KENNEBUNK, Maine — Another list of names of men charged with paying for sex in Kennebunk is expected to be released Friday afternoon by the town police department, 10 days after the first 21 men implicated as johns in the high-profile scandal became fully public.
The case, in which police accuse Thomaston businessman Mark Strong and fitness instructor Alexis Wright of running a prostitution business out of Wright’s Kennebunk Zumba studio, has attracted national media attention.
Among the previous batch of 21 names of men charged with engaging a prostitute were former South Portland Mayor James Soule, Kennebunk High School hockey coach Donald Hill, and local lawyer Jens Bergens. Hill was the first to publicly lose his job in connection wtih the allegation, resigning from his coaching position two days after the first list was released on Oct. 15.
According to prosecutors, Wright kept meticulous records including a list of approximately 150 clients from throughoutr the state, including some well-known public figures in southern Maine. Wright also allegedly videotaped her encounters with the johns, prosecutors have said.
Both Wright and Strong have pleaded not guilty to a slate of charges stemming from the alleged operation.
Kennebunk police Lt. Anthony Bean Burpee has said investigators are combing through Wright’s documents and, as they compile evidence to do so, incrementally charging clients with engaging a prostitute.
The names released Friday by police will represent the men charged during the past two weeks. The department has indicated it would release biweekly lists of individuals arrested or issued summonses, regardless of the charges, and police plan to maintain that schedule through the prostitution case investigation.
The previous list of men charged with engaging a prostitution was delayed, issued on the Monday following the scheduled Friday, Oct. 12, release day because of a motion filed in court by attorney Stephen Schwartz, representing two people on the alleged johns list, to keep the names from public dissemination.
Schwartz argued that, because of the alleged videotaping activity, the accused johns were also victims of the crime of invasion of privacy, and as victims, they should not be named publicly.
Cumberland County Superior Court Justice Thomas Warren initially ruled that the names of the charged johns should be released, but without home addresses in an effort to provide the men with a layer of confidentiality. That ruling caused police to release just the first and last names of the men charged as clients — initially without middle initials, ages or addresses — creating some public confusion around men who were not charged, but have the same first and last names as the men who were.
Warren reversed his decision the following day, on Oct. 16, and allowed all identifiable information to be released, and Kennebunk police updated their published list to include middle initials, ages and addresses.
Free entertainment! Whoot!
All this, is just a dog and pony show just to tantalize the snoopers and gossipers that like to see other peoples business …………………………… this makes them feel better, so they don’t have to remember that they themselves are ‘NOT’ perfect …………………………. OH, that’s right some are perfect (just ask them).
I heard that the dog and pony cost extra.
Hahaha! What a RIOT! I dont care HOW much money they had, there is NO WAY IN HE$$ I would sleep with those guys, yuck
are you worried you will be on the list?
Nope …………………………………. and even if I was, I wouldn’t give a d*mn!!
How much of the “news” is actually something that matters?
All of it matters to the paper’s bottom line. The media is milking this for all it’s worth – but that’s the newspaper business. What are reading it for?
you are so right .
Why not wait for the “whole story” before printing and posting this one? You’ll just repeat the same blather when you get the list. Doing it this way is a waste of everyones time.
Page views = ad revenue. Worked on you didn’t it? ;D
if they must be made public, make them all at once, not keep putting out a few more, trying to keep the nosy people happy.
just a reality tv show is all it is now.
oh come on, enough of this ridiculous reality tv showdown.
Everyone involved are adults
what business is it of anyone’s who’s doing the dirty with someone
In several cases, this involves locally high-profile people breaking the law and in many situations, cheating. Smart, successful people doing something really, really stupid and getting caught for it.
That’s the business it is.
Everyone breaks the law some way or another an they never get there name in the parer. like causing an accident an there medical bill is 45,000 an nothing happens to them .
so it’s ok to publish the name of the women, but not ok to publish the names of the men? They broke the law just as much as she did.
personally, I’m with the legalize it crowd.
This about many people who should have known better. People who, in many cases, will see their families broken up. People who will lose their jobs. And it appears to be a long list.
Yeah, sex sells. And buying sex sells even more. When it happens on a fairly large scale locally, involving people many of us know, it’s news.
And when our trust in some these people has been broken, it matters.
“who should have known better. ”
lets face it, guys like sex. a lot.
and plastering it all over the front page, even national headlines, is wrong and ridiculous.
People like money, too. There are right ways and wrong ways of getting it.
Don’t want to get caught breaking the law? Don’t break the law. Simple.
I can’t understand your defense of these people.
You can lose you job far any reason . Trust is broken by many people every day look at the banks people that steal money from there company ect .
And your point? Unless you missed it, people who get caught stealing money get their name in the paper. Why? Because they broke the law.
Hey, if you don’t think prostitution should be illegal, work to get the law changed. But as long as it is illegal, then renting a hooker might also buy you fame. You play, you pay.
No i did not miss it as you say if i mist some thing like i did you can list it an while you are at it you can list every thing that a person can get arrested for
I think you need to take a writing class…..just saying…..:)
that was plain and simple you have no come back so you use its .
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Was the reason your vindictive nature? ;D
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Twas but a joke, I’m sure he’s quite the gem…though you know certainly that hacking someones email is also quite illegal – a felony in fact? I wouldn’t be sharing that tidbit with his lawyers.
My ex-wife’s lawyer helped her hack my e-mail and then used coercion to maximize her settlement. They both knew I did not have the liquid capital to fight back. It is a sad state, sad_statue…
Though it’s easy for me to say, it could very well have been a bluff. Punishment for blackmail and disbarment are quite the threat in their own right.
I think, now, it had to be a bluff, too. But, at the time, I was naive regarding the depths of sleaze to which a lawyer would slither.
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Thanks for a good laugh. Your ex-louse must be sweating now and it’s not because he had a good Zumba workout…..or perhaps because he did?
Hopefully they will release the whole list and not in bi-weekly installments.
” fitness instructor Alexis Wright of running a prostitution business out of Wright’s Kennebunk Zumba studio”… well, she is a “fitness instructor”… what she was doing could be some new movements to the Zumba exercise… additionally, her recording the episodes might have been for a new, “to be released” DVD on new Zumba moves!
I don’t really care about who they are actually, to each his own and worrie about your own back yard.
All this has inspired Kellogg’s to make a new cereal. It’s called Prostituties . They don’t snap, crackle and pop, they just lay there and bang….
It must be getting serious: The PPH has abruptly changed its online “comments” policy, apparently due to this story. Apparently every comment now has to be linked to a Facebook page and, therefore, each author identified. If it should turn out that certain politically-connected names on “the list” are withheld until – say – November 8, any resulting public outrage would have to be expected and understood.
The PPH found an excuse to change their comments section, probably wrongly thinking that they could increase views on their website by having each comment advertised on people’s Facebook walls. The comments when I read the articles regarding the initial list were generally mild, and many people had even positive things to say about some of those on the list.
The funny part is that they thought somehow a Facebook account meant that they could verify people as real or not. Now you look at any of their comments for articles and it’s minimal. Who would have ever thought that people who may be commenting at work comment using an anonymous name so their bosses wouldn’t know that they were wasting time at work? The PPH has shown time and time again to not understand half the things they write articles about and have terrible editing on some of the articles that make it online. I think high school students could often do a better job.
Well said.
Is it better to be on the first list, second or third?
List is out… Apparently she charged $195 1/2 hour, $300/hr, Fantasy & Fetish Extra
http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20121026-NEWS-121029759
http://kennebunkpolice.org/press.php?y=2012&search=current