The Capital Call Girls
Jim Bunch got mixed up with Austin escorts—first for sex, then for money. When the police closed in, the career state bureaucrat felt he had nothing left to live for.
Cindy says: I know this was a long time ago, but wow TM, very intriguing story! (June 25th, 2010 at 1:30pm)
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News of the sensational arrest thundered through Austin. A prostitution ring being run out of a state agency! The Department of, ahem, Human Services, no less! Your tax dollars at work! The media spotlight shifted daily, first to Bunch’s audacious use of state property for illicit purposes; then to the client list, which, police acknowledged after reading only a portion of it, included the name of at least one state legislator; then to the vice squad’s revelation that Bunch may have pimped for girls under seventeen. Local wags salivated over the possibilities until speculation became gossip and ultimately took on the status of fact: “They say he ran the whole operation right out of the DHS. They say he made millions. They say he had teenagers and Tarrytown housewives on his payroll. The say the whole damned Legislature’s on the list!” Referring to the number of well-heeled Aimes clients who contacted the police department to find out whether their name appeared in the Bunch files, vice squad investigator Rudy Vasquez smiles and says, “The phones got real busy around here.”
Jim Bunch was released on a $5,000 personal recognizance bond on February 16, the day after his arrest. He talked to his family on the telephone and ordered them not to come to Austin. The local media were hounding him; one television reporter planted a microphone just outside his front door. Having heard of the fabled client list and imagining the ramifications of such a list’s being in the hands of the police, Bunch’s brother asked, “Jim, is your life in danger?”
No, Bunch assured him—concealing from his family, as always, the fact that the real danger rustled within his despondent heart. On the advice of a friend, he began to take Prozac to combat his depression. His life, once so neatly compartmentalized, was now in a shambles. The DHS job he loved so dearly was no longer his. Though several individuals had contacted Bunch’s attorney offering assistance, only one DHS co-worker had called him personally to extend support. His girls were now in deep trouble. Several had been questioned by the police, and eventually a few of them would be arrested. Against the orders of his attorney, he called Kelli LaRue. “Jim, you now we’re not supposed to be talking,” she said and hung up on him.
The secret life he had fought so hard to keep from his family, particularly his parents and his daughter, had now been made excruciatingly public. Could anyone be hoped to understand his story, now so grotesquely inflated and embroidered by the media? He hadn’t owned Aimes for “at least two years,” as the Austin American-Statesman had reported; the business had been his for only four months, and he had already arranged to turn it over to someone else. The suggestion that he had gotten rich off of prostitution was ridiculous. Where was his money? He had none! He’d given it away as soon as it fell into his hands. What did he have to show for his endeavors? Only a Ford Bronco, and he was still making payments on it! And minors—that misconception depressed him the most. He would never have employed a girl under seventeen. That the fifteen-year-old had gotten into the business through one of his girls was news to him. Jim Bunch would never stoop to such exploitation. He was always decent to his girls. He always helped them.
Then this business about the list. Yes. There were a couple of legislators, but no more than that. What escort-service list didn’t include a few politicians? And sure, the list featured several prominent names: wealthy attorneys, doctors, lobbyists, developers, academics, restaurateurs, a local television personality, a former professional athlete, and other notables. But, with a few exceptions like Christopher, the big money wasn’t coming from the big names. It was coming from men who, like Bunch himself, were of modest means and perhaps modest self-image and who were spending all of their disposable income on women who made them feel virile and adventurous for a fee. The money was coming from a local businessman who blew his livelihood on crack. It was coming from a bureaucrat with the Austin Fire Department and from a middle-aged federal employee who still lived with his parents. It was coming from an auto mechanic who liked to get drunk with his friends and hire three or four women at a time. It was coming from a blues musician who asked the prostitutes to make noises into a microphone during sex. It was coming from a scary young man who lived in a shabby Riverside apartment and who liked to be “rushed,” or knocked around. It was coming from one accountant who liked to whip the girls and another who wanted to be kicked in the testicles. These were Jim Bunch’s glamorous patrons. These were the Richard Geres who kept Austin’s Julia Robertses in business and on cocaine.
By the early morning of February 18, Jim Bunch had decided not to count on anyone’s understanding. On four pieces of paper, he scribbled a series of notes to nineteen people or groups. He began by writing good-byes to his parents, his son and daughter, and his brother, To a nineteen-year-old prostitute whom he had taken in, he wrote, “I love you as a daughter,” and asked his parents to take care of her, as she had no family of her own. To Kelli LaRue he gave his love and said, “This is the only way out for you.” He thanked the Austin vice squad for their professional treatment of him but then warned, “You are fighting a losing cause. The [escort] services are the only things that these girls can survive by.”
The notes moved on, extending thanks to friends and apologies to the Department of Human Services while reminding the world, “I did a good job and cared about the clients and staff.” To the Austin TV stations, he wrote, “Boy, you were brutal…It’s a shame I couldn’t stick around for the movie of the week.” In another moment of irreverence, Bunch admonished the city to fix the air conditioners in the courthouse holding tanks. But he let down his guard when it came to addressing Natalie Dudney: “On the 20th it will be a year since you died. You will never know how much I love and miss you. I think I want all this to happen as punishment for not being able to help you.”
After notations to his attorney, the Internal Revenue Service, and a co-worker, he jotted down one last paragraph: “Finally My Girls: I hope you now that I cared about each of you. I am sorry for the pain I have caused you. I hope this takes some heat off of you. I should have done it sooner. I forgive all outstanding debts (like you were going to pay me anyway). Sorry I was so stupid. I know this puts all of you in a financial bind. I made it so easy for them. I can’t believe I was so stupid. Take care of yourselves.”
And with that, James Almer Bunch put the note in his car, drove five miles from his house to the parking lot of his old workplace on the corner of Lamar Boulevard and Fifty-first Street, stepped out onto a grassy median, and revealed the one final secret he had kept from everyone, including his girls: the fact that he owned a revolver.
“I’m out of the game,” SAYS Christopher over dinner at a popular Austin restaurant. Fresh from a long stay at a rehabilitation center, he indeed looks healthier, His therapist has ordered him to say away from prostitutes, and he has done so, despite the provocative calls he has received fro a few of Bunch’s former girls. “Prostitution is a trap for men and women,” he observes. “The girls and the guys con each other, and they con themselves by telling themselves that it’s just an economic relationship like so many marriages are. Anyway, I’m through with the conning.”
“Hmmm,” says Kelli LaRue with a knowing smile when informed of Christopher’s decisions. “Well, we’ve heard that before about him, haven’t we?”
She has seen enough in her 24 years to infect whole populations with lethal doses of cynicism. Kelli wishes Christopher the best—after all, why not?—but in her experience, one might do well to count on the worst and learn to live with it. While Jim Bunch’s other prostitutes have scattered like wild seeds—some of them are already working for other escort services, some are under arrest, others are nowhere in sight—his closest female associate sits and waits for her part in the Bunch fiasco to play itself out. She awaits trial as Bunch’s suspected co-manager, and her attorney, Allan Williams, predicts, “They’ll try to shift the blame of the whole operation onto Kelli, just so they’ll have something to show for their efforts after Bunch killed himself.”
Kelli LaRue made herself an easy target by being the only Aimes call girl to make the trip to Mexia on February 20, the day thy buried Bunch. Heads turned and whispers filled the air when the red-maned prostitute sashayed into the crowded funeral home. But she picked her way through the congregation, oblivious to the gawking mourners, until she came upon Bunch’s mother and brother. She told them who she was and that she loved Jim, and then she began to cry. They embraced her, and while Jim Bunch lay in state, his two families were united at last.
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