On May 21, 2001, Luke Ford wrote the following: “Last week I spoke to a person with strong connections to both porn and the Mafia who said that he’d heard the audiotape from around 1981 where VCA owner Russell Hampshire can be heard asking for a Mafia murder of his business partner of the time Walter Gernert.
My reliable source says that the tape remains firmly in the possession of former Mafia muscleman Anthony Fiato, who in 1998 published his autobiography “The Animal In Hollywood: Anthony Fiato’s Life in the Mafia.”
Luke causes a lot of shit with this story.
Luke Ford writes the following in his new book, XXX-Communicated: A Rebel Without a Shul:
“At the VCA Booth [during the January 1999 CES] Friday afternoon, tall, intimidating Walter Gernert, who runs a porn company in Brazil, walks over and taps me on the shoulder. We step into Hampshire’s office. Walter takes off his jacket. We sit down. He gives me a deadly stare. I freeze.
“Don’t you know that for less than the price of a plane ticket to Brazil, I could make you disappear?” He snaps his fingers.
I’m dealing with someone who could end my life.
“Talk to me,” says Walter, motioning with his fingers that I should open up in a hurry.
“I’m a provocateur,” I grovel. “I apologize for my language. I use overblown rhethoric. I want people to read my Web site and sometimes I go too far. You have a, uhh, colorful past. I’ve heard the stories. You’re known for advocating drugs.”
Glancing at the window, I see Hampshire looking in. He wants me to make sure I stay alive.
I turn to Walter. “I try to make my writing like a punch in the stomach. I love hard-hitting stories such as the one about Russell trying to hire a hit on you.”
“What?”
I sense Walter’s mood change. “You didn’t hear that one? It’s in the new book, The Animal in Hollywood. It says that Russell tried to hire a hit on you when you had the coke problem. He said you were throwing away the business..”
Walter’s shocked. “I didn’t know that.”