MIAMI MIRROR – TRUE REFLECTIONS Club Madonna THE CLUB MADONNA BAMBOOZLE the Hoodwinking of Leroy Griffith Page 1 of 43 MIAMI MIRROR – TRUE REFLECTIONS By David Arthur Walters August 12, 2013 Word was out on South Beach’s Washington Avenue this Spring that Leroy Griffith, owner of the totally nude strip joint, Club Madonna, was about to bring a fraud suit against the City of Miami Beach, City Attorney Jose Smith, former Mayor David Dermer, former Commissioners Simon Cruz and Saul Gross, and former city attorneys Gary Held and Murray Dubbin. Furthermore, it was joyfully proclaimed, Griffith planned to expose Mayor Matti Bower and Commissioner Deede Weithorn for promising they would help him get a liquor license in return for $4,000 in campaign contributions. Members of the family of city officials sued by Club Madonna Most people are surprised and patrons of the naked arts disappointed that Club Madonna cannot sell liquor simply because its entertainers appear totally nude, although alcohol may be served in partially nude clubs where private parts are left to an imagination that can be more provocative than the real thing. Sally Rand in Bubble Dancer Recall that the great burlesque dancer Sally Rand was arrested multiple times for indecent exposure although her nudity was only imagined; a San Francisco judge who viewed her performance said that anyone who thought it was lewd had a perverse notion of morals. Page 2 of 43 MIAMI MIRROR – TRUE REFLECTIONS Nude clubs elsewhere can sell liquor, so what in the world is wrong with the City of Miami Beach? Meyer Lansky must be spinning in the grave at the sight of the sunny city exercising a legalized monopoly on pursuits better left to illegally organized crime! Maybe not: Griffith reportedly sued Charlotte, North Carolina, television station WBTV and Fayetteville police Capt. William Johnson for damages in excess of $10,000 for calling him a “Meyer Lansky man” and “one of Meyer Lansky’s boys” during an April 1984 broadcast, in which the program said Griffith’s Astor Theatre in Charlotte was the only theatre in town that showed only X-rated homosexual movies. According to a Fayetteville Observer report dated Dec. 4, 1984, Capt. Johnson was referring to a 1982 New York Select Committee on Crime report that said, “Leroy Griffith, a former Meyer Lansky man, is alleged to be the adult movie king in Miami.” Griffith complained that Johnson’s statements were false and malicious, and that he had never been associated in any way with organized crime. The disposition of that federal case is unknown at deadline. Sadly, the allegedly false and malicious allegation was reiterated in Appendix Five to Part 4: Chapter Four, entitled “Organized Crime,” of the 1986 Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography, wherein operations in various states including Florida were described based on investigators’ reports. Describing Florida, the pornography report implied that Griffith was guilty by leasing, a kind of guilt by association: “Benjamin Sigelbaum is a former banking official who has been known to set up Swiss bank accounts for organized crime figures. He also acts as an international courier of monies for organized crime figures. It is believed that he is the financial backer of Bernard Rose's pornographic enterprises. Rose owns the controlling interest in three X-rated movie theaters in Dade County which are leased to firms that actually operate them. He owns approximately 600 theaters in the United States. Rose is alleged to front investments for Meyer Lansky in Esquire Theaters. Benjamin Sigelbaum is also an associate of Meyer Lansky. Leroy Griffin (sic), a former Meyer Lansky man, is alleged to be the adult movie king in Miami. He owns and operates several adult theaters the Roxy Theater, Pussycat Theater, Paramount Theater, and the Gaiety Theater, all in Dade County. It was recently reported that he is now leasing the 79th Street Theater and the King-Rex Theater from Bernard Rose.” We are still left wondering why the gentleman, ostensibly defamed by associational allegations, could not serve liquor in his licensed nude establish in Miami Beach thirty years later. “That’s what they do, put information out there to ruin people,” said a security worker who spoke under condition of anonymity, saying that mere association with the strip club industry had ruined the life of a friend of his, who eventually committed suicide. “That information you’re talking about is probably from the F.B.I. It is supposed to be provided to the government in secret, but then the committee report or the court report is released with all that crap in it. And the Internet is seeded with it now. What kind of privacy is that? Page 3 of 43 MIAMI MIRROR – TRUE REFLECTIONS “I’ve worked for strip clubs in Atlanta, Vegas, and Miami,” he said, “and I worked for Leroy too. I remember when Leroy wanted to buy a club in Miami. People looked on the Internet, and decided not to even to talk to him because he was made out to look like a racketeer on the Internet. Strip clubs were called a racket in the Florida law books, so anyone who had an interest in them was called a racketeer.” “He’s no hood, no Mafia man. I know Mafia. He’s just a businessman. He runs a clean business. I worked security for a competitor of his on the beach just a few months ago, and everything was exposed inside, all kinds of sex acts going on too, that’s nothing new, but they won’t let Leroy have a license because he’s Irish and up against the Jews and Cubans. As long as they run the beach, he’s never getting a license. Miami is different.” In Atlanta, an anti-Semitic motive was asserted for the 1999 prosecution of Steven Kaplan, owner of the Gold Club. Wherever behavior is criminalized the crime is likely to become organized or attract organized crime families if the crime is highly profitable. Kaplan was indicted on federal racketeering charges including credit-card fraud, prostitution, money laundering, police corruption, and involvement with organized crime. The trial drew national attention from sports fans because some of his customers were famous athletes. Small-time hoodlums alleged Kaplan was paying for Mafia protection provided by the Gambino crime family. Defense attorney Steve Sadow said that prosecutors "recruited every scoundrel, every scumbag, every criminal that they could possibly get and have offered them their freedom and money for their testimony." Former beef smuggler Jack Galardi, a subject of the F.B.I. Operation G-string probe in Las Vegas also operated strip joints in Atlanta, Florida and San Diego. He was allegedly making huge payments under the table to several Las Vegas officials. Prosecutors there were accused of being on a fishing expedition. It seems like the political assembly governing the City of Miami Beach is running a legalized protection racket. Griffith over the years has complained of selective enforcement, a common refrain on the lips of residents in regards to code enforcement in general. It is usually random enforcement due to bureaucratic laziness and gross negligence, or moral corruption, but there is plenty of room for criminal corruption, and every so often the F.B.I. moves in for the kill. The regime is so unaccountable, given the absolute discretion of officials to do what they like, that Page 4 of 43 MIAMI MIRROR – TRUE REFLECTIONS City Attorney Jose Smith has called a proposal to account for some of it “moronic,” stating that all officials have to do is “follow the law,” which is to do as they like. “Leroy is good man but he is stubborn, his own worst enemy,” said local hotel and restaurant association president David Kelsey, familiar with the Miami Beach political scene for decades, when I asked him why Griffith does not simply convert his club to a burlesque entertainment theatre, having his girls don pasties and thongs so he can get a license. Another local businessman, a political insider, practically echoed Kelsey’s viewpoint. “Leroy is his own worst enemy. I told him how to get a license, but he wants to fight city hall for his civil rights. He has integrity, but he will never get a license now that he has sued commissioners and one of their wives.” Kelsey declared at public hearing on the issue in March 2004 that the irrational liquor ban on total nudity was drafted for graft. That makes sense: Legendary theatre entrepreneur Griffith has been trying to get a liquor license for over a decade and has plenty of money, making him the politicians’ favorite chump for their liquor license con game. He has long complained that his competitors over the years have been allowed to serve liquor with nudity in violation of the law enforced against him alone because he actually applied for a liquor license. The mutual tattle-tale game between clubs was almost as bad as the current war between Las Vegas wedding chapels. The corruption allegations even included peeks and blowjobs to induce the policing power to look the other way. Griffith believes he has a natural constitutional right to provide the sight of genitalia onstage to his customers if not during lap dancing, and he was not deterred by unconstitutional hindrances. In 1970 he and his performers were charged in the Municipal Court of the City of Miami Beach with producing, presenting, directing or participating in obscene performances at the Roxy Theatre (now Club Madonna) in regards to the performance of the play ‘Fear of Love.’ Further, he was himself accused of violating the ordinance against operating a house of ill-repute just for showing the play.