Paul Stachelek

Wilkening speaking at Libertarian Party Supper Club, September, 1991. I couldn't have known that the budget of the Homicide Task Force would be used to track me down halfway around the world.

I moved to San Diego in 1970, when I was 24 and married to a Navy pilot stationed at North Island. It had been a kind of Cinderella story. I married a boy from my high school back home in Long Island, New York. He came home as a plebe from Annapolis at Christmas in his dress uniform and swept me off my feet. Before I was able to finish college, I'd agreed to marry him. We were married for 4 1/2 years.

Karen Wilkening. Basically, what Tiger sold me was her client base and her girls, some of whom were dancers for bachelor parties.

After we were divorced in 1972, I stayed in San Diego and worked at a variety of substantial jobs. First I was a systems analyst with U.S. Financial, downtown. I had started in the computer center keypunch operation, but when I saw that they didn't have adequate computer instructions, I started writing them on my own time. My supervisor saw my efforts and promoted me to be a liaison between the computer center and the customers.

Wilkening and Jack Gates from Channel 39 (center), September, 1991. I could see that people who are in the news, sports figures and jet-setters, very rich people, don't like to follow the rules of the service.

Paul Stachelek

When USF went out of business, I got my real estate license and went to work for San Diego Country Estates in Ramona. It was investment property in the mountains where you'd build a custom home in the recreational community. They would invite people to dinner parties and would interest prospective buyers in a personal tour of the property. I was the introductory speaker at the dinners, and then I would be a tour guide for the people that showed up on weekends. But I've never been a strong negotiator, so after I'd given the prospects the tour, I would turn them over to the experienced salesmen, and we'd split the commissions. I did that for about three years in the mid- 70s.

I rented a separate entertainment apartment in Mission Valley on and off for six years. The rates were $150 an hour. Out of that, I took $50 and the girls kept $100, plus any tips.

At the same time. I was a management consultant with a company in La Jolla that provided training packages to bank managers, loan officers, and tellers. I traveled all over the United States and Canada as an independent contractor.

At the end of the 70s, I sold a "spec" house I designed and built in Hidden Meadows in Escondido. That afforded me the leeway to go back to San Diego State and work toward my degree in psychology and to do a little bit of traveling.

Wilkening with Ulysses and his family. Hercules' brother Ulysses was Mr. Philippines 1989.

In early 1981, I knew I had to get serious about an income. I was in contact with a former associate who suggested that I meet a friend of his who was selling a business. He knew that I was looking for something to run myself. He didn't say much about it, just that I might be interested. Armed with a resume, I went to meet the person for the first time, and it turned out that his friend, a girl named Tiger, was selling an escort service.

Hercules and Karen Wilkening. He became my tour guide and my family and my lover and my bodyguard.

I didn't know anything about that type of business, but I was intrigued and very curious. It was a unique opportunity, and it looked like a lot of fun for a business I could run myself.

I didn't know all the questions I should ask Tiger. But over a period of several months, we discussed the fact that she had run it for a long time, 10 to 12 years, and wanted to sell the business to the right person. She had many people interested in buying it from her, especially her girls. But she was most concerned with turning it over to someone who had some brains and some business sense and sincerity, because she seemed to be very concerned about her clients' welfare. We reached our agreement in the empty stadium parking lot.

In the beginning, I had a lot of doubts about a lot of things. It was a new subject for me, and I had never knowingly broken the law before. I worried about somebody getting in trouble and the tremendous responsibility I was taking on for other people's private lives. I had asked Tiger whether she'd had any trouble with the law, and she said no. She said she had trouble with the IRS a couple of times because she had run massage parlors, and they're always looking into the bookkeeping in those types of businesses. I asked if she'd had any connections with the police — protection, or as clients - and her answer was no. I was trying to formulate questions based on stereotypes that we all learn about through novels and TV movies, and I guess I would have assumed there were connections like that. I found out later that she had been in a little trouble with the police.

Basically, what Tiger sold me was her client base and her girls, some of whom were dancers for bachelor parties. The business had no name; it was not advertised. New clients and new girls were by referral only.

It's a very personal business; the clients knew her, and she needed to contact everyone of them to tell them that she was retiring and someone very nice was taking over. In many cases, she put me on the phone or set up a luncheon or coffee so I could meet them.

They were professionals, management-type people, and people who owned small businesses. Many of them were elderly, a lot of them were retired men, and some were handicapped. That touched my heart. It was one of the things that put me over the edge to decide to buy the business. I think my social work ethic was one of the factors, because there is a certain type of client whose quality of life was enormously affected by being able to call a service like this.

One client was a paraplegic in his 20s. He'd had a terrible accident and had been married at the time, but his wife left him. His father had compassion and wanted to make sure his son didn't lose out on having a full life. So his father made the arrangements with me. It was the only way he could help his son continue with his sex life.

Another young fellow had cerebral palsy. His mother would call about once a month and make the arrangements. I could tell by talking to her that this was not an easy thing for her to do, but her son was getting worse, and he was going to die, and it was her gift to him. She would get a small motel room, and then she would tell me where to send a girl. She would drive him over there and help him into the room and leave the money on the table. It was very touching.

I'd say three-quarters of the men were married. In some cases, their wives knew that they were calling and approved or didn't care. I remember one client told me, "My wife knows that I'm here, and it's okay with her. I just wanted to let you know. She has, for a variety of health reasons, not been interested in sex for a long time, and she loves me enough that she doesn't want that to be the end of my sex life." I was very touched by that explanation. I tried not to be judgmental about any motivation for using a service like mine.

I never wanted very prominent clients. I was invited to be introduced to some very interesting people in the city. I could have met some of the Chargers. I also turned down the idea of expanding to L.A. and to Las Vegas. From talking to Tiger, I could see that people who are in the news, sports figures and jet-setters, very rich people, don't like to follow the rules of the service. They always deal from power bases, and they want to steal the girls away. They promise them cars and condos and "I'll take you away; you can be my girlfriend." Staying small was a protection for the girls too, because they get their heads turned around. I needed to keep control of the situation and control the types of clients and arrangements. It was very much up to me who I put together and under what circumstances. I had to make quick executive decisions all the time based on everyone's need for discretion.

There were some clients that had worked better with Tiger and didn't call my service. However, there were some clients who, once they got to know me, sent lots of referrals and used the business a lot more than they did with her. I can see now that she probably screened the type of clients that she turned over to me after she got to know my personality. Coming from a conservative background, I can see that she chose a conservative level of client to turn over to me. Sorry, no orgies. I heard that the service had been a lot wilder in the 70s.

She turned over a certain number of girls to me; but after a while, I had all new ones, fresh to the business. There were former teachers, nurses, secretaries, a lot of students, jazzy housewives, ages 26 to 30. Variety is the spice of life!

Most of my girls were doing this part time and had substantial lives that they were working on. They were going to school or they were working other jobs too. Quite a few of the girls had children. They were working toward goals and were doing this for extra money - to get out of difficult marriages, to become independent, to be able to afford to pay for tuition to go back to school or to buy a new car. Several girls were committed or married, and in one or two cases, their husbands knew about their extra work.

One of the ways that girls who lived with someone were able to get away was to say that they were working for a catering service. That would explain being called at the last minute and needing to be nicely dressed to go out and hostess or serve at a cocktail party or a dinner party. I'd say that three fourths of the business I was able to schedule in advance, and there was about one fourth of the business that was a little bit last minute. About 20 percent of the business involved supplying dancers for bachelor parties, including some parties for young cops getting married. Dancing at bachelor parties is not illegal, and since I would always know when it was a cop party, all I would do is send the dancer, and all she would do is dance.

I rented a separate entertainment apartment in Mission Valley on and off for six years. My "key" girls would go over to the apartment before the scheduled time and put on the stereo and open the windows, light the candles, and whatever. I always had a small core of girls I could trust to handle this situation, be there on time, and make things nice. The rates were the same for meeting in the apartment as for other places - $150 an hour. Out of that, I took $50 and the girls kept $100, plus any tips.

Things went along remarkably smoothly. I had a ball. It was basically an entertainment business, a chance to help people have more excitement and fun in their lives and help everybody put smiles on their faces. The girls were happy to work; I didn't have to recruit. They were calling me, always wanting to work more than I had work for them.

I didn't put much energy into worrying about undercover police. I really do believe in magnetism - your worst fears will be realized. I felt that the self-screening process for new clients through old clients assured me that I wouldn't have to worry too much, and most of the girls were referred from girls who already worked for me or from the clients, so I did not have to worry about strangers. I relied on my clients to guard my telephone number carefully.

I was very much tied to my telephone. I thought of myself as a switchboard operator sometimes. I turned the phone on about 10:00 in the morning and was there usually throughout the day, seven days a week. It was mostly a weekday business, and the assignations usually took place in the daytime. I didn't answer the phone after 10:00 p.m., generally.

For the most part, I didn't keep books or any files on my clients or girls. I kept most of it in my head. I had an excellent ability to recognize voices, so after I talked to someone once or twice, I could recognize who it was and they didn't have to identify themselves. I rarely referred to the Rolodex.

I had all the girls check in with me every day, and they would tell me what their available schedule was. And there were debriefings about new clients and new girls. I would get to know the qualities of each girl, and I became friends with most of them. They became like little sisters to me. I sometimes babysat for them while they worked.

I never had to drop any client for bad treatment of the girls. The clients that were turned over to me from my predecessor had already been prescreened for years. One fellow called me every day just to say hello. And when Desi Arnaz was in town, he'd call and say, "Hi, this is your Cuban uncle." He came with the business. I don't think he would mind my discussing it, because he was a self-proclaimed womanizer all his life. That was one reason his marriage to Lucy didn't last. It was a privilege to know him. I'd arrange for a girl to see him at a certain time, and I'd get there early and sit and chat with him and hear about the heyday of Desilu and the people that he knew.

In many cases, the gentlemen trusted me enough to leave me their telephone numbers to call back so I could confirm reservations with them. If a secretary answered, I used the name Karen Arnold, sometimes Dr. Arnold. It's disconcerting to me that a lot of the subsequent newspaper articles talked about so many people knowing me as Karen Wilkening when I ran this business. That's completely false, because no one involved in the service knew my real last name. My old friends knew nothing about the service. I led a double life and I did not mix them.

This job isolated me a lot. Most of my friends, eventually, were just involved in the business. I kept in contact with people in real estate, and my family and old friends thought I was still in real estate. But I had fun running the business, and I went out dancing a lot with the girls. We used the dancing as an aerobics class. It was very good exercise.

When I bought the business in 1981, I'd planned to do this for only five or six years. It wasn't going to be a career. So in 1986 I put the word out that I was looking for someone like me to turn it over to. Of course, the girls were always interested in taking it over. But I was faced with the same dilemma as Tiger; I needed someone who had some business sense and had done a lot of PR work. Besides the investment, I cared a lot about my clients and my girls.

Running the service had expanded my consciousness. It made me more understanding of the variety of human nature. I had come from a pretty conservative, upper-middle-class background in New York, with high ideals and goals, and there was a certain strata of society that I was used to. I hadn't had much opportunity to meet many people different from that, and this was an opportunity. I met people from all different kinds of backgrounds.

How the service was busted is the story of a police sting. One of my girls, Elizabeth, from the Philippines, was married for residency to a U.S. sailor. I was introduced to her through an attorney friend of mine. She had gone to him with a very sad and serious story about needing to get out of her marriage. She wanted to go back home, but there was no way for her to make money. The attorney sensed that she might be amenable to working for me, so he introduced us. She worked for me for several months in the middle of 1986.

Elizabeth had told her husband she worked for a caterer; but apparently he suspected that she was having an affair or something and followed her to an assignment. I sometimes let long-time clients pay by check (but never by credit card) and he found one in her purse, and he confronted her about it. There was no talking her way out of it, I guess.

He first called the San Diego vice detectives anonymously and gave them my phone number. Apparently, vice couldn't do very much with it because I had a very clean record, had never been in trouble, was not known on the streets, and there had been no trouble with that phone number. But Elizabeth's husband stayed mad and pursued it. He called vice again and this time gave his name, and they invited him down to police headquarters. In the end, Elizabeth was given immunity from prosecution, and she talked and dropped a couple of names of clients that she'd seen through me, and that got the police interested in my service.

I think the police believed they'd uncovered an upper-strata, society-type call girl ring that they hadn’t known about. From what I've been able to reconstruct, they then designed an elaborate sting operation that took several months to arrange. They chose one of their young, attractive policewomen who had been a centerfold on a police calendar, and they sent her to my attorney friend with the same type of serious story of an abusive marriage and having nowhere to turn and needing to make some money. Apparently she befriended, she flirted with, she enticed, she begged, she cried, and she had lunch with this attorney until he finally said, "Well, maybe I can introduce you to someone."

I didn't need any new girls at the time, so when my attorney friend called about Lisa Pope, as she called herself, I just took her number, which I now assume was a special police number. But I didn't call it right away, so I guess vice started getting impatient. The attorney called me a few times and said, "Haven't you called Lisa yet? She's really needing to talk to you and wants to meet with you." And I eventually did in the spring of 1987. And that's when they began what some people might well consider entrapment.

When I finally called Lisa Pope, I recall in hindsight that there was some clicking on the phone that I even commented on. "Is there something wrong with your phone? It’s clicking a lot." She said, "Oh, I have to call the phone company. We've had trouble with it before." But I set up a meeting with her at Garcia’s restaurant on Rosecrans. Any of the new referrals I would meet in advance, usually in coffee shops, Denny's, or someplace like that.

I can remember now that there were guys standing out in front of the restaurant, looking very uncomfortable. Maybe they thought I was armed. Lisa had given me a description of herself, and when I sat down, she had a great big purse that was more toward my chair than the middle of the table. I pushed it away from me. She was wired, but I didn't suspect a thing.

She was as nervous as any of the other prospective girls I'd interviewed. She wasn't overly glamorous; she was very attractive, petite, in her 20s, little makeup, a girl-next-door type that fitted the description of what I usually looked for. Her story was that she had been married right out of high school to a sailor, and he was abusive, and she had no job skills. She said she was in desperate straits to make some money so she could leave this abusive man, and I felt very sorry for her, as I had with Elizabeth. Ironically, these were the only two sad stories I heard from prospective girls in six years.

I spent an hour explaining what the service was and wasn’t, that the call girl stereotype didn't apply to my service, that the clients were screened, we didn't deal with crazy strangers, it didn't involve S&M, she wouldn't be asked to do weird things or go out in the middle of the night with people who were out of their minds on alcohol or drugs, that it was none of those situations. We discussed the money and what was required sexually, and the police got it all neatly on tape.

In order to assure Lisa that she wasn't going to be introduced to transient crazy people, I mentioned that our clients were very nice local businessmen, bankers, doctors, people of that ilk. But I never gave a false impression about my having very prominent clients.

By the end of our conversation, I had the sense Lisa would be available in several days and that I could introduce her to someone then. But within a day or two I heard from a client who wanted to see someone new (some clients only wanted to see the new girls). I called Lisa to see if she was available. Apparently I put vice in a panic because they weren’t ready to send her out, and I was calling for a job right away, within an hour or so. I suppose the police had to have people ready wherever she was going so that the assignation didn't proceed. She did agree to go, but apparently when she met the client she acted very, very nervous and said she couldn't go through with it. I believe he was arrested anyway.

Her second appointment that day was with an attorney who had a very busy schedule, so he would generally have the girls stop by his downtown office. She showed up at his office, and from what I've heard, he wanted her to get undressed right away, so she must have gotten pretty nervous. She had people from vice waiting outside, and they came bursting in, and he was arrested too. But I didn't hear about any of this at the time.

That same night I was at a management training seminar in an office on Morena Boulevard. I guess vice had followed me from my condo, and they showed up there. When the seminar ended, I stayed longer to talk to some people, and the cops out in the parking lot must have gotten impatient, because they sent in a nice-looking plainclothes cop to ask for me. The first thing he asked was, "Is that your car out front, the metallic-gray Nissan 300ZX?" I said yes, and he asked, "Can I talk to you privately?" He pulled me over to the side and showed me his badge and said something to the effect that he had a search warrant for my house, and I could ride with them and open the door or they would have to break in the door if I didn't cooperate.

My whole life flashed in front of my face at that moment; my body started shaking, but I agreed to go with him. I left my car there, got in his car, which I think was unmarked, and we drove to my condo. When we arrived, I saw a lot of cops with walkie-talkies and weapons, looking grim. I started crossing the street toward my condo, and a woman caught up with us and said something like, "Karen, do you recognize me?" I turned around and it was Lisa. I believe she had a cop's uniform on. I don't know what my reaction was; I think I just said, "Nice to see you," or something like that. I was in absolute, total shock.

After five or six years of dealing with people I knew and knowing I was going to get rid of the business soon, I just never envisioned this. I'd had a psychic feeling for the past year that something was going to change in my life, but I thought it was because I was going to move on to another job or career. To get a handle on my emotions, I tried to take deep breaths for calmness.

We walked to my front door and I unlocked it. My hands were shaking so badly I could hardly get the key in the lock. I was worried about the names and phone numbers and about my cats. So I let them in, about nine of them, and they told me to sit on the couch and not move. They spread out, and each took a different part of the house. There was banging and drawers being opened, and I'm just picturing everything being dumped and torn up and ripped with knives.

I sat on the couch, and my automatic nervous system took over. I lost my voice, I turned deathly pale, and I started shivering. I recall asking if I could get a coat from the closet, and they got very upset. Maybe they thought there was a weapon in there, because they wouldn't let me get up off the couch. One of the cops went to the closet and looked through everything and finally gave me a trench coat to put on.

My mind was going a mile a minute. I was sure at that moment my life as I knew it was over, and the next thought was how other people's lives were going to be affected.

My Rolodex was up in the kitchen cabinet because I didn’t need to use it all the time. It was one of the long files, with about 500 cards and a clear plastic cover. As I've said 100 million times, it was my address list of everyone I've known in my whole life - my family, my family's friends, people I'd worked with in real estate, old boyfriends, my banker, real estate associates, the person who fixed my car, my hairdresser, plus a few clients who were mostly inactive. There was no way to tell one from another just by looking at the cards.

I heard someone in the kitchen yell "Bingo!" And then a few other cops joined him, and I heard them making noises. I think what they found in the Rolodex was the name of a San Diego patrolman who had called several times for dancers for bachelor parties. I heard them whispering and joking.

My girls were not in the Rolodex. I had a little planner book, and I used to tear the pages out after that date was over. In the front there was a list of friends, emergency numbers - and the girls. The police found it in my purse and took that too. But again, they couldn't know who was who.

Finally, the cops started leaving one by one, and they seemed a bit disappointed. I assume they expected to find pornography, orgies going on, drugs, weapons, whips and chains - the stereotype of this kind of business, which I never fit. Then I saw the Rolodex being taken out the door.

They gave me a list of the items they confiscated. They took every penny that they found, approximately $900. They took all the cash out of my wallet and $100 bills from a little locked file cabinet that I had upstairs. They took my answering machine and the tape that was in it. It seemed like they were there for 48 hours, but it was probably more like 45 minutes.

They started leaving, and when there were one or two cops left, I thought, "Well, these are the guys who are going to arrest me." And to my tremendous surprise, the last guy went out the door saying, "We'll be in touch."

They had been taking Polaroids of the place, and I noticed their camera was on the coffee table in front of me, and I thought there must be someone else upstairs. So I sat on the couch longer, waiting. I didn't want any guns drawn on me. I sat there like an idiot waiting for someone else to come downstairs, take the Polaroid camera, arrest me, and we'd leave.

I finally realized there were no more cops in the house, so I jumped up and locked the door. I didn't know what to do. I knew I had to get out of there. They hadn't arrested me, but I knew I had to get a criminal attorney right away. My adrenalin was flowing, my heart was beating out of my throat, I was dropping things all over the place and trying to make plans really fast. I figured they'd come back and arrest me any second, so I didn't want to stay there.

In that panic state of mind I couldn't remember anyone's phone number. I threw some things in a suitcase, fed the cats, and checked my wallet. When I found they'd left my credit cards, I knew I could stay in a hotel. My car was still back at the place where they picked me up, so I called a friend to come and pick me up, but I didn't explain anything. I gave him the impression that my place had been robbed and I was afraid that people might come back, which wasn't a complete fabrication.

I finally remembered two of the girls' numbers, and when I called them I just told them the facts, because I was afraid to give them any advice. I said there was a search warrant on my house, they took my Rolodex, they have my phone numbers, the escort service exists no longer, and I was going to be getting an attorney and it might be a good idea for them to speak to one also.

I stayed at a hotel in Mission Valley for a couple of days and called friends in the social parts of my life to get referrals to criminal attorneys, "for a friend of mine," I said. I interviewed all of the attorneys within the next day and a half, then I chose one and gave him a retainer. I remember being surprised that I still had a bank account. I canceled my phone number. The attorney advised me to go back to my apartment and wait to see what the police were going to do.

Apparently the records on the search warrant issued for suspicion of pimping and pandering were not supposed to be made public. But something happened and reporters got ahold of them. The deputy district attorney, Bonnie Dumanis, at the time said, "Oh, it must have been a mistake." It wasn't to their disadvantage that it hit the press.

I don't know where reporters got the information, unless it was directly from the prosecutors, about what type of clientele they assumed I had, but the very first TV splashes on the story were a Star Wars type of rolling credits that had big letters: ATTORNEYS, DOCTORS, BUSINESSMEN, MANAGERS! I sat in horror in my living room watching the television coverage. My insomnia started that night.

The next morning there was a knock on my door. It was a man nicely dressed in a business suit. No one had contacted me in advance by phone, so I thought that he was from my attorney's office. I didn’t open the door, but I said, "Who is there?" And he said something like, "Somebody who'd like to speak with you." And I asked, "Who is it?" And he said, "My name is Bob Donnelly." I knew he was a reporter for a local TV station, so I said,

"I'm sorry, but I can't speak with you." But he started asking questions, and I said, "I'm going away from the door now, go away," or some stupid thing.

They got all this on their recorder, and they played it on TV. They had a TV camera hidden down below the entrance to the house, and they photographed the front of the house and my cat in the picture window and recorded my voice behind the door. This was my first media contact in my life, and it shocked me.

From that moment on, it was the stuff of soap operas. Newscasters conjectured that my service was a real jet-set operation with well-connected clientele. Donnelly showed up several times, and other people started knocking on the door. I didn't answer it anymore.

Heavy publicity started within a week of the serving of the search warrant, in May 1987. I hadn't been charged; I hadn't been read my rights. They'd never arrested me, so I take exception to all the news articles that said I'd been arrested in 1987 when my service was busted with the search warrant. It was approximately two and a half months later that I was finally called, through my attorney, to be arraigned in court, though I still wasn't under arrest.

During that time, I sat holed up alone in my condominium. My income stopped. My name was all over the news. I lost contact immediately with the girls and the clients, and most of my friends didn't want to get involved. I was very alone, just the cats and me. I thought that any minute, maybe in the middle of the night, they'd come and arrest me. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. My attorney advised me to wait and see what they were going to do. At the time, he thought it might even blow over.

The only saving grace was Linda Webster, a girlfriend of mine who came from back East and joined me. She was having a rough time and didn't have any resources, and at least I had a place for her to stay. She knew what had happened; I told her I had an escort service. She stayed with me until I left the country. She was my only confidante.

In the summer of 1987, I appeared for the arraignment and pled not guilty, which is usual when first charged. The preliminary hearing was set for a couple of weeks later. I started to hear that the prosecutors had subpoenaed scores of people and that they were starting to send investigators out to talk to people in the Rolodex, and they were using gestapo tactics to intimidate them into volunteering information. They were assuming that all the men were "johns" and all the women were prostitutes. They were fishing; they couldn't tell who was who. And I was hearing that vice was going out to people's homes and to their jobs and grilling them in front of other people. They were talking in front of men's families accusing them of being johns. We never used those words. We never used nasty street lingo. Nobody I knew used that language, except the cops.

I called it a moral inquisition. They were sifting through everybody I'd ever known, at least in the local area to start with, to see who might have been involved with this escort service. I can never understand their motivation in being so interested in people's sex lives. Quite a few of the Rolodex cards had only a first name, so maybe they hoped those names might be high-placed people. Bonnie Dumanis bragged about being a veteran sex-crime prosecutor.

The preliminary hearing was what made me decide to leave San Diego. Watching the moral inquisition and hearing about the form of investigation of so many people in my life, with the accusations, the intimidation, upset me greatly. I heard from friends that hadn't known that I was running an escort service. They'd been contacted on their jobs in front of other employees. Several of the clients appeared as witnesses. The reporters and the TV cameras were in the courtroom, and people were enormously affected. They were visibly distraught and breaking down on the stand.

At the time I didn't know that it's a mandatory prison sentence of three years minimum for even one count of pimping or pandering. I didn't worry about it very much; I've never been a paranoid person. I've always felt that I put out good karma. What I did never felt like a crime.

The only option I could see to stop the prosecution of everybody was for me to disappear. They were giving witnesses immunity from prosecution, but they weren't giving immunity to people's peace of mind and lives. The prosecution, I think, was a minor part of it. I never feared going to prison. I'm not a fearful person. I decided to leave the country to stop the prosecution of clients and the girls and the psychological persecution of all the people I've known in my life.

September 23, 1987, was the next scheduled preliminary hearing day, and I decided to leave before then. So I had a week to end my life as Karen Wilkening and leave the country. I just abandoned everything. I didn't want to leave any clues. I had some savings, but it wouldn't take all that much money because I was going to a Third World country. I didn't use my own passport, I used Linda's. I've been an honest, tax-paying citizen all my life; there was no sophisticated manipulation going on here. My girlfriend offered to get me a passport, and I said yes. She was very protective of me.

When Linda got her passport, she used one of my wigs, and we did her makeup similar to mine. She got the passport in her name and gave it to me. The name on the passport was Linda Webster; I became Lynn Webster for almost two years. I had to use the wig anytime that I went through immigration or customs or had to use the passport as ID. And Linda has brown eyes, so I had to wear brown contacts. I was always terrified that some customs official would say, "This is not you."

I made a decision to stop being Karen Wilkening because I felt I could be found anywhere I went if I was still myself. I might be tempted to use my resume, my background, my schooling, my references someday along the way, and I didn't want to have to worry about that. I knew I was making a great sacrifice giving up my life, giving up my cats and my friends and my things; but in return, if I also gave up my name, I would gain the freedom of not worrying about being found, for my own sake and for the people I was leaving behind. I never expected to come back to the United States.

Within a week I had packed up in two suitcases the things I felt I couldn't live without - some spiritual books, little crystal figurines, and some of my clothing and jewelry. I found good homes for the cats. I emptied my bank accounts. And Tony McCune, who had been a client, offered help as far as legal assistance, which I accepted. He had no idea that I was planning to leave the country. When I left, I had about $6000.

That week was a blur. I was trying to think what it would be like to be a fugitive. The Philippines is known as the false-ID capital of the world, and since I knew I wouldn't be able to borrow a passport for very long, the Philippines seemed like the best place to find a new identity.

To get to Los Angeles, I rented a car near Lindbergh Field. I knew the company had an office in Los Angeles, and I knew that I wasn't going to return the car to where I’d rented it. Once Linda and I arrived in L.A., I booked into a hotel, then I called the rental car agency and I said I'd injured my ankle and I couldn't drive it back, and I told them exactly where the car was. Strange, but I was worried about Karen Wilkening being erroneously charged with car theft just as I was becoming Linda Webster.

In the last few hours with Linda, we were almost speechless. We had so many heavy thoughts. We'd known each other for 22 years, without sharing a great deal of that time together because we were in separate cities for so long, but we always felt like soul sisters. We'd had a metaphysical link, a spiritual link. She'd done a very intense tarot reading for me just before we left. It was astonishing. The one thing I can remember, the very last card was the sun, which is a very, very good card for the future, the ending card, so I left Linda with a lot of trauma and a lot of hope.

Before I left the hotel, I went into the bathroom with a pair of scissors and cut up all my IDs, my Social Security card, my driver's license, credit cards, college records, resume, birth certificate, marriage license, divorce papers, bank records -all the ID I'd ever had. I flushed it down the toilet. I was too numb to cry. I was ending my life as Karen Wilkening.

Linda didn't know where I was going. I didn't want her to worry about being prosecuted or get in trouble. I didn't tell my parents or anyone. The bank eventually foreclosed on my condo, and I assume my car was repossessed. Everything I left behind is now gone.

I left Los Angeles late in the afternoon of September 23, 1987, on a Singapore Air flight to Manila. It was a very long flight. I was getting very uncomfortable with the wig, and I had trouble with the brown contact lenses, which didn't fit properly. One of them was hurting my eye, so I had to take it out, and for a long time I sat with one eye closed. Then I put on sunglasses for a while, but that started getting ludicrous when the sun went down. And then I thought, "No one on this plane knows me. I'll just take the contacts off and put them on again when I get to Manila," which was very early the next morning.

I tried to cover my tracks by leaving my real passport behind with my attorney. I wrote letters to be mailed from Mexico. They were mailed from a Mexican post office box and from another mailbox in Tijuana. I wanted to make sure that at least one of them got through. The letters said something to the effect that I can't make it to the next preliminary hearing because of concerns for my safety, that I was going to stay away for a while until things cooled down. They were handwritten, addressed to the court, as a reason for not showing up for the preliminary hearing. This fabrication of danger would come back to haunt me when it was used as an excuse for some horrible treatment in jail — "to protect my life."

I don't know all the manipulations that the authorities went through, how far and wide they looked for me over the next year and a half. I'm sure they looked in Mexico. I know that they went to the state that my parents lived in and personally interrogated them. And they flew to another state and interrogated someone I used to date. My parents got an anonymous letter in the mail with a newspaper article, and that's how they found out about everything. To this day, I don't know who sent it. Not very many people in San Diego knew my parents' address, and I have to wonder if it was the authorities. Also during the time I was gone, investigators in San Diego called my parents and asked questions about dental records and intimated that one of the bodies found as part of San Diego's serial prostitute murders was me. I don't know if that was a fishing expedition or whether they truly thought I had been killed.

Once I landed in the Philippines, I breathed a sigh of relief that I'd made it. I was very nervous clearing customs, but they only glanced at my passport picture. I found a place to stay in a private residence, and I used it as a sanctuary for about five months. I barely budged from it. I wasn't used to answering to a different name. I had to dress up in a wig and contact lenses every time I went out. I just stayed underground and read about 200 books on all different subjects. I even got ahold of the J. David Dominelli book while I was there.

I eventually did allow my parents and a few other people to know I was okay. I found a way to forward mail so it would have a postmark from the States. I stayed away from Americans in Manila. For food, I'd buy the chickens that they sell in the street that are already cooked, and I bought fresh mangoes, pineapples, and basically ate what the Filipinos eat - a very healthy diet, but I was still under a lot of stress.

Finally, in February of 1988, I decided to check out Australia as a possible place to live. I thought I might be able to blend in there better, being tall and blonde. I wouldn't have to worry about sticking out like a sore thumb, as I did in Manila. So I made reservations and went to Perth. I was put in a different kind of shock when I got there because it looks just like San Diego. It scared me to death! It was very upsetting - I thought I was back home. I stayed with a girlfriend who was living with her Australian fiancé. Their house in Perth was a home base for me, and I was able to relax for the first time in six months because I was with a friend.

I was in Australia for about two and a half months and visited the outback and climbed Ayers Rock, the most sacred of aborigine spiritual places. One of my goals has always been to visit all of the spiritual sights in the world before I die. I looked into making Australia my home, but unfortunately, the answer was no. Not only was Perth like constant déjà vu, but Australia is very expensive, and the immigration rules are extremely strict.

I still didn't know where I was going to spend the rest of my life, and I started worrying about how I was going to support myself. I knew I had to give up Linda's passport eventually.

I returned to the Philippines because I knew that my money would stretch the farthest there. It was also a decision of the heart, because I had met a man there shortly before I left for Australia, and we had become very close.

I met Hercules in Manila through a friend. He was young, in his early 20s, and very tall for a Filipino, about six feet, and mature, very quiet, very shy. He was tall, dark, and handsome.

I met him just before I went to Australia, in the spring of 1988. We had less than a week before I was due to leave; I'd already booked my flight. To meet somebody just before I left the country, perhaps for good, was kind of poignant. We both cried at the airport.

But before I left, he introduced me to his family. They lived in Pasay City, which is a little suburb of Manila, like a barrio, or a barangay as they call them. Four generations lived in the same house. They had me over and served me Filipino food, and it was a little awkward because I was the first American they’d ever had in the house, and they were very shy with me at the beginning. But they were very gracious, and they welcomed me, and actually, when I came back from Australia, I almost became part of their family.

People stared at me a lot when I was out with Hercules because I am so blonde and he is so unusually tall; people either thought he was my bodyguard or that we were movie stars or famous somehow. Hercules's family are body builders. His brother Ulysses was Mr. Philippines 1989. His father is a competitor and also a judge in body building. I believe he had a self-fulfilling prophecy in mind when he named his two sons powerful mythological names.

The people in the Philippines have very interesting and unusual names. I met someone named Pepsi and heard someone had named a baby Chernobyl at the time of the nuclear accident because they thought the name was pretty. There was a society couple I read about in the paper; his name was Arsenic and hers was Crispy. So after a while, calling my boyfriend Hercules wasn't odd at all.

When I got back from Australia, I rented an apartment and Hercules moved in with me. He was so wonderful to me. He became my tour guide and my family and my lover and my bodyguard. He worked at Faces, one of the best nightclubs in Makati. We lived together for almost a year and a half. We created our own little family, and we even had a "kid" - a cat. He brought a kitten from his house, and Meka became our baby.

There's a funny story about my cat’s name. It wasn't always easy for me to answer to the name Linda or Lynn, so I named my cat Meka, standing for "Me, Karen," just to remind myself I was the same person. You're not totally identified by your name, but you do get used to it being a part of you.

Hercules thought that I had reasons that I left the States; I told him I had some legal problems that were uncomfortable enough that I was looking to live elsewhere. But he didn't ask any questions. He was extremely respectful of me and my past life and seemed happy that I was there with him. He taught me some Tagalog, like "Mahala kita," which means "I love you."

I was seriously looking for a job toward the end of the time I was there because I was running out of money. I had the opportunity to be an extra in some movies being Filmed over there; one of them was Delta Force Two. That's probably the most outrageous thing I did while I was a fugitive. They paid foreigners a lot - $25 a day (500 pesos) -and fed you two meals. There are talent agencies always looking for foreign extras, and I was on a list of people who were available. I was also in The Lady and the Dragon. I looked into the possibility of being an English tutor, but for that I'd need a résumé.

By setting up house with Hercules, I was transitioning to a brand new life, and I think I would have stayed there indefinitely. We had a wonderful relationship, and age difference never mattered. We went to visit his family at least once a week for dinner, and I often borrowed his cousin Pinky to take to the movies. I took some of his family to the ballet for Christmas to see Snow White.

I helped Hercules draw up a wonderful résumé, and I encouraged him to apply for a different job and get serious about his future. I guess you could say I Americanized him. He got a job as a personal aide and bodyguard for one of the 22 Philippine senators, and he still has that job. I also encouraged him to go back to college. He's almost finished now with his degree in business. He's making plans to visit the States for the first time next year, when he graduates.

I'm interested in the spiritual side of life, so I was very interested in the esoteric part of Philippine culture, and I attended some classes and lectures that they offered in crystal consciousness and massage therapy. I met the president of the Philippine Psychic Research Society. And I had the rare opportunity to meet a divine healer and watch him practice in one of the remote provinces of Luzon. You have to know people who know people; the healer never advertised. Hercules's father, who's a physical therapist and interested in herbology and metaphysics, knew the divine healer.

It took hours for Hercules, his father, and me to get there by three different kinds of transportation - a rickety bus, a jeepney, and then a tricycle, which is a motorcycle with a sidecar. It was after a typhoon, and the roads were almost nonexistent. We arrived at some very, very modest houses and nipa huts in a crowded, tiny village. We walked for a while until we got to a certain house with a courtyard. I was stared at a lot, and little kids would follow me and try to touch me. And their parents would point me out.

A large room in the healer's house was filled with Filipinos who had come very long distances in some cases, and all of them had some sort of ailment they hoped to be healed. The healer's wife chatted with me for a while and explained that he would go into a trance in the morning and he would actually become a different personality with the power of healing that he ascribed to the divine, to God. There was one cross on the wall, but he didn't do any praying. He was more like a master of ceremonies, even cracking jokes.

He had me assist in some of the healings, for example, holding someone's arm that had been crippled all his life as he straightened it out. He manipulated certain areas along the meridians, similar to acupuncture, the energy flow meridians of the body. He kept measuring the limb to see if it was as long as the other one; he kept pulling it to make it the same length. It didn't look like it was very comfortable. The man was grimacing. But he fixed it! I was so overwhelmed that I was getting all emotional, I couldn't help crying as I saw all these things happen.

There was an older couple, and the gentleman had had a stroke that affected his consciousness. They said he hadn't recognized his surroundings for a long time and was almost nonfunctional. He didn't recognize his family and was like the living dead. And in front of my eyes, the healer used some sort of power to bring this man's consciousness back. He grabbed the man and kissed him on the top of the head after touching a very sacred gold cross for extra power.

And after he did that to this elderly gentleman, I watched how the man’s eyes started to look around, and it was so obvious that his consciousness was coming back to him. His wife had such an emotional reaction to seeing her husband come back again. They embraced and they cried, and I was crying with them. I went over and hugged the man. I don't think it could have been faked, because they did not expect me to show up; I was the only non-Filipino there. I was there for about two hours, and I probably witnessed 30 miracle healings of all different types.

I left that experience with an altered state of consciousness. I have a Catholic background, but I hadn't followed any organized religion for a very long time. I've always been interested in spirituality, believing in God and the power of love. Sometime before I went to the Philippines, a symbol appeared to me in a dream. It's a pyramid with a heart in it, and it became my symbol, so I often end my letters with this symbol and write under it or in it "Love is power."

Around Easter of '89, Hercules and Meka and I moved to a new apartment in the high-rise Sagittarius condominiums in Makati, a brand-new, tiny one-bedroom place. Ironically, I felt very safe there because I'm a Sagittarian. One morning, when we'd lived there only a few weeks, Hercules had left for work around 6:30 and I was still asleep, there was a knock on the door. I thought it was the paperboy, and I was in my nightgown, so I opened the door only about a half an inch. There was a sea of faces in the little hallway, and the first person I saw had a uniform on. He was Filipino, but there were a lot of American faces, and I knew instantly that the jig was up; San Diego police had found me.

It was just like the time the police had approached me after the seminar in San Diego two years before. I had thought I'd never feel that sinking feeling again, but there it was. It was May 8th of '89, 7:30 in the morning.

Someone put his hand on the door so I couldn't close it and said, "Are you Linda Webster?" I didn't answer right away. I needed time to think, and I didn't want to get myself in more trouble by starting off with lies. I had to make an instant evaluation of what I should do. I had not one bit of identification with me that linked me to Karen Wilkening, and I had a passport, Social Security card, and even stationery that said I was Linda Webster. I could have bluffed; but in the long run, since the authorities were there from halfway around the world, I figured I'd piss them off even more if I gave them a hard time. I knew that if I admitted I was Karen Wilkening, I'd be going back into the same maelstrom in San Diego and all the people I'd left behind. But if I insisted I was Linda Webster, I was in a position of putting her in jeopardy, and I didn't want to do that either. So I went ahead and admitted I was Karen Wilkening. The minute I did, the Philippine immigration officer asked me for my passport, and I became an instant illegal alien.

I invited them in, perhaps seven or eight officials in all. Two or three were Philippine immigration officials, one of them a woman, and some were in uniform. The Americans were Bonnie Dumanis and three other people who identified themselves as members of the San Diego Homicide Task Force, and that stopped my heart. I said, "What is this all about? What does this have to do with me?" They mentioned something about unsolved prostitute murders in San Diego that they were hoping I might be able to help with. They gave me very little information.

I don't remember my exact words, but I said I'd help in whatever way I could. I also agreed to cooperate to the extent that I would answer to the charges against me but I would not implicate anyone else, and I said that over and over again.

The female Philippine immigration officer went in the bedroom with me while I put some clothes on. I could sense tremendous tension in the air. The Americans probably felt vulnerable because they weren't in their own country, and I don't believe they're allowed to carry weapons. I don't know what they might have been expecting, but they searched the place and didn't let me out of their sight. And this time too, I guess, they were surprised, because there were no armed guards, nobody to jump them, no bodyguards, no weapons, no drugs, no secret files. I was completely compliant. It was already very hot that day, and I offered them water. My heart was racing and my mind was frozen, but I remained very calm and sat down and talked with them for a while.

They asked me for full cooperation, which, in part, would involve their taping phone calls they wanted me to make to some of my friends in the States so they could get some evidence. They wanted me to call Tony McCune, and they wanted me to call my attorneys as if nothing had happened. I said, "You're asking me to lie, and I won't do it. And I won’t implicate anyone else. I won't call as if nothing has happened." They tried to explain it wouldn't be a lie if it was part of the investigation, but I wouldn't buy that.

They said they had become acquainted with Linda Webster and that they knew everything there was to know about me. They were trying to turn me against people at the time and trying to get me to talk. I remember saying something like, “I think this is a situation where I should have an attorney." There was a lot of confusion about citizens' rights in a foreign country and the ability to get an attorney. Everybody had plenty to say, none of it pleasant to my ears.

I was turned over to Philippine immigration for passport violations since I now had no ID, and the Americans said they weren't going to be responsible for what happened to me until I was deported. It seemed like a threat at the time, but I said it didn't matter to me; I’d always felt comfortable in the Philippines. The Filipino immigration official tried to be very fair. Before he allowed the task force to search my place, he required somebody to be called from the manager's office to see that they didn't plant anything in the apartment while they were searching.

From what I could gather, Chuck Rogers, Dumanis, and the task force had arrived in the Philippines at least a week, maybe longer, before they actually contacted me. They had trouble getting my address. I heard that they used the American Embassy and possibly Naval Intelligence and the FBI. In my last conversation with Linda, I had finally told her where I was and had given her my telephone number. I had to call her to ask for another piece of identification so I could get a work visa. I've since been told that at this point in 1990, she went to an attorney, and he called the San Diego police and explained the situation to them. So I more or less fell in their laps, and discovering my whereabouts was not the San Diego police's big triumph after all.

I'll never know Linda's motivation or state of mind, what intimidation was used against her, until I see her again - which may never happen. Apparently, they made a bargain for her immunity. My best friend eventually became the chief prosecution witness against me. I know the San Diego police went to Oklahoma, where she was living, and they taped all the overseas conversations that Linda and I had.

Before the authorities and I left the apartment, they did allow me to pack one suitcase and leave a note on the table for Hercules, because they told me I would not be permitted to return. I barely remember what I wrote. I said I was okay, I wasn't being harmed, I was being taken to immigration, and that I loved him, and to take care of Meka. The cat was hiding behind the television set when I left. I thought I'd fall apart if I touched her, so I didn't.

We piled into cars and drove to the immigration offices on Magall Anes Drive. It was really hot, 90 or 95 degrees. I could see that the American contingent was badly affected by the weather. Immigration first allowed the Americans to have a room in which to interrogate me, and that's where they put the pressure on me to call people in the United States and implicate them in the service, and I refused to do that. They had brought a surprise for me: a tape that they'd had Linda record. In a very dramatic moment, they played it, but I know it didn't have the effect on me that they thought it would have.

They had taped her talking to me, but she was talking so strangely that it seemed to me that she had been drugged. (Linda had taken prescription drugs for a long time for back and knee injuries.) She was talking extremely slowly and said something like, "Karen... this is the hardest thing ...I've ever done ... but I know it's for the best.... We've got to put an end to this madness... and just know that everything... is going to be all right. Just cooperate..."

It didn't go on much further because I reared back and looked up with my eyes wide and said, "She sounds drugged," and they hit the stop button real fast and never played any more. I guess they expected me to break down and dissolve into tears and sob and become distraught, that this would have been the blow to soften me up. But it had the opposite effect. I felt Linda had been manipulated, that she'd been intimidated, she was in a horrible state of mind, and that they'd used her.

I was then taken to a different room, a very small, hot room. There was a desk, and they moved a whole bunch of chairs in and put me right in front of the desk. Behind the desk was one of the heads of immigration and his secretary with a manual typewriter. They were apparently going to take down the questions and answers on this typewriter.

Also in the room was the task force from San Diego, including Chuck Rogers and Bonnie Dumanis, and people representing the American Embassy, and someone from the FBI, I believe, and armed guards. It was very crowded. It was mid-afternoon, and I hadn't had anything to eat. I had a splitting headache but couldn't get them to give me an aspirin. I even had to ask to get something to drink.

The Philippine immigration official was asking me some very mild questions having to do with when I arrived, under what circumstances, for what purposes. I said I was there as a tourist. I told them the truth. They didn't interrogate me about anything that was going on in the States or anything that I was being pursued for. I was kind of surprised.

But before we got into all these questions, there was a very strange occurrence. There were tremendous crashing sounds, thunder, lightning, and the power went out. The air conditioner went off, and all the lights went out. People were screaming, and you could hear banging on windows. Everyone jumped up and ran around. The room was dark, and they opened the door right away so light from outside could come in, but the room was still dark and hot as an oven. I sat perfectly still because I didn't want anyone drawing guns on me or accusing me of causing commotion or an escape attempt. I think I had premonitions at that point, so I didn't move a muscle.

It was a freak hailstorm. The hail was big enough to be crashing against the windows, and the thunder and lightning was right over the building, and the electricity went off. They lit two candles and propped them on either side of the typewriter, and that's how the interrogation proceeded, by candlelight.

When they came back in the room, everyone was staring at me, and I found myself saying, "The gods must be angry.” Their eyes got really wide, and I can remember a couple of people backed away from me. I don't know what they thought, but I felt it was very metaphysical. I took it as a sign that I wasn’t alone. I'd felt very, very alone during the interrogation, but the storm comforted me for some reason. Strangely enough, the electricity came back on fairly quickly in the rest of the city, but not in this building. I'd spend the next three days here, and the electricity would remain off until I was ready to leave for the airport.

An hour after they started the interrogation, things were calming down a little bit, and we were getting used to the 120-degree temperature in the room, when suddenly a shadowy figure came flying through the door and grabbed me by the back of the neck. I thought I was being attacked, but it was Hercules, and he said, "Are you all right?" He hugged me, and everyone in the room was just immobilized. They probably thought I was being assassinated. I started crying, and he was crying, and then, of course, the official said, "You have to leave. Who are you?"

Hercules had his Senate badge, and that was what got him into the building. He was so concerned for me, he just didn't think about the consequences. He could have been shot. They finally kicked him out, but before he left he talked to the officials and they calmed down about it. Because he worked for a senator, and they didn't know where that came into the picture, they were respectful of him and said he could come and see me at the deportation center next door.

Immigration officials gave me the option of fighting the deportation, but I decided to face up to what was happening. The bounty hunters had come this far and gone to all that trouble, and if they didn't come back with me, I figured they'd make it harder on me. Plus, they were dangling the possibility that if I complied, they would not only fly me back with them on the plane first class, but there was a possibility they would put me up in a hotel in San Diego and treat me well, rather than take me to jail. They already had a flight booked later in the week. They said they had a ticket for me, and if I went with them, it would look much better for me. The Philippine immigration official gave me a self-deportation paper to sign. I was told if you deported yourself, you would never be allowed to return to the country. I signed, but I hoped it wasn't true.

By the end of the day, I still hadn't had anything to eat. They had been playing "good cop, bad cop" with me, and one of the task force officers wouldn't let me have anything to eat during that long ordeal. They were sending out for sandwiches, and I asked if I could have something to eat. He said some nasty thing like, "Do you think you deserve to be fed?"

Finally, I was trotted next door to my home for the next several days. It was a little shack, an old run-down house converted into a holding place for deportees. One floor was a huge cage filled with men, mostly Middle Eastern men awaiting deportation. All the men would hang out the windows for air.

They gave me a choice of either staying in this cage with all of these men, with no bed or bedding of any kind, or in a closet storeroom that was behind the guard's desk. It was smaller than a bathroom. A woman already lived in the closet, a German lady named Marguerite, accused of selling Filipino babies to Europeans, and she'd been there ten months fighting deportation. She had just done her laundry, which was hanging inside this closet, dripping water all over the floor. She had a mattress on one side that took up half the floor, and the other half was all her dripping clothes. And I'm there with my Louis Vuitton suitcase with nowhere to sit down or put my things.

Marguerite was a huge woman, so she took up a lot of the closet space. She had been there long enough that she had started dating one of the Filipino guards, and he would bring her food and gifts. He was allowed to come visit her at any time, and I'd have to leave the closet.

The only bathroom was inside the cage. Every time I used it, I had to ask the guard to unlock the cage. I would walk through it with all those guys yelling at me and moving close. And there was no shower and the toilet had no seat. The sink was filthy, one faucet was broken, there was only a cold water spigot, and there was no light, which may have been a good thing.

The Americans left me in the detention center and went about their business, maybe sightseeing in Manila. I did give them some restaurant recommendations. I think they came by once over the next couple of days just to see that I was still there. The American Embassy came by once to give me a temporary passport; I was Karen Wilkening again.

There was an outer room in the deportation center where the guards' desk was and some chairs for visitors, but I couldn't tell the difference between the visitors and the guards. I was sometimes mistaken for a visitor. The guards didn't wear uniforms and they didn't have weapons, and I saw some of them come to work drunk and sometimes without shirts on. They weren't very vigilant. I could have walked out the front gate many times.

Breakfast was a hard-boiled egg and two tiny, hard muffin-type things. Nothing to drink. For lunch they brought only a handful of rice in a Baggie, with one tiny dried salted fish. Dinner was the same plain white rice and a little fish and a couple of chopped-up vegetables. They can't afford to feed their own people, no less people they're deporting, I guess.

I slept on the floor in the closet. Hercules was able to bring a futon for me, and he brought a towel and some soap. I put on a gown to sleep in, but then when I was lying on the floor I had to decide whether to put my head or my feet at the door right behind the guard. The German lady had said, "Don't put your feet down there because they'll try to look up your gown if you turn over in the middle of the night. They'll be looking at your body.” We couldn't close the door because we wouldn't have been able to breathe.

Hercules came to visit me as much as he could. He bribed the guards with cigarettes and beer, and he brought me food. They never searched my suitcase or anything Hercules brought me. They were intimidated by his Senate badge, I think. We would go outside and sit in a little front yard that was full of trash, with an old commode in one corner of it. We sat on broken stools, and there were no bars or gates in the front, just a little fence. I got a broom and cleaned up the place a little. There wasn't much else to do for the time being except worry.

The last night I was there, Hercules came with his parents. They brought dinner and a bottle of champagne. We sat on crates, under a full moon, and drank out of paper cups. Hercules's mother had made spaghetti for me, because I loved her spaghetti. She put a little sugar in the sauce. And they brought my favorite, pansit. It was a very memorable and very sad night.

The next day, the whole contingent of Americans arrived. They were rushing me, and I was dropping things and trying to say good-bye to Hercules at the same time. He had to help me get dressed because I was shaking so badly. Then he rented a taxi and followed us out to the airport in the hopes he could say good-bye one last time.

At the entrance to the airport, Hercules jumped out of his taxi and came to where I was being guarded. They let us say good-bye very briefly in front of everybody, and we were crying. I told him that I most likely was going to prison and that I would keep in contact as closely as I could, and I hoped he'd write to me. They weren't going to keep me in prison forever, I said, and I would see him again. He was pretty torn up. When he visited me in the deportation center, I had explained that I owned an escort service, because I wanted himto know the extent of what I was guilty of. He had a hard time understanding what all the heavy prosecution was about, and he certainly wouldn't be the only person to wonder about that.

At the airport I was surrounded by bodyguards, immigration officials, and the force. They got the airport guards to clear a path for me. Everybody was staring. They took me on a long, winding route behind offices and up and down stairs and through corridors because of the special deportation situation.

I left the Philippines on the 10th of May, 1989. Three days later, horrifying articles appeared in the Manila paper about me. The headlines said, "The Most Wanted Woman in the United States." The stories talked about white slavery and the unsolved murders of 42 women in several states. This made me look like I was a suspected murderer and white slaver. Hercules's family mailed the clippings to me, and I was astonished that they kept in touch, because the articles mentioned the family's name and had totally inaccurate information.

Who knows how the Manila newspapers got even an inkling of any of this. Ultimately, it would have to have come from the task force; they had to make a good enough story to the immigration officials to get them to cooperate. It was truly scary to see those headlines, because I had made good friends in the Philippines, and for them to even for a minute think that there was any truth to any of this horror was personally devastating.

We were the first people on the plane, and we sat in first class. Right away we had to hear about the champagne and wine and the gourmet dinner we were going to have and what movies we were going to see. I was sitting there thinking, "I'm in the twilight zone." I remember when the plane took off that I started crying again, looking at the islands fade away, wondering if I would ever be able to return.

At one point, Bonnie Dumanis traded places with my Philippine immigration escort for a while and began talking to me. I hadn't slept for three days, I wasn't feeling very well, and I was extraordinarily depressed, but she tried to keep me talking. One of the things we talked about was her wanting me to go right to San Diego and get it all over with. I could have chosen to give myself up to the FBI in Honolulu, technically, the first American soil. But obviously, they wanted to bring me back with them to San Diego.

When we stopped in Honolulu, we got off the plane, and I was introduced to an elderly man who showed me a badge and said he was with the FBI. I had the impression that he'd been prompted to recommend that I not give myself up in Honolulu, that the jail there was very poor and that I should continue on to San Diego. I agreed out of sheer fatigue.

Unbeknownst to me, Honolulu was the first place I was photographed; some San Diego media had actually flown to Hawaii. It was leaked to them somehow that I was on my way back, and I'm told that the first photographs that appeared were of me taken in the lounge at Honolulu.

When we landed in Los Angeles, they emptied the plane but said for me to stay put. I looked out the window, and there were police cars surrounding the plane - San Diego police, Los Angeles police. Once everyone left the plane, we moved up to the front, and all these cops started pouring onto the plane - and I remember hearing the sound of chains. I'll never forget that. John Lusardi, one of the vice cops - very tall, wearing cowboy boots - asked, "Are you Karen Wilkening? You are under arrest.” That's the first time those words had ever been spoken to me. I was being charged with pimping and pandering and illegal flight. And they mentioned something about possible federal passport violations. Then my rights were read to me.

The Philippine immigration escort was just standing there with his mouth open, watching this happen. Just before they handcuffed me, I stepped forward and reached out - and probably startled everybody - but I reached out to shake my escort's hand because he'd been so nice. He had taken Hercules's phone number and promised to call him for me. And he wished me well.

Then they put me in custody with waist chains that were all one piece, like a long belt. They put them around the front of you first, then cross behind, and the ends come forward and attach to your wrists with handcuffs. They didn't shackle my legs yet because I had to walk down a very steep exit ramp into a San Diego police car.

I was a rag doll by this time. The flight had been 13 or 14 hours long, I hadn't slept in days, and I was exhausted. Once I was in the police car, we caravaned 2 l/2 hours from LAX back to the downtown San Diego police headquarters.

From the moment I left San Diego 20 months before, I'd never considered coming back. I had left to avoid the prosecution and harassment of everyone in my life, my clients, my girls, my friends, my family. I felt that if I stayed away, the case would eventually be dropped. I knew what my business was and what it wasn't. I trusted in the truth to come out and that the San Diego police prosecution and media would move on to more important issues. But in actuality, my being gone only fueled the fire.

I couldn't have known that eventually the budget of the Homicide Task Force would be used to track me down halfway around the world. If it were just vice looking for me, I figured eventually it would be dropped. But little did I know that there were other things going on in San Diego that would affect me greatly - from unsolved prostitute murders to savings and loan collapses to accusations of police corruption.