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Somebody’s Daughter
Inside an International Prostitution Ring
Phonse Jessome
MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
This book is dedicated to the memory of Joe Jabalee, a teacher who always found the time to foster the talents of his students and to help them develop a strong sense of self worth. You will live on in the accomplishments of those students, Joe. For those of us you have left behind, we miss you.
Contents
Preface
Part One: Horror and Hope
Part Two: Stacey and Annie Mae
Part Three: Taunya and the Big Man
Part Four: From the Brink of Death
Part Five: Operation Hectic Heats Up
Part Six: Crime, Punishment, and an Uncertain Future
Preface
First, I want to offer a few words on purpose and approach. This book is not an academic assessment of the problem of juvenile prostitution in Canada, nor does it suggest solutions to that problem. My intention here is to provide a window on that violent underworld so you, the reader, can have a clearer understanding of who the girls in the tight skirts really are.
All the incidents described in this book are real, although some of the dates, times, places and names have been altered. The current and former prostitutes who agreed to share their stories asked that their names be changed, and that has been done. The jailed pimps who cooperated in the research for this book made the same request, and it has been honored. The names of other pimps who would not cooperate, but whose stories are contained in this book, have also been changed. This approach permitted me the luxury of combining certain stories to make this a more concise and readable book. There are those who will compare this book to the well-publicized cases it describes and draw conclusions as to the real identities of the pimps and prostitutes. That would be a mistake; some of the characters presented here have been created from the experiences of more than one person involved in those cases. My purpose was not to repeat the coverage given to those incidents in the media, but rather to take you inside the lives of the people caught up in them.
Many people have contributed their time and expertise in order to make this book possible and to them I say thank you. I will not individually list them because to do so would risk omitting someone and consequently offending a person to whom I owe a debt of gratitude. Many of the people you will meet in the pages of this book, many more are not identified but have added to the content in various ways. One person I wish to single out is Miles States, a former pimp who had no reservation in sharing his experiences and allowing his name to be used. He is a valuable and, unfortunately, underutilized resource.
Book writing is very much a team effort. My name is on the cover, but there are others without whom it would never have been completed. I would like to thank my publisher Dorothy Blythe at Nimbus. Also a special thanks to Joanne Elliott who worked long and hard to chase these pages to the printer. Perhaps no one worked as hard on this book as my editor Liane Heller who took a mass of information and helped shape it into a digestible form.
I thank my employer, ATV, for allowing me to use the resources of its considerable video archive to supply most of the pictures in this book. Thanks to Kevin “fuzzy” Hilliard and Gary Steele for transforming the moving pictures of the video tape into the pictures contained here.
Finally, thanks to the task force officers who shared their experiences with me. To those officers whose names and stories I did not use, do not feel offended. Your efforts and experiences have been included in the stories of those officers I choose to represent the larger group in this book.
Part One: Horror and Hope
It was late in January 1992 and nineteen-year-old Annie Mae Wilson was spending the final moments of her life watching television. Annie Mae was lounging on a couch in her sister’s apartment in the north end of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, enjoying some time with the new man in her life, her new pimp. Annie Mae ignored the irritating sound when the old brown phone in the kitchen began to ring. Unlike the newer phones with the electronic warble, Annie Mae’s phone had a real bell inside activated by a tiny wire connected to a small lead weight that slammed repeatedly into the bell when someone called. It was appropriate enough that a bell sounded; the call represented the tolling of the bell for Annie Mae.
Annie Mae’s sister took the call and shouted to the nineteen-year-old. When Annie Mae heard the familiar voice on the line, she knew she was in trouble. Bruno Cummings was in a rage. Bruno was calling from another Dartmouth apartment where he was playing cards with a group of friends. Like Bruno, they were also pimps. Bruno was upset because in his opinion he, not the young man on the couch in Annie Mae’s sister’s apartment, was her “man” on Hollis Street in Halifax and he knew she had not been working for him. Annie Mae’s decision to switch pimps didn’t really bother Bruno; it was how she was doing it. Pimps take their game seriously and don’t like anyone breaking the rules. When a girl leaves one pimp and chooses another she is required under the code of The Game to pay her former pimp a leaving fee. Leaving fees are one of the methods, torture and terror being two others, used by pimps to keep young women from breaking free of the prostitution game. The fees run from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, depending on a girl’s age and appearance and the level of respect her pimp has earned in the street. Contrary to popular myth, there are very few street pimps who share the profits with their young girls. Pimps take all the money and give their girls an allowance for clothing and food, ensuring that a young woman cannot save enough money to pay her own leaving fee. If a girl wants to break free of a pimp she usually approaches a new man and convinces him to pay the fee, but the girl is still in The Game.
Annie Mae had been a prostitute since she was fourteen and she knew the rules. By not paying the leaving fee Annie Mae was committing the ultimate act of defiance: she was showing complete disrespect to her man or, in the words of the card-playing pimps, “dissin’ Bruno, big time.”
Bruno knew he had to regain control of Annie Mae. If he let her walk away without paying a fee, his short career as a pimp was over. The message would spread in the street in minutes; Bruno’s girls were open targets for any pimp who was shopping for someone new. No pimp would ever bother to pay Bruno a leaving fee again. Bruno did not like the idea of supporting himself with his part-time, legitimate job, bagging groceries. He had already lost more in the poker game that afternoon than he could make at the super market in a week.
Annie Mae knew she had gone too far when she slammed the phone down and now she paced her sister’s apartment trying to decide what to do. Annie Mae had worked the streets of Halifax, Montreal and Toronto for more than five years. She knew an angry pimp was not to be trifled with and she knew she was once again getting herself into trouble. Annie Mae had developed a reputation that was not all that uncommon in prostitution. She was known as a “Choosy Suzy,” a girl who liked to jump from one man to another. None of the pimps felt Annie Mae was a threat to The Game, they considered her a lifer who was just a little restless. Annie Mae thought she could get away without paying Bruno a fee because he was a minor player. At least that was what she had hoped. Bruno, she knew, was considered small time by most of the players. He had no ambition and never bothered running his girls in Montreal or Toronto. Bruno was content to make a few dollars from his girls in Halifax and then live the big life wasting it all at the poker table with the real players. But Annie Mae now realized she had misjudged Bruno; he would not stand for her leaving without paying the fee. She decided she better take the initiative. Bruno
had not mentioned where he was calling from but Annie Mae knew how to reach him. She quickly dialed the number of Bruno’s pager and left a message for him to call her. It was one of Bruno’s card-playing buddies who was wearing his pager that afternoon and he returned the call.
Annie Mae was on the right track when she realized the mistake she had made. Her problem was in the approach she took when she tried to fix it.
“You tell him when he gets some man sense he can give me a call,” she told his buddy. Annie Mae had instantly gone from being frightened to defiant and instead of easing the tension between herself and her former pimp, she had unwittingly pushed Bruno to the breaking point.
When the card player wearing Bruno’s pager passed on her angry message, everyone at the table heard it. There were a few chuckles but one man was not laughing. Richard “Biker” Benson flashed a sinister smile when he heard what Annie Mae had to say. Biker was an older, well-respected player who had girls in Montreal and Toronto. He was also a violent man. He did not like Annie Mae and had slapped her around once—after she had left his brother, another pimp. Now Biker could force Bruno into dishing out some pimping persuasion to the errant girl while he watched the fun. He enjoyed beating his girls and seeing other pimps beat their girls almost as much as he enjoyed the hefty profits he earned in The Game.
“Bruno, you ain’t no man at all. You think you got respect, and you let a ’ho dis’ you like that. Man, you’re nothin’.” Biker pulled the right strings as he taunted Bruno while the younger pimp tried his best to ignore it. The other card players picked up the theme and Bruno began pacing the room as his anger grew. Bruno’s closest friend and fellow pimp could see where Biker was pushing and he didn’t want Bruno going in that direction. He told Bruno to cool off and let it go.
Bruno ignored the sound advice of his friend and hatched a plan that he felt would help him regain the respect he had lost and get Annie Mae out of his life at the same time. Biker offered to drive Bruno to Annie Mae’s sister’s apartment so the disrespected pimp could set her straight, and Bruno accepted. During the drive across Dartmouth Bruno sat quietly in Biker’s car thinking about how to carry out his plan. He had decided the best course was a fast decisive one. Biker, unexpectedly, and with obvious excitement, pulled out a small black gun from beneath his jacket. Bruno knew Biker often carried a gun but he wasn’t sure why he would be pulling it out now.
“Just in case my man, just in case.” Biker smiled at the weapon and returned it to its place.
Annie Mae’s sister’s apartment was on the second floor of an older brick building just off Windmill Road in Dartmouth’s North End. Bruno pushed his way through the plate glass door and ran up the stairs to the dimly lit hallway. Biker clambered up behind him and followed Bruno to the apartment door. Bruno Cummings stood just over six feet tall and weighted close to two hundred and thirty pounds. He was not muscular or athletic but he was an intimidating presence in that small hallway. The angry pimp pounded the wooden door and waited. Annie Mae’s sister opened the door. She recognized Bruno and quickly raised her hand to her mouth as she turned to look into the apartment where Annie Mae was lying on the sofa with her head in the lap of her new man.
“She’s dissn’ you big time man.” Biker was staring past Bruno at Annie Mae. “You gotta do somethin’ now.”
Annie Mae jumped up when she saw the two pimps in the doorway. She walked toward Bruno but before she was able to say a word Bruno lashed out with a fast powerful punch that landed square on Annie Mae’s nose. The slim young prostitute reeled backward from the force of the blow. Instinctively she threw out her hand for balance and caught a fistfull of Bruno’s long curly hair. The sudden tug on his hair fuelled Bruno’s temper higher and he struck again, this time hitting Annie Mae on the left side of her face. The punch spun her head violently to the right, twisting her neck well beyond its normal range of movement. Biker and Bruno watched her collapse on the floor with a sickening gurgling sound. They saw blood coming from Annie Mae’s mouth and nose, the result of the first punch to her face. They did not see what the violent twisting motion from the second blow had done. The vertebral artery had ripped and blood was filling the space between the young girl’s brain and the inner wall of her skull. Her body began to jerk in spasms and Biker began to laugh.
“You knocked her cold Bruno my man, two shots and she’s on the mat.”
Bruno said nothing. He looked mutely as her sister knelt beside her and began to cry. The new pimp who had been sitting on the couch with Annie Mae moments before got up and walked out of the apartment without acknowledging Biker or Bruno.
“Get some water,” was all he said to Annie Mae’s sister. His only concern was that she be revived before neighbours called the police.
Annie Mae’s sister didn’t hear him. She was glaring at Bruno, tears streaming down her face. “She’s not breathing any more. My god, you killed her. You bastard, you killed Annie Mae.”
Biker grabbed Bruno by the arm and pulled him back toward the stairs and out of the apartment building. As Bruno walked toward Biker’s car the friend he had left at the poker game came running toward him.
“Bruno. What happened? What did you do?”
“I think she’s dead,” was all Bruno could manage as Biker pushed him into the passenger side of the car and sped away.
Bruno’s friend ran upstairs where he found Annie Mae’s sister and another young prostitute who had arrived on the scene. Both girls were crying and trying to raise Annie Mae into a sitting position. Bruno’s friend decided he would have to act fast if he was to save his friend from a murder charge. He bent down, swept Annie Mae up in his arms and ran full speed down the hall toward his waiting car. Annie Mae’s sister and her friend followed; the new pimp walked back into the apartment and closed the door.
Doctors at the nearby Dartmouth General hospital were able to revive Annie Mae but they realized something was seriously wrong inside the young woman’s head. Annie Mae was transferred to the Victoria General Hospital across the Halifax Harbour. There a neurosurgeon recognized the symptoms of the hemorrhage inside her skull, but it was too late; Annie Mae was dead.
The police were called to the hospital where they interviewed Annie Mae’s sister and her friend. Bruno Cummings was arrested and charged with murder. He pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter and was sent to prison for just under ten years. The judge accepted his claim that he had not intended to kill Annie Mae.
Annie Mae’s family and her friends—most of them other prostitutes—attended her funeral in a tiny church in Dartmouth. For Annie Mae the pain of life on the street was gone forever.
Annie Mae Wilson never really had a life, although at nineteen she had had more life experience than most people could ever dream of, no matter how vivid their nightmares. She had visited and worked in most major Canadian cities, earning tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, although she died without a penny. Annie Mae had either been beaten by and or had sex with more men than most women meet in a lifetime. A high school drop-out who had slipped through the cracks, Annie Mae ended up a piece of society’s trash. She was just another dead hooker; one of twenty-two prostitutes murdered in Canada in 1992.
Annie Mae Wilson was one of the hundreds of young Canadian teens who chose to play the deadly game of prostitution. Statistics Canada figures show the vast majority of street prostitutes arrested in Canada are young teenage girls. In 1984 a federal study into sexual offenses against children in Canada uncovered some startling facts. At that time a large number of male and female prostitutes were interviewed. Fifty per cent of those prostitutes had entered the sex trade before turning sixteen years old; almost every one of them had taken to the streets before turning nineteen. That same study showed that most of the teens entering the prostitution trade had run away from home at least once in the past and that most had done so at a very young age. Being a young teenage runaway is just the first step toward becoming a prostitute. Entering The Game is usu
ally a choice made for the girls by pimps with a keen eye for a profitable mark. Pimps chose young girls for two reasons: they are more profitable because they look fresh and attractive on the street, and they are easier to manipulate.
In many ways, Annie Mae Wilson fit the profile of a girl destined to become a prostitute. She ran away from home at a young age. She quit school because it made her feel inferior to the smarter kids. By age fourteen she found a pimp who convinced her she could be the smart one, that she already had everything she needed to be a success. Annie Mae followed the young man into the prostitution game and never looked back.
Annie Mae could have left the street without giving up her life. Only months before the teenage prostitute was killed, a special police task force had been established in the Halifax area, called into service when juvenile prostitution in Halifax suddenly became a high-profile social problem. But the public outcry that finally spurred Nova Scotia’s law-enforcement system to take effective action against The Game came too late for Annie Mae Wilson. Her years in The Game had fostered a strong hatred and mistrust of police. Annie Mae knew it was the prostitutes, rather than their pimps, who were the targets of the criminal justice system. By 1992, Canadian police were filing ten thousand prostitution related charges every year. That was a dramatic increase from pre-1985 figures of about two thousand per year. The new figures did not represent a major influx of prostitutes in Canada’s streets or a major crack down by police. It had its source in the inception of Bill C-49, an amendment to the Criminal Code of Canada that prohibited solicitation but failed to make a dent in The Game. The new law made it tougher for girls to work the streets; it did not deter the men who placed them there.
There are no accurate figures to indicate how many pimps are working in Canada. Calculating that number is made impossible by another rule the pimps enforce. When a prostitute is arrested she almost always tells the police she is working alone, and it is almost always a lie. Annie Mae Wilson was punished for not paying Bruno Cummings a leaving fee, a violation of the rules she was brave or foolish enough to risk. Annie Mae would never have risked telling a police officer she was working for a pimp.
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