Easy, if your aim is to provide the perfect, toasty atmosphere for an upscale clientele.
The Willetses' cottage industry, the state attorney charges, was prostitution, with Jeff, 41, a deputy with the Broward County sheriff's office, managing the business while Kathy, 33, provided the fireside services for up to $150 a session. Then, last week a videotape of Kathy with one of her sex partners was revealed. The prosecution, claiming that the video was made surreptitiously—a crime in Florida—recast its original plea bargain deal, presumably offering stiffer terms than a reported 300 hours of community service for Kathy and up to a year in jail for Jeff.
But what has made the Willetses' case a late-summer sizzler is Kathy's Rolodex. The List, as it is called, is said to contain the names of some of Fort Lauderdale's leading citizens. If the prosecution gets the court's permission to make the List public, those who disported with Kathy by the embers could suddenly find themselves in the hot seat.
There's already been at least one suspected casualty. On July 29, just before being cited in a local paper as a List-ee, Fort Lauderdale Vice Mayor Doug Danziger—a conservative who has opposed nude bars and spring break—resigned for "personal reasons." During its investigation, the state attorney's office subpoenaed more than 20 men; several felt a need to hire lawyers. Says attorney Richard Rosenbaum, who is representing a couple of them: "They've come in here and cried in my office." And with good reason. The List doesn't stop at names. Kathy's archives also describe sexual preferences, even the size of pertinent organs. "Those intimate details should remain private," says Rosenbaum.
Chary of sharing her own intimate details, Kathy Willets will only talk sketchily about her past, citing a failed marriage and two sons who no longer live with her. She met Jeff Willets, then a policeman in Tamarac, six years ago, when he pulled her over for a traffic infraction. Jeff quickly got divorced, and they married shortly thereafter.
The Willetses insist they were a happy couple until May 1990, when Kathy had a serious bout with depression and began taking the anti-depressant drug Prozac. Their attorney, Ellis Rubin, claims the medication was the cause of the Willetses' troubles. "As soon as she started the Prozac," says Rubin, "she developed this engulfing, insatiable appetite for sex." (Some medical experts question this claim. "Prozac, if anything, has been reported to lead to decreased sexual feelings in women," says psychiatrist Irl Extein of Lake Hospital, Lake Worth, Fla.)
According to Rubin's script, Jeff was overwhelmed by his wife's voracious needs and became impotent. Determined to save their marriage, the Willetses reached out to the personal ads, where they touted Kathy as a "hot frosty blonde" seeking encounters with wealthy executives. The offers poured in, and the smoke billowed from the chimney.
Police say Jeff himself put a damper on their business, inadvertently, in mid-July, when he threatened one of the clients who was apparently getting freebies from Kathy. The man called the Broward police, who went to the Willets home, catching Kathy with one of her partners. They apprehended Jeff later on in his patrol car; in his briefcase they found more than a dozen sheets of yellow legal paper with descriptions of sexual acts Jeff witnessed from the bedroom closet.
A chastened Kathy is repentant. "I feel sorry for my husband, who's been a police officer for 17 years and now will no longer be able to wear a badge," she says. "I feel sorry for the gentlemen on this so-called client list...."
Still, Kathy and Jeff say there has been an up side to their troubles. TV's A Current Affair has accorded them their 15 minutes of fame by airing shots of Kathy at home, topless at poolside. "We stop in Bennigan's [a Fort Lauderdale restaurant]," says Kathy, "and people buy us drinks and offer to pay for our meal. People have just been great."
WILLIAM PLUMMER
CINDY SMITH DAMPIER in Fort Lauderdale
- Contributors:
- Cindy Smith Dampier.
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