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

But now she had a newborn, and she wanted to do right by her son. While St. John was out on bail, they went to D.C. His father had died, but meeting his mother had a profound effect on Ana. She was respectable and middle-class — something Ana wanted badly to become.

"She just embraced me," Ana says. "The first question she asked was, 'When are you gonna get married?' "

They wed soon after. "I wish she never asked me that, or that I would never have done that. I didn't know what those years would entail."

ILLUSTRATION BY TIM GABOR

ILLUSTRATION BY NOAH PATRICK PFARR

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

At trial, St. John testified in his own defense and denied everything. Asked about it now, he continues to maintain that the sex charges were false. Working with underage girls, he says, would violate his own "integrity line." He does admit to pimping (which is more than he acknowledged on the stand) but says he worked with a different, older crew.

In any case, the jury was not persuaded. He was convicted of pimping underage girls, dealing marijuana and one count of lewd acts with a child. He was acquitted of nine other charges of lewd acts, apparently owing to discrepancies over dates. But the one count he was found guilty of was enough to earn him 11 years in prison.

Left behind, Ana focused on finishing college and raising her son, with financial help from St. John's mother. St. John promised that, when he was paroled, they would start life over in a new place.

She bought a three-bedroom house in a subdivision in Palmdale and waited for her husband to come home, hoping that he would change.

For St. John, the first three years in prison were the hardest. One of the worst parts was watching TV and seeing comics he recognized from the clubs becoming famous. He still longed for stardom, and decided to use his time behind bars to work on writing and acting.

"Apart from his crimes, he was a talented writer-actor-comedian," says Deborah Tobola, a poet who ran the theater program at the California Men's Colony at San Luis Obispo. St. John had roles in several productions, once stepping in at the last minute when the lead in a play was put in solitary confinement.

His final project was an autobiographical play titled Last Call. The purpose of the program was not to discover talent; it was to reduce recidivism. And while the play is well-written, with believable characters and genuine drama, it does not offer much evidence of rehabilitation.

Mostly, it's a prison lament. The action concerns the lead character's yearning to be a star. He is a singer, Dream, trying to make it big while also maintaining a long-distance relationship with Nicole, his baby's mother. His misfortunes — he is stuck playing a small club called the Joint — are chalked up to associations with the wrong people.

His solution is a change of scenery. He urges Nicole to move to a new house so they can start fresh, but she worries about being far from her friends.

Dream tells her he hopes to sign with Parole Records. He pleads with her not to lose faith in him.

"I've been thinking a lot about us," he says. "Let's start a new life together."

In their final scene together, Dream calls and a man answers the phone. When Nicole comes on the line, she confesses she is seeing someone else.

"So you just gonna throw us away?" he asks.

"It's just ... you're not here," she says, and hangs up.

In real life, Ana stayed married to St. John. She brought their son to visit him every couple of weeks.

His mother died while he was behind bars, and that, too, made it into the play. A character is told that his mother has died, and he's racked with anguish. "I'm here, and I just realized I needed to be there," he says. "And I can't get there. ... Mom was the only one who was really there for me."

In 2007, St. John was paroled. But because he had committed a sex crime with a minor, he was not allowed to live in the Palmdale house with his son.

He got an apartment at a complex next to the Tujunga Wash in Van Nuys, an hour's drive from Palmdale. He came around to take his son to school, but he was prohibited from staying past midnight. The couple had another child, but they fought about St. John's absences and his relationship with another woman.

St. John needed money, but he wasn't about to work at Arby's. Soon after his release, he was back to pimping. Within three months, he had been arrested and sent back to prison on a six-month parole violation. When he got out again, he pursued pimping as though making up for lost time.

"I knew a girl that was still in the game, so I took it to the extreme," he says. "I turned it into a business."

Prostitution had changed while he was away. Now the action was on Craigslist. He drew up escort ads and figured out how to make them stay at the top of the queue. When johns called, he would pretend to be a woman. He also would send mass texts advising of "trick parties" in the Hollywood Hills.