Police Claim to Bust Upscale Escort Service; How are Houston’s Working Girls Coping?

Update: Here’s the show.

On this week’s Partisan Gridlock, Wednesday from 10:00 – 11:00 PM on KPFT…

A couple of weeks ago, one of the biggest prostitution busts in Houston history took place. The Chronicle reports that

With two locations, several Web sites, dozens of apparently satisfied employees and perhaps thousands of loyal, well-heeled customers, the service business that Debbie and Charles Turbiville nurtured over the last few years was impressive for a pair of young and inexperienced entrepreneurs. Some say it was the largest of its kind in Houston.

But prostitution is not legal. For all their efforts, the Turbivilles apparently now find themselves in need of a good lawyer.

The couple stands charged with running a sophisticated brothel and call-girl operation that catered to the city’s high rollers and screened its prospective clients carefully. Like similar operations that have come to light in New York, Washington and New Orleans, it relied on Internet advertising, well-trained and educated young women and lots of word-of-mouth publicity. Clients paid $300 and up for a one-hour session.

“She’s the Heidi Fleiss of Houston,” said Houston Police Sgt. Mark Kilty, whose office spent more than a year investigating the operation before arresting the couple last week, along with two alleged prostitutes who worked for them. “She was the one all the big players go to. If you come to town and you’re a big player, you call her. She screens you and she knows who you are and then you’re good to go.”

Channel 11′s Jeff McShan has been all over this story.  He reports that the escort service maintained a large list of customers — many of whom may be among Houston’s most prominent citizens:

Customers underwent criminal background checks, Kilty said.

“You had to be brought into what she called ‘her family’,” Kilty said. “These weren’t johns off the street. These were suit-and-tie businessmen. She had the upper scale. She probably had the biggest escort service in Houston.”

According to police, the list of more than 1,500 names is likely to include professional athletes, stockbrokers, doctors and lawyers.

On Partisan Gridlock this week, we’ll get an update on the case from Jeff McShan. We will also talk about whether the well-publicized bust has affected Houston’s sex trade and what the life of a prostitute is really like in the nation’s fourth largest city.

We’ll do all of that and have the quotes of the week tomorrow night from 10:00-11:00PM on KPFT.