Listen to Episode 5 of The Clown and the Candyman, “The Apex Predator” – the story of a Boy Sex Trafficking Kingpin.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-clown-and-the-candyman/id1540131474
Ask yourself about Oakland County, Birmingham, Michigan, Frank Shelden, Gerald Richards, Christopher Busch and the GM porn and sex ring as you listen.
The rest of the story…
John David Norman was a pederast pervert who sexually exploited and abused boys throughout his adult life, absolutely deserving of the Sexually Violent Predator status he was eventually conferred with.
John Norman’s apartment in Dallas, Tx., was raided, following a tip from a 24 year old member of Norman’s male prostitution ring,
Aug. 16, 1973 NY times;
“DALLAS, Aug. 15 — The police here said today that they had uncovered a nationwide homosexual procurement ring in a raid on an apartment on the city’s near north side.
Last night’s raid turned up catalogue files containing the, names and addresses of 50,000 to 100,000 people around the country, the police said.
Also seized were booklets containing the pictures and names of teen‐aged and young adult males available through !the ring for homosexual activities, they said”…
In “Why Johnny Can’t Come Home”, Noreen Gosch states that, on her way to testifying before Congress during hearings on organized crime in 1984, she spotted something on a “child sexual exploitation materials” display, run by FBI. It looked to her, to be a catalog of “boys for sale”. She says that she was not permitted to look through it. This was indeed a copy of John Norman’s infamous “booklet”.
In the video “Boys For Sale”, Professor Tom Philpott talks about seeing a “catalog of boys for sale” in amongst child sexual abuse images products, being sold in a Texas porn store. Again, this was a copy of John Norman’s “booklet”.
What were these booklets?
The booklets contained “personals ads” for male prostitutes, very much like advertisements for sex workers that were the bread & butter of every “alternative” newspaper in the US, except that these ads featured nude photos for some of the listings, and brazenly stated the alleged age of each person, (rather than concealing it, as was the custom with newspaper personals), even when they were illicit minors under the law. These ads were primarily for male persons aged 16 to 21, although there may have been some as young as 14 years, and some perhaps as old as mid to late twenties. In all cases, these were males for whom Norman was attempting to act as a pimp, (through a variety of schemes), charging some form of “service fee” for facilitating contact between prostitute and ‘john’.
Where did the young men in the booklets come from?
Dallas Police stated “Some of the youths were procured at bus stations, while others, apparently known homosexuals, were solicited by deter, according to Captain Newman”
None of the persons who appeared in these booklets were found to be victims of Dean Corll, and there was, and is, no evidence that Corll obtained any of his victims from John Norman.
“Capt. Bennie M. Newman, commander of the Police Youth Division, said today there was no immediate evidence to link the operation in Dallas with the discovery of the homosexual torture murder ring in Houston and 27 bodies of young boys and men.
“At this point I don’t think it has anything to do with what happened in Houston,” Captain Newman said” – (Aug. 16, 1973 NY times)
Some of the younger boys in Norman’s booklets were undoubtedly runaways at some point, and may have been reported as “missing persons” by parents or other caregivers, however, it was standard police practice at that time (1973) to assume they were runaways, label them as such, and not formally declare them missing persons. Norman was charged with many types of crimes against children during his lifetime, but he was never charged with kidnapping or false imprisonment, and there was no evidence that any of the persons listed in his booklets had been abducted by him, or trafficked by him to other men against their will.
Police determined “the ring had apparently begun operation in May”, and Norman was arrested in mid-August. During those 3 and 1/2 months, there were two documented instances of Norman successfully pimping one of his male prostitutes to a john. There was a 16 year old boy that Norman pimped to someone outside the US (to Canada, I believe), and there was the 24 year old that Norman matched with someone in Houston – causing that man to panic and blow the whistle on him, to police. Police confiscated somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 index cards, allegedly containing one name and address per card. Various persons stated these names were believed to be Norman’s male prostitute customers, but really who these persons were and how Norman acquired their personal information remains unknown. If they were all Norman’s pimping clients, that would mean Norman had pimped 1000 boys PER DAY, over the 100 days his scheme had been in operation.
John Norman revived his pimping schemes several times over the next ten years, and police confiscated 20,000 or more index cards from him on at least one other occaision, but not more of those booklet-catalogs. They were artifacts of Norman’s 1973 operation, regardless of where or when they may have turned up again, after that.
We do know who one of John Norman’s pimping clients was. Norman fled prosecution in Dallas in 1973, and turned up in Homewood, Illinois later that year. Police in Homewood received anonymous tips that a Steven Gurwell had been inviting young boys to his home, giving them beer and showing them “stag films”, during which he sexually assaulted them. Gurwell would later be unmasked as John Norman, and Norman would end up being charged and convicted on 5 counts of felony indecent liberties with a child. It turned out that Norman was living in the apartment of one of his Epic International members, a Mr. Charles J Rehling. Rehling had received an invitation, by mail, to join Epic International operating out of Dallas, Tx., The Purpose of the organization was stated to be, to introduce male persons – with the object that one of them would take the other “on a vacation” if they were ‘compatible’. Rehling accepted and became a member. Several months later, Rehling got a phone call from “Gurwell”, saying his membership fee was received, and that a 16 year old by from Independence, Missouri, would visit him to determine if they were compatible. It was determined that they were, and the boy returned to Missouri with the promise that Rehling would take him on a trip to Europe later that year. In August of 1973, Rehling took the boy to Europe for a 3 week “vacation”, after which Rehling paid for the boy to fly home to Missouri.
https://archive.org/details/JohnNorman_HomewoodPD/page/n37/mode/2up
John Norman subsequently contacted Rehling, after fleeing prosecution in Dallas, and was invited to stay with Rehling – which he subsequently did, also borrowing money and a car from Rehling as well – indicating that Norman was not sitting on mountains of cash from his pimping, and other, schemes. He was in fact dead broke.
There is no indication, in the police report, that they had any inclination to charge Rehling with anything, with respect to his sexual liaison with the 16 year old boy. There is no suggestion, that Rehling was a person of such great wealth and power, that he would be “untouchable” – so why bother trying? But what could they have charged him with? “transporting a minor across state lines for purposes of prostitution” had stupidly stipulated FEMALE minors, so neither man could be charged that way. If prostitution was alleged, it would be the BOY that would get charged, not the man. At age 16, the boy might be of legal age to consent to some sexual acts. Probably not sodomy, but the boy would have to state such acts took place, Rehling couldn’t be charged for “suspicion of sodomy”.
Does this case, ultimately, explain why none of the police forces that confiscated alleged “client lists” of Normans, ended up charging any of the men listed on them, with any crimes? “Being listed on a pederast pervert boy pimp’s mailing list”, isn’t a crime, and what else could such a listing – by itself – prove anyone guilty of?
Of much greater importance than any purported list of John Norman’s male prostitute customers, would be another list described in the Homewood police report as having been discovered “in a file drawer in Rehlings basement”; “approximately 2000 names, addresses, descriptions, etc.of boys ranging in age from 14 to 21”.
Concentrating on the minor boys only, the question of “where/how did Norman acquire their personal info” SHOULD have been pursued, if it was not. Chasing down 5000, 20,000, 50,000 names of alleged customers would be a fool’s goose chase, but making contact with 500? 1000? minor boys much less so.
How many, if any, of these minor boys ‘belonged’ to some version of Gerald Richards & “his boys”, or Vermilye and his Boys Farm, or the New Orleans boy scout troop conspirators, somewhere else in the country? How many, would John Norman be “subcontracting” from another pedophile abuser that had control over them, to pimp out to his own customers?
The boys would be the key to finding and exposing them.
There was no indication, in the Homewood police report, that there was another adult male (or males) at the Independence, Missouri end of the transaction with the 16 year old boy that Rehling exploited. The boy apparently showed up at Rehling’s apartment unaccompanied, he wasn’t in the company of a ‘controller’, and there’s no suggestion that the boy was under duress to return to Missouri, either time. It’s still possible, that there was another adult abuser in Missouri, whom Norman was “borrowing” the boy from.
It’s also possible, that Norman collected many names and addresses of minor boy prostitutes, through personals ads and contact ads, placed by the boys themselves – in Boylover journals like Better Life or Hermes, or in local or regional underground newspapers or Gay community publications. There were a number of ways to advertise as a minor, without necessarily inviting legal troubles. “Male nude model” was used in mainstream newspapers in my own community, (It wasn’t against the law to be a nude model, of any age, as long as it involved no sexual poses or acts), in the 1970’s and 80’s.
And there were many hundreds, if not thousands, of juvenile male prostitutes in America during the 1960’s, 70’s, and 80’s. Robin Lloyd famously claimed “the boys outnumbered the girls in Times Square” during the 70’s. The baby boom had generated a HUGE teen population in America, peaking in those years, and child welfare services of all kinds were hopelessly overwhelmed. Under 16’s were prohibited from “real” employment, in many places, and maybe newspaper delivery boys or lawn-mowing jobs for 1 in 10. At the same time, youth consumer culture was booming – there had never been so many youth oriented consumer goods and services, nor so much pressure to consume them in order to “belong”.
Where would the money come from? Not an allowance from your single mother with multiple children, being payed a fraction of the wages that a man could make. On top of all this, heroin addiction was rampant in major centres, and teens just as vulnerable to the lure of it as their rock star heroes.
Finally, there was another epidemic, completely invisible to almost everyone at the time, that we now understand to have touched all too many young boys of the 60’s and 70’s – sexual exploitation by clergy, by scout leaders, by sports coaches, etc. So many young boys, learning against their will how to perform sexual acts with adults, learning that some adults would trade ‘favors’ for sex with them. A dangerous knowledge, easily translated into ‘picking up johns’ as a teen on the streets.