May 28, 2024 • 48 mins
Guy Kelly interviews Lindsay Byron for an in-depth look at how she discovered the lost story of Hookergate, and the laborious process of turning it into a podcast.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, be warned. The following behind the scenes interview contains
major plot spoilers of hooker Gate Season one. Yo, what's cracking?
It's me your best friend in the world. Lindsey Byron,
(00:25):
the host of hooker Gate, and I am here today
yet again with the homie Guy Kelly.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Hey, what's up?
Speaker 1 (00:36):
The man behind the music the sound of hooker Gate,
And today Guy is gonna be interviewing me on the
process of creating this podcast. You know, by the way,
the process of creating this podcast, to be honest, could
(00:59):
be the subject of a whole season of this podcast
for sure, you know, for those of you guys who
don't know, and why would you know. I got pregnant
on the day that I was alerted that Guy and
I had won the next Great podcast competition, and so
(01:19):
hooker Gate all along has been tied with New Life
literally and metaphorically. I'll be honest, I don't really believe
in cosmic signs. I mean, you know that. But if
I did believe in cosmic signs, that pregnancy on the
same day is winning this podcast competition certainly would have
(01:44):
been one.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Before we get started. Let me say I had a
very young child when we started this whole process. I
think my son was about eight months old when we
first started on the competition pilot, and so I didn't
personally know what it was like to be pregnant, but
I knew, you know, my wife's experience being pregnant and
(02:05):
knew how difficult that was. And I definitely knew how
difficult it was caring for an infant. But I never
had a moment where I was worried that you wouldn't
be able to do what you do. I know how
motivated and hard working you are, and I know what
you accomplished when you had your first child, so I
(02:26):
knew it was going to be hard for you. But
there was never a doubt in my mind that you're
going to pull it off.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Man. Thank you. I really appreciate that vote of confidence.
I knew I would pull it off too.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
And we have. We have, so I say, we go
ahead and get into it.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Let's get into it, all right.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
So everyone has gotten to know Lindsay as the narrator
and the storyteller and voice actor in this podcast, but
a lot of you may not know much about Lindsay
and her history and career to this point. So why
don't you just give us a quick rundown of who
you are and where you've been.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
My name is Lindsay Byron, And first of all, if
you really want to get to know me, and if
you enjoy my writing, by my masterpiece, the best writing
I've ever done. My life story Too Pretty to Be
Good by Lindsay Byron, sold wherever books are sold online
(03:24):
that I'll tell you everything, but let me give it
to duck Wick version. I'm from Danville. As I state
in the podcast, I had a difficult youth. My dad
died suddenly when I was sixteen. It was absolutely horrible
and incredibly formative. My mom pretty much died too as
(03:52):
far as that went, so it's fair to say I
was fairly orphaned. Like a lot of kids, you know,
in a situation like that, I got tangled up with
all the wrong things, bro you know, predatory asque grown
men who would get me, you know, hooked on terrible
(04:13):
hardcore drugs. Meanwhile, I was always this, you know, great student.
I just loved school, the straight a's. I made straight
a's my whole life until I was a senior in
high school and was getting my ass beat by my
boyfriend and then, by the way, I was making straight f's,
and it bears noting that no one noticed or cared.
(04:34):
In fact, I had a reputation in school as the
high school slut. My teacher of the literary magazine that
I wrote for this dude was married to a former
high school student, by the way, and at Christmas that year,
my teacher gave me knee pads as a Christmas gift.
(04:59):
What actually happened knee pads and said, because he imagines
I spend a lot of time on my knees. My god,
isn't that something. Yeah, So I had a chip on
my shoulder, and the moment I graduated high school straight away,
I decided that I was gonna take this bad reputation
(05:23):
and weaponize it and just lean into it. So I
promptly started stripping. I mean, listen, I was in a
strip club so young that I wasn't allowed to drink
alcohol in that bitch though I was, of course, you know,
drinking white zinfandel, which is what a kid drinks. And
(05:47):
I stayed in that world on and off for a
whopping sixteen years.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
That's a really long time.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Oh my god, it's a long time. In the meantime,
I got a PhD in English, you know, which is
the three degrees had to get a bachelor's and master's
in a PhD. And by the way, I only got
all the English degrees because all I ever wanted to
do was write. And so let me actually underscore that,
(06:19):
because I tell my life story and kind of like
what I forefront over and over is being a stripper,
and what I really was and what I've always been
is an artist. All I ever wanted to be was
a writer. And I thought, well, you become an English
(06:39):
professor and then you can write your books. This was
not actually how things panned out. I finished my PhD
and actually rewind. I started my PhD, and the first
day of that program, the head of the department, this
(07:00):
dude stands up in front of all of these grid
assistants and literally says, there are no jobs for any
of you. So it became quickly, you know, obvious to
me that I was not actually going to have a
career in the academy. And then I found this thing
pole dancing, that I was real good at, and so
(07:25):
I started posting videos on Facebook. But I made a
fake account because I didn't want people to find Lindsey Byron.
You know, I was working at Georgia Tech by the
way at this time, and so I made this fake
in this fin stuff you know as you would call
(07:47):
it nowadays, on Facebook, and I named it lux Atl.
People ask me all the time, where did I get
the name lux To be honest, I really just like
the way it sounds. You know, it's sharp, it's short,
it's three letters, but incidentally it means light and lux
(08:10):
Atl ended up being one of the biggest lights of
my life. I started posting these videos on Facebook and
them shit started going viral. This was before the days
of influencers. This wasn't like a career or even a word.
(08:32):
I do not think the word existed.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, definitely not.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
This was like twenty twelve. Around that same time, I
convinced my poor husband to give me the go ahead
to start stripping again, which he didn't want to do.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
And guess what murdered it. I was making money, so
I was, you know, posting this stripper life on Facebook too,
and so then I started thinking, huh, wonder if I
can make money off this whole Facebook bang. I invented
a workshop called strip Craft, changed my life entirely. Toured
(09:14):
that workshop all over the world. All over the world.
I toured that workshop, created a large fan base that way,
and from there, lux at Al became my career. Now
that was almost a decade ago. From there, you know,
I taught workshops, and then the workshops turned into retreats,
Strip Cabin being the first of those retreats, and then
(09:36):
Strip Cabin created Strip Cabana and Costa Rica, and then
the next thing you know, I'm you know, renting a
whole island in Belize. So now my professional life is
one in which make most of my money hosting what
I call strip trips, getaways for grown women, for normal
(09:58):
ass women who want to go somewhere, do something fun
for themselves with a gang of other goals, have some
sexy fun in a safe and encouraging environment. People often
ask me, like, what is this shit? Is this like
lesbian orchies. No, it's not, and like, by the way.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
That's just what the husband's wish it was.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
It is. I can't tell you. I've had clients like
show up at retreats and be like my husband says
that whatever happens here is fine. I'm like, okay, but like,
this ain't the place, and I like really, so that
you know is sort of a long winded way of
telling you who I am. Lux Atl is the person
(10:41):
that the world knows now Lindsey Byron has seemed like
practically a secret. In fact, I'm pretty protective over that name.
I don't really like to be called Lindsay, though I'm
kind of leaning into Lindsay now as an artist. Mm hmm,
So who you're talking to is Lindsey. But the person
(11:03):
that the world has kind of rewarded is lux And
that trajectory is really what drew me to this story.
My own, my own personal trajectory.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
So let's start talking about Hooker Gates. Yeah, in the
very first episode, you tell us the story about your
unnamed friend ambushes you with a binder full of old
news clippings of this salacious story that happened in your hometown.
When this happened, you were at a you were home
for your grandmother's funeral.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yes, that's correct.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
How soon did you realize this was actually a real story?
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Right then and there immediately? So my unnamed friend, which
I realize is an awkward phrasing, who I'm talking about
was initially totally down to be involved in this and
then pulled out, doesn't want to be named or any
of that, which, by the way, has been a theme
(12:12):
of this whole project. So my friend, you know, she
had been telling me for years that she had this story.
And at that time, I was writing my own memoir
running a business. You know, I was smiling and nodding, yeah, okay, great,
sure you got a great story, but I got my
own shit. Rather dismissive. Well, as you said, my friend
(12:41):
had found in her mother's trunk, her dead mother's trunk,
a massive collection of fifty year old news clippings, like
just raw news clippings that she then took the time
(13:03):
and the money to have scanned and placed into a
bound notebook. Not a easy or cheap endeavor, by the way.
And so she handed me this bound book and said,
this is what I've been telling you about. I've been
(13:25):
telling you I got a story for you. This is it.
And I start flipping through this and bro, I mean
straight away, I'm like, hold on, truck stop, brothels. Then
I flip a little bit more and I'm like the
(13:47):
commonwealth attorney, Yeah, who is you know where the buck stops?
When it comes through the law in an area. It
took me all of five minutes to just read the
first little articles I came across in that book to
know immediately this is gold. But the moment that I
(14:12):
got a holt to these stories, I was at that funeral,
and then guess what. Leaving that funeral, I was going
straight to the beach. It was my family, my nuclear family,
me and my husband. I would say kids, but it
was just a kid at that time. We go to
the beach every year, same beach in North Carolina and
the Outer Banks, and like, the whole point of that
beach trip is to sit on the deck and read.
(14:35):
I took that note book, bro I set on that
deck for two straight weeks at that beach, and I
read every line of those news articles. And by the
end of that vacation, I truly thought this is about
(14:58):
to take up the next decade of my creative life.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Really, I don't know how, I don't know in what form,
but I know this is the best, most compelling raw
material that I have ever had my hands on outside
of my own life story.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
What made you think a podcast would work well for
telling this story versus writing a book? Which you had
already done, or any other sort of medium.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
The number one reason that I chose to a podcast
is because my favorite creative medium is oral storytelling. But
also I always had a long game vision for this project,
which by the way, I still do, so hey, powerful
people who are listening right now, pay attention. My long
(15:51):
game vision was, Okay, we put out a podcast, and
I'd already had a fairly sixful podcast that i did
all on my own strip cast. Get some interest in
the story via the podcast, and then turn that into
(16:13):
a book. And my ultimate goal is to turn this
into a series. To be honest, I think it would
make us sick. HBO series. It is just begging to
be prestige television. Oh yeah, it is begging to be
prestige television.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
So you clearly had a vision for like wanted to
do the podcast, And I remember when you called me
the very first time, you had a real vision for
what you wanted the podcast to sound.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Like.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
I think when I tell people that I'm working on
a podcast, they usually think Joe Rogan kind of thing,
a couple of people shooting the shit and like, how
hard is that? And I'm like, that's not what this
is at all. So you mentioned soundscapes, original music. Do
you use the word cinematic frequently as you're talking about it?
(17:09):
And these are all the things that got me excited
about it. So what was your inspiration for that vision
and how did the finished product compare to what you imagined?
Speaker 1 (17:20):
I am proud to say that this finished product is
pretty damn close to the vision that we started out with. Awesome,
and in fact, it may even be better.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
It's better than what I imagined it was going to
be when you explained it to me.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
I think that you and I have both grown a
ton as artists, absolutely, and I think that with every
episode we just got better and better.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Definitely.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
I may sound pretentious here, but honestly, I wanted to
create a work of art. Back in the olden days,
there were radio shows that were similar to what we're doing.
By the way, oh yeah, this is like before TV, right,
And when I was a young woman, somehow I became
(18:06):
privy to a number of cassette tapes that had these
old radio shows on them, and it was like you'd
listened to these radio shows and that there were plot driven,
they had sound effects, they had scores, and I'm no
expert on the history, but it seems that they were
the foundation and inspiration for television m H. I wanted
(18:31):
to create an immersive world that would allow the listener
to feel like a fly on the wall, and even
more importantly than that, I wanted these listeners to be
able to have some emotional investment and connection to these characters.
(18:56):
I also wanted to hear human eyes and portray as
complexly as possible the individuals that appear in this story.
Take Joe Whitehead, for example. In the papers in the
court documents, it ain't favorable, right, but even Whitehead, I
(19:20):
wanted to do the best I could to understand. And
by the way, yo, I am sure I missed some
marks because I'm just using my imagination mixed with the
facts available to me to try to understand. But for
all of these people, I wanted to make them complex
(19:44):
human beings in a world that the listener would press
play on this podcast and for about thirty to forty minutes,
they are just transported to Danville, Virginia, a gravel parking
(20:04):
lot outside of a truck stop.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
You refer to this genre of podcast as docu trauma.
What do you mean by that?
Speaker 1 (20:13):
I use that term deliberately to indicate the fact that
in this podcast there are scenes where people are having thoughts, feelings,
private conversations. You know, I'm having to make that shit up, Okay,
I'm doing the best that I can to understand these
(20:39):
people and what they might be feeling. And I'm, by
the way, dig in deep dog to try to read
the facts of the case and then depict to the
best of my ability, what a normal ass person like me,
(21:01):
like a complex human being, would feel and think in
these situations. Here's how I have created this these scenes.
I did a ton of research, firstly into these news articles,
which numbered in the hundreds. Secondly, into the mother load
(21:22):
the official court transcripts of the Rico trial, of the
federal trial of the quote unquote Big six that's Whitehead,
Holly and the truck stop operators. And in those primary
documents a number of scenes are described. For example, one
(21:44):
of my favorites in court and in the news, they
recounted a time in which Janet was having a appointment
with Joe Whitehead and he told her that he owned her,
and Janet quote unquote was not happy with that, and
(22:10):
in turn, Joe stood on top of the bed and
started jumping up and down until the bed broke. Okay,
those are the facts of the mantain. That's the raw
material I was working with. Now that is recounted in
the news. Okay, so I'm assuming that's fact. I take
(22:35):
that fact and then I depict it, and I want
to put you as the listener there, and I want
to try to imagine, like what does that feel like
to be Janet?
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (22:52):
And what does it feel like to be Joe?
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Like?
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Why the hell? Like, where where are you at in life?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Dude?
Speaker 1 (22:57):
If you are in this powerful of a position politically,
but somehow you were so far gone that you're jumping
up and down on a bed, screaming at a woman
that you own her until the point that the bed breaks.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Even just hearing those facts stated, even if it's dry
like a newscast, it is salacious enough. But the process
of dramatizing it as we did, to show the chaos
and the you know, the sounds and just brings it
alive and just totally transforms it into something so much
(23:36):
more than a straight podcast. If you were softly talking
like an NPR reporter talking about how he owned her
and dropped on the bed.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Dude exactly exactly, And so that's why, you know, I
want to be up front and clear that you know
these conversations that characters are having while in bed together,
I don't know. I mean, I don't know what they
actually said to one another. Who can ever know? And
(24:06):
that's the drama part of the docu drama. For me,
to make this story something not only immersive, but something
that a listener would emotionally invest in, it required some
imaginative creative writing on my part, definitely, hence the term docudrama.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
I remember when you originally told me about the project,
you were expecting interviews to be a pretty big part
of the process. You've hinted that a little bit. But
why don't you tell us about what the process was
like one finding these people, asking them to do interviews,
what the reactions were, how did that go?
Speaker 1 (24:52):
You know what? We got to talk about Facebook again
because one of them ways that I found found Rodney,
the way I found Rodney, which, by the way, Rodney,
if you're listening, and I'm sure you are, shout out
for just being an awesome human being, Like I legit
(25:13):
have so much respect for you and you were so
nice so I go on Facebook. I'm going I start
looking into groups like you know you're from Danville when,
and like Pittsylvania County History all right. I start finding
those sorts of groups. I go into the groups and
(25:33):
I'm making posts like, Hey, has anybody ever heard of
this dude? Rodney? He was a reporter for Gretney Gazette,
and in fact, he was the editor for the Gretny Gazette.
Has anybody heard of this case? And I'm just dropping
this information that I have. A Couple weeks later, I
got an email, Dear doctor Byron. I am Rodney Smith,
(25:57):
the reporter that I think you're looking for, and if
you'd like to talk, here's my number. I look forward
to speaking with you. So finding Rodney was easier than
I thought. Now there were other people that I talked to.
Some I would talk to for months, actually, people who
(26:22):
knew me as lux strangers to me. I was starting
to get in boxes, being like, hey, dude, y'aught to
talk to my mom?
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Yeah. There was one particular individual that I came in
contact with who what she told me is that she
lived in the house with one of the pimps okay,
namely Tommy but that she had not, you know, engaged
(26:54):
in the sexual labor. I mean, ain't gonna try to
pull it out of you because you know, I don't know.
But her claim was that she hadn't, but that she
had a lot of information. You know. What I wanted
from this particular individual was insight into the women's lives,
(27:14):
because that's what you don't get. Yeah, I mean, the
people on trial are all the men. Okay, you get
very little insight via the news or the court transcripts,
like what these women were experiencing. Now I take that back,
the court transcripts give you. The court transcripts finally gave
(27:37):
me insight. But the news articles, which was all I
was working with at that time, it's just you know,
unidentified women, the prostitute, you know. Yeah, And I knew
that I could not make a podcast that is involving
this much sex work and just treat these women like
(27:58):
background characters. Yeah, Like, I could not do that. That
would be to my mind, ethically unresponsible. And you know,
I mean like I felt like I was one of
these broads. If look, if I was in Devil in
the seventies, boy, they would have snatched me up so quick.
I would have been in one of them truck's ips,
no problem. Oh, as a perfect kind of I mean,
(28:18):
I was a troubled young woman. I was a troubled
young woman who was very susceptible to the charms of
older men who made me feel like I was somebody.
And I thought, I bet that's what most of them
women were like too, for sure, you know, yeah, so
(28:39):
I wanted to understand them. So that was an individual
who I thought had some good insight to that. But
you know, that individual would email me in the middle
of the night for you know, months and would be
down for talking and then not. And I did end
up meeting up with that individual and doing some you know, long,
(29:03):
lengthy interviews. But ultimately she was another person who was
you know, fairly repeatedly expressing buyer's remorse, you know, contacting
me and being like I don't know what kind of
shit you're gonna do with my story, Like I don't
know if I trust you, blah blah blah, I don't
know if I trust you. Kind of like attitude, and
(29:26):
to be honest, it offended me, like I get it,
you know, but I was just at that point, I
was just like all right, So I cut that entirely. Yeah,
uh huh, cut that source entirely. There was another woman
who I know was a sex worker in this ring.
She's in the newspapers repeatedly. I was amazingly able to
(29:48):
find this woman. She's living in you know, I don't
want to give away details because I don't want to
identify this woman, but like, yeah, I mean you could
probably call it a halfway house, okay. And I was
trying to contact her and I left her messages, and
(30:09):
then one day, at like seven thirty in the morning,
she called me and seemed to me to be not sober.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Yeah, at seven thirty in the morning.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Seven thirty in the morning, And I got a lot
of experience of people on pills. It seemed like a
pill haze, you know what I mean. And this individual
was also not exactly friendly. It went on back and forth. Actually,
she'd be like, you know, like what the fuck are
(30:47):
you trying to do? And then she'd be like, you know,
you seem like a nice woman. I shit you not.
And so that source, I decided, like, I don't think
that I'm big and pregnant. I'm like eight months pregnant.
To me, I'm like, I didn't really want to get
too involved, dude. And if I were one of these
(31:10):
like bulldog investigative reporters for whom I have a lot
of respect mm hmm, I probably would have shut up
at this woman's store and just hounded her to death
until she gave me what I wanted. But I didn't
have it in me. Yeah, and I also felt that
with the primary material that I had, namely the court transcripts, particularly,
(31:30):
that I had enough to go on.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Anyways, let's talk about the transcripts for a second, because
I remember that wasn't something you had when we first
started this process. You just had the news clippings and
you had big plans for interviews to be a part
of this. You never said anything about court transcripts. And
I actually remember at some point when we were doing
(31:54):
some prep work, I was thinking to myself, I bet
we could find the court transcripts, but you had so
much going on with the pregnancy and everything. I was like,
let me not bug her with details. She'll take care
of everything. And then I get a text. You're like, bro,
I found the court transcripts. So how did you find
the court transcripts?
Speaker 1 (32:11):
It was no easy feat But shout out to the
folks in Philadelphia at the National Archives, because they the
ones that really found these transcripts. Now, how did I
find them? Shout out to the PhD. It was the
(32:32):
lifetime of scholarship. I am trained in scholarship and I
know how to find sources, and so I researched what
to research? How do you find transcripts? Who do you
go to? Then I started emailing different courts. This clerk
is telling me, no, it ain't here, you got to
go look here. Now that now I'm being sent to
(32:54):
this other clerk. Oh well, now it's not here. Maybe
try here. Through a up of different county clerks putting
me in different directions, I was finally sent to the
National Archives in Philadelphia, where they said they might have it.
(33:16):
So one day I was hosting a retreat, in the
middle of hosting a retreat, pregnant as hell, just hating
from outside the club while all of my guests are
hooting and hollering and having fun, you know, and I'm
like trying to be cool, but I'm jealous as hell.
And I get an email and it's from the National
(33:38):
Archives and they're like, hey, great news, we have found
the transcripts, and we are not going to be able
to scan them for you as requested because it's four
thy six hundred and eighty five pages.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yes, but you can come here and scan them if
you won't. Do you know how long it takes to
scan four thousand, six hundred pages.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
I don't know, but I can imagine it's a very
very long time.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
It's a very long time. It's a very tedious process.
And you can't put it in a feeder like a
copy machine like where it feeds mm hmm. You have
to do because they don't want you damaging their and
your shoff, of course, so you have to I bought
a flatbed scanner and I spent one week in those
archives and just scanning page by page by page by page.
(34:27):
By the time I was done and a head back home.
Once I finally get back to Atlanta, it's time to
go to the beach again. Uh huh. And so for
this next beach trip, instead of the news articles, I
had with me all of these transcripts. And that's when
I first dug into them. And that year at the beach,
(34:49):
I sat on the deck and I read these transcripts.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
They really transformed the story. It feels from my point
of view, it feels like the bulk of your knowledge
of the case comes from those transcripts rather than the
news clippings or anything else.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
It does because in fact, the news clippings, most of
them at best, are secondhand accounts of the court proceedings.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
M M.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
And here I had the actual court proceedings. And the
hugeous gift of those transcripts is how many of those
women testified.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Wow, Yeah, I guess we have a lot of those
quotes in the podcast. That really helps queue up the
stories that are told.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Absolutely, And so this mystery where I was just imagining
what must these women be, like, what were they going through?
Was for so many of these women no longer a mystery,
right Yeah, And I'm hearing like actual women who were
who had, by the way, dispersed across the US. Clearly
(35:54):
shit got hot and everybody got out. Nobody wants to
be involved, know these women that had kids and stuff,
like they didn't want to lose their kids. Yeah, which
was a worry for at least one of these women,
and like a reasonable worry because you didn't have her kid.
But the FBI went and found a whole lot of
(36:21):
these women and went knocking on their doors and they said, well,
you better come over here and do this testifying, you know,
or else, And so they did. And because of that,
I was finally able to get some first hand accounts
of what the women experienced.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Yeah, that is a really special thing that you're able
to find, because that was always from the beginning you
talked about wanting to tell the story of the women,
and that was only going to be possible with the interviews. Yes, originally,
and so were all very fortunate that you put in
(37:03):
that work. And it's clearly you can't just google Federal
Court transcript from nineteen seventy five and get any results.
It's a lot of layers that you had to go through.
It's an amazing story. On the topic of the interviews.
The other big interview that's featured prominently is Frankie Jones,
and boy, were those segments.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Wild, absolute gold.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
I could not believe some of the things that he
was saying. What was Frankie like? And why do you
think he was so comfortable being so candid with you.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Frankie was immediately warm and welcoming and gave me a
hug when he met me. The reason that I contacted
Frankie was because his dad was on the grand jury.
So I was just hoping to get some insight, like,
you know, tell me about your dad's experience. That's all
(38:00):
I expected. Now what I did get from Frankie was
so much more. First thing I want to say about Frankie,
when we started talking already, I was like, Okay, this
is gold, because I'm gonna tell you. People think that
this accent of mine is fake. They do. Yeah, that
(38:23):
dude started talking, I'm like, oh my god, he's even
more damnvill than me. Like that real Southern accent, you
can't you can't replicate it. Yeah, So when I heard
his accent, I already knew. I'm like, this voice is
gonna sound beautiful on this podcast. Frankie chose to open
(38:54):
up to me because he was just treating me like
a human being with whom he was having an honest conversation,
which is rare. He It was disarming, in fact, the
(39:18):
unguarded honesty from this man. It was a pleasant surprise,
the sort of jovial nature in which he told these stories.
Did I ever think I was gonna find an individual
who had actually been to one of these brothels who
(39:39):
was willing to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Hell no, you didn't even know when you started the interview.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Absolutely not. But then he starts talking about, yeah, I've
been to one or two, and I'm like, oh, helly,
you know, tell me more. And I really appreciate that
honesty because even talking about these topics, you know, I mean,
you know, you're kind of like, look, I will tell
(40:06):
you what I don't want to do. And one of
my greatest fears in regards to this project, I don't
want to bring any problems or shame on anybody who
chose to be involved. And that's why it's hard, you know,
to even write about people. I mean, like, you know,
(40:28):
a lot of these people are still alive. Man, I
want to tell this story. I'm telling the story. Obviously,
it's told, it's done, but there's a part of me
that's like, damn, you know, like do I want to
like these people are fifty years gone? People change. I mean, bro, listen,
(40:51):
if you wanted to make a podcast about the fucked
up shit that I've done, boy, we could have a
number of seasons on that. By the way, please okay,
please don't. And I know That's how I feel, like,
please don't. So you know it is with some uh
(41:13):
conflictedness that I tell this story at all, because you know,
I mean, all of this was public, it was all
in the news. I'm not bringing up anything that ain't known.
But I don't want to drag people's name through the mud.
I don't want to fuck anybody's life up like I
don't want to do that. But at the same time,
(41:35):
is there any story in the world that can be
told without that risk? And if I allow that to
keep me from researching, if I allow that to keep
me from telling stories, then what story can I ever
tell that everybody looks good in? And if everybody looks good,
then where's the story?
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Yeah? Yeah, So let's pivot again. You talked a lot
about your origin story when we started the conversation, and
you definitely mentioned that you are an artist. And something
that I have always found striking about you is that
when you talk about yourself, you use that word artist.
(42:18):
What does being an artist mean to you and how
does it influence your career to this point and your
ambitions for the future.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Man, we are always looking at this life and we
are trying to understand what it means, and we find
this meaning in any number of ways, but the search
for it is absolutely fundamental to humanity, hence the existence
of religion. For example, when I talk about being a writer,
(42:47):
and when I talk about being an artist, to me,
it means this. We're all living this life. We're all
seeing the trees and the people walk around and the
experiences that we're having. And I'm seeing the same thing
as everybody else. But sometimes I see things and to
(43:13):
me they are immediately a poem, laiden with meaning, a
way that we can understand what life is about. In
the early days of COVID, they removed the swings from
the swing set in my neighborhood playground and wrapped the
(43:37):
swing set and caution tape. Yeah, that's a poem. That's
the kind of image that I take. I put it
in my back pocket and I think, one damn, we'll
put this shit into a story. I am a collector
(43:57):
of such images. I'm a collector of the casual things
that a person says that they don't ever think twice about.
But I hear it, and I think that's a poem.
We talk about ai writing stories. Oh, the writers are
gonna lose their jobs, you know, like the AI is
writing stories. Yeah, they might be able to make some
(44:18):
paragraphs and shit, but how can the robots understand the
human heart and the meaning of this universe of chaos.
I could have gone my whole life and never been
(44:38):
all these sparkly pretty things that I had to be
to make money. But if I was on this deathbed
and I didn't write this book, I didn't write this art.
I didn't write all the poems that I guess nobody's
ever gonna read that I couldn't do. Being an artist
(45:01):
is the most important thing to me as an individual,
regardless of any material gains that I ever received from it.
It is where I find my meaning. It is where
I make my meaning. And if I could be known
(45:21):
for anything, it would be my art.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
I love what you said, a collector of images. I
don't know if that was off the cuff or not,
but I think that's a really brilliant way of describing
being an artist of any medium, A collector of images
from life. Yes, that you convey the beauty of the hidden,
beauty of that of a.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Beautyl Yes, like I'm not making things up out of
whole cloth. I am not making things up. I merely
have the ability to see the meaning in what already exists,
the meaning that I think a lot of people miss.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
M m. Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful. Well, this has been
an amazing convert stations been so much fun talking about this.
We also had a conversation with me about my role
in the podcast, and it's been so fun to debrief
and talk about this process. And I hope all of
you really appreciate hearing this behind the scenes. Once again,
(46:18):
too pretty to be good. I can't say it enough.
You got to read it. Strip Cast.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
Y'all will probably like strip Cast because, in my humble opinion,
it's quite a page turner.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
It's very compelling.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
But when you listen to it, you're gonna be like, damn,
this is a angry ass bitch and I'm as mad
as a motherfucker the whole time. But yeah, check it out.
And also, Guy, you are an artist in your own right.
I am so plug your stuff.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
Well, I think the biggest thing you can do is
go to Guy Kelly dot com. You can find links
to my music. I have a few different artist names.
I have some music listed under Guy Kelly on Spotify
or or any streaming service you go to. But if
you want to find lots of my work, some of
my design work, head to my website Guykelly dot com
(47:08):
and you can get links to all kinds of stuff
that I do there.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
Hey, dudes, yo, I really appreciate y'all listening to me
and guys art this whole season. Let us know what
do you want to hear in season two? By the way,
I've already got it planned out, but you know all
might take some input. What do you want to hear
(47:36):
more of? What can't you wait for next season? Season
one was a bastuff of labor, but we about to
do it again. Thank you for being here, Thank you
for your time. I am Lindsey Byron and this is
my homeboy, Guy Kelly.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Thanks everybody.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
Thanks. Now, let me be clear, I thoroughly support lesbian orgy.
All right? Where are they at? Let me know? Send
me the invite, just Kidden or Emma
Hey, be warned. The following behind the scenes interview contains
major plot spoilers of hooker Gate Season one. Yo, what's cracking?
It's me your best friend in the world. Lindsey Byron,
(00:25):
the host of hooker Gate, and I am here today
yet again with the homie Guy Kelly.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Hey, what's up?
Speaker 1 (00:36):
The man behind the music the sound of hooker Gate,
And today Guy is gonna be interviewing me on the
process of creating this podcast. You know, by the way,
the process of creating this podcast, to be honest, could
(00:59):
be the subject of a whole season of this podcast
for sure, you know, for those of you guys who
don't know, and why would you know. I got pregnant
on the day that I was alerted that Guy and
I had won the next Great podcast competition, and so
(01:19):
hooker Gate all along has been tied with New Life
literally and metaphorically. I'll be honest, I don't really believe
in cosmic signs. I mean, you know that. But if
I did believe in cosmic signs, that pregnancy on the
same day is winning this podcast competition certainly would have
(01:44):
been one.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Before we get started. Let me say I had a
very young child when we started this whole process. I
think my son was about eight months old when we
first started on the competition pilot, and so I didn't
personally know what it was like to be pregnant, but
I knew, you know, my wife's experience being pregnant and
(02:05):
knew how difficult that was. And I definitely knew how
difficult it was caring for an infant. But I never
had a moment where I was worried that you wouldn't
be able to do what you do. I know how
motivated and hard working you are, and I know what
you accomplished when you had your first child, so I
(02:26):
knew it was going to be hard for you. But
there was never a doubt in my mind that you're
going to pull it off.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Man. Thank you. I really appreciate that vote of confidence.
I knew I would pull it off too.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
And we have. We have, so I say, we go
ahead and get into it.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Let's get into it, all right.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
So everyone has gotten to know Lindsay as the narrator
and the storyteller and voice actor in this podcast, but
a lot of you may not know much about Lindsay
and her history and career to this point. So why
don't you just give us a quick rundown of who
you are and where you've been.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
My name is Lindsay Byron, And first of all, if
you really want to get to know me, and if
you enjoy my writing, by my masterpiece, the best writing
I've ever done. My life story Too Pretty to Be
Good by Lindsay Byron, sold wherever books are sold online
(03:24):
that I'll tell you everything, but let me give it
to duck Wick version. I'm from Danville. As I state
in the podcast, I had a difficult youth. My dad
died suddenly when I was sixteen. It was absolutely horrible
and incredibly formative. My mom pretty much died too as
(03:52):
far as that went, so it's fair to say I
was fairly orphaned. Like a lot of kids, you know,
in a situation like that, I got tangled up with
all the wrong things, bro you know, predatory asque grown
men who would get me, you know, hooked on terrible
(04:13):
hardcore drugs. Meanwhile, I was always this, you know, great student.
I just loved school, the straight a's. I made straight
a's my whole life until I was a senior in
high school and was getting my ass beat by my
boyfriend and then, by the way, I was making straight f's,
and it bears noting that no one noticed or cared.
(04:34):
In fact, I had a reputation in school as the
high school slut. My teacher of the literary magazine that
I wrote for this dude was married to a former
high school student, by the way, and at Christmas that year,
my teacher gave me knee pads as a Christmas gift.
(04:59):
What actually happened knee pads and said, because he imagines
I spend a lot of time on my knees. My god,
isn't that something. Yeah, So I had a chip on
my shoulder, and the moment I graduated high school straight away,
I decided that I was gonna take this bad reputation
(05:23):
and weaponize it and just lean into it. So I
promptly started stripping. I mean, listen, I was in a
strip club so young that I wasn't allowed to drink
alcohol in that bitch though I was, of course, you know,
drinking white zinfandel, which is what a kid drinks. And
(05:47):
I stayed in that world on and off for a
whopping sixteen years.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
That's a really long time.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Oh my god, it's a long time. In the meantime,
I got a PhD in English, you know, which is
the three degrees had to get a bachelor's and master's
in a PhD. And by the way, I only got
all the English degrees because all I ever wanted to
do was write. And so let me actually underscore that,
(06:19):
because I tell my life story and kind of like
what I forefront over and over is being a stripper,
and what I really was and what I've always been
is an artist. All I ever wanted to be was
a writer. And I thought, well, you become an English
(06:39):
professor and then you can write your books. This was
not actually how things panned out. I finished my PhD
and actually rewind. I started my PhD, and the first
day of that program, the head of the department, this
(07:00):
dude stands up in front of all of these grid
assistants and literally says, there are no jobs for any
of you. So it became quickly, you know, obvious to
me that I was not actually going to have a
career in the academy. And then I found this thing
pole dancing, that I was real good at, and so
(07:25):
I started posting videos on Facebook. But I made a
fake account because I didn't want people to find Lindsey Byron.
You know, I was working at Georgia Tech by the
way at this time, and so I made this fake
in this fin stuff you know as you would call
(07:47):
it nowadays, on Facebook, and I named it lux Atl.
People ask me all the time, where did I get
the name lux To be honest, I really just like
the way it sounds. You know, it's sharp, it's short,
it's three letters, but incidentally it means light and lux
(08:10):
Atl ended up being one of the biggest lights of
my life. I started posting these videos on Facebook and
them shit started going viral. This was before the days
of influencers. This wasn't like a career or even a word.
(08:32):
I do not think the word existed.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, definitely not.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
This was like twenty twelve. Around that same time, I
convinced my poor husband to give me the go ahead
to start stripping again, which he didn't want to do.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
And guess what murdered it. I was making money, so
I was, you know, posting this stripper life on Facebook too,
and so then I started thinking, huh, wonder if I
can make money off this whole Facebook bang. I invented
a workshop called strip Craft, changed my life entirely. Toured
(09:14):
that workshop all over the world. All over the world.
I toured that workshop, created a large fan base that way,
and from there, lux at Al became my career. Now
that was almost a decade ago. From there, you know,
I taught workshops, and then the workshops turned into retreats,
Strip Cabin being the first of those retreats, and then
(09:36):
Strip Cabin created Strip Cabana and Costa Rica, and then
the next thing you know, I'm you know, renting a
whole island in Belize. So now my professional life is
one in which make most of my money hosting what
I call strip trips, getaways for grown women, for normal
(09:58):
ass women who want to go somewhere, do something fun
for themselves with a gang of other goals, have some
sexy fun in a safe and encouraging environment. People often
ask me, like, what is this shit? Is this like
lesbian orchies. No, it's not, and like, by the way.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
That's just what the husband's wish it was.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
It is. I can't tell you. I've had clients like
show up at retreats and be like my husband says
that whatever happens here is fine. I'm like, okay, but like,
this ain't the place, and I like really, so that
you know is sort of a long winded way of
telling you who I am. Lux Atl is the person
(10:41):
that the world knows now Lindsey Byron has seemed like
practically a secret. In fact, I'm pretty protective over that name.
I don't really like to be called Lindsay, though I'm
kind of leaning into Lindsay now as an artist. Mm hmm,
So who you're talking to is Lindsey. But the person
(11:03):
that the world has kind of rewarded is lux And
that trajectory is really what drew me to this story.
My own, my own personal trajectory.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
So let's start talking about Hooker Gates. Yeah, in the
very first episode, you tell us the story about your
unnamed friend ambushes you with a binder full of old
news clippings of this salacious story that happened in your hometown.
When this happened, you were at a you were home
for your grandmother's funeral.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yes, that's correct.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
How soon did you realize this was actually a real story?
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Right then and there immediately? So my unnamed friend, which
I realize is an awkward phrasing, who I'm talking about
was initially totally down to be involved in this and
then pulled out, doesn't want to be named or any
of that, which, by the way, has been a theme
(12:12):
of this whole project. So my friend, you know, she
had been telling me for years that she had this story.
And at that time, I was writing my own memoir
running a business. You know, I was smiling and nodding, yeah, okay, great,
sure you got a great story, but I got my
own shit. Rather dismissive. Well, as you said, my friend
(12:41):
had found in her mother's trunk, her dead mother's trunk,
a massive collection of fifty year old news clippings, like
just raw news clippings that she then took the time
(13:03):
and the money to have scanned and placed into a
bound notebook. Not a easy or cheap endeavor, by the way.
And so she handed me this bound book and said,
this is what I've been telling you about. I've been
(13:25):
telling you I got a story for you. This is it.
And I start flipping through this and bro, I mean
straight away, I'm like, hold on, truck stop, brothels. Then
I flip a little bit more and I'm like the
(13:47):
commonwealth attorney, Yeah, who is you know where the buck stops?
When it comes through the law in an area. It
took me all of five minutes to just read the
first little articles I came across in that book to
know immediately this is gold. But the moment that I
(14:12):
got a holt to these stories, I was at that funeral,
and then guess what. Leaving that funeral, I was going
straight to the beach. It was my family, my nuclear family,
me and my husband. I would say kids, but it
was just a kid at that time. We go to
the beach every year, same beach in North Carolina and
the Outer Banks, and like, the whole point of that
beach trip is to sit on the deck and read.
(14:35):
I took that note book, bro I set on that
deck for two straight weeks at that beach, and I
read every line of those news articles. And by the
end of that vacation, I truly thought this is about
(14:58):
to take up the next decade of my creative life.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Really, I don't know how, I don't know in what form,
but I know this is the best, most compelling raw
material that I have ever had my hands on outside
of my own life story.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
What made you think a podcast would work well for
telling this story versus writing a book? Which you had
already done, or any other sort of medium.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
The number one reason that I chose to a podcast
is because my favorite creative medium is oral storytelling. But
also I always had a long game vision for this project,
which by the way, I still do, so hey, powerful
people who are listening right now, pay attention. My long
(15:51):
game vision was, Okay, we put out a podcast, and
I'd already had a fairly sixful podcast that i did
all on my own strip cast. Get some interest in
the story via the podcast, and then turn that into
(16:13):
a book. And my ultimate goal is to turn this
into a series. To be honest, I think it would
make us sick. HBO series. It is just begging to
be prestige television. Oh yeah, it is begging to be
prestige television.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
So you clearly had a vision for like wanted to
do the podcast, And I remember when you called me
the very first time, you had a real vision for
what you wanted the podcast to sound.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Like.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
I think when I tell people that I'm working on
a podcast, they usually think Joe Rogan kind of thing,
a couple of people shooting the shit and like, how
hard is that? And I'm like, that's not what this
is at all. So you mentioned soundscapes, original music. Do
you use the word cinematic frequently as you're talking about it?
(17:09):
And these are all the things that got me excited
about it. So what was your inspiration for that vision
and how did the finished product compare to what you imagined?
Speaker 1 (17:20):
I am proud to say that this finished product is
pretty damn close to the vision that we started out with. Awesome,
and in fact, it may even be better.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
It's better than what I imagined it was going to
be when you explained it to me.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
I think that you and I have both grown a
ton as artists, absolutely, and I think that with every
episode we just got better and better.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Definitely.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
I may sound pretentious here, but honestly, I wanted to
create a work of art. Back in the olden days,
there were radio shows that were similar to what we're doing.
By the way, oh yeah, this is like before TV, right,
And when I was a young woman, somehow I became
(18:06):
privy to a number of cassette tapes that had these
old radio shows on them, and it was like you'd
listened to these radio shows and that there were plot driven,
they had sound effects, they had scores, and I'm no
expert on the history, but it seems that they were
the foundation and inspiration for television m H. I wanted
(18:31):
to create an immersive world that would allow the listener
to feel like a fly on the wall, and even
more importantly than that, I wanted these listeners to be
able to have some emotional investment and connection to these characters.
(18:56):
I also wanted to hear human eyes and portray as
complexly as possible the individuals that appear in this story.
Take Joe Whitehead, for example. In the papers in the
court documents, it ain't favorable, right, but even Whitehead, I
(19:20):
wanted to do the best I could to understand. And
by the way, yo, I am sure I missed some
marks because I'm just using my imagination mixed with the
facts available to me to try to understand. But for
all of these people, I wanted to make them complex
(19:44):
human beings in a world that the listener would press
play on this podcast and for about thirty to forty minutes,
they are just transported to Danville, Virginia, a gravel parking
(20:04):
lot outside of a truck stop.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
You refer to this genre of podcast as docu trauma.
What do you mean by that?
Speaker 1 (20:13):
I use that term deliberately to indicate the fact that
in this podcast there are scenes where people are having thoughts, feelings,
private conversations. You know, I'm having to make that shit up, Okay,
I'm doing the best that I can to understand these
(20:39):
people and what they might be feeling. And I'm, by
the way, dig in deep dog to try to read
the facts of the case and then depict to the
best of my ability, what a normal ass person like me,
(21:01):
like a complex human being, would feel and think in
these situations. Here's how I have created this these scenes.
I did a ton of research, firstly into these news articles,
which numbered in the hundreds. Secondly, into the mother load
(21:22):
the official court transcripts of the Rico trial, of the
federal trial of the quote unquote Big six that's Whitehead,
Holly and the truck stop operators. And in those primary
documents a number of scenes are described. For example, one
(21:44):
of my favorites in court and in the news, they
recounted a time in which Janet was having a appointment
with Joe Whitehead and he told her that he owned her,
and Janet quote unquote was not happy with that, and
(22:10):
in turn, Joe stood on top of the bed and
started jumping up and down until the bed broke. Okay,
those are the facts of the mantain. That's the raw
material I was working with. Now that is recounted in
the news. Okay, so I'm assuming that's fact. I take
(22:35):
that fact and then I depict it, and I want
to put you as the listener there, and I want
to try to imagine, like what does that feel like
to be Janet?
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (22:52):
And what does it feel like to be Joe?
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Like?
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Why the hell? Like, where where are you at in life?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Dude?
Speaker 1 (22:57):
If you are in this powerful of a position politically,
but somehow you were so far gone that you're jumping
up and down on a bed, screaming at a woman
that you own her until the point that the bed breaks.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Even just hearing those facts stated, even if it's dry
like a newscast, it is salacious enough. But the process
of dramatizing it as we did, to show the chaos
and the you know, the sounds and just brings it
alive and just totally transforms it into something so much
(23:36):
more than a straight podcast. If you were softly talking
like an NPR reporter talking about how he owned her
and dropped on the bed.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Dude exactly exactly, And so that's why, you know, I
want to be up front and clear that you know
these conversations that characters are having while in bed together,
I don't know. I mean, I don't know what they
actually said to one another. Who can ever know? And
(24:06):
that's the drama part of the docu drama. For me,
to make this story something not only immersive, but something
that a listener would emotionally invest in, it required some
imaginative creative writing on my part, definitely, hence the term docudrama.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
I remember when you originally told me about the project,
you were expecting interviews to be a pretty big part
of the process. You've hinted that a little bit. But
why don't you tell us about what the process was
like one finding these people, asking them to do interviews,
what the reactions were, how did that go?
Speaker 1 (24:52):
You know what? We got to talk about Facebook again
because one of them ways that I found found Rodney,
the way I found Rodney, which, by the way, Rodney,
if you're listening, and I'm sure you are, shout out
for just being an awesome human being, Like I legit
(25:13):
have so much respect for you and you were so
nice so I go on Facebook. I'm going I start
looking into groups like you know you're from Danville when,
and like Pittsylvania County History all right. I start finding
those sorts of groups. I go into the groups and
(25:33):
I'm making posts like, Hey, has anybody ever heard of
this dude? Rodney? He was a reporter for Gretney Gazette,
and in fact, he was the editor for the Gretny Gazette.
Has anybody heard of this case? And I'm just dropping
this information that I have. A Couple weeks later, I
got an email, Dear doctor Byron. I am Rodney Smith,
(25:57):
the reporter that I think you're looking for, and if
you'd like to talk, here's my number. I look forward
to speaking with you. So finding Rodney was easier than
I thought. Now there were other people that I talked to.
Some I would talk to for months, actually, people who
(26:22):
knew me as lux strangers to me. I was starting
to get in boxes, being like, hey, dude, y'aught to
talk to my mom?
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Yeah. There was one particular individual that I came in
contact with who what she told me is that she
lived in the house with one of the pimps okay,
namely Tommy but that she had not, you know, engaged
(26:54):
in the sexual labor. I mean, ain't gonna try to
pull it out of you because you know, I don't know.
But her claim was that she hadn't, but that she
had a lot of information. You know. What I wanted
from this particular individual was insight into the women's lives,
(27:14):
because that's what you don't get. Yeah, I mean, the
people on trial are all the men. Okay, you get
very little insight via the news or the court transcripts,
like what these women were experiencing. Now I take that back,
the court transcripts give you. The court transcripts finally gave
(27:37):
me insight. But the news articles, which was all I
was working with at that time, it's just you know,
unidentified women, the prostitute, you know. Yeah, And I knew
that I could not make a podcast that is involving
this much sex work and just treat these women like
(27:58):
background characters. Yeah, Like, I could not do that. That
would be to my mind, ethically unresponsible. And you know,
I mean like I felt like I was one of
these broads. If look, if I was in Devil in
the seventies, boy, they would have snatched me up so quick.
I would have been in one of them truck's ips,
no problem. Oh, as a perfect kind of I mean,
(28:18):
I was a troubled young woman. I was a troubled
young woman who was very susceptible to the charms of
older men who made me feel like I was somebody.
And I thought, I bet that's what most of them
women were like too, for sure, you know, yeah, so
(28:39):
I wanted to understand them. So that was an individual
who I thought had some good insight to that. But
you know, that individual would email me in the middle
of the night for you know, months and would be
down for talking and then not. And I did end
up meeting up with that individual and doing some you know, long,
(29:03):
lengthy interviews. But ultimately she was another person who was
you know, fairly repeatedly expressing buyer's remorse, you know, contacting
me and being like I don't know what kind of
shit you're gonna do with my story, Like I don't
know if I trust you, blah blah blah, I don't
know if I trust you. Kind of like attitude, and
(29:26):
to be honest, it offended me, like I get it,
you know, but I was just at that point, I
was just like all right, So I cut that entirely. Yeah,
uh huh, cut that source entirely. There was another woman
who I know was a sex worker in this ring.
She's in the newspapers repeatedly. I was amazingly able to
(29:48):
find this woman. She's living in you know, I don't
want to give away details because I don't want to
identify this woman, but like, yeah, I mean you could
probably call it a halfway house, okay. And I was
trying to contact her and I left her messages, and
(30:09):
then one day, at like seven thirty in the morning,
she called me and seemed to me to be not sober.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Yeah, at seven thirty in the morning.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Seven thirty in the morning, And I got a lot
of experience of people on pills. It seemed like a
pill haze, you know what I mean. And this individual
was also not exactly friendly. It went on back and forth. Actually,
she'd be like, you know, like what the fuck are
(30:47):
you trying to do? And then she'd be like, you know,
you seem like a nice woman. I shit you not.
And so that source, I decided, like, I don't think
that I'm big and pregnant. I'm like eight months pregnant.
To me, I'm like, I didn't really want to get
too involved, dude. And if I were one of these
(31:10):
like bulldog investigative reporters for whom I have a lot
of respect mm hmm, I probably would have shut up
at this woman's store and just hounded her to death
until she gave me what I wanted. But I didn't
have it in me. Yeah, and I also felt that
with the primary material that I had, namely the court transcripts, particularly,
(31:30):
that I had enough to go on.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Anyways, let's talk about the transcripts for a second, because
I remember that wasn't something you had when we first
started this process. You just had the news clippings and
you had big plans for interviews to be a part
of this. You never said anything about court transcripts. And
I actually remember at some point when we were doing
(31:54):
some prep work, I was thinking to myself, I bet
we could find the court transcripts, but you had so
much going on with the pregnancy and everything. I was like,
let me not bug her with details. She'll take care
of everything. And then I get a text. You're like, bro,
I found the court transcripts. So how did you find
the court transcripts?
Speaker 1 (32:11):
It was no easy feat But shout out to the
folks in Philadelphia at the National Archives, because they the
ones that really found these transcripts. Now, how did I
find them? Shout out to the PhD. It was the
(32:32):
lifetime of scholarship. I am trained in scholarship and I
know how to find sources, and so I researched what
to research? How do you find transcripts? Who do you
go to? Then I started emailing different courts. This clerk
is telling me, no, it ain't here, you got to
go look here. Now that now I'm being sent to
(32:54):
this other clerk. Oh well, now it's not here. Maybe
try here. Through a up of different county clerks putting
me in different directions, I was finally sent to the
National Archives in Philadelphia, where they said they might have it.
(33:16):
So one day I was hosting a retreat, in the
middle of hosting a retreat, pregnant as hell, just hating
from outside the club while all of my guests are
hooting and hollering and having fun, you know, and I'm
like trying to be cool, but I'm jealous as hell.
And I get an email and it's from the National
(33:38):
Archives and they're like, hey, great news, we have found
the transcripts, and we are not going to be able
to scan them for you as requested because it's four
thy six hundred and eighty five pages.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yes, but you can come here and scan them if
you won't. Do you know how long it takes to
scan four thousand, six hundred pages.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
I don't know, but I can imagine it's a very
very long time.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
It's a very long time. It's a very tedious process.
And you can't put it in a feeder like a
copy machine like where it feeds mm hmm. You have
to do because they don't want you damaging their and
your shoff, of course, so you have to I bought
a flatbed scanner and I spent one week in those
archives and just scanning page by page by page by page.
(34:27):
By the time I was done and a head back home.
Once I finally get back to Atlanta, it's time to
go to the beach again. Uh huh. And so for
this next beach trip, instead of the news articles, I
had with me all of these transcripts. And that's when
I first dug into them. And that year at the beach,
(34:49):
I sat on the deck and I read these transcripts.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
They really transformed the story. It feels from my point
of view, it feels like the bulk of your knowledge
of the case comes from those transcripts rather than the
news clippings or anything else.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
It does because in fact, the news clippings, most of
them at best, are secondhand accounts of the court proceedings.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
M M.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
And here I had the actual court proceedings. And the
hugeous gift of those transcripts is how many of those
women testified.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Wow, Yeah, I guess we have a lot of those
quotes in the podcast. That really helps queue up the
stories that are told.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Absolutely, And so this mystery where I was just imagining
what must these women be, like, what were they going through?
Was for so many of these women no longer a mystery,
right Yeah, And I'm hearing like actual women who were
who had, by the way, dispersed across the US. Clearly
(35:54):
shit got hot and everybody got out. Nobody wants to
be involved, know these women that had kids and stuff,
like they didn't want to lose their kids. Yeah, which
was a worry for at least one of these women,
and like a reasonable worry because you didn't have her kid.
But the FBI went and found a whole lot of
(36:21):
these women and went knocking on their doors and they said, well,
you better come over here and do this testifying, you know,
or else, And so they did. And because of that,
I was finally able to get some first hand accounts
of what the women experienced.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Yeah, that is a really special thing that you're able
to find, because that was always from the beginning you
talked about wanting to tell the story of the women,
and that was only going to be possible with the interviews. Yes, originally,
and so were all very fortunate that you put in
(37:03):
that work. And it's clearly you can't just google Federal
Court transcript from nineteen seventy five and get any results.
It's a lot of layers that you had to go through.
It's an amazing story. On the topic of the interviews.
The other big interview that's featured prominently is Frankie Jones,
and boy, were those segments.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Wild, absolute gold.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
I could not believe some of the things that he
was saying. What was Frankie like? And why do you
think he was so comfortable being so candid with you.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Frankie was immediately warm and welcoming and gave me a
hug when he met me. The reason that I contacted
Frankie was because his dad was on the grand jury.
So I was just hoping to get some insight, like,
you know, tell me about your dad's experience. That's all
(38:00):
I expected. Now what I did get from Frankie was
so much more. First thing I want to say about Frankie,
when we started talking already, I was like, Okay, this
is gold, because I'm gonna tell you. People think that
this accent of mine is fake. They do. Yeah, that
(38:23):
dude started talking, I'm like, oh my god, he's even
more damnvill than me. Like that real Southern accent, you
can't you can't replicate it. Yeah, So when I heard
his accent, I already knew. I'm like, this voice is
gonna sound beautiful on this podcast. Frankie chose to open
(38:54):
up to me because he was just treating me like
a human being with whom he was having an honest conversation,
which is rare. He It was disarming, in fact, the
(39:18):
unguarded honesty from this man. It was a pleasant surprise,
the sort of jovial nature in which he told these stories.
Did I ever think I was gonna find an individual
who had actually been to one of these brothels who
(39:39):
was willing to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Hell no, you didn't even know when you started the interview.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Absolutely not. But then he starts talking about, yeah, I've
been to one or two, and I'm like, oh, helly,
you know, tell me more. And I really appreciate that
honesty because even talking about these topics, you know, I mean,
you know, you're kind of like, look, I will tell
(40:06):
you what I don't want to do. And one of
my greatest fears in regards to this project, I don't
want to bring any problems or shame on anybody who
chose to be involved. And that's why it's hard, you know,
to even write about people. I mean, like, you know,
(40:28):
a lot of these people are still alive. Man, I
want to tell this story. I'm telling the story. Obviously,
it's told, it's done, but there's a part of me
that's like, damn, you know, like do I want to
like these people are fifty years gone? People change. I mean, bro, listen,
(40:51):
if you wanted to make a podcast about the fucked
up shit that I've done, boy, we could have a
number of seasons on that. By the way, please okay,
please don't. And I know That's how I feel, like,
please don't. So you know it is with some uh
(41:13):
conflictedness that I tell this story at all, because you know,
I mean, all of this was public, it was all
in the news. I'm not bringing up anything that ain't known.
But I don't want to drag people's name through the mud.
I don't want to fuck anybody's life up like I
don't want to do that. But at the same time,
(41:35):
is there any story in the world that can be
told without that risk? And if I allow that to
keep me from researching, if I allow that to keep
me from telling stories, then what story can I ever
tell that everybody looks good in? And if everybody looks good,
then where's the story?
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Yeah? Yeah, So let's pivot again. You talked a lot
about your origin story when we started the conversation, and
you definitely mentioned that you are an artist. And something
that I have always found striking about you is that
when you talk about yourself, you use that word artist.
(42:18):
What does being an artist mean to you and how
does it influence your career to this point and your
ambitions for the future.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Man, we are always looking at this life and we
are trying to understand what it means, and we find
this meaning in any number of ways, but the search
for it is absolutely fundamental to humanity, hence the existence
of religion. For example, when I talk about being a writer,
(42:47):
and when I talk about being an artist, to me,
it means this. We're all living this life. We're all
seeing the trees and the people walk around and the
experiences that we're having. And I'm seeing the same thing
as everybody else. But sometimes I see things and to
(43:13):
me they are immediately a poem, laiden with meaning, a
way that we can understand what life is about. In
the early days of COVID, they removed the swings from
the swing set in my neighborhood playground and wrapped the
(43:37):
swing set and caution tape. Yeah, that's a poem. That's
the kind of image that I take. I put it
in my back pocket and I think, one damn, we'll
put this shit into a story. I am a collector
(43:57):
of such images. I'm a collector of the casual things
that a person says that they don't ever think twice about.
But I hear it, and I think that's a poem.
We talk about ai writing stories. Oh, the writers are
gonna lose their jobs, you know, like the AI is
writing stories. Yeah, they might be able to make some
(44:18):
paragraphs and shit, but how can the robots understand the
human heart and the meaning of this universe of chaos.
I could have gone my whole life and never been
(44:38):
all these sparkly pretty things that I had to be
to make money. But if I was on this deathbed
and I didn't write this book, I didn't write this art.
I didn't write all the poems that I guess nobody's
ever gonna read that I couldn't do. Being an artist
(45:01):
is the most important thing to me as an individual,
regardless of any material gains that I ever received from it.
It is where I find my meaning. It is where
I make my meaning. And if I could be known
(45:21):
for anything, it would be my art.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
I love what you said, a collector of images. I
don't know if that was off the cuff or not,
but I think that's a really brilliant way of describing
being an artist of any medium, A collector of images
from life. Yes, that you convey the beauty of the hidden,
beauty of that of a.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Beautyl Yes, like I'm not making things up out of
whole cloth. I am not making things up. I merely
have the ability to see the meaning in what already exists,
the meaning that I think a lot of people miss.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
M m. Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful. Well, this has been
an amazing convert stations been so much fun talking about this.
We also had a conversation with me about my role
in the podcast, and it's been so fun to debrief
and talk about this process. And I hope all of
you really appreciate hearing this behind the scenes. Once again,
(46:18):
too pretty to be good. I can't say it enough.
You got to read it. Strip Cast.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
Y'all will probably like strip Cast because, in my humble opinion,
it's quite a page turner.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
It's very compelling.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
But when you listen to it, you're gonna be like, damn,
this is a angry ass bitch and I'm as mad
as a motherfucker the whole time. But yeah, check it out.
And also, Guy, you are an artist in your own right.
I am so plug your stuff.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
Well, I think the biggest thing you can do is
go to Guy Kelly dot com. You can find links
to my music. I have a few different artist names.
I have some music listed under Guy Kelly on Spotify
or or any streaming service you go to. But if
you want to find lots of my work, some of
my design work, head to my website Guykelly dot com
(47:08):
and you can get links to all kinds of stuff
that I do there.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
Hey, dudes, yo, I really appreciate y'all listening to me
and guys art this whole season. Let us know what
do you want to hear in season two? By the way,
I've already got it planned out, but you know all
might take some input. What do you want to hear
(47:36):
more of? What can't you wait for next season? Season
one was a bastuff of labor, but we about to
do it again. Thank you for being here, Thank you
for your time. I am Lindsey Byron and this is
my homeboy, Guy Kelly.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Thanks everybody.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
Thanks. Now, let me be clear, I thoroughly support lesbian orgy.
All right? Where are they at? Let me know? Send
me the invite, just Kidden or Emma
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