How a teen ‘band geek’ became a Seattle pimp’s ‘bottom girl’ North Carolina woman duped by fake HBO documentary maker helped her abuser lure more teens

Marysa Comer, pictured prior to her arrest in 2014. Now 23, Comer was convicted of a sex trafficking offense after helping her pimp send young women around the country to work as prostitutes. Marysa Comer, pictured prior to her arrest in 2014. Now 23, Comer was convicted of a sex trafficking offense after helping her pimp send young women around the country to work as prostitutes. Image 1 of / 7 Caption Close How a teen ‘band geek’ became a Seattle pimp’s ‘bottom girl’ 1 / 7 Back to Gallery

“It was all lies.”

That’s how “K” described her life with Marysa Comer, weeks that saw her degraded and sexually abused for the benefit of a pimping fraud, David Delay.

Comer was K’s path to Delay. At 19, Comer seduced and exploited the Seattle-area high schooler in the hope that Delay would make her a star.

Three years later, Comer has nothing to show for all she took from K and the others. The money went to the man who broke them. She will spend a third year in federal prison. If she is proud of what she did, she hides it well.

Delay, on the other hand, remains defiant. Facing a possible life term when he is sentenced in February, Delay has asked U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik to throw out a jury verdict against him. He faces long odds – sentencing Comer on Friday, Lasnik described Delay as a master manipulator who reminds him of Charles Manson.

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Delay, a 51-year-old Lynnwood resident, was convicted Nov. 6 on charges related to a sex trafficking ring he ran for years. Posing at one point as an HBO documentarian with $155 million in the bank, he duped his victims into signing contracts requiring that they pay him thousands of dollars a month.

Making a documentary with Delay would make them millionaires, or so his story went. All they had to do was work as prostitutes and pass their earnings to him. He recruited or attempted to recruit dozens of women and girls before K broke up his scheme in November 2014.

K, whose true name has been omitted here to protect her privacy, was a late addition to Delay’s sex trafficking operation. She was recruited and managed by Comer, who had also been drawn in by Delay with promises of fame.

Conspirator or 15th victim?

Pleading for leniency on Comer's behalf, federal public defender Kyana Givens noted that a moment of reckoning has arrived in America for those who engage in sexual exploitation.

Delay fits the bill, as do those who used their money and status to exploit the women Delay supported himself by trafficking.

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Givens listed 14 names of the women Delay is known or suspected of abusing.

Those women and girls, she said, were primed for abuse in part by a culture that asks women to trade their sexuality for fame or money. Givens presented the court a Netflix page packed with titillating documentaries and reality shows glamorizing sex work. She listed well-known websites infamous for profiting off of prostitution.

Givens then asserted that there is one woman “we have counted out” – Comer.

“When the government talks about holding someone accountable,” Givens said, “let us go bigger than a 19-year-old girl.”

‘She wanted to be famous’

As with so many others, Delay recruited Comer online. He sought out naïve teens who were lonely and susceptible to flattery. He talked many of them into sending him sexually explicit photos and videos, which he then used for blackmail.

Delay manipulated more than a dozen women into signing contracts with his production company, requiring them to provide weekly "production fees" ranging from $1,500 to $1,800 earned through prostitution. He promised each of them a payment of at least $20 million, and claimed to be negotiating a deal with "American Idol" host Ryan Seacrest's production company.

Raised in North Carolina, Comer rushed to Seattle and Delay after a fight with her stepfather. He had caught her smoking marijuana and they had a real blowout. She now says that it would’ve been about something else if it hadn't been the pot.

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Assistant U.S. Attorney Catherine Crisham described Comer as crucial to Delay’s plan.

“This was a far-fetched scheme and a lot of women simply didn’t believe him,” she said. “Comer changed that.”

“She wanted to be famous, and she was willing to exploit other women to be famous,” Crisham continued.

Comer vouched for Delay to a Pennsylvania girl Delay was recruiting; that girl flew to Seattle the day after she turned 18. Comer posted escort advertisements on Backpage for her and others, and rented hotel rooms for "dates." Living in a smelly apartment in Lynnwood, Comer presented prostitution as fun and glamorous.

In truth, of course, there was no documentary or record deal. Investigators searching Delay’s home didn’t even find a professional video camera.

Sold to the highest bidder

It was with K that Comer was at her worst.

The young women met on MeetMe, a social network geared toward older teens. K was lonely. Comer listened to her. About her parents’ divorce. About her struggles at school. Eventually, about her infatuation with Comer.

Comer and Delay picked K up at her Eastside high school, offered her a place in their relationship and launched her into prostitution. Comer sold K to “the highest bidding porn producers and prostitution customers,” Crisham said.

K was initially told she would only have to work as a prostitute until they could film the documentary. Then Comer and Delay told her she needed to pay off her contract, flying her to Texas, Illinois and Oregon to prostitute.

Under Comer’s guidance, K was made to engage in degrading sex acts on camera. Comer then posted humiliating photos of K on Facebook, and sent K’s father a photo of his daughter getting Comer’s name tattooed on her buttocks.

By November 2014, K was done. She bought a cell phone, called her mom and fled. Her tip to Redmond police ultimately brought down Delay and Comer.

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Investigators ultimately recovered dozens of prostitution advertisements promoting other teens. They also seized 700 hotel room cards, contracts describing the documentary and computers loaded with sexually explicit materials, including child pornography.

Dressed in a tan jail uniform, her bleached hair growing back to brown, Comer apologized to K directly during her sentencing hearing Friday.

“I’m sorry,” Comer said to K during Friday’s sentencing hearing. “I didn’t mean to ruin anything for you.”

‘Everything has changed’

Speaking at the Seattle federal courthouse, K said Comer’s social media attack on her left her reputation in tatters. She and her family have struggled to get back some of what they had before Comer entered their lives.

“I wanted to go into education and for the longest time I couldn’t because of all the stuff on Facebook,” K told Lasnik. “Everything has changed.”

Having presided over Delay’s trial, Lasnik told K that her story moved the jurors who condemned Delay.

“The jury felt you showed incredible courage in coming in and testifying the way you did,” said Lasnik, who spoke with the jury after they returned their verdict. “What you did was very brave.”

Givens, who took over as Comer’s public defender after she pleaded guilty, painstakingly compared Comer’s ordeal with those suffered by 14 other girls and women snared by Delay.

The official prosecutorial line on women involved in prostitution has shifted. No longer presented as villains, sex workers are put forward as victims. That some sex workers don’t share that view is a nuance usually kept out of court.

Women like Comer complicate things.

While prosecutors described her as something incrementally worse, Comer appears to have served as a “bottom girl” to Delay. As a “bottom,” she assisted Delay in controlling the other women in the sex ring. She was cruel and enjoyed preferential treatment from Delay for her work.

But Delay made the money – hoarding prostitution earnings is one way a pimp retains control – and abused Comer, too. While she might be blamed for not running from Delay as others did, she is hardly the first victim of domestic violence to stay when she should have gone.

‘Music was everything’

In Comer’s case, she was held hostage by a dream.

As he did with many others, Delay made promises on which he would not deliver. For Comer, stardom was the draw.

Delay was, she hoped, her entry point to a career in music. Instead, she was abused on camera and pushed into prostitution.

“This was a young band geek,” said Givens, her public defender. “Music was everything to her.”

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“Marysa Comer was lured from the outset,” she continued. “She has a passion, and David Delay abused it. … She was exploited from the beginning.”

Those who knew Comer before Delay describe a different person, a softer young woman they fear they’ve lost.

“We miss the Marysa that we knew before she was sucked in by Delay,” Comer’s stepfather told Lasnik. “We understand that a lifetime of sorrys can’t undo this wrong, but we pray every night that this can be the foundation of healing.”

‘She crossed a line’

Asked to decide whether Comer was a victim or a victimizer, Lasnik found her to be both. That Delay made her the one didn’t absolve her for becoming the other.

Comer, Lasnik said, is “primarily a victim in this case, but she crossed a line.”

Lasnik sentenced Comer to three years in prison, two years shy of the prosecution’s request and one year more than the time-served recommendation from Givens. Comer previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion.

While the hearing in theory centered on Comer, Delay was not far removed from the proceeding. Lansik remarked that he was watching a report on Manson, the recently deceased murderous cult leader, and was reminded of Delay.

Delivering the verdict following a 10-day trial, jurors convicted Delay on sex trafficking crimes related to six women and girls, as well as production of child pornography. Like Comer, he remains jailed.

SeattlePI senior editor Levi Pulkkinen can be reached at 206-448-8348 or levipulkkinen@seattlepi.com. Follow Levi on Twitter at twitter.com/levipulk.