INVESTIGATIVE WORK

The completed stories below were published by The Tennessean in Nashville. As a general ssignment reporter I was able to cover a myriad of topics.

Law has not stopped lap dances
Scant cover-ups flout ordinance, councilman says

By AILENE TORRES
Staff Writer

Despite a touted and contested new ban on lap dances at Nashville's adult entertainment spots, women are still straddling the thighs of customers and gyrating their bodies in a variety of seductive dances night after night.

The difference: They are wearing bikinis.

A Tennessean spot check of 12 establishments found that most are still offering lap dances, but are doing so with swimwear that's not much more revealing than a customer might see at any local swimming pool.

The bikini dances represent the fine line clubs are walking as they comply with adult-entertainment regulations, which took effect Jan. 15 after eight years of legal battles.
No one is happy with the situation. Club owners say the addition of Lycra and lace to what was a naked experience is hurting business. And city leaders say the dances are still lascivious and should stop.

"I'm absolutely appalled that they are circumventing the law," said Metro City Councilman Michael Craddock of Madison. "I think they should be cited for that and taken to court. It was not the council's intention and they are plainly circumventing the law and they need to be held accountable for this."

Since the ordinance went into effect, at least two adult businesses have closed down. But most strip clubs have found ways to stay open.
Among them:
o Dejà Vu of Nashville has 15-inch"stages" where dancers can dance nude close to customers. The club says the arrangement complies with the 3-foot rule, citing the distance between dancers' torsos and customers.
o The law requires strip clubs to close at 3 a.m. but some stay open until 5 a.m. by making the dancers on stage wear bikinis and referring to the businesses as after-hours clubs.
o Two clubs are operating as before while they fight the new regulations in court.

Bikini dances

A lawyer for some Nashville strips clubs said punishing businesses or entertainers for bikini performances could infringe on free expression.

"If the entertainer is not nude or semi-nude, it's not sexually oriented entertainment," said attorney Bob Lynch. "Once the entertainers are not displaying their sexual anatomical areas, it's protected under the First Amendment."

Metro's Sexually Oriented Business Licensing Board is charged with identifying and punishing violators. Doug Sloan, one sex board member, said Metro's ordinance is unambiguous and that lap dances are categorically erotic.

"Regardless of whether or not the specified anatomical areas are covered, if their exhibition depicts acts of specified sexual activities, then that is sexually oriented entertainment," he said after a recent board meeting.

Any sexual entertainment must be on a stage that is at least three feet from the nearest customer, he said.

"You can't be nude off the stage and even if you are not nude -- even with clothes on, you can't do what is specified as a lap dance," Sloan said.

Sloan said he would expect clubs allowing close-range bikini performances to be reported by the city's compliance inspector for possible citations.

But Lynch, who represents at least two clubs, said his clients are just trying to stay afloat after Metro banned one of the main sources of revenue. Nashville's strip clubs are prohibited from serving alcoholic beverages.

Ultimately, those close to the matter said, a court may have to decide issues such as what constitutes a lap dance and what makes a particular style of dance sexual.

In Nashville clubs like Anthony's Showplace, Christie's Cabaret and Pure Gold's Crazy Horse, bikini-clad dancers strip on stage but perform the more lucrative personal dances with their swimsuits on. Prices are generally around $15 to $40.
Ignoring ordinance

Two of Nashville's strip clubs have openly refused to abide by Metro's new rules. Club Platinum and Historic Theatre Brass Stables have offered different reasons they don't believe they are legally bound by the ordinance.

Both continue to offer topless lap dances while their cases are in court. Lawyers for Brass Stables have argued that the business is in a narrow building making it impossible for customers to remain three feet away from nude dancers.

"Due to the size of the location, they can never comply with the code," said their lawyer, Bryan Lewis of Barrett, Johnston & Parsley.

Lewis, who also represents Club Platinum, declined to elaborate on its reasons for not complying, saying his legal strategy has not been released to his opponent.

"We feel the statute doesn't fit our clients' activities," he said.

On a recent Saturday night at Club Platinum, women in little outfits welcomed their patrons into semi-private areas, some complete with beds. There, they gyrated and grinded while straddling their outstretched customers for about the length of two songs.

Once the semi-private performance started, the women stripped off their tops leaving only their G-string-like underwear on. When the dance was over, at least one man could be seen with his shirt untucked and his belt around his neck.

Several competing club owners complained that allowing those two clubs to operate under the old rules creates an uneven playing field.

Brad Shafer, a Michigan lawyer hired by Dejà Vu Consulting, the national franchise corporation that owns the local club on Demonbreun Street, said ordinances are not supposed to be designed to close businesses down.

"My clients ... are going to the nth degree trying to comply. But they are in competition with businesses that are totally out of compliance," Shafer said.

For now, the courts have ruled that the clubs can operate during the dispute.

Small stages

The city's lap dance ban allows nude dancing only on stage, a provision designed to limit sexually charged interaction in intimate settings.

But one club tried to preserve lap dances by using little 15-inch-high "stages" close to seating areas for nude dances.

The club, Dejà Vu, became one of the first flagged for a violation. The sex board pointed to a section of the law that banned nude dancing in booths, and said the seating arrangements in question were booths.

The club and the board have engaged in an arcane debate over what constitutes a booth under Metro's ordinance. The board ultimately dismissed the citation, but Dejà Vu officials have been ordered to discontinue the close-range dances.

After hours

The new law also forces strip clubs to close at 3 a.m., but some of the clubs have found a way to keep their doors open longer. At Anthony's Showplace near Interstate 40 and Charlotte Avenue, patrons hardly notice the seamless transition at 3 a.m. when the business turns from a strip club into After Hours.

Instead of stripping naked, the women on stage dance in bikinis after 3 a.m. This small difference leaves After Hours out of the purview of the sex board.

Although Metro won the lengthy legal battle to implement the ordinance, lawyers for the strip clubs expect an equally vigorous battle ahead as the city tries to enforce rules that potentially cross the free-speech provisions of the First Amendment.

"You are either nude or you're not," said Lynch, the lawyer who represents some of the strip clubs. "But when you talk about erotic touching, it's just a big black hole as far as the law is concerned."

Metro Councilman Jim Gotto, who supported the crackdown, said additional action might be needed if a legal review finds that the law allows women to give lap dances in bikinis.

"I am ready to amend the law and take the loopholes out," Gotto said. "As a matter of fact, I would like to close them down."

Metro ordinance has stripped business, club owner says

By AILENE TORRES
Staff Writer

On a recent Friday afternoon, "Indigo," a dancer at Odyssey Gentlemen's Club, moved to a medley of Prince hits including "Soft and Wet" on a dimly lit stage. The room was virtually empty.
In the past, the club would have 35-40 customers, many of them buying lap dances, said owner Ted Russell. Indigo didn't collect one tip during the two-song set.

"Business is terrible because of the new law," said Russell, who also runs Executive 701 and Showtime Gentlemen's Club in Nashville. "It has hurt the business. I try to do the right thing by doing what the city wants to do, and we are taking it on the chin."

Russell is feeling the pinch that many adult entertainment businesses are trying to combat as a result of the new enforcement of Metro's law regulating sexually oriented businesses.

Russell described Indigo as a trouper. He said 90 percent of his dancers have left for more lucrative clubs in places like Memphis, Birmingham, Atlanta, Kentucky or anyplace without a three-foot law, he said.

At least one manager of a club near Fort Campbell said they©ve seen an influx of dancers and customers from the Nashville area. One club, Catwest in Oak Grove, Ky., advertises the fact that it's not subject to a three-foot rule.

Councilman Jim Gotto of Hermitage, who supports enforcement of the ordinance, said it's too bad if it hurts business.

"I don't think that is what it was designed to do, to shut these businesses down," he said. "But if that's what it does, that is what it does."o

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Gunshot took one life, stole two mothers' peace of mind
Karren Brown and Kathelene Scott have never met, but their lives became intertwined Nov. 12 when Nashville recorded its 87th homicide of the year.

She misses her daughter's hugs, strives to forgive

By AILENE TORRES
Staff Writer

The bedroom where Denise Brown, 15, slept each night remains virtually untouched. A stuffed Tweety Bird perches neatly on a pillow, close to a poster of B2K's Omarion, Denise's favorite rhythm & blues singer.

Only after her sudden death earlier this month did her mother notice that Denise had left her room unusually neat, a fact that conjured eerie overtones for her stunned relatives.

"She never straightened her room very well, even if she was trying to go somewhere," her mother, Karren Brown, said in an interview last week.

Denise had spent the night at a girlfriend's home on the night before her death. The next day, Nov. 12, Denise came home but asked if she could again stay the night with her friend. Her mother obliged.

Then, without her mother's knowledge, Denise was dropped off with another friend at the home of Tessie Torrez, who lived in an apartment at the James A. Cayce Homes public housing complex in east Nashville.

That evening, Denise sat atop a bed in an upstairs bedroom as a handful of girls chatted and did each other's hair. Across the street, unknown to Denise, Stephen Scott, 18, had just returned to the scene of an illegal dice game, according to police accounts.

Scott claimed he had been robbed earlier of more than $200 in winnings. He returned with a gun, intent on getting even, police suspect.

He fired into the upstairs bedroom where Denise sat, striking her in the head and killing her almost instantly. She became the 87th person killed in a homicide in Nashville this year.

Scott is being held in the Metro Jail in Denise's killing and has said publicly that he didn't intend to shoot her and has apologized.

That was little consolation to Denise's mother, who was driving when she received a phone call from her oldest daughter, Rhonda, informing her about the shooting.

As it turned out, Denise was already gone by the time Rhonda punched in her mother's cell phone number.

Two weeks later, the finality of Denise's death still has not entirely set in.

"It feels like she's just gone away for a couple of days," her mother said. "I feel like she's coming back, but I know she's not."

The bubbly teen loved to cook and talked of having her own cooking show, her mother said.

Those close to her also said she avoided shaking hands. Instead, when she spotted friends, the teenager greeted them with hugs, said Dwayne Lewis, pastor of The Rock of Salvation Ministries.

Her mother recalled the last day she spent with her daughter.

The two took in the Veterans Day Parade, in which Denise's brother Damont, 7, took part. Then they ate lunch at a McDonald's.

Metro Police Sgt. Anna-Marie Williams, who handled the investigation into Denise's death, stays in contact with the grieving family, Brown said.

"I just hate to see families go through so much pain," said Williams, a 19-year veteran. "I know where the resources are and the families don't ... Families know all they have to do is pick up the phone and call, and if I don't know how to do something, I call somebody who does."

But what Brown longs for most these days are her daughter's enthusiastic hugs. She also struggles to reconcile the death of her child with her Christian values.

"I know I have to forgive ... Mr. Scott," the mother said. "Because he asked for forgiveness, that is required of me."

Along with son who cared for her, she lost home, too

By AILENE TORRES
Staff Writer

Kathelene Scott rode a motorized chair through her apartment at the James A. Cayce Homes on a recent afternoon, pondering her future after being notified this month she is being evicted from her home of the past year.

"I don't know why I have to move," Scott said in her impaired speech. Wiping away tears, she finished, "I pay my rent on time. I kept the bills caught up."

Scott, 59, seems an odd fit in the crosshairs of the Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency's rules aimed at maintaining a safe environment in the city's 11,000-resident public housing system. Since 2001, more than 500 residents have been evicted from Metro's public housing complexes under the rules.

A massive stroke in 1993 left Scott largely paralyzed on her right side and using a wheelchair. Her son, Stephen, 18, has shouldered the bulk of her care, helping her with basic hygiene and spending time with her.

But according to police reports, Stephen was carrying a gun in the Cayce homes Nov. 12 while grumbling that he had been robbed. Residents of the neighborhood suggested the alleged robbery might have been tied to an illegal dice game.

Police say Stephen fired into an upstairs bedroom window of an apartment, killing Denise Brown, 15, who had been sitting on a bed chatting with her girlfriends. He is being held without bail at the Metro jail in connection with Denise's death.

The killing also triggered action at the public housing headquarters, which has rules stating that criminal activities by the leaseholder, any household member, guests or anyone under a leaseholder's control are grounds for eviction.

Kathelene Scott was ordered out by Nov. 22, but she says she has nowhere to go. She said she has been using her $592 a month disability income to pay her publicly subsidized rent of $192 a month. She has been unable, she says, to find another affordable place to live.

"We can't afford it unless we get something based on her income, and that's not going to happen because what Stephen did is in her file," her daughter, Stacie Scott, 17, said. The family is considering moving in with some relatives if nothing turns up soon.

Housing officials say they have no plans to physically oust the Scotts while eviction proceedings work their way through the legal system.

"While the situation involving Kathelene Scott's son is unfortunate and sad for everyone involved, the rules she agreed to when she signed the lease have to be enforced," the housing agency's executive director, Phil Ryan, said in a prepared statement.

As her teenage daughter packed household items into boxes last week, Kathelene Scott defended her son.

"He didn't mean to kill that girl," she said, her speech labored. "He's not irresponsible."

Housing officials have called in the assistance of a social worker to help find housing elsewhere, possibly in an assisted-living facility.

"That's where she's going to go if we don't find a place to move," Stacie Scott said.o

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Worry taints family's easy life in slow-paced town

By AILENE TORRES
Staff Writer

AJIJIC, Mexico -- Carmen Rojas Solorio shed tears as she stood behind the counter at Media Luna Bistro & Cafe.

The tears came at the idea of her husband, Perry March, spending more than 20 years in jail for something she believes he didn't do. She recounted a story of a man she read about on the Internet who was freed last week after spending 27 years in jail for a crime that only now DNA proves he didn't commit.

"I think, is that what they are going to do to Perry?" she said, wiping tears from her high cheekbones.

It's been a difficult time for Solorio, whose husband was taken away almost one week ago by unidentified men clad in all black. The government says he was deported. And now he sits in a Los Angeles jail awaiting his extradition to Nashville. American authorities have accused him of killing his first wife, Janet, and getting rid of her body.

It's in Ajijic where Solorio and March built a life together.Their large blended family -- his two children from his first marriage, her three from her first marriage and a baby girl they had together -- goes with the grain in this closely knit community.

Solorio smiles when she talks about the children, all six of them, including March's children Samson, 14, and Tzipora, 11. She believes Janet March -- whose body has never been found -- is alive.

"How old was Tzippy when she left? Two? I have spent more time with Tzippy than she has," Solorio said. "Who takes care of them when they're sick? I do. Who's there at karate practice? I am... What do they call me? Mom. They're mine."

Solorio said Janet March's parents, the Levines, were doing more damage by attempting to take Samson and Tzipora away from the only family they know.

"The Levines don't realize that Samson and Tzippy are older now. They aren't babies anymore and they know what's going on," she said. "You can't hide where their father is."

On Saturdays all six children, whom Solorio affectionately refers to as the "Brady Bunch," usually come to the bistro to spend all day with their parents.

But this past Saturday it was different. Perry March was gone and the children were nowhere to be found. And there was a curious item on display among the raspberry tarts, apple pie and chocolate bundt cake with two kinds of icing: a local newspaper with her husband's name, his picture and the phrase "arrested for wife's murder."

Solorio appeared from the back with a smile to help her customers, who had been coming in steadily.
Since March was arrested, people have been coming in to find out what happened.

"Everybody asks why we have that up," she said as she glanced at the local weekly she is displaying on her counter. "We always have that paper there. Why take it down just because he's in it? We have nothing to hide."

March made enemies in Mexico
Fraud allegations, other legal woes in adopted hometown dog deportee

By AILENE TORRES
Staff Writer

AJIJIC, Mexico --Gayle Cancienne had the perfect early retirement.

In her mid-50s, Cancienne moved to Ajijic. For two years, she would wake without an alarm clock to the beautiful blue skies, go for walks on the narrow cobblestone streets and play bridge with other American expatriates she had befriended.

Life for her couldn't get better, but it did get worse, she said, the day she met Perry March.
Now, four years later, Cancienne, 61, says she's poor and works 80 hours a week. Only this time, she makes $2 an hour and works one full-time and three part-time jobs.

"I'm getting too old for this kind of crap," she said, standing in the aviary at the animal shelter where she's the computer operator in Ajijic. "It's been horrible. I had to eat, for a long time, tortillas, beans, cactus and eggs. Eggs are cheap."

Cancienne is one of many North Americans in the Ajijic-Chapala area who claim they've been swindled by March, said Joel Rasmusson, who voluntarily helps people file complaints with the Mexican government. Although many filed claims with the Mexican immigration officials in nearby Guadalajara, nothing was done, he said, so they gave up and returned home.

Complaints about fraud and unsavory conduct were among the factors that caused Mexican immigration officials to deport March last week, an official in that country said. The immigration official conceded that officials had no evidence the allegations were true.

After his deportation, March was taken into custody by U.S. authorities responding to the unsealing of an indictment alleging that he had murdered his wife nine years ago and had disposed of her body. He is expected to be returned to Nashville in the coming week to face the charges.

The arrest has fueled criticism of March by some locals in Ajijic, his adopted home since 1999.
Nashville lawyer John Herbison, who has represented Perry March in the past and expects to be retained by him again soon, said he was unaware of the claims made in Mexico.

"I really don't know anything about the local issues there," Herbison said via telephone yesterday. "Last week was the first I have spoken with Perry, and the matters you are talking about were not part of those conversations."

Cancienne's allegations against March are the subject of a civil lawsuit being decided before a judge in Ajijic.

According to the suit, Cancienne needed a lawyer four years ago to help her manage three properties she owned in the United States -- two in her hometown of New Orleans, the other in Kansas City, Mo.
Cancienne wanted to sell the properties, deposit the money in a tax-free Mexican bank account and live off of the interest, which is common practice for Americans living in Ajijic.

March presented himself as an attorney, she said, and she retained him for $15,000 initially, later giving him an additional $5,000 retainer when he demanded it.

She said he convinced her that the best way to handle her affairs was to create a corporation using her name. "Actually, he had opened the corporation for himself," she said. "It's his corporation, not mine."
She said she later learned that Perry March had secretly sold her duplex in New Orleans.

"He sold it for $181,000 because he wanted a quick sale," she said. "The owner then turned around and sold it for $252,000."

Cancienne never got a cent of that money, she said.

"I'm pretty naive when it comes to business," she said, adding that the failed deal had ruined her. "I lived on the income of the rentals on the house. So he took everything I had."

Perry March's father, Arthur, said in an interview this week that he'd never heard of Cancienne and could not comment on her claims.

However, there are those in Ajijic who say they know Perry March to be a stand-up guy.

Angel Hago spent two years chauffeuring the March children to school in nearby Chapala. He never had to wait to be paid, he said.

"He would say, 'How much, Angel?' " Hago said. "He paid me, no problem."

But that's not the side of March that Jesus Madrigal says he knows.

Madrigal tried to make extra money by renting one of his family's properties, a lavish home in the affluent subdivision of La Floresta in Ajijic. When Perry March answered his advertisement, Madrigal said, he trusted him and didn't have the Marches sign a lease.

Behind a high wall sits a two-story Spanish-style hacienda with three bedrooms -- the master bedroom has a Jacuzzi -- 3 1/2 bathrooms, an additional outdoor kitchen complete with grill, and a swimming pool with "his" and "her" changing rooms.

Madrigal began renting to March in 2000.

At first things went smoothly, he said. March paid a year's rent in advance. The next year, he said, it took longer for March to pay, though he finally did. The third year, Madrigal said, he ran into problems with March.

"He would owe two months rent, then pay the two months and then one month," Madrigal said. "Then it started to get more complicated. He would promise to pay, saying, 'I'll see you tomorrow,' or that he had to go to Guadalajara to get money."

Finally, 22 days ago, the March family left the hacienda, Madrigal said, still owing thousands.

March's father said he didn't know anything about Madrigal's claim but found it hard to believe.

"They moved, but they left the house owing money? I doubt that," the older March said. "I never heard anything about that. To my knowledge he doesn't owe any money. I didn't hear that. You know, these people have stories."

Madrigal says that March left owing seven months' rent, plus more money for an unpaid utility bill. At $1,100 per month, with the utilities, the tab is closing in on $10,000, he said.

The Marches moved out so quickly that some personal belongings were left behind, Madrigal said, adding that he hoped to use the belongings as leverage to collect the money he says he is owed.

Elsewhere in town, officials within the La Floresta subdivision also were critical of the March family.
Media Luna Bistro & Cafe, the Marches' family-operated restaurant, is violating the area's zoning guidelines, said Luis Ramirez, the subdivision association's president.

"We don't want businesses around here because that's our rules," he said. "And it's a problem."

Ramirez said yesterday that the association had filed a claim to close Media Luna.

Carmen Rojas Solorio, March's Mexican wife, said that, in that case, officials would have to close the businesses next door, too, because they are in the subdivision. Association officials disagreed.

Ramirez said correspondence about the cafe went unanswered, so now the association is working through the court system. "In the next 45 days we will have something," he said.

As for Cancienne, she has moved out of the house she bought in Ajijic because she cannot afford the maintenance or the utilities. Now, she lives in a cheap apartment far from town. She doesn't have a phone, a computer, a television or a washer and dryer.

This is not how she expected to live out her life.

"Well, who would expect this? Who would expect to be destitute?" she said.

She realizes that she's unlikely to get her money back if March is convicted. Still, she sees his recent deportation and arrest as the first steps toward justice.

"I don't see much hope for me in getting any money back," she said. "I must say I'm very glad something has been done."o