The Best American Crime Reporting 2009 - Jeffrey Toobin [103]
Most reporters covering Ash’s stories have included a quick disclaimer saying Ash had been arrested multiple times for prostitution before quoting him extensively. None of them, however, have gone into any detail about Ash’s criminal history.
When I Googled “William Ash,” the search led me to a 2001 cover story in the Broward-Palm Beach New Times, a free weekly. The story documented more than a dozen cons that an overweight man by that name perpetrated on the South Florida gay community. There was a picture: It was the same guy.
The swindles listed in the New Times included stealing the client list of a company that sold goods manufactured by the disabled and setting up a rival company; a stint working at Fort Lauderdale’s CenterOne, an AIDS-counseling center, that ended when Ash was fingered for lying to a tabloid and telling them Tina Turner was a patient; and chartering a boat for his 31st birthday and spending thousands of dollars on flowers and balloons by telling vendors he was throwing a party for Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga and that the Miami businessman would be footing the bill. In 1997, Ash spent six months in jail on a combination of those charges and for running a prostitution ring. At the time, Ash was billing himself as Mr. Madam and boasted he had an offer to write a book about his days as a Heidi Fleiss-like pimp. The book never happened. Ash headed out for San Diego shortly after the New Times story appeared.
DAVID FOREST, a prominent agent in the gay-stripper business, gave me Tiger’s phone number. I reached him at his parents’ home outside of Spokane. Now married, Tiger has a baby daughter who could be heard screaming in the background. After the New York Times story broke, Tiger, a.k.a. Christopher Dauenhauer, at first offered a denial of sorts. He didn’t recall meeting Tobias, he told reporters. “I meet a lot of people, I don’t always remember names,” he told me when I asked him to explain. But once Ash’s story gained momentum, Tiger changed his mind. “When I thought about it more, I did remember Seth,” he says.
Then he told me that he hooked up with Tobias six or seven times, including on more than one occasion in Las Vegas. “Seth was a nice guy,” he said. “He was very good to me.” As with Ash, I asked him if there was any tangible evidence that he knew Tobias. Tiger said there was none.
Next came a story that might have made Billy Ash blush. In fact, it’s a story that seems flat-out loony. As Tiger tells it, he was living in Los Angeles a few years ago when he went to get his hair cut in West Hollywood. Out front were two attractive women. Tiger, who says he is bisexual, chatted them up. He said the girls were interested in rough sex, and the trio headed back to his RV in Orange County. “We were tying each other up,” says Tiger. “When it was my turn, they handcuffed me and threw a blanket over my head. Then they let in a guy who starting beating the shit out of me and forced drugs in my mouth. I woke up in prison. Then when I heard about Seth, I listened to the 911 tapes and heard Phyllis’s voice. She was one of the women. She must have heard about my affair with Seth.” What Tiger was saying, in other words, is that a jealous Phyllis Tobias traveled all the way across the country, deliberately hunted him down, lured him into a lurid sexual tryst, and assaulted him. Jacknin emphatically denies it. “That story is such bullshit, I can’t even believe I’m answering it.”
I asked Tiger for the name of the hospital he was treated at, specific dates of the assault, or any other corroborating details. “I don’t know,” he told me. “My memory isn’t so good.”
On January 9, Billy Ash added yet another wild twist to the story. He told the New York Daily News’s “Rush & Molloy” that Phyllis had paid $100,000 to Madam Simbi M’Arue, a voodoo artist who sometimes goes by the name Mama, to place a hex on her husband while he was still alive. Two days later, he told the same column that Tobias liked to have his genitals sheared by another gay porn star named Angel. Ash