Original subtitles

I was a working girl for Dennis Hof.

I just thought, "Oh God, it's gonna be so much fun."

He said, "You get to pick and choose

who you have sex with."

[Dennis] I don't make anybody do anything. Ever.

I know that there are allegations

of rape and violence.

The job of the documentary was not to do

an investigation into the Bunny Ranch.

The job was to create a good-time series.

We're at the Bunny Ranch! We're having fun!

Tatiana! Carissa!

And I thought it was safe. But it wasn't safe.

He was a very sick man.

He hurt a lot of people.

[Dennis] I'm a straight guy.

I pay my taxes, I do the right things.

He's a monster.

I was molested, and beaten, and raped

on a regular basis.

Girls come in, shut the door,

put a blanket over you

and beat the [beep] out of you.

The Bunny Ranch is kind of like Walmart or church.

You don't have to go unless you want to.

If you make Dennis unhappy, he's gonna hurt you.

This feels like organized crime.

He was sort of a degenerate Tony Soprano.

He thought he could do whatever he wanted.

He had gotten so big

that he couldn't be contained anymore.

♪ [moody pop]

♪

♪ You put me under the covers. ♪

♪ For all the world to see. ♪

♪ But I never recovered. ♪

♪ You never cared about me. ♪

♪ So now you're being uncovered. ♪

♪ I kept all the receipts. ♪

♪ You and all of the others. ♪

♪ Under a fantasy. ♪

♪

[Crew] Jennifer interview, take one. Marker.

I'm Jennifer.

I was a working girl for Dennis Hof

at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch.

I went into the brothel industry because

my abusive husband wanted to kill me.

♪

I didn't have any choice but to run.

So, it was a really dramatic,

"I'm getting the [beep] out of here."

I was only a legal prostitute for six months, if that.

♪

I had never heard of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch,

the Kit Kat, the Mustang.

I got sold on the Cathouse shows.

And I thought it was safe.

But a lot of what you saw on

the Cathouse videos was fake.

♪

Cathouse was an incredibly successful show.

Around 2010-ish,

Dennis Hof is a master of brothels

and the most famous pimp in America.

[Host] We turn now to Dennis Hof.

- Dennis Hof. - Dennis Hof.

- Dennis Hof. - Dennis Hof.

Dennis Hof.

[Dennis] Our girls are businesswomen

that want to be there.

They're enjoying what they do.

Dennis felt like HBO falling into his lap

was one of the greatest things

that ever happened to his business.

[camera shutter clicking]

[Dennis] Well, HBO is gonna show you the reasons

why it should be legal.

And that's what HBO can capture.

And only HBO can do something like this.

As years went on and he started getting his ass

kissed by everybody and being on every show,

he was like very full of himself.

SFX: ["cha-ching"]

[Dennis] That's the sound- I love that sound.

That's like, "Cha-ching!"

That's like a cash register ringing.

I love your new dress!

So I actually met Dennis Hof very briefly

probably twenty-something plus years ago,

working the MTV music awards.

And he walked over,

and he thanked us for our service, and told us,

"If you ever make your way out to one of the brothels,

you know, law enforcement discount,"

which, I just rolled my eyes at that,

but I appreciated at least that he was jovial,

he was friendly, he was nice to us,

where all the other A-listers were not.

Looking at it now, I know exactly

what he was doing.

"Here's one potential person I can get in my pocket

that will then just serve my purposes only."

So you have the ultimate marketer,

Mr. Pimp, Dennis Hof,

and it was the Wild Wild West of television.

Sex sells, and...

you're not going to ask yourself questions about

what, what kind of sex are we talking about?

Are we talking about...

consenting sex between people

who are enjoying themselves?

Or are we talking about what is,

behind the scenes, violence and harm?

♪ [sinister]

♪

[Jennifer] So, let's see...

♪

My mother was a Playboy model.

♪

My mom's Playboy, November of '64.

She's pretty proud of this.

There's a better picture with some clothes on.

[laughs]

I won't show you the ones that don't have clothes on.

Her blue eyes.

Um...

No...

No. My mother was a very evil person.

This is why she gave up her children.

This is why she gave up me.

Uh, I- she thought money,

Playboy, fame, drugs,

was more important than, than me.

♪

She's beautiful in that picture.

Who she really was, she was also a alcoholic,

and a drug addict.

I was born in Hollywood.

When I was 5, my mother and I

went to a restaurant, and um...

♪

My mom said she had to go to the bathroom.

♪

And uh, she never came back...

So... [exhaling] Sorry.

And I went to sixteen different foster homes.

I didn't go to school after the sixth grade.

And, I, I got emancipated.

♪

As soon as I turned 18, I got a sales license,

I got into the car business.

Made a phenomenal living,

but I had a very bad marriage,

and he was very violent, um, very controlling.

And Johnny showed up at my job

and was screaming that I was a...

a fu-

[beep] whore, I was a bitch.

So, I lost my career.

I went to one of my girlfriend's house,

and he found me there,

beat me in front of her and her kids,

and then took a gun and put the muzzle in my mouth

and told me that...

if I ever tried to leave him,

that he would kill me.

♪

My girlfriend said, "Hey, you're single,

you're beautiful.

Why don't you go to a brothel?"

I was like, "But I'm not,

I'm not a prostitute. I'm..."

She goes, "But you have sex."

I go, "Yeah."

She goes, "Why don't you get paid for it?"

The owner, Dennis Hof, on Cathouse,

he says you get to pick and choose

who you have sex with.

So, she's like...

"It's safe." It's like, okay, let's do it.

I mean, if I don't like it, I can always walk away.

And so, she...

signed me up.

And sent pictures in.

She called and she said,

"You've been accepted

to the Love Ranch closest to Vegas."

♪

When Johnny went to sleep,

I snuck out with the clothes on my back and my purse.

I had nothing else...

♪

[inhaling & exhaling]

The Love Ranch was in

the middle of nowhere.

♪

When you get there, and you get your

Bunny Bible, you also get Dennis Hof's Cathouse.

So he wants you to watch that and

that is your training. And so...

That was my training video.

That was the first porn I'd ever seen in my entire life.

Uh, but yeah, that was the training.

The Cathouse TV shows,

they were being played in all the rooms.

It was actually filmed at the Bunny Ranch,

but I wasn't there when he did 'em.

The girls got asked to be on the show,

including myself, and I just didn't want to do it.

It wasn't my cup of tea.

Any working girl is going to put on

a different mask than who they are.

I had to become Karmen Leigh.

♪

Every bone in my body...

felt that Johnny, my abusive husband,

he would never find me.

Like, I would just fall off the face of the earth.

I didn't know it was gonna get worse.

I had no idea.

You know, we're getting ready to start our ninth

year of shooting our HBO show, Cathouse.

I thought I'd bring the girls. These are the girls

from the new season right here.

Dennis Hof was a master at exploiting opportunities

for publicity.

Dennis wanted to get on the Russell Brand show.

And I had mentioned, "Oh, I have connections

with the show, I think I can get him on it."

Dennis was so nice to me on the phone.

He seemed very kind.

And, I ended up getting Dennis booked on the show.

And Dennis had a shtick he used in the media to,

you know, promote his brothel and promote himself.

[Dennis] The truth is they don't have to party

with anybody they don't want to.

They don't do anything that they don't want to

because everybody has their limits.

And they don't do anything for any less money

than they think it's worth.

[DeAnne] And the idea would be that, you know,

men would see them and would want to book and

would call and make an appointment.

Because he made things look nice.

[Dennis] It's just fun. It's just sex.

- Fair enough, it's okay. - It's just having a good time.

[DeAnne] So I never saw him as a pimp in the beginning.

I saw him as a businessman.

He didn't just own brothels.

He owned two restaurants, a mini-mart, a gas station,

several real estate businesses.

He owned a nightclub, a strip club.

I thought he was just a businessman

who was diversified in his investments.

[Dennis] People's reaction when I tell them that

I'm a brothel owner, they love it.

I have never once had a bad experience.

He did portray himself as a community member

who was helping the community.

But sadly, it was not a community effort

that was positive.

♪

[Jennifer] I was at the brothel, New Year's Eve.

And it was just like the show is.

Big old party, had people there.

Celebrities hanging out.

Everybody showed up. Heidi Fleiss showed up.

Ron Jeremy, he was there.

Dennis was in love with celebrities.

And there was a whole entourage of people

like that around Dennis,

and if they'd ever been in the news or the media,

he just was infatuated with them.

He couldn't have them around enough.

[DeAnne] Flavor Flav was around.

Dennis wanted him for media exposure.

He hired John Wayne Bobbitt.

I think he worked as a bartender

or a driver there.

He would lure people like Joey Buttafuoco

to the brothel.

♪

♪

[Jennifer] There was a few other girls,

and they were so excited to see Dennis.

It was "Daddy." They sat on his lap.

He was like, "Oh girls, come sit on my lap."

That's how I met Dennis Hof.

He said, "Come here." [patting lap]

"You can call me Daddy."

I actually did sit on his lap,

and I looked at him, and I said,

"You're not my Daddy."

♪

So, I don't know,

two, three hours maybe have gone by,

and I've got some alcohol in me, and...

the madam of the house comes and says,

"Dennis wants to see you."

Dennis was in my room.

Dennis asked me to sit on the bed.

[patting] "Here," patted the bed,

[patting] "Sit here." The door was closed.

And then he told me to get undressed...

And... I did.

Dennis started touching me.

And he said, "I get to try

all... the flavors."

I told him I didn't think

I needed to sleep with my boss.

He's like, "I got to try you.

This is how it's gonna be."

I did not authorize Dennis Hof to have sex with me,

nor did I get paid.

I know and I feel in every bone in my body

that Dennis Hof raped me.

♪

He owns us. He owns you.

And so, he gets to try you.

♪

I went to the madam right afterwards,

and I said, "He just raped me."

"I didn't have a condom, I didn't have protection."

She's like, quote, unquote, "Don't worry about it."

♪

That was what was said.

Dennis was engaging in a lot of

very ugly behavior.

And he was getting away with it because he was,

in my opinion, so far removed.

None of this would work anywhere else,

but only in the sagebrush parts of our state

where there's nothing but wild rabbits

and a couple antelope running around.

[whooshing vehicles]

They're on an island of their own,

and you're just kind of like...

"Maybe this is what goes on out there."

But as long as we stayed out of there,

it's that out of sight, out of mind kind of thing.

They don't want us involved, and we had very little,

in my 21-year span of dealing with them, very little.

♪

[Jennifer] But I was angry.

I went into town, and I went to the

Nye County Sheriff's Office.

And I said, "I want to report a rape."

He said, "Who?" I said, "Dennis Hof."

It didn't even faze him. It was like that was...

"And? What...

What do you want me to do?"

♪

[Jennifer] I learned that day that I was a prostitute.

That I was nothing more

than the trash underneath their feet.

Law enforcement often, I think, in the past,

has had a disconnect with sex workers

and prostitution because sex work,

it's kind of viewed through the puritan eyes

of America, and if there is a woman who's a

sex worker seeking help from law enforcement

in those rural counties, and then the deputies

don't even let you write out a statement,

that would be concerning to me.

That initial statement is so critical because

that's where the details come out

when it's still fresh in the victim's mind.

[Jennifer] The police didn't help me.

The house staff don't care. No one cared.

That was it, and I go, "F this,"

and I walked out.

I went back to the brothel.

It started coming out that we haven't

evaluated them or checked on them

as much as we should've.

Dennis Hof didn't want us to bother them, and...

the Sheriff's Office doesn't want to bother them.

[Jennifer] I was completely trapped

at the brothel at that time.

I had no money for food,

I had no money for a hotel.

I was stuck 25 miles outside of town

in the middle of nowhere.

[Ashton] Part of the problem is you're just so isolated.

They were kind of stuck there.

[Jennifer] I had, like, a moment

that this was my life.

I'm gonna make as much money as I can,

as fast as I can,

and I'm gonna get the hell out of here.

♪

[Brenda] Sadly, I don't think that's out of the norm.

Often, the women who work in the Bunny Ranch

come down to get their hair and nails done,

and on one occasion,

when I was sitting right here in the salon in this chair...

I noticed a woman that was about three chairs over

from where I'm sitting right now.

She had bald spots. There was 3 or 4 of them

about the size of a fist,

and I came to find out that it was actually the john,

the purchaser, the buyer of a woman,

ripped her hair out from the roots.

And after her hair extensions were replaced,

she got in a Bunny Ranch limousine

and was taken back to the brothel.

So, I chose to do something positive.

I started a non-profit to help be a resource for women.

And since 2012, we were able to

serve about 55, uh, women.

[Taina] Why is it that we allow, you know,

this particular population of vulnerable women to,

to be bought and sold?

Because it is a population

the state does not care about.

[DeAnne] After I booked Dennis on

The Russell Brand Show, he was thrilled with me.

At that point, Dennis was so pleased

that he offered me a job to come work for him

as his publicist and executive assistant.

So, Dennis constantly praised me.

He would tell other people how wonderful I was.

Ah, it made me feel so great

that I had found a place

that I thought was a good fit for me,

with a boss who truly appreciated me,

who empowered me to do the best that I could.

Suzette asked me about my family.

Suzette is the madam,

but that's just the term they use,

she's the general manager.

I didn't have any family, and I let her know that.

The very next day,

I get a text message from Dennis, and he says,

"I want you to know we're your family now.

We're family, you and I."

And I felt like, yeah,

I'm not in the world all alone...

♪

I have family now.

♪

[Racquel] He's such a good reader of people.

So many of the women who worked at the Bunny Ranch

came from childhood trauma.

And so, I think every young woman who comes...

into his vision, he knows her background,

he knows exactly what her weaknesses are,

he knows exactly what she wants to hear,

and he- he exploits that.

He just presses that button

to get exactly what he wants from them.

♪

[Jennifer] I got flown, by Dennis,

to the Bunny Ranch.

It's because it was a much upper scale facility.

And I was making really, really, really good money.

♪

Once I got to his,

as I call, lair...

[exhaling sharply]

And he had handcuffs, toys,

all that on the bed already.

♪

He would handcuff me to the bed.

He would then stick things in me.

It wasn't even sex,

it was that he shoved things in me that hurt.

He dominated me, that's all he did.

Um, and by doing those things,

he felt like he had control of me.

♪

[DeAnne] Everything was fine for a few months.

But then I was starting to see things I didn't like.

The show Cathouse made it look like the Bunny Ranch

is so much fun.

Everyone just looks really happy coming here,

and just making some money in a safe environment.

"And I get to be a star on HBO."

[Dennis] When the weather gets nice,

Suzette creates outdoor parties.

In the jacuzzi with beachballs,

and eating hotdogs, and hula hooping.

And doing all these fun things.

[DeAnne] I never saw anything even remotely

like that in real life.

So, here's the reality of the situation.

I was in the swimming pool one day,

and suddenly Dennis and a bunch of girls

were in the shallow end of the pool.

And the girls were messed up.

Their eyes were like, pfft,

rolling in the back of their head.

They were so out of it.

And they were naked.

But Dennis is instructing these women in a very

aggressive way to perform sex acts on each other.

And he's telling them, "You do this to this one,

you do this to that one."

And he had sex toys.

And he was pounding this girl, and just pounding her.

So, for Dennis, none of that was about sex.

That was about physical assault and battery,

and control of a woman.

And I thought, this doesn't look very consensual to me,

especially when the women are doped up.

And as far as I'm concerned, that's rape.

♪

And by the way, I didn't dare call the police

because the deputy would show up at the brothel...

in his car, the Sheriff's car...

in uniform.

He had called ahead and there was a

particular girl he wanted, and she was called out,

she came to take him back to her room.

They went to the room, but she never came out

with money or a credit card to pay.

♪

He was in there about half an hour, 45 minutes.

And then he left.

And this happened several times.

[Ashton] You're a government official.

It could undermine an investigation and

it's a violation of your oath now if you try to

conduct some kind of an investigation

into some impropriety in these brothels,

but you've been a customer there at a

discounted or free rate or even a full paying customer,

there's gonna be a problem.

[DeAnne] This deputy could've lost his job

for doing this.

It was so inappropriate.

[Ashton] You're undermining the woman who's

working there and you're undermining your career.

You're basically betting your badge

if you're doing this.

[DeAnne] Now when Dennis needs a favor,

Dennis owns him.

This particular officer later became

an investigator with the department.

[Ashton] There's no free lunch.

Everything comes at a cost.

[DeAnne] On top of that, Dennis donated money to

charities for the

Carson City Sheriff's Department.

♪

Just follow the money.

[Ashton] We know that Mr. Hof donated money

to the police funds, and he had photo opportunities

with local cops and things of that nature.

It's all smoke and mirrors at the end of the day.

Those start to become that grey area...

where if you're a law enforcement administration,

if you're the Sheriff, if you're...

in the position of authority,

you have to be very careful.

You have to walk a very fine line there.

[Eric] Sometimes you'd get new guys that would come out

and be like, "I'm gonna go out and pull all their cards."

And then it was kind of like, dude, just,

you know, upper management would be like,

"Dude, just leave them alone."

♪

Brothel tax money was used to

buy the town's police cars.

You know, he did things in the town and tried to be

a good citizen to show, like, oh,

look what the brothel is providing the town.

[Ashton] We have some of the most

sparsely populated parts of the state.

There's really nothing outside of ranching, mining.

There's no major casino.

There's not hundreds of thousands of tourists coming

like Las Vegas and Reno.

And so, sometimes you get the brothel becoming the,

really the only thing that provides the...

tax money to provide county resources

such as law enforcement.

[Dennis] Nye County in Southern Nevada,

where I have three brothels outside of Vegas,

wouldn't have an EMT system.

They wouldn't have ambulances.

That's where the money comes from.

This county, Lyon County,

we pay for all the police cars and the communications,

so they need us.

♪

[Taina] There were conversations at the time

about shutting down the brothels because

there were signs of trafficking,

there were signs of violence.

And what the sheriff said is,

"Unless another big

source of income comes in,

for instance a Walmart or a Target,

we would lose 350,000 in that county,"

so it was not economically desirable

for brothels to be shut down.

[Ashton] The brothel is really the only thing

bringing in huge amounts of money to the county coffers.

♪

[laughs] They're filming us...

[Brenda] He did not treat his women well,

and I can say that because I sat with some of them

that were bleeding, some of them who had been raped,

some of them who have bruises all over them.

♪

♪ [suspenseful] ♪

♪

[Tom] While we were filming Cathouse,

I was not aware of any allegations of rape

and violence toward women,

but I certainly could see it happening.

It probably happened while we were there.

The fact is that nobody was after

a serious insight,

an incisive look at life in the Bunny Ranch.

Nobody was after that.

The job was to create a goodtime series that had

the connection to reality so that it felt real.

The job of the documentary was not to do

an investigation into the Bunny Ranch.

Nobody asked, "Does Dennis ever molest you?

Do you ever not want Dennis to touch you?"

♪

[DeAnne] The brothel may have seemed in the beginning

like it was a safe place,

the way it was shown on Cathouse.

But I started to think this feels like organized crime.

And Dennis seemed like a crime boss.

[Jennifer] When Dennis decided that he liked me...

Dennis would come regularly.

♪

But Dennis, um,

raped me on a regular basis,

any time that he was at the property.

So, if he was there for a week, it was every night,

or every other night, or a couple times a day.

♪

I wanted out of the industry.

But then my abusive husband, Johnny,

found me there.

He'd shown up at the brothel,

and he couldn't get in the gate

'cause they had a picture of him.

I didn't leave the brothel

because the fear factor was there,

the protection was there.

Um, I had already...

been through Dennis, um...

raping me.

But I wasn't getting beat.

So those were my choices.

♪

And for those of us, the top sellers,

we would go into town with him,

go to the casinos with him.

He would have a redhead.

I had my hair jet black with the ice blue eyes.

He had his blondes.

So, the- I think the reason that he had us

all around him, um, was marketing.

"This is what's on the menu this week."

"This is what I have at my ranch."

And we always had people come in the back door.

Politicians, police officers, congressmen.

[Dennis] We've had everybody here.

Judges, uh, yes.

Yeah, yeah, we've had a lot of people here.

And there's gonna be a lot more.

That's why we have a back entrance.

The private entrance to get in and out of here,

people can't see you.

[Jennifer] But then I would have to give

free services to them.

I would have to give them [beep],

have sex, clean them up.

When Dennis...

was involved, it was always free.

[Dennis] I'm the only guy that gets Ron laid.

[Ron] [laughs] That's true!

[crowd chatter]

Ron Jeremy was the biggest celebrity

that he was able to hold onto.

[Racquel] Ron Jeremy was a porn star

in the 1970s and 80s,

then sort of has this career resurrection

when he is cast on a reality television show

called The Surreal Life.

[Ron] They look sexy. Mine is funny.

- Is this for real, Ron? - I'll tell you in a second.

- Let's do a measurement. - Yes, it is.

[Sonja] One of the reasons too that I think Dennis

hung out with Ron, Ron Jeremy being famous

for the size of his member, it's simply association.

You know, guilt by association,

big [beep] by association.

Ron Jeremy came for the free stuff

as well as for the friendship.

He would stay at the brothel for free, eat for free.

He would be able to have sex with the girls.

[Jennifer] Ron Jeremy would just come in and...

stick his [beep].

There- he's disgusting,

and it made me sick, and it hurt.

♪

♪

[DeAnne] One day, Dennis got an email from this...

very pretty, young girl from Seattle.

She wanted to come there

and auction her virginity,

and Dennis put this poor girl's face everywhere.

We had her on CNN, we had her doing interviews,

every major outlet.

[Bekah] I think Dennis, he would even go

and have tables at job fairs

and try to get girls to auction their virginity off.

Because he didn't care.

You're just some fantasy that they have

that they want you to meet.

[Taina] One of the things that was most disturbing

is when you go into the Bunny Ranch,

there's a wall of photographs

of pregnant women, naked pregnant women,

because if you have a fetish for, for

purchasing pregnant women for sexual acts,

uh, Hof could provide that.

♪

[DeAnne] And he even had a pregnant prostitute on Tyra.

[Racquel] Dennis Hof is always willing to go on these

shows because he's using this as free publicity,

but even though Tyra Banks, and like every member of

the studio audience, and her family,

and the father of her child are all trying to shame her,

Dennis really is revealing something about

the hypocrisy of the morals of her family.

[Dennis] She's got a father that's the mayor of a city

that wouldn't support her because he's got a new wife.

When she made the phone call,

the family wasn't there.

[Racquel] He's riding that sympathy, in a way.

He gets to step in,

and there's this fascinating way

that he manages to turn himself into

a hero and a savior.

[Dennis] At the Ranch, she's got people to

support her and take care of the things she needs.

[Racquel] He could do so much to support this young woman

besides having her, you know, do this type of

hard physical labor at 8 months pregnant.

We know that they're being exploited

at the Bunny Ranch,

but this feels nasty in a way

that is different.

♪

[Jennifer] In front, the white picket fence,

and inside you're getting your ass beat or raped.

He's a monster. He's evil.

He was evil.

He thought he could do whatever he wanted.

The HBO Cathouse was always a

hyper-competitive environment.

Oh, it's all got to be about you, doesn't it?

You bet, that's what I've been doing.

You inject yourself into any situation, don't you?

Pretty much.

Everything was a competition for who could be

the most successful.

♪

He liked dynamic tension

among the women around him.

♪

He liked that kind of drama,

and he would feed it a lot of times.

He did that by showing the girls

who was in and who was out.

He did that on purpose.

[Alice] If you were his girlfriend,

out of all the other girls that he was sleeping with,

you would get the most promotion,

the most opportunities,

choice placement on the website.

Maybe, like, a little banner or a popup.

And Dennis, he would encourage some of the

catfighting and would, like, fuel the fire in a way.

Well, if the girls are fighting with each other,

they're gonna want to make more money than each other.

Well, if he's making 50% of both their money,

good, they should be fighting each other.

It benefits him.

[Sonja] With the Cathouse series,

Dennis has a very specific type.

Teenage to 25.

White, blonde hair, very skinny.

[Dennis] Flawless. It's a great outfit.

What it takes to be Dennis' girlfriend,

he likes to mold them.

And that's what he's doing with Cami now.

[Dennis] It's the old saying, keep your friends close

and your enemies closer. [Cami] Right.

[Dennis] If you think a girl doesn't like you,

that's the girl you want to be more friends with.

[Cami] Right.

[Dennis] I'm glad you're having a good time.

[Cami] I am, I love it here.

It's the best place in the world.

Thank you, Daddy.

[Jennifer] So, Cami Parker is

Dennis Hof's main girlfriend.

We were good until she found out

I was having sex with him.

The first reaction was, "What did you do?"

And I was like, "Girl,

I don't want to have sex with him."

You're with a girl now,

let's have a competition with Daddy.

The girls get jealous.

Um, and when they get jealous,

they get pissed.

♪

So, I was in bed and

my door was open so I could hear the bell.

And so, the next thing I know is I have girls coming in.

And as soon as they lock the door,

I knew something was gonna happen.

The reason they put a blanket over you,

number one, you can't move.

And number two, you can hit somebody

and not really bruise them. They punch you...

and punch you and punch you.

And yelling at you.

"You're a nobody, don't you dare do this,

you're a nobody, you're a piece of [beep].

I'm the number one, bitch."

I went straight to the cashier,

and I was like, "What the [beep]?"

She was like...

♪

"It's part of it." I got no assistance,

no help in any way, shape, or form.

♪

♪

I met Michael at the Love Ranch in Pahrump.

Just like every customer,

we would do a lineup.

I was, like...

"Damn, I could deal with that." You know,

that was really what was going through my head.

He picked me...

and we went to the negotiation room.

And, we talked.

I gave him a dollar amount.

Um, after our party,

he asked what it would be

to spend the night with me.

And, we hung out

the rest of the night, and...

the next morning came.

I left the room, and I...

paid for a few more hours.

[laughs] On my dime.

♪

And Michael spent quite a bit of money...

and kept coming back.

Michael and I talked daily.

And, he wanted me to be his girlfriend

and to see where it would go, and...

I was like, "Okay."

So, I then decided to leave the industry.

And then Dennis found out.

So, Dennis made it very, very, very clear

that I was not to leave.

That was his vagina, that was his vagina,

that was his vagina. I thought it was just-

like, I thought it was like I could quit a job.

It didn't work out that way.

♪

[DeAnne] Dennis was very fond of saying,

"The door works both ways.

If you don't like it in here, you are free to leave."

But...

women were afraid because

there was a punishment if you left Dennis.

[Glen] In that show Cathouse on HBO,

Sunset Thomas was his

number one for a long time.

And she was eating out of Dennis's hand.

She would just do whatever Dennis said.

[Dennis] The reason I'm late is we decided to play boss

and secretary this morning in the office.

[laughing]

I woke her up, said, "Uh, Ms. Thomas,

could you step into my office please?"

Dennis and Sunset had this...

long-running battle.

When she left Dennis from the Bunny Ranch,

she went over to the Kit Kat under a previous owner.

They had to have bodyguards to protect her

from Dennis' thugs getting to her.

Dennis left some vicious messages for her.

♪

♪

[DeAnne] The message was loud and clear:

if you don't play by Dennis's rules,

if you make Dennis unhappy,

you are going to be punished, he is gonna hurt you,

and you are gonna suffer.

♪

[Jennifer] Michael and I had decided

that I was gonna leave.

And I went down to the U-Haul parking lot

in Carson City, Nevada,

and went to go get a U-Haul truck.

I just remember seeing the girls.

They started pulling me off the steering wheel.

Dennis sent his girls to beat the [beep] out of me

and try to kill me...

and they did a pretty good damn job.

So, I decided to leave the industry,

and was backing out a U-Haul truck.

And, it happened so fast.

I was on the ground having grand mal seizures.

Seizure after seizure after seizure.

I knew every single one of them.

I had smoked with them,

I had done parties with them,

I knew these people personally.

I remember waking up in the hospital.

I had a head injury, and so

Michael took me to his house.

He took care of me.

I never got restitution on that.

I had to pay the hospital bills from it.

[whooshing truck]

Maybe a month later,

my abusive husband, Johnny,

put a bullet in a young lady's head.

And...

he shot himself in the head.

♪

[dog barking]

♪ [gentle instrumental]

[Jennifer] So, Michael and I bought a house.

[birds chirping]

I got out.

[dog barking]

My life now is...

the best it's ever been in 53 years.

♪

[voice breaking] I tell him all the time...

[clearing throat]

He's my knight in shining armor.

♪

And I'm waiting for the ball to drop.

Because it hasn't, and it's been going on 14 years.

You have no idea how grateful I am to you.

How much I love you.

How much you mean to me.

You have no idea, ha.

♪

[faint barking]

I have a great life.

♪

My day-to-day is my dogs.

♪

My garden, they dig holes.

I go sit by the water. I go flat boarding.

♪

I was only a legal prostitute for six months, if that.

♪

The girls that say that they did good, it's a joke.

There's a lot of girls that are in that.

The way they get treated, and molested,

and beaten, and raped

is not much different than what I saw with Johnny.

It's not a job. It is a nightmare.

♪

[Racquel] I think it's really significant

that Cathouse aired on HBO,

which was a cable network that...

I think, not only myself, but a lot of people,

had faith in.

As in, it wasn't trashy as a network, and so,

you had this sort of sense that if HBO is airing it,

they've got to have some kind of

journalistic integrity. And of course,

we know now that Cathouse was sort of

selling itself as being all about women's

sexual liberation, but underneath it,

it's the same tired story of women being

sexually exploited and abused.

Dennis has raped so many women

who haven't come forward.

♪

He had gotten so big

that he couldn't be contained anymore.

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

[Jose] All I hear is...

Boom, boom. Gunshots.

They set the house on fire to make it look like an accident.

[Merydith] It was horrific.

Six victims and two of them were unborn children.

[News] Brooke Phillips, also known as Hayden Brooke,

died in Monday's fire.

[Jose] I wanted to know why.

[Ryan] We don't know who did this.

Everybody was a suspect.

[Sonja] Dennis was the one that told me

Brooke was pregnant with his child.

[News] A suspect wanted in the murder of six people

is now in custody.

[DeAnne] Dennis was going to go to the trial.

[Ryan] He's making a spectacle of it.

[Dennis] This is terrible, this is killing me.

[DeAnne] Dennis is the one who coined the phrase

the Cathouse Murders.

[Merydith] He didn't come there seeking justice for her.

He came there seeking attention.

[Dennis] This is the saddest day of my life.