from www.nydailynews.com – The madam was a senior citizen and the prostitute was just a kid.
Vice cops raided a grimy midtown brothel called Episodes, where a 64-year-old hustler oversaw a stable of women – the youngest just 15 – giving “sex massages,” police sources said.
The W. 38th St. whorehouse was decidedly low-rent – mattresses on the floor of tiny rooms and a sign advertising $1 bottles of water, sources said.
“I know things are tough, but $1 isn’t going to break anyone,” read the sign in the fourth-floor sex pad.
Cloth butterflies and small “Phantom of the Opera” masks were the only decor in stark contrast to the majestic West End building where alleged madam Noreen Williams lived.
Cops said Williams had been hustling prostitutes since at least 1997, which was news to her neighbors.
“She was just a normal, polite old woman. She’s always walking her two dogs. She doesn’t dress flashy,” said a stunned West End resident.
When cops raided Episodes on Thursday afternoon, Williams was booking clients, and a 15-year-old hooker was getting ready to turn a trick in one of the back rooms, sources said.
Williams told cops she had no idea the young Hispanic girl was only a high school student, sources said.
She was arraigned last night on third-degree rape and promoting prostitution charges and is being held on $25,000 bail.
The teen was not arrested but treated as a victim.
The girl’s father had abandoned the family about four years ago, and her mother worked nights to support her and her sister, neighbors said.
The NYPD and the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement targeted the brothel after repeated complaints of criminal activity.
City Hall got a court order to shutter the building this week based on multiple arrests there.
In the basement, another massage parlor – which operated as Luxuryasiangirls. com – sold sex for $200, sources said. The “masseuses” slept on mattresses on the floor and showered in a back room.
Williams’ upstairs brothel had a living room, kitchen area and a warren of tiny “guest” rooms, investigators said.
“Some days there’d be a lot of guys going in there around 5 or 6-ish. A lot of them were in suits, so I suppose they were getting off work. It was all kinds of guys,” said Lizel Paule, 27, who works at a nearby laundermat.
from www.abclocal.go.com- NEW YORK (WABC) — Walking down this commercial block, you would almost miss the small doorway on West 38th Street.
But city officials say there was plenty going on inside the building.
On Thursday afternoon, when city officials came here to shut down what they thought was an illegal hotel operation on the fifth floor, they were surprised to find something very different just one floor below.
“They saw just a location that was arranged with rooms for sex, but there was no actual activity going on at the time,” Shari Hyman of the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement said.
Hyman said there were some men in the waiting area.
They say there was also a 64-year-old woman here. She is the alleged “Madame” of the brothel, who is accused of forcing a 15-year-old girl to be a prostitute.
“Once we identified her as a minor, we obviously treated her as a victim and made sure services were provided,” Hyman said.
The alleged madame, Noreen Williams, lives in an upscale building on West End Avenue. A man inside her apartment buzzed us up today, but then shut us out.
Most of the woman’s neighbors told us they didn’t know her, but they also aren’t overly surprised.
“Nothing shocks me anymore in this city. I lived in a co-op years ago where the same thing was happening,” Evelyn White said.
Williams was expected in court to face charges of promoting prostitution and endangering the welfare of a minor. City officials also told us it’s not the first time a nuisance complaint yielded much more. On a similar, routine call at another building on 38th Street in the spring they found yet another brothel in the building’s cellar.
“I was shocked to even find out something like this is going on in this neighborhood. It’s quite shocking,” Lizel Paule said.