Butcher, Baker: The Untold Story, Part 3
After escaping Robert Hansen’s basement torture chamber, Cindy Paulson faced a raft of choices. Her most pressing decision: Should she stay or should she go? The “go” side was fueled by local cops who refused to believe her — to the point they even doubted the minute-by-minute re-creation of her near-death experience. Cindy was not inclined to help them further. That meant going back to the Lower 48 — to Seattle and, perhaps, beyond. Little did she know that her escape would, too soon, drag her back to Alaska. But life on the margins doesn’t always think that far ahead.
After the Hansen escape I felt oddly at odds with the world, if that makes sense. Like I was starting over with nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. I still had my life. And, hey, I wasn’t the first eighteen-year-old to wonder, what’s next? I’d long ago watched my sisters walk the plank. Graduate high school. Get married. Move out. Have kids. But that was not my fate. And not the priority of the day.
Cindy Paulson
The die was cast when Nate — Cindy’s pimp — said he, too, wanted out of Anchorage. He was, for the record, a young, slender, medium-skinned black man – good looking with long hair that was wavy and stylish. None of that helped him now. All this cop talk made him nervous. He wasn’t handling it. He already had a police record. An FBI identification number. He didn’t need this mess.
Because Nate was from Portland, Oregon, that’s where they went. And, since Portland is a largely segregated city, that meant they went back to the Albina neighborhood, where Nate’s mother lived. Then as now it was a majority Black neighborhood with small, tidy houses. Nate was looking forward to this return. His cream and white Cadillac Seville was there. There was no way he could ship that car to Alaska. It was too expensive. Took too long. For a newly minted pimp like him, that car was more than his meal ticket. It was his identity.
When we got to Portland, at first I went and stayed at Nate’s mom’s house. I slept in her bed with her. I was freaked out. Yeah, I had to sleep. Just sleep. I… I was just freaking, so I just slept in bed with her. And I’m having all sorts of thoughts. They were dark thoughts. I’m thinking, “What kind of man couldn’t protect me?” Nate didn’t do nothing. He couldn’t protect me. I mean, you know, I’m damaged.
Cindy Paulson
Back In Business
Next thing Cindy knew, she was having another conversation with Nate. He was running out of money and she was going to have to do something. Which meant only one thing. She was supposed to go out and work “the track,” where men wheel their vehicles in circles to find ladies of the night. Mostly, it’s sex in the cars, but sometimes it’s a cheap motel, like the Knickerbocker in Portland, where Cindy parked for liaisons before she met Nate. This time around, she was not so lucky.
I get busted. And Nate has to bail me out. I think he put up his fur coat as part of my bail money. Then I get busted again, right away, because they’re on to me. You know, I don’t know if I was the number one person or what, but I got busted twice in just a few days. And I had to go. I couldn’t stand to go to court, I couldn’t pay the fines. And I didn’t really belong out there in the first place, not in my state of mind.
So Nate goes out and he gambles. Him and his friend, they get the money together and they ship me back to Alaska. And Nate says just send, just send me the money. You know, basically he just wanted to get rid of me. In hindsight, that’s what it was, you know what I mean? This pimpin’ and hoeing is a cold ass business, that’s for sure.
Cindy Paulson
No Escape
Bad as it was in Anchorage, the local police weren’t entirely sleeping on Cindy’s case. They were in fact trying to put it to bed. Investigator Bill Dennis of the APD contacted the Big Timber Motel. That was Cindy’s last known address. The clues that implicated her started to pile up. One, a large telephone bill from the Big Timber to a telephone number in Portland, OR. Dennis called. The number rang to the 6th Ave. Motel in downtown Portland. Inv. Dennis immediately called his counterpart in Portland, one Det. Trummer of the Portland Vice Squad. The Anchorage cops were now closing in on Cindy.
"Approximately 2 hr. later," Inv. Dennis wrote in his police report, "TRUMMER returned my phone call and told me that PAULSON'S real name was Felisha Lee REDMOND and that she had been arrested on June 24, 1983, for soliciting for prostitution. He stated he would send me a photograph of her so I could confirm that this was the same person that I was investigating in the alleged sexual assault.
"On July 1, 1983, I received from Det. TRUMMER, Portland, P.D. Drug and Vice Division, a copy of the rap sheets of PAULSON, [her pimp] and color photographs. Upon observing the color photographs it was determined that Felisha REDMOND and Cindy PAULSON was one and the same [person]."
ANCHORAGE POLICE CONTINUATION REPORT, July 1, 1983
The coup de grace came that very same day. The official report read: “Since she had been arrested in Portland on prostitution charges on June 24, 1983, [s]he was no longer missing, and apparently in good health. No further action was deemed necessary by INV. DENNIS.”
Case Closed
Cindy was now officially out of the picture. If there was a “bonus,” it was that she could slink back to Alaska on the sly. Which is exactly what she did. Of course, that didn’t mean she was ready for a return booking in Anchorage. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
So what happened was, I get back to Anchorage and I’m working. The girls are taking care of me. I would just keep going out and doing, you know, getting a little money. I don’t think I was making $500 a night. I had to pay my motel rent and then Nate would want me to send him money. So I was just sending money down to him.
Along the way I met some people, ohhh gosh, I don’t even know their names, and that’s how I met John and Morgan. They ran a club called Kitty’s. After being on the street a while, I saw Morgan and told her that I wanted to get off the street. She said, “Fuck that girl. What have you been going through?” And I told her, you know, I’m scared to date. I’m scared, you know. She asked me, “What’d your people do, leave you?” And I told her, “Yeah, he went down to the lower 48 and sent me back up here by myself.” And you know, if you think about it, that’s pretty shitty. She said well, come in the club with me and John.
So Morgan just took me under her wing. She was from New York and she liked Alaska because it was so slow paced compared to New York. Yeah, yeah, man, this was a gold mine to her. She was super savvy. She had been around the block more than a couple times. And she knew. She gave her pimp some of her money, but not all of it. She knew how to fold her money just right, keep it right there. She knew what she was doing. And I trusted her. I tucked up under her wing and she said, “Well come [to Kitty’s] and try and dance.” I was like, I couldn’t do it. So she got me drunk off tequila and let me get up there. ‘Cause I had a rhythm. So then she got me into it and that’s where it led from there.
I stopped sending money down to Nate.
Cindy Paulson
Life At Kitty’s
Kitty’s – also known as “Miss Kitty’s or “Kitty’s Playclub” – was a topless-bottomless club strategically located along the downtown Fourth Avenue strip. At any one time there were multiple clubs in the vicinity, most within close proximity. Customers prowled among them, picking and choosing as they went. Like most of its competitors, Kitty’s advertised, “Girls, Girls, Girls,” and “New Girls Arriving Weekly.”
It was a place that favored dancers like Cindy — on the lam from some unspecified trouble, out for the quick buck — and maybe a ticket home. Their financial model was influenced by the playbook of Frank Colacurcio, an organized crime figure who dominated the Anchorage topless-bottomless club scene. He had joints like the Wild Cherry, the Booby Trap, Goldie’s and the Good Times Lounge. Robert Hansen had, in fact, picked up some of his victims from those very venues.
Colacurcio’s clubs were influential because they featured a series of employment practices that raked in money at the dancer’s expense. The club skimmed the difference. Those in Colacurcio’s orbit sent it straight to him. One of his clubs sent him as much as $60,000 per month. Here’s how it worked:
Nude dancers paid a $2.00 per hour “entertainer fee” for the privilege of working at the club. There was no salary. Dancers pushed so-called “lady drinks.” They cost $6.00 each – $3.00 to the house, $3.00 to the women. Table dances – highly trafficked at these places – started at a $5.00 minimum, with $2.00 to the house and $3.00 to the dancer. Dirty dances paid more – up to $20.00 per dance, with a similar split percentage.
Stripping for the Strippers
Kitty’s had, in fact, stripped away some of those practices. For Cindy, that meant the prospect of earning more than she could at the other clubs — if, in fact, they would have her.
Every night we’d have to pay the DJ and the bartender. That was it. As long as they were paid, everybody was happy. You didn’t have to fill out an application to dance or anything. We were supposed to drink certain drinks. We only drank the champagne and tipped the DJ. And actually, we just tossed the champagne. Anybody could come in and dance, you know. Later on, I found out why: Miss Kitty’s was going bankrupt.
Cindy Paulson
Kitty’s was struggling so much that by the mid-80s it started featuring male dancers in an attempt to attract couples. But there was one advantage to this business model, as Cindy saw it.
Once she switched from working in the streets to working a club, she was able to go to the after-hours clubs that catered to workers in the sex trade. Pimps and their girls, mostly. These places thrived for a very particular reason: these are night people. They work while the so-called “normal” folks sleep. By the time they’re done, everything else is closed. The after-hours club is their respite.
Come to find out, most folks are pretty much the same once they get off work. They want to chat, have a beer and get something to eat. They want to push aside their labors and relax.
Purchase Butcher, Baker
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