The Case of the Bank-Robbing Prostitutes: How a Team of L.A. Hookers Became the "Starlet Bandits"

From there, he says, it was an easy transition into pimping. His apartment was at Sunset Boulevard and Curson Avenue, which was right on "the stroll" — the spot where prostitutes hung out in the mid-'90s. As he tells it, he sort of fell into it: "I hooked up this one dude, and the rest is history."

He was still struggling as a comedian, telling unfunny jokes in out-of-the-way clubs. But he didn't feel like he was struggling anymore. He had wanted to be a star, and in a small way, he was. He had found a shortcut.

"Whenever you're selling drugs and dealing with women, you're cheating," he says. "You're not believing in your talents. You're hedging your bets."

ILLUSTRATION BY NOAH PATRICK PFARR

ILLUSTRATION BY NOAH PATRICK PFARR

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• Mallory Mnichowski
• Kayla Canty
• Palmdale
• Crime
• Crime and Law

Doing stand-up one night in Montebello, he met a girl after the show. Ana — her name has been changed to protect her privacy — was 19. She had a difficult childhood. After suffering abuse, she'd left home to live with an older brother. Intent on getting her life on track, she had enrolled in college.

St. John, then 25, captivated her. He told her he had grown up in D.C. and come out to L.A. to pursue an acting career. With her tough background, such ambition was exotic to her.

"He's a very smart guy," she says. "He wanted to be famous."

After a while, Ana started to notice little lies. Once, she found an old ID in the name of Henry McElvane. He said it was a fake. Only much later, when she met his family, did she learn it was his true name.

As time went on, he had more and more excuses for why he couldn't hang out with her. Her older brother warned her that he was the wrong guy for her. She knew that St. John was dealing drugs, but that didn't make her love him any less.

When she was 20, she got pregnant. St. John told her that if he had wanted a baby, he would have stayed in Washington. Now he was trying to get famous and didn't want to be tied down.

When she made it clear she would be keeping the child, he broke up with her. She was devastated.

"He took my heart, and he stomped on it," she says.

Even after the break-up, he attended a birthing class and was at the hospital when his son was born. But a few days after the birth, in December 1996, he was arrested. It was only then that Ana realized her baby's father was a pimp.

It got even worse. One of the girls working for him was just 13.

A few days after Christmas 1996, a 14-year-old named Tameka ran away from a group home for teenage girls. Her friend Kacey had also run away from the home, and through her Tameka wound up at St. John's apartment in Hollywood.

If she wanted to stay, Tameka was told, she would have to sell herself on the street.

"I asked Kacey why she didn't tell me," Tameka would later testify. But she agreed to do it, she said, because "I had nowhere to go."

Kacey, also 14, had been prostituting off and on for a few months, turning over her earnings to St. John in exchange for clothes and a place to stay. She would stand at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Gardner Street, a couple of blocks from St. John's apartment. On weekends, she would do about three tricks a day, stopping when she had made $150. Then she would go to the movies or return to the apartment and watch TV.

That fall, St. John had split up with his pregnant girlfriend. He spent his time going to comedy shows and auditions, eventually talking his way into a small speaking part on a TV series. (In addition to income from drug dealing and prostitution, his parents still sent him checks.)

Kacey wearied of the life and turned herself back in to the juvenile services system. But in early December she ran away again and returned to St. John's apartment. There she stayed with another girl, Kristen. During the day, St. John made the girls break up bricks of marijuana and package them in Baggies.

At night they slept on the living room floor. Tameka and Kacey had never slept with St. John. But on New Year's Eve, Kacey was awoken by the sound of Kristen and St. John having sex. She tried to convince herself it was her imagination.

Kristen later would testify that she and St. John had been having sex since September. She was 13.

Tameka's stay with St. John was mercifully brief. On Jan. 3, 1997, she was arrested for soliciting prostitution by Hollywood vice cops. A female officer persuaded her to call her pimp. When St. John arrived at a nearby Denny's, he was put in handcuffs.

In his apartment, the officers found packages of marijuana on the bedroom floor. They also found a copy of a comedic monologue in which he complained of the difficulties of being a pimp. He was booked on a half-million-dollar bail.

At that point, Ana could have walked away. In retrospect, she knows she should have.