There once was a dentist named Gary,
Whose teeth were so white it was scary,
But he had a Secret,
And he couldn’t keep it,
So now he has need to be wary.

So Gary Kimmel was sentenced to prison today and Marina City’s just fine without him.  Since January 2006, there’s been neither rhyme nor reason to explain the actions of the former Marina City condo board member. After his arrest and indictment that month on charges of money laundering in connection with a national prostitution ring operated out of several of his Marina City condo units, stupefied corncob residents took to the age-honored task of trying to render reason through rime on the then-newly debuted Marina City Watchdog blog.

A dentist whose woes had got deeper,
Knew his condos could not be a keeper,
He barely had closed when
His assets were frozen,
He bought high–the feds sold them cheaper.

As a fellow stupefied corncobber, for more than a year I followed the sleazy story in these virtual pages. From the collective shock that reverberated up and down all 120 combined floors of 300 North State Street (Marina Slutty, “Like 9/11 with Hookers”) to the condo board’s secretive circling of the wagons (Kimmelgate Update: No Rudder, Sinking Fast), from revealing the details of the U.S. Department of Justice complaint to opining wistfully on how things are done in less-infamous condo towers (John Hancock: How the Other Half Lives), I tried to keep up with the story.

After the collective interviews with me and other residents conducted by Chicago Magazine for an exposé on Kimmel appearing later that year (How I Helped Chicago Magazine Pimp Gary Kimmel), it all got to be a bit too much.  Next thing you knew Marina City was suing Marina City, fellow indictees were making the contours of the case a bit too revealing (“Some of my best girls were minors…”), and the initial shock had morphed right through outrage at Kimmel and the condo board into stiff resignation and forlorn that in our beloved, historic high-rise home scandal had become status quo.

A dentist with pimps did conspire,
So the feds asked his friends “wear a wire”,
Though he lives in a tower,
And once had great power,
Now everyone knows he’s a liar.

In my stead, the upstanding scribes over at Marina City Online took up the stressful baton of Kimmel coverage, reporting in May 2008 that, as many had long suspected would happen, Kimmel finally pleaded guilty.  As told by the rumor mill, by that point his apartments had already been sold off by the feds and his family was in shambles.  I expressed sympathy at the time, although I found it odd that after two years Kimmel continued to walk around Marina City common areas as if nothing at all were wrong.

As reported by the Chicago Tribune and Marina City Online this afternoon, the other shoe has dropped–and with a whisper-quiet thud at that.  After almost three years of foolishness, Gary Kimmel’s sentencing today to three years in federal prison was remarked on almost in the manner of a footnote by local media.  It’s a harsh comeuppance when someone formerly of good reputation doesn’t even merit notice for their bad reputation anymore.

I doubt anyone here will miss Kimmel.  At least, not anyone without a seat on the condo board.  As a longtime resident, though, I’m fairly if unfortunately pretty sure that before long these towers will come up with something to top even the most disgraceful of scandals. Like Gary Kimmel.

It’s a moral to make Kimmel shiver:
Immorality’s left him a sliver
Of pride, name, or nerve,
But brought what he deserves–
Serving 36 months up the river.

Many have emailed me to ask if I am still covering the Gary Kimmel scandal. You may remember it as the case of Marina City’s alleged pimp dentist that brought unwanted attention to the towers in 2006.

I haven’t been following the story closely lately, but my good friends over at Marina City Online have. They are reporting today that, as many have long suspected would happen, Kimmel, a former corncob towers condo board member, pleaded guilty yesterday to charges of money laundering in connection with a national prostitution ring operated out of several of Kimmel’s Marina City apartments.

I don’t think anyone I have talked to about the allegations in the past two years would be surprised, and as you might expect being a Citizen Blogger, I talk to lots of my neighbors all the time. But it’s not a happy thud, either, hearing this second shoe finally drop.

You can read previous coverage of the scandal as it broke throughout 2006 (shortly after I moved into the corncobs) here on CHICAGO CARLESS in my Gary Kimmel Scandal archives, including my invitation to Chicago Magazine to come interview Marina City residents. (You can read the resulting August 2006 feature by reporter Bryan Smith on the magazine’s website here).

My heart goes out the the man’s family in this–frankly to Kimmel, too. Sometimes we do things out of an ignorance that we regret when we wake up to out actions. Raise your hand if you’ve never been there.

Just maybe not at this sad level.

A quick posting for the Gary Kimmel Scandal followers among you. Chicago Magazine’s October 2006 article on Gary Kimmel, containing several quotes from Yours Truly and lots of, um, enlightening background information on the erstwhile dentist, can now be read for free, in its entirety, on the Chicago Magazine website, at this link.

You can find the backstory of my and my Marina City neighbors’ participation in the article in this previous Carless post, or look here for the details of Kimmel’s next court appearance.

Oddly enough, I need to make a dental appointment this month. And don’t you know, I’m of two minds about that.

[(October 5, 2006) Update: Now you can read Chicago Magazine's article on Gary Kimmel for free on their website, here.]

Kimmelgate has officially hit the fan, and score one for the blogosphere. The October issue of Chicago Magazine, hitting newsstands now, features a lengthy, scathing profile of Marina City’s alleged “pimp dentist”, Gary Kimmel (p108, “The strange tale of the dentist and the pimps”)–with several quotes from Yours Truly.

Faithful readers will recall that Kimmel, Marina City’s former condo board vice-chair and chair of the screening and security committees, was indicted in January based on USDOJ allegations that he was involved in a national underage hooker ring. Among the accusations against Kimmel: allowing hookers to work out of several of his Marina City condos; supplying the ring with a fleet of expensive cars while laundering more than $400,000 in the process; and, of course, fixing the girls’ teeth for free.

It’s a sordid and, for Marina City residents, deeply angering story that I’ve covered on CHICAGO CARLESS all year (see my Gary Kimmel Scandal archives). My refusal to let the scandal rest led CARLESS to the top of the Google rankings for the search term “Gary Kimmel” (a dubious honor, I assure you). And that led Chicago Magazine reporter Bryan Smith to my blog.

Smith sent me an email asking for an interview, which I granted. But given the nature of the Kimmel scandal, I didn’t want the residents of Marina City to end up painted with the same brush as Kimmel. I knew my neighbors needed a chance to tell their side of the story–about Kimmel and the dissatisfaction with the current condo board that the Kimmel scandal raised. So I called a few neighbors and invited Smith to come visit the corncobs–as it turned out, for the first time.

He was able to hear first-hand from residents new and old about their against-all-odds love for this place. We weren’t malcontents or attention-grubbers. We were committed residents with a strong fondness for our communal home, and we were horrified that someone entrusted with great power over our homes had betrayed that trust. I think Smith got the point, and it’s reflected in the article. We spoke up because we care. By the end of the visit, Smith seemed to care, too. That was as evident from his ear-to-ear grin upon visiting the roofdeck for the first time (it happens to all of us the first time) as from his comment upon leaving, for us a common refrain: “I love this place.”

Smith went on to get the thorough participation of Kimmel, himself (though after reading the article that probably wasn’t the best idea on Kimmel’s part), and, apparently, the almost non-existent cooperation of the condo board.

The resulting article summarizes Kimmel’s life story, from his obsession with risky assignments in Vietnam, to the string of dental practices he’s quit or been fired from, to the Fed Ex packages full of money received from alleged pimp associates, to the Detroit detective, Edward Price, who put it all together by seeking the answer to the fateful question, “What was a pimp in Detroit doing driving a car belonging to a dentist in Chicago?”

A good question that wouldn’t seem to lend itself to a plausible answer. Then again, Kimmel, himself, doesn’t go out of his way to appear plausible in his own quotes. In a discussion of the girls who inhabited his Marina City apartments, he says, “I never made the connection in any way, shape, or form. I knew they were escorts…So what? There’s nothing wrong with that. Do these girls do anything more than go out with guys? Not as far as I’m concerned.”

Um, right. More delicious, though, is Price’s description of a telephone conversation he had with Kimmel during which the good doctor tried with all his might to convince the detective that the address of a mailbox in a Detroit UPS store under which one of Kimmel’s luxury cars was registered was actually a vacation home.

But while out-of-state law enforcement was steadily piecing together the details of Kimmel’s involvement with the prostitution ring, those closest to him at Marina City maintain that they didn’t know about his shady activities. Marina City condo board president (and, according to Chicago Magazine, godmother to two of Kimmel’s kids) Donna Leonard is quoted saying, “I found out about this only from a Sun-Times reporter”.

I find that hard to believe. As I told Chicago Magazine, I don’t pretend to say that all the problems in Marina City are related to the Kimmel case. But I don’t think anything occurs in a vacuum. The Marina City community houses a lot of people in a very little space. In the past year and a half here, I’ve come to know the comings and goings and histories of more of my neighbors than has ever been the case anywhere else I’ve lived.

We pass through the same circular hallways, the same little lobbies, the same compact plaza. We tend to know surprisingly well even our most tenuous of acquaintances in these two towers. So for Kimmel’s friends and fellow board members to have known nothing about his illicit activities, it seems to me they’d either have to be living in a different building than this one, or be astoundingly aloof to the world around them.

Or maybe they’re just lying.

It all comes down to an age-old conflict of interests. The powerful can be counted on to protect their power at all costs…and occasionally, to wield their power against the community-at-large for private gain. The public, however, is not defenseless. At least not when anyone’s listening. Shame is a modest but potent tool, especially when wielded in the court of public opinion.

So if you’re curious to know more about Kimmelgate and the unease it’s created between an avowedly clueless condo board and its indignant residents, pick up the latest issue of Chicago Magazine.

And for a good time, read Gary.

(Credit: Carol E. Sandgren.)

A surprise development in the Gary Kimmel hooker scandal, the Marina City story that just keeps on giving. As reported in the Chicago Tribune (here and here), on Tuesday one 35-year-old Jody Spears was indicted in federal court on charges of sex trafficking involving minors as young as 14 years old. According to an FBI affidavit revealed in U.S. District Court, Spears is quoted as saying, “Some of my best girls were minors.” Spears is also identified as a “business partner” with none other than indicted Marina City dentist Gary S. Kimmel. Figure that, huh?

The indictment alleges that, after recruiting the young women and girls, Spears advertised their sexual services in newspapers and on the Web in Indiana, Tennessee, Nevada, and Hawaii, and physically abused them if they tried to leave his, er, employ. But the kicker is that Spears and one of the women allegedly in his harem lived for a year in a Marina City apartment owned by — ah you’re ahead of me now, aren’t you? — Gary S. Kimmel.

Faithful readers will recall Dr. Kimmel was indicted in January 2006 on charges that he took more than $400,000 in kickbacks allegedly to house a nationwide prostitution ring in several Marina City apartments he owned and to supply the ring with a fleet of luxury cars and free dental work. One witness quoted in the Spears indictment, a former employee in Kimmel’s dental office, identified Spears as having brought in several young women to get their teeth fixed.

Kimmel case watchers may also recall an “Individual A” identified as a pimp in the USDOJ complaint and indictment against Dr. Kimmel. A close reading of those documents appears to suggest that Spears is, indeed, “Individual A”, an associate of Robert Lewis Young, aka “Blue Diamond”, another alleged pimp identified in the Kimmel indictment. You can decide for yourself: find the full text of the Kimmel case complaint and indictment here.

Spears was arrested in Cleveland on July 14, and showed up in court yesterday without an attorney. Apparently, his assets were too large to qualify for a public defender. As a result, the case was continued to Thursday. Check the U.S. District Court docket under Judge Maria Valdez if you feel like attending the free theater that this scandal has become. The case number is 06 CR 519. It’s listed as “USA v. Suppressed” (as now is Kimmel’s case), but don’t let that fool you. That’s the only of Judge Valdez’s cases continued from Tuesday.

Kimmel pleaded not guilty to the charges leveled against him in January by the USDOJ and his case goes on. As for Spears, if I were him I’d worry. According to the Trib, the maximum penalty for child sex trafficking is life in prison. Hmm. I wonder if there’s a penalty for being the “business partner” of a child-prostitution ring pimp who’s facing life in prison?

I bet I know who else is wondering that question right now, too.

# # #

[Browse the Gary Kimmel Scandal archives for more coverage of Marina City's infamous hooker scandal, including details of Dr. Kimmel's next court date.]

You knew it had to happen. After a year of growing discontent with the current notorious state of affairs at Marina City, late last month a group of Marina City resident-owners filed suit against the condominium association for the twin 60-story corncob towers overlooking State Street and the Chicago River. The seven owners, most of whom tried unsuccessfully to win seats on the Marina Towers Condominium Association board at its election last April, allege that the current voting proxy system in use by the condo board effectively disenfranchises resident owners, thereby “undermining” the intent of the Illinois Condominium Property Act.

Currently, about half of the condominium units at Marina City are owned by absentee investors. The plaintiffs allege that individual condominium board members and Shari Vass, the owner of Marina Management, also named in the suit, have conspired to solicit the overwhelming majority of voting proxies from these absentee investors in order to remove the ability of resident owners to have a say in the state of affairs at Marina City and, essentially, run the property with little or no real input from owners. The disgruntled owners also allege discrepancies with the April 2006 vote for condo board officers, and are seeking to have the vote overturned and judicial limits placed on the ability of the board and Ms. Vass to seek proxies. (Download a PDF of the complaint here).

Numerous readers of the Marina Watchdog, an independent residents blog, have discussed the lawsuit since the suit surfaced on June 21. Many posts have characterized both the current condominium board and board president Donna Leonard as willfully ignorant of the concerns and needs of building residents, and as less than forthcoming about the true state of financial affairs at the towers. Some posters have suggested that this allegedly out-of-touch attitude led directly to the numerous fires, floods, and police calls of the past several months — as well as to the Gary Kimmel hooker scandal (prior to his indictment by the USDOJ, Dr. Kimmel was the vice-president of the board and chair of the screening and security committees).

Meanwhile, other Watchdog posters have opined that, perhaps, the proxy holders intend things to be this way. Their argument: real-estate agents only make money when an apartment turns over with a new owner or renter. If residents were actually happy with Marina City, then no one would leave — leaving no money to be made by proxy-holding real-estate interests.

Whatever the true state of affairs here at Marina City, it’s a good bet a lot of mud will be slung, largely in public, before it becomes known. The notoriety of the corncob towers has already prompted at least one widely read publication to plan an investigative feature on Dr. Kimmel and the not-so-merry-go-round of Marina City’s repetitive problems. Last month, more than a dozen residents (myself included) were interviewed for the piece, individually and in groups, throughout Marina City, and the opinions shared were surprisingly frank. Check your newsstands in mid-August. (Hint: the publication is the most widely read city monthly in the nation).

Then duck. Because if half of the opinions I heard expressed by my neighbors during those interviews make it into print, the poo-poo is really going to hit the fan. You can quote me on that.

At the July 18 status hearing and notice of motion for Marina City’s most famous dentist, Gary S. Kimmel, the good doctor was granted a request to travel, but he and his attorney, Joseph Lopez, were reminded to mind the “restrictions”. These were not specified, but it’s probably safe to assume that they include “don’t leave the country”. The saga was continued to September. Does that mean a deal is in the works? Other names might be named? One can only speculate. Well that’s not true. There’s something else one can do, and that’s…

Join Dr. Kimmel on (the re-rescheduled date of) October 6, 2006 in federal court. Kimmel was the vice-president of the Marina Towers Condominium Association and chair of the association’s screening and security committees when he was indicted in January on U.S. Department of Justice charges that he laundered money for a national prostitution ring and allowed it to operate out of several Marina City apartments. He’s also alleged to have fixed the hookers’ teeth for free.

On October 3, you might discover the verity of these arousing allegations by sitting in the public gallery box at Dr. Kimmel’s next day in federal court:

9:30 a.m., Friday, October 6
Dirksen Federal Building
219 S. Dearborn Street
Room 2125 (BMM), before Judge Blanche M. Manning
Case No. 05 CR 938

Using the case number, you can double-check the above schedule — which is, of course, fully public information — with the clerk’s office of the U.S. District Court/Northern District of Illinois (Eastern Division) at 312-435-5670 (choose option 3 from the recorded menu).

Do not be fooled by the currently official title of the case as “USA v. SUPPRESSED“, that case number belongs to, and only to, the USDOJ case against Gary Kimmel.

And bring a book if you go, or perhaps the full text of the complaint and indictment, it’ll probably be a big docket — you don’t think Gary Kimmel is the only federally indicted individual in Chicago, do you?

Well, maybe the only one with a license plate allegedly named after an interstate hooker. And probably the one with the best teeth.

(Find full coverage of the hooker scandal that continues to rock Marina City in my Gary Kimmel Scandal archives.)