1

May 16, 1977

Ch icago

is

center

of national child porno

A NATIONWIDE homosexual with headquarters in Chicago has been trafficking in young boys, sending them across the nation to serve clients willing to pay hundreds of dollars for their services,

Existence of the ring wias uncovered by a Chicago Tribune investigation of child pornography and child prostitution throughout the country.

The investigation also has disclosed that a clandestine is being published in Chicago which serves as a conduit for perverts throughout America in engaging children in pornographic

modeling and prostitution and in making contact with one another.

Both operations, the police said, were controlled by separate groups of men working together in an interlocking web of vice.

TIlE RING trafficking in young boys goes under the name Delta Project. Ac- cording to police in Chicago, Los Ange- les, and Dallas, it is masterminded by 49-year-old John D. Norman, a convicted sodomist serving a four-year sentence in the Illinois state prison at Pontiac.

His closest associate is Phillip R. Paske, 25, a convicted murderer and

The Child Predators

Child pornography is a nationwide, multimillion-dollar racket that is luring thousands of juveniles into lives of prostitution. Tribune reporters Michael Sneed end George Bliss spent three months investigating this sexual ex- ploitation of young boys and girls by a national ring of greedy, perverted adults, The series was written by Ray Moseley. This is the second of their tour-part report.

thief who police said is now on proba- tion and Is carrying on the project in Norman's absence.

The clandestine newsletter is known as Hermes. Police said the principal fig-

ures in Its publication are Elden Gale [Rusty) Wake, 40, an employe of Trinity College in Lake Forest; Patrick Town- son, a Chicago man who operates a citi- zens band radio information show for

homosexuals and is connected with the Gay News and Events newspaper, and David Berta, who along with Townson was involved in Norman's operation.

Berta was arrested Saturday on a charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor in connection with the film- ing of a pornographic movie.

BUT POLICE SAID they could take no action against the Hermes operation in the absence of an Illinois obscenity law. The law was declared unconstitutional by a federal court last year.

The Cook County state s attorney s of- fice and Chicago police said Norman's

Delta Project was born In Cook County Jail last spring while he was awaiting trial on charges of taking indecent liber. ties with 10 teen-age boys.

Unknowvn to jail , they said, Norman used the jail s printing facilities to send eel three "newsletters" about the p r o j e c t to homosexual clients throughout the country and to people who answered his advertisements in gay publications.

TIHE NEWSLETTERS said the aim of the Delta Project was "to provide edu- cational, travel and self-development op-

Continued on page 8, col. 1

Chicago is center of

national child pornography ring

Continued from page one

for qualified young men of character and integrity."

Norman told his readers that "Delta- " were being established around the country. "Each is a private resi- dence where one of our sustaining mem- bers acts as a 'don' for two to four 'cadets'.... The nature of the relation- ship between cadet and sponsor Is left entirely to the two of them."

In a prison Interview with The Trib- une last week, Norman said the Delta was a program to provide self- development and training for young men.

"This has nothing to do with sex," he said. "I didn't want to get young kids involved in sex."

BUT POLICE said Norman's "dons" hce pedophiles - adults with a sexual preference for children - and the "ca- dets" are boy prostitutes recruited for Norman in the Chicago area.

Norman, a tall man with wavy gray hair, acknowledged in the Interview that he published his newsletter in Cook County Jail until jail officials stopped the operation, and said he carried on a correspondence with more than 7,000 persons.

"It was quite a project and I would work all day, 16 hours, and I paid an- other Inmate to do the typing and other work during the other eight hours of the day," he said.

Norman said he also plans to go Into the business of selling pornographic TV casettes when his prison term is up, but denied that children would be involved.

HOW MANY "cadets" have been sent to "dons" on Norman's mailing list is unknown. But police said Paske, out of jail on probation since last July, has

kept the project going while Norman is in prison.

The Delta Project operates from P.O. Box 5094 in Chicago.

The Chicago police Area 6 youth divi- sion, tipped to the existence of the pro- ject last February, began an investiga- tion and determined that the post office box was registered to Paske and Nor- man.

The probe led police to the discovery that Norman has a long career of sexual abuse of children. Norman, who came to the Chicago area in mid-1973 from Dal- las, has a record of 13 arrests for sex offenses going back to 1954.

TIlE DELTA Project was only the latest of a series of organizations he set up to supply boy prostitutes to male customers around the country, police said.

Earlier, they said, his operation had gone by such names as the Norman Foundation, Epic International, and the Odyssey Foundation. Ironically, Dr. Ju- dianne Densen-Gerber of New York City, heads a national movement to pre- vent child abuse and neglect, called Od- Institute. She Is an outspoken foe of child pornography.

Dallas police told Sgt. Ronald Kelly, head of the Area 6 youth division, that they have information associating Nor- man with the ring that helped transport to Texas the 27 boys murdered in Hous- ton in 1973 in a widely publicized sex and sadism case.

That case Involved Dean Corli, a 33. year-old who police said paid two teen-agers to bring other boys to his home where they were sexually assault- ed and murdered.

The murders were discovered after one of the teen-agers, Elmer Wayne Henley, shot and killed Corll because,

he said, Corll threatened to kill him.

NORMAN came to suburban Home- wood in mid-1973 and lived In the home of one of his Epic International clients. Homewood police said the client later told them that Norman supplied him in the summer of 1973 with a 16-year-old Missouri boy whom he took on a three- week, $4,500 tour of Europe.

Norman, who was then using the alias Steven Gurwell, was arrested in Octo- ber, 1973, an anonymous tipster told police he had lured the 10 teen- agers into committing sex acts with him by giving them beer.

The police confiscated from Norman a large collection of pornography and a list of 5,000 names and addresses which they say identified clients of his various "." The Tribune subsequent- ly obtained a copy of the list from other sources.

IT WAS NOT the first that Norman compiled.

Lt. Harold Hancock of the Dallas po- lice arrested Norman in March, 1973, on charges of contributing to juvenile viola- tion of state drug laws. Hancock told The Tribune he confiscated from Nor- man more than 30,000 Index cards list- ing clients around the country, some of them prominent people and some feder- al employes in Washington.

"I felt that some federal agency should get the cards and I contacted the State Department through the FBI, I think it was," Hancock said. "All the cards were sent to Washington to the Staoe Department, and that s the last I heard of it."

The State Department confirmed to The Tribune that it had received the cards. Matthew Nimetz, a counselor for the State Department, said officials there determined "the cards were not relevant to any fraud case concerning a

passport" and therefore destroyed them.

Nimetz was unable to explain why the Stale Department looked at the cards only from the standpoint of possible passport irregularities or why it had not turned them over to the FBI or postal inspectors.

SHORTLY AFTER Norman published his first newsletter from Cook. County Jail last year, someone in California whom police have not been able to iden- tify provided the $36,000 cash needed for his ball.

Norman went free until December, 1976, when he pleaded guilty to eight counts of indecent liberties with a child and was sentenced to four years in pris- on.

The police first learned last March of the existence of the Hermes newsletter. An informant in the area of Clark Street and Divarsey Parkway, a center of ho- activities in Chicago, obtained a copy of it and turned it over to police.

Hermes, a bimonthly publication, con- tains line drawings and photographs of naked boys, articles on "boy love," and advertisements listing coded names that enable subscribers to contact one anoth- er and to engage children in porno- graphic modeling and prostitution.

It is one of three principal "boy love" newsletters in the United States. The others are Better Life Monthly, pub- lished in California, and the Broad Street Journal, published in Milliken, Colo.

According to police, Hermes sells more than 5,000 copies nationally every two months and, at $10 a copy, grosses more than $300,000 a year.

HERMES LISTS ITS mailing address as P.O. Box 802, North Chicago.

Policesaid the box was registered to Wake, who works in the audio-visual department at the Lutheran church-run

Trinity College, and to the National Press Business, 1445 11th St., Waukegan.

Trinity College has been cooperating withthe Lake County state s attorney s office in the Investigation of Wake.

In addition to his job at Trinity, Wake is a salesman for National Press Busi- ness-a legitimate printing concern-but his only account is himself, police said. He receives a 15 per cent commission on materials sold-materials that police said go into the production of Hermes.

Police have not determined where Hermes is printed.

TIlE LAKE COUNTY state s attor- ney s office has identified Wake as an employe of a children s home and two

children s camps between 1964 and 19G8.

Police said Townson screens prospec- tive subscribers for Hermes and Berta helps with the layouts.

Townson, 30, has a record of arrests over the last 15 years for fraud, sodo- my, and escape from a mental hospital. Berta has no previous arrest record.

Police said they believe Wake is the printer of Hermes.

Copies of Hermes have turned up in arrests of pornographers in California, Michigan, 'and other parts of the coun- try.

TUESDAY: A look at child - phy and prostitution operations through- out the United States.

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