During jury duty yesterday, I admired the striking views of downtown Denver from the new Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse. The view to the north falls spectacularly on Diamond Cabaret, Troy Lowrie’s flagship skin club. How fitting that Denver’s only memorial to Benjamin Barr Lindsey stands opposite the porn king’s palace.
Judge Lindsey established Denver’s juvenile court system. His flair for drama won him fame and lifelong enemies. Lindsey opposed the Ku Klux Klan at a time when Denver’s mayor, Colorado’s governor, and many influential people were members. He raised hell about selective enforcement of prohibition laws, charging that the Denver DA prosecuted the poor but allowed the rich to drink illegal booze with impunity. The Catholic Church condemned Lindsey because he advocated “companionate marriage” — marriages that could be dissolved by husband or wife at will, and in which procreation was optional.
Lindsey chronicled his battles with public corruption in the book The Beast, a national bestseller in 1910. From the statehouse to city hall, and from the courts to the cops in the streets, Denver was in the grip of what Lindsey called “The Beast,” an alliance of private interests engaged in unchecked criminality.
Exposing The Beast is like playing a game of connect the dots. As each line is drawn, a clearer and clearer picture emerges. Lindsey wrote:
It is not a picture in a picture puzzle. It is a fact in a fact puzzle. …To some it has appeared to be a house cat merely; and it has purred to them very soothingly, no doubt. But some have come upon its claws, and they have been rather more than scratched. And others have found its teeth, and they have been bitten — bitten to the soul. …It lives upon us — upon the best of us as well as the worst — and the daughters of the poor are fed to it no less than the sons of the rich.
Lindsey’s Beast is relentless dehumanization and violence in the service of corporate interests and power – all of it aided by complicit public officials.
Maybe you’ve been following the story of Troy Lowrie. The Denver porn baron was arrested in a prostitution sting on Colfax Avenue in July. The charges were dismissed by the city attorney in August.
Lowrie appeared on CBS4 to proclaim his innocence and repair his reputation. I wrote that Lowrie’s version of events contradicted the police report. I pointed out Lowrie’s ties to Denver power broker Steve Farber.
Radio host Peter Boyles invited me on air to talk about it. Lowrie called Boyles and told a convincing tale of police misconduct and lies. He planned to sue the city, he said.
Denver Police released an audio recording of Lowrie’s arrest. The audio did not support Lowrie’s claims. Also, Lowrie had been arrested for a prostitution-related charge in 1990.
In 2006, investigators from the Minneapolis Police Department reported witnessing sex acts and drug dealing in Lowrie’s Denver strip clubs. Denver Police claimed that they hadn’t noticed any violations. A Denver Police spokesman told the Rocky Mountain News: “We routinely go into these clubs and check them out to make sure they’re in compliance.”
Despite routine checks by Denver Police, however, accused-pimp Germaine “Jell-O” Wallace was able to operate a prostitution ring out of Lowrie’s strip clubs and others in 2010. A rape complaint against Wallace brought the strip-club prostitution ring to police attention. (Wallace is facing felony charges for pimping and pandering. By contrast, Denver Players pimp Scottie Ewing was given a slap on the wrist for tax evasion.)
Lowrie’s VCG Holding Corporation operates strip clubs and distributes violent pornography on the Internet. Lowrie transferred shares of VCG stock to his private charitable foundation. Using the proceeds from this gift of porn, Lowrie gives money to public schools and charities for at-risk youth.
In August, Lowrie’s foundation was the presenting sponsor of Tennis With The Stars, a charity event to benefit youth programs. For the past four years, Lowrie has participated in the event with notable community leaders such as then-Mayor John Hickenlooper, congressional candidate and Aurora City Councilman Ryan Frazier, and Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey.
Despite Lowrie’s prostitution bust and allegations of criminal activity in Lowrie’s clubs, and the “dirty money” origins of Lowrie’s charitable gifts, Morrissey obviously had no qualms about sharing marquee billing with Lowrie in August.
And that’s how it is. Politicians happily accept campaign contributions from Lowrie. Socialites and community leaders celebrate Lowrie and legitimize his business by pretending that it’s “just like any other.”
In Denver, sleaze, philanthropy, and political influence are purposefully intertwined.
Sadly, this is an old story. In the final chapter of The Beast, Ben Lindsey wrote:
I shall be called a traitor to the community because I have tried to expose the traitors in the community; and the traitorous newspapers of the community will be the first to raise the cry. I shall be called “a blackener of the fair name of Colorado” because I have named the men who have corrupted, debauched, and prostituted Colorado – for no men hate the light more than the men who profit by the crimes which the light discloses. Heaven help them! – Heaven help us all.
