining new girls. Some of the methods employed will be discussed more fully in the chapter on B-girls, since many of these stepped over the borderline from that profession into prostitution.

The Fish Camp was perhaps the best organized and managed establishment in the Phenix City environs, which offered sex for cash, but there were many others at different levels. There was the Little Uchee Fish Camp, about twelve miles south of the city, which rivaled Cliff's both in the volume of business and in the quality of entertainment offered. It was operated at one time by Ernest Youngblood and "Heavy" Daugherty.

The Little Uchee, named after a creek that honed its way through the rocks nearby, catered to the heavy cash trade, but prices were not so high as at Cliff's. House rules were not so strict or well defined, but nevertheless the girls who worked for even a week around Phenix City knew that Daugherty and Youngblood were not characters to be trifled with.

In addition to catfish and sex. Little Uchee offered various forms of gambling to its customers, and those in the know reported that a fellow also could get a "lift" with the needle or a pill.

Human depravity in its lowest forms could find expression and outlet at Hill Top House, also located about twelve miles south of Phenix on the Sandfort Road. It was run by Wilson McVey, and catered to the five dollar per date trade. It was almost always "off-limits" to military personnel, but soldiers by the score frequented the house in civilian clothes and sometimes in uniform.

Perhaps Army authorities at Benning could be blamed in part for vice conditions in Phenix, but it should be said in their behalf that most of the prostitution houses were "off limits," even though there was no strict enforcement of the ban. Since the houses were widely scattered, the military police and men of the Army's Criminal Investigation Division would have been hard pressed to have kept amorous soldiers from throwing away their pay in the flesh pots of Russell County. On pay days at the Army camp, soldiers by the thousands poured across the river by automobile, bus, and taxicab for a night of revelry which too often ended with many of them returning to camp broke, drugged, and beaten almost beyond recognition by thick-armed bouncers who used small lengths of chain wrapped with tape to subdue anyone who dared to make an issue of prices or who squawked too loud about the methods some of the joints used to separate him from his money.

The collection of vicious, hand-made weapons, as well as rifles and pistols, which guardsmen seized in raids on the sin dives of Phenix, would fill a small arsenal. In addition to chains, cut in lengths of about fourteen inches, guardsmen collected a basketful of metal *'knucks," some of which had spikes on them to add to the devastation they could wreck on the face of the victim. There were lead-filled palm-slappers and black-jacks made of stiff springs, one end filled with babbitt.

The Hill Top House was one of the places noted for the beating of soldiers and "muggings." And the brutality was not always confined to customers.

Any girl who got too far out of line might find her features changed by Tommy Capps, near-sighted bouncer, or one of the other thugs on McVey's payroll. Even more dreaded by some of the girls than the facial massage, was the work-over several received where it wouldn't show. A kick in the stomach can put a "working girl" our of business for a long time in addition to spoiling an evening.

Hill Top House, also called the House on the Hill, was at one time the largest of the bordellos. Business became so rich in its heyday that a two-car garage was converted into a four bed make-do adjunct. Still insufficient to accommodate the crowds, facilities were broadened. This time, a mesh wire rabbit hutch was convened; the rabbits being removed so humans could do what, in Phenix City, rabbits didn't do any better. The McVey gang ate the rabbits.

McVey was cruel and this very cruelty reacted against him and in time he was no longer at the top of the heap. Before his fail, he once beat a girl with his fists and elbows. He pistol whipped a GI with a .38 revolver, and a cab driver who was helping McVey flayed at the victim with a blackjack. A second cabbie, rushing into the fray, calculated wrong and arrived just in time to receive a wallop In the eye from his buddy.

The most inhuman thing McVey did was to get a big butcher's knife after a customer who hadn't finished with his broad and who refused to leave until he had. McVey and his boys began forcing the man outside, but the customer fought back. Leaving the fight to get the knife, McVey returned and took one vicious swing. The blade lopped off the man's fingers.

Hill Top House was the jumping off place. It was for transients, the down and outers, the low class. Though un- sanitary and weedy, even by Phenix City standards, it could not begin to rival in those respects another establishment operated by McVey. This was known as The Social Club, and was a couple of miles closer to the city than Hill Top House.

The only thing social about The Social Club was the four small cubicles in the rear of the two-by-four "club." Each provided barely enough room for a filthy, sway-bellied bed in which the girls entertained.

For everything bad in Phenix, it was always possible to find something worse. Even The Social Club was higher in scale than the Georgia-Alabama Game Club, Ownership or management of the "club" was obscure, but it was located on property belonging to Harry LaRue. It was hidden in a thickly wooded area several miles from Phenix, and could be reached only by a winding, dusty road.

Guardsmen, led by Major General Walter J. (Crack) Hanna, came upon the place while searching for a cache of gambling devices which LaRue himself had tipped them about. LaRue met the Guardsmen at the highway intersecting the dirt road. They knew only that they were to meet man in a white jeep who would lead them to where some slot machines were concealed. LaRue and his wife were in the jeep, and Guardsmen followed them to their home, where LeRue surrendered two slot machines. Unsatisfied with the find. General Hanna ordered a thorough search of the area and they soon found a large, metal building a half-mile behind LaRue's home. LaRue was brought to the scene and led the search party inside.

A sign outside bore the name of the Georgia- Alabama Game Club and advised that cock fighting was going on at the location.

Inside, the Guardsmen found a smooth, walled-in area for pitting fighting cocks, and bleacher seats around the ring for spectators. There were slot machines and other gambling devices, a bar and drink stand and a place where sandwiches could be purchased. But what puzzled Guardsmen most was a series of small cubicles around the sides of the building, so that a person had to bend over to crawl inside. There were no water or sanitary facilities, but piled in a comer were several filthy bunk mattresses which showed they had been used on the dirt floor of the crawl-in rooms.

Veteran Army officers, whose combined experience covered most of the face of the globe, agreed that they had never seen more sordid facilities for dispensing sexual satisfaction.

All of the places mentioned so far were located outside of the police jurisdiction of Phenix City, but all were a part and parcel of the Phenix City atmosphere and influence. Inside Phenix City proper there were scores of prostitution contact points and many places where facilities were provided for customers on the premises.

The largest prostitution operation in the city was centered at The 431 Club, partially owned by red-haired Rudene Smith, who, incidentally, was the only woman ever to occupy any position of real authority or influence in the B-girl and prostitution setup. She rose from a seven dollar a week counter girl, so the story goes, to be half owner of The 431 Club, The Silver Slipper Cafe and the Circle Motel.

The latter was just across the road from The 431 Club, and National Guard investigators reported they found rental turnover to run as high as twenty times in a single night. In addition to operating several businesses, all geared to the fleecing of soldiers, Rudene also found time to recruit new female talent on her own. She was one of the three or four women to be caught in the gigantic vice cleanup net spread by Guardsmen. One of the charges against her was for the alleged enticing of girls into prostitution.

To explain why so few women were charged with any offense growing out of the Phenix City vice cleanup, it should be pointed out that General Hanna, early in the investigation, announced that he was not seeking to prosecute the individual prostitute or B-girl, but was after the ring-leaders, whether male or female. In pursuance of this policy, about one hundred girls were picked up, or volunteered for questioning by the investigators. Some of them were held in jail for periods ranging up to a week but almost ail of them were released without charges. Many of the girls assisted the cleanup by giving valuable information on undercover operations around and in Phenix City,

Some of the girls were held in jail at times for protection and were afforded the additional safeguard of having their identity kept secret when they were taken before the special Grand Jury to testify. This was made possible by the cooperation of the newspapers and wire services covering the story. All agreed to withhold names and pictures where the safety of the witness might be at stake. Grand Jury Foreman Cloyd Tillery made the request of reporters after the Grand Jury had found that a curtain of fear was causing many witnesses to hold back information or to hide out to keep from being questioned.

While most of the so-called cafes clustered on the Alabama side of the Chattahoochee River at the Fourteenth-Street Bridge were little more than dope and gambling dives, and prostitution contact points, the operations of these places will be discussed fully in chapters dealing with gambling and B-girl rackets.

But no discussion of prostitution in Phenix would be complete without mention of a place known as The Square Dance Club, at the time of the vice crackdown. Under different management at various times, the club was known for years as the French Casino, and was one of the hottest spots in a town that sizzled from border to border from the heat and passion generated in its half a hundred sex dives and clip joints.

For sheer brazenness, the French Casino or Square Dance Club could not be topped. In flashing neon on each side of the club it advertised "GIRLS." In a glass-enclosed space in front of the club were posted the pictures of scores of scantily clad hustlers. The glamor pictures were changed from time to time as new bodies were brought into the merchandise mart under the guise of entertainers. The Casino, or Square Dance Club, was one of the spots where it was an even money bet an unattached male could not get from the front door to the middle of the dimly-lighted room without being approached by one of the house-girls. The same thing was true in almost all of the cafes which served little food but much drink and entertainment, along with the occasional "knock-out drops" for the unwary customer who was foolish enough to flash a heavy wallet or pay for drinks with a large bill

To attempt to list all of the prostitution contact places in a city where sex was one of the main industries, would amount, almost, to listing a business directory of the town. Places like "Ma" Beachie's Swing Club, which is known all over the world, through having entertained perhaps a million soldiers from the beginning of World War II, until the day the guardsmen marched in, will be treated elsewhere in this book.

From records examined by guardsmen and investigators, it appeared that prostitution in Phenix City and the outlying areas amounted to a one to two million dollar a year business, with the highest point being reached during war years when Benning maintained a complement of eighty thousand officers and men. There were many briar patch operators, and it would be impossible to estimate with any degree of accuracy just how many girls practiced the world's oldest profession on their own, or with the aid of a pimp to drum up business. Guard investigators made public the names of five persons they listed as the bosses, or ring-leaders of prostitution.

On that list were Rudene Smith, R. W. (Heavy) Daugherty, Ernest Youngblood, Entrekin and H. C. Edwards. Not one of the five ever made any public denial of the charge.

In Phenix, as in any other city where crime, vice and gambling are major industries, the operators must pay off to law enforcement officers and other officials for the privilege of operating unmolested. The payoffs ran heavy in Phenix, with both the sheriff's office and the police force demanding substantial cuts, and some public officials giving the sign of the open palm. The usual rate for a house was one-third of the net rake after it had been divided with the girls who earned it. For years the payoffs were made in a single lump sum and the split was made by the minions of the law. Then a disagreement between the two law enforcing factions caused a split of the contributions. After that payoffs were made each week to an officer from the police department and a deputy sheriff. The payoffs from prostitution, according to investigators, amounted to as much as seven thousand dollars a week.

In Alabama there is no direct statute prohibiting the operation of a house of prostitution outside any city or its police jurisdiction. All cities have ordinances against disorderly conduct and fornication. There is a state statute on fornication, but it is no answer to the operation of assignation houses since the act must be proved.

All of the persons mentioned in this chapter as being connected with prostitution, with the exception of Tommy Capps, have been indicted and some of them convicted on charges growing out of the prostitution racket. In most cases the state could do no better under existing laws than to indict a house operator on vagrancy charges, with an occasional charge of enticing a female into prostitution, as in the case of Rudene Smith. Had investigators been backed up with adequate laws, they could, without question, have made many more cases out of the gigantic prostitution racket.

As it was, the National Guard wrote "finish" to the highly organized sex sale. The operators were either jailed, run out of business, or both.

Many of them sought new areas for their operation, and others turned to new fields of vice. Many of the drivers for the multiple taxicab companies in Columbus and Phenix City were part and parcel of the racket, hauling soldiers or civilians to the outlying houses at the drop of a hint. Many of them did not hesitate to make the suggestion to a lonely GI that he could find surcease for his loneliness in female companionship for a price.

Some of the drivers had deals with the houses by which they would receive two dollars for bringing in a customer. Trade was brisk, and on weekends or paydays there would often be more taxicabs on the roads in and around Phenix City than there would be pleasure cars. Competition for trade was keen, both among the house operators and the drivers who transported about seventy five per cent of the trade to and from Columbus.

With the closing of the houses, many of the drivers switched to the role of pimps, hauling customers to the girls scattered in apartments and private homes in Columbus and other nearby cities. Many of the patrons were carried a distance of fifty miles to a notorious house midway between Columbus and Macon, Georgia.

The cabbies had to work harder for their two dollar tips this way and the fringe benefits they had enjoyed in Phenix were harder come by. One driver who had performed above and beyond the call of duty in toting men about Phenix was rewarded with a chicken dinner by the proprietor of a cat house.

The male "madames" of Phenix paid for protection from raids with large sums of money, but the girls often were called upon to contribute to the payoff with the one commodity they had for sale.

A list of regular customers was seized at Cliff's Fish Camp, and it carried the names of many persons prominent in Russell County. Among them were some who held responsible positions in the community or in politics. On occasions when any of the "brass" came a-calling, the entertainment was on the cuff.

Among the VIPs who frequented the sex-camps were many who were addicted to abnormal forms of satisfaction. As a number of girls later attested, they were required to perform acts which were painful, disgusting and sometimes humiliating without receiving any payment. This was, of course, a kind of blackmail on the part of these leading citizens.

The girls who carried on this world famous sport were a blase', hard-talking lot. They never were so much at home as when with a group of their sisters-under-the-skin, or with a man whom they felt might understand them. Some of them, probably a minority, reached out pathetically for this male insight.

When the women hoisted their skirts and traipsed across the bridges into Columbus, some of them found themselves tied down to the area, just as many other wage-earners learn it is difficult to leave home.

Purely in the interest of scientific research, one of the authors visited an ex-member of the sorority at her Columbus home. It was broad daylight and children were romping over the grassless front yard of the dilapidated house. Most active of the children was a husky, little blond fellow who led a troupe of three in and out of the wooden, frame dwelling.

A short, rather squatty woman with her hair in curlers answered the knock at the door. This girl had been in the game in Phenix City for years. She had been known around the county as mistress of one of the whore masters.

With her hair in curlers, the girl didn't look worth ten dollars. In fact the entire picture was one of filth and laziness. Even with all the dough she had raked in during her years of bedroom exercise, she was living hand to mouth. This may have been partly because seven of the children were hers although she wasn't married.

Since the cleanup, she had taken a "respectable" job in Columbus, but she would meet gentlemen friends by appointment. Her own estimate of life as a Phenix City prostitute was startling.

She said that ninety- percent of the men who patronaged the houses got their sexual kicks in other than normal ways. This percentage seemed extremely high and probably wouldn't stand up under a thorough study of the facts.

Quite a few of the customers simply enjoyed disrobing completely and having one to three girls whip them. The girls would be fully dressed, They would beat the men with belts or their hands, as the customer preferred. Generally the girls got a big kick out of the action and giggled while performing the chore.

There were those individuals who had highly personalized systems; such as, for instance, the man who asked his girl to undress, put a lampshade on her head, cross her eyes, and say "goo goo." And, disgusting though it was, there were a handful of men who asked only for the girl to urinate in their face.

This was the seamy side of Phenix City.

The slender young girl who used to go to Cliff's to eat catfish with her parents learned of the main business function of that establishment by accident. She said she left the table and by chance looked into one of the rooms. There she saw a man and woman performing the sex act. She, herself, went into the trade because she needed money, she said.

She had a child who needed an eye operation. A job at Cliff's offered the best chance for quick money.

As did other girls of the night, she left Phenix following the cleanup and took up residence out in the country beyond Columbus. She, too, applied for and received a decent job, but when her employers learned of her past life, they dismissed her.

For breaking the prostitution rings and uncovering evidence against the whoremasters and political protectors, the National Guard chose Warrant Officer Ray McFall, a 34-year-old Birmingham postman, who did one of the best investigative jobs in the entire county. He traveled hundreds of miles tracking down principals, worked long hours obtaining confessions and wrapping up his cases against the big shots. McFall must stand out as one of the men to whom the state is most indebted for cleaning up a sordid situation. In some of his work he was assisted by M/Sgt, D. M. Lawson, also of Birmingham.

These two men proved beyond doubt that in Phenix, America had its Number One city in sex, sin, and deviation.