Louisiana Voice

It’s in every major daily newspaper, you can’t avoid it on TV news programs and it’s spread all over the internet. The Jeffrey Epstein ongoing saga is literally a story you cannot avoid unless you live under a rock or on some remote uncharted island.

Yet, Florida’s sex trafficking story goes much deeper than the Epstein/Trump angle and along with that goes the age-old story of political hypocrisy.

Take, for instance, a study by the UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA released last July indicates that more than half-a-million people were exploited in labor trafficking and another 200,000 in sex trafficking in the Sunshine State in 2024.

Just today, when I opened and began reading my daily news dispatches, a STORY jumped out at me, proclaiming that the Florida attorney general “threatens child predators with ‘death penalty’ after announcing rescue of 122 children.”

That sound pretty impressive on the face of it. But when one takes a closer look at sex trafficking in the state of Florida, one realizes that all those news stories about nabbing traffickers in sting operations is little more than window dressing to give appearances of progress against what has become a national cancer.

With sex trafficking estimated to be enslaving 200,000 just in Florida, 122 rescues, while a positive note, certainly doesn’t appear to be a significant breakthrough in fighting sex trafficking.

Especially when another news story almost three years ago to the day reveals a trend of official neglect bordering on malfeasance. On Nov. 20, 2022, The South Florida Sun Sentinel revealed that the administration of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (affectionately known as Rhonda Santis) declined to issue fines after 14,000 violations of a sex trafficking law by Florida hotels and lodging establishments.

Could that possibly because the state’s tourism industry must be protected at all costs? Nah, couldn’t be, but an INVESTIGATION by the newspaper found that 6,669 hotels and lodging establishments had received 14,279 citations since a 2019 sex trafficking law mandated that they make modest changes to protect victims.

But not a single fine for the violations? Wow.

Then, there’s the case of ANDREW TATE and his brother Tristen. The two had been held in Romania on charges of trafficking women in three countries but strings were pulled and the charges were dismissed (know of anyone powerful enough to get charges in Romania dismissed?). The pair next showed up in Fort Lauderdale. “The Tates will be free, Trump is the president. The good old days are back,” Andrew Tate posted in X in February.

Their attorney was a man named Paul Ingrassia. That was before he joined Trump’s White House, however, as its Department of Homeland Security liaison.

From his DHS desk, Ingrassia scolded authorities in Fort Lauderdale for the seizure of the Tates’ devices and asked that their property be returned to them. He was careful to note that the “request” was coming from the White House. Never mind that Ingrassia’s intervention on behalf of the accused sex traffickers could be construed as interference with a federal investigation.

Finally, we have this STORY. Note the three individuals in the photo are all from Florida: Attorney General Pam Podi, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Pedo-POTUS Trump.

 And yet…and yet, there are legions of Americans who have convinced themselves that Agent Orange can do no wrong – people like U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, the only member of the House to vote no on releasing the Epstein files, and Gov./LSU Athletic Director Squeaky Toy Landry who will unquestionably take up any cause that his Dear Leader tells him to.

We can now assume that Higgins and Landry support misogyny, up to and including rape and sex trafficking, bribery, getting in bed with despotic dictators like “Bone Saw” MBS, kidnapping of innocent persons and zip-tying children.

I don’t make it to movie theaters much anymore, though I admit I really miss the smell of that delicious popcorn that goes with theater presentations. I now resign most of my movie-watching to Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc., and nibble on vastly inferior microwave popcorn.

I watched a very good movie over the weekend that, while it was actually released last March, has just been offered on my streaming services, namely Amazon Prime in this particular case.

The movie was called The Alto Knights and featured one my favorite actors, Robert DeNiro, playing dual roles as Mafia bosses Frank Costello and Vito Genovese.

Genovese, fearing prosecution for a 1934 murder, fled to Italy in 1937 where he supported Benito Mussolini. But when the Allies invaded Italy, he switched sides and offered his services to the U.S. Army, an act that help facilitate his return to the U.S.

Upon fleeing to Italy, he named childhood friend Frank Costello boss of bosses. But when he expected to reclaim his position upon returning to the U.S., Costello resisted, prompting an attempted hit on Costello. Costello was only wounded, but the attempt on his life convinced him to retire. Along the way, there was the barber shop assassination of Albert Anastasia and the infamous Apalachin meeting that ultimately forced J. Edgar Hoover to finally face the fact that an organized crime syndicate did indeed exist – a contention he’d denied up to that point, preferring instead to focus the FBI’s efforts on rooting out communists.

Written by Nicholas Pileggi who also wrote Goodfellas, the two-hour Alto Knights movie is riveting and certainly entertaining – especially to those familiar with the names of America’s old crime bosses like Lucky Luciano, Carlo Gambino, Meyer Lansky, Joe Adonis, Joe Valachi and Bugsy Siegel.

While the story is mostly told from Costello’s vantage point, it does leave out what I consider to be an important occurrence that tied Costello’s name to New Orleans and Louisiana – AS RELATED IN A POST by LouisianaVoice in September 2021, more than four years ago.

In 1934, New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia confiscated thousands of illegal slot machines being operated in the Big Apple by Costello. La Guardia had the machines dumped into the East River, crushing a major source of Costello’s cash flow.

Undeterred, Costello looked southward to Louisiana where he cut a deal with then-Sen. Huey Long, giving Long 10 percent of the gambling revenue should Costello choose to move his slot machine operations to New Orleans. Thus, was born Bayou Novelty Co. as a front to spearhead what would eventually be a statewide gambling operation, stretching from New Orleans to Bossier City – until the campaign of State Police Superintendent Francis Grevemberg to eradicate illegal gambling in the state in the 1950s and ‘60s..

When the manager of Bayou Novelty died in 1937, Costello’s brother-in-law Dudley Geigerman, Sr. (his sister was marred to Costello; her part was played in the movie by Debra Messing) took over the operation which by 1939 generated revenues of $800,000. In October of that year, however, a federal indictment charged six men of evading more than half-a-million dollars in income taxes. That’s more than $10 million in today’s dollars. Named in that indictment were Costello, Dudley Geigerman, brother Harold Geigerman, James Brocato (alias Jimmie Moran), Phillip Kastel and Jacob Altman. Costello and Kastel were only two of the six not from New Orleans. Moran had once served as a bodyguard for Long.

By 1954, Costello was also on trial for evading $73,437 in income taxes on income from his 22½ percent ownership of Louisiana Mint Co., a slot machine rental firm in New Orleans. It was further learned that the Beverly Country Club in Jefferson Parish was a partnership divided between Kastel (35 percent), Costello and Lansky (20 percent each), Kastel associate Alfred “Freddie” Rickerfor (17½ percent), Dudley Geigerman, Sr. (2½ percent) and Carlow Marcello (15 percent).

Also omitted from the movie was the fact that when Costello died in February 1973, his wife of 59 years moved to New Orleans to live with her brother, Dudley Geigerman, Sr. Geigerman Sr. died in August 1985.

Dudley Geigerman, III at various times has partnered with Marcello associate and convicted organized crime figure Anthony Tusa and former Louisiana State Police Commission member Jared Caruso-Riecke of St. Tammany Parish.

Business enterprises in which Dudley Geigerman III was involved – and his partner(s) – included:

• Crown Entertainment, Metairie (Anthony Tusa, partner);
• Decatur Entertainment, Slidell (Tusa);
• Southeastern Louisiana Entertainment, Houma (Tusa);
• Video Village, Slidell (Tusa);
• Mr. Binky’s Video Store, Kenner (Tusa);
• Paradise Video, Kenner (Tusa);
• GDH International. Covington (Jared Caruso-Riecke).

The first six businesses were video stores that specialized in pornographic videos and literature as well as various sex toys while GDH was a real estate investment company. Other officers in GDH besides CEO Riecke and Director of Housing Geigerman were Director Daniel E. Buras, Jr., Chief Operating Officer Richard Sharp and Chief Financial Officer Bruce Cucchiara.

Cucchiara was murdered in an apartment complex parking lot in New Orleans East on April 24, 2012, while looking for investment property. His killer has never been found.

Last year my book about wrongful convictions, 101 Wrongful Convictions in Louisiana, was published. It was a work I had been considering for several years and I finally was able to write about an issue I felt passionately about.

One of the exonerees I profiled in that work, a chapter that began on page 172 and continued for three full pages was about a man named Calvin Duncan who stands out as possibly pulling off the single greatest turnaround of one’s life and overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds.

Duncan was that rare individual who made the most of his opportunities once freed from years in prison for a crime he did not commit.

Accused of a 1981 murder, he was convicted because of the perfect trifecta of injustice. Orleans Parish then-Assistant District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro withheld exculpatory evidence and because a hostile judge threw up obstacles for Duncan’s defense counsel and to top it all off, a corrupt Oregon police officer lied to Duncan during questioning following his arrest in that state (the officer, Clackamas County sheriff’s deputy Roy Reed, would, six months following Duncan’s August 1982 arrest, plead guilty in federal court to a single count of wiretapping in an unrelated case).

The short version of Duncan’s story is he was convicted of first-degree murder in 1985 and affirmed in affirmed in 1987. You can read the longer version HERE:

Appeal after appeal was routinely denied and in order to hire an investigator, he sold his plasma. The investigator, after taking his month, then failed to perform any work on his case.

In 2004 the Innocence Project New Orleans (author John Grisham sits on the national organization’s board) took up Duncan’s case and began filing public records requests for documents from police and prosecutors, eventually forcing the release of exculpatory evidence and false police reports.

On Jan. 7, 2011, after serving 26 years in prison, he was allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter and attempted armed robbery and was released on time served. It’s called an Alford Plea. This tactic is a favorite ploy by prosecutors since the guilty plea prohibits the defendant from collecting damages for his wrongful conviction. It’s a cruel, underhanded deal: trade your freedom for any future claim of damages.

Duncan, though, played a critical role in assisting attorneys to gather evidence and frame arguments for a successful challenge to Louisiana’s use of non-unanimous juries. Louisiana and Oregan were the only states that had continued to recognize such verdicts until 2020, when the U.S. Supreme Court barred such verdicts.

Meanwhile, Duncan had enrolled and graduated from Tulane University and then attended Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Ore. despite knowing that if his conviction for manslaughter and attempted armed robbery were allowed to stand, he could not be admitted to the bar following his graduation from law school.

Fortunately, Judge Nandi Campbell in August 2021 said in her ruling, “Given the state’s prior suppression of evidence relating to the Oregon officers’ possible criminal activity, the inconsistencies of the …eyewitness identification and Mr. Duncan’s extensive service and numerous contributions to the community post-release, the sentence imposed on Jan. 7, 2011, is unconstitutionally excessive.” Following her ruling, the state dismissed all charges against Duncan.

Fast forward to this past Saturday. Duncan, 62, who worked at Loyola University’s Jesuit Social Research Institute, won his race for Orleans Parish Criminal Clerk of Court in an astounding upset of an established political opponent, pulling 68 percent of the vote.

He attributed his win partly to his opponent’s attack on his “claimed” exoneration. “That (the election result) was a message by New Orleans people for sure, that we’re not goin to tolerate politics being an institution where people display their meanness,” he said, perhaps a bit more optimistically than the political realities as they currently exist.

Duncan pledged to protect the rights of all citizens “like I would protect mine.”

If I ever write an update to my book, I know where I’ll begin.

First, let me confess that I know little about the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office that doesn’t fall under the description of ancient history. Nor do I know Sheriff Gerald Sticker or any of his deputies.

That ancient history, by the way, dates all the way back to the mid-1970s – half-a-century ago when a sheriff’s department public information officer was involved in an abortive scheme to have then-Southeastern Louisiana University President Clea Parker fired for corruption.

I was working at the time for the Baton Rouge State-Times and Editor Jim Hughes told me to take a trip to Hammond and look around to see if there was any merit to the allegations.

I did, and found no evidence of any wrongdoing by Parker and so reported to Hughes who told me to just forget about it. (A majority of tips about corruption and misdeeds did and still do turn out to be nothing burgers.)

On an ensuing visit to Tom Kelly, my old publisher at the Ruston Daily Leader, I told him of my dry run to the university. He bolted upright, snapped his fingers and said, “Wait a minute! I have a brother-in-law who teaches there and he told me that an official at the school told him in the student union, “You’re looking at the next president of Southeastern. Gov. (Edwin) Edwards promised the job to me.” Kelly told me the official’s name.

Back in Baton Rouge, young, inexperienced and naïve, I simply walked over to the 34-floor State Capitol, took the elevator up to the fourth floor and announced to the receptionist that I’d like to talk to the governor. No appointment – just walked in cold.

To my now-astonishment, she said, “All right, sir. Have a seat and he’ll be with you in a minute.”

A few minutes later I was ushered into the governor’s office. There was no one in the room, so I took a seat at his desk. A few minutes later, Edwards strode past me from my right, walked around to his desk whereupon he proceeded to step up feet-first into his chair and perched on the back of the chair with his feet where his butt should have been. Holding a disposable cup of coffee in both hands he said simply, “May I help you?”

Being the somewhat direct sort, I blurted, “Governor did you promise the presidency of Southeastern to ________?”

Edwards, with a well-earned reputation of being even more direct, never blinked. “What I promised _______, was if the presidency became open, I would endorse him for the position and since I appoint all the board members (State College Board of Trustees), my endorsement would carry considerable weight. Does that answer your question?”

Boom. Just like that, I had a front-page story and all hell broke loose. The person in question was irate and called me at the paper screaming. I calmly told him if he had a problem, he needed to take it up with the governor because that was my source. Never heard another word.

The point I was leading up to with this story is I received a message from the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office via a third party that I was invited to never set foot in Tangipahoa again. Tempers apparently cooled because I was later to promote a monthly comedy show in Hammond for several years – a show that regularly featured a then-Tulane med student named Ken Jeong who you may have seen in the Hangover movies or the TV show The Masked Singer.

Fast forward to last Saturday. Tax proposals being pushed by Sheriff Sticker failed, leaving the office in dire financial straits – if one listens to the sheriff, though it’s pretty difficult to feel sorry for someone pulling down $276,000 per year in salary, expenses and retirement benefits.

But the results of the election apparently were not enough. Sticker or someone in his office posted this message on Facebook:

Now, I’m no expert in public relations but it seems to me posting a somewhat petty message like that would seem to be a guarantee of a single term in office. Folks don’t like taxes and they for sure don’t like their elected officials thumbing their noses at their constituency – unless, of course, you’re Donald Trump.

We have not heard any official or even reliable information on the reasons, but we do know that Jackson Parish Sheriff Andy Brown and his chief investigator, Deputy Donovan Shultz abruptly resigned (though word is they’re calling it “retirement”) their positions barely a week after LouisianaVoice published a story about their unsuccessful attempt to market expensive “skin substitute” bandages made of dried placenta to a Ruston doctor.

Brown was serving his sixth term as sheriff and word was, he was planning to run for reelection before today’s sudden turn of events. Shultz, who is a business partner of Brown, is a veteran of more than 20 years in law enforcement.

Plenty of rumors are circulating around their sudden departure, including a report that a third deputy also stepped down at the same time. A quick check by LouisianaVoice, however, revealed a report that he actually retired more than four years ago.

One local critic whose vulgarities caused us to ban him from posting his comments, accused us of “hiding behind a phone screen” (whatever that might have meant) despite the fact that my name was at the top of my most recent – and this one as well – story. Speaking of hiding, that individual has yet to reveal his own name, going instead by “Unknownuser2252025.”

That aside, everything we have published about Brown and Donovan, with the exception of the report about the sales call in Ruston (which came from a person with close, personal knowledge of the event) has been straight from prior news accounts and/or public records, including 83 violations in the treatment of youth in his care and the state’s subsequent cancellation of its contract with him to house juvenile offenders.

Nor do I have any particular “angst” against Brown, as another writer suggested (at least he was civil). I even wrote about at least 40 sheriffs and deputies in my book Louisiana’s Rogue Sheriffs: A Culture of Corruption but somehow failed to include Brown or Shultz. Angst? I don’t think so.

Stay turned. If we learn anything more, I’ll pass it along. And it won’t be “behind a phone screen.”