Thirteen originals. I'm the linoleic, and this is Once Upon a Time in the Valley featuring Ashley W o. So we ended the last episode with Troy Madeley, Tracy's high school sweetheart, and his account of the night he spent holding her as she fell apart in her deluxe apartment with no furniture except for a Coke mirror 48 hours before the FBI bust in the morning.

I had to go and she's like, no, don't go. I don't go. But I was crying all the way, driving back to Oklahoma thinking what's going to happen to her? Because you always hear about these girls getting killed and raped or whatever in a sex industry. And I'm like this. What is going to happen to her now that she's just spinning out of control? Deep down, she was a scared little girl that I knew, but on the outside, she was just bigger than life.

And she had, you know, a new name and she had money and she had this place that I was. And she was just so young. Still, you know who this person was anymore? Her name was Tracy now.

Ashleigh, we titled this podcast Once upon a Time in the Valley, and we've played around with the notion of Tracy as a variation on the theme of Little Red Riding Hood. Really, though, it wasn't until I was listening to Troy tell this story that I felt like we were in a fairy tale. The trappings of modern, obviously a beach bum boy, a pornstar girl, the sex industry and a illegal narcotic.

If the troops are classical, the pure hearted young knight wants to rescue the beautiful princess from the glare of the fire breathing dragon. But he can't. The dragon is too strong and the princess is too hopped up on Internments. And she walked into that lair of her own accord and is now in so deep. Then I can't get her out. Hasn't a prayer. Tracy gives an account of that same night in underneath it all, though, she focuses on the morning after.

I'll read a bit of it to you.

I woke up sprawled out in a pile of sweat drenched clothing. It took me a few minutes to figure out who I was, where I was and what I needed to do that day to survive. So I just lay there, sprawled out on the cream colored carpet of my 2400 square foot apartment overlooking King Harbour. It was a gorgeous apartment, the kind you get when you make it. But anyone could tell something was a bit off. The living room was completely empty, except for the antique mirror my mother had given me years earlier.

Now lying in the middle of the room with remnants of the previous night's Coke binge on it, according to Tracy. The evening had begun at the neighborhood bar, the poop deck and she, quote, vaguely remembered having sex with some guy, but couldn't quite put it together, unquote. I've been on a bender for two days, she writes. I was losing my mind. Try. The count is persuasive. In particular, it's also tense and moving to an almost unbearable degree.

You feel both pity and terror for him and Tracy. He loves her and she loves him. But there's little he can do to save her. All he can do is comfort her. And she's alternately ashamed of what she's become and proud of what she's become. And the drugs she's taking are heightening and estranging everything. It's interesting that the only appreciable difference between Troy's account and Tracy's account is Troy. Troy isn't in Tracy's the guy, and hers is a nameless, faceless stranger with whom she engages in empty, anonymous sex.

And that brings us to the only other appreciable difference in their accounts. Sex and Troy is there is none, though what he and Tracy experience together is as intimate as it gets to his account is quite exciting and dramatic. And yet I fixated on a seemingly banal detail to his address. 190000 Katalina. That's in Redondo Beach, isn't it? The classy part, South Redondo, overlooking King Harbour, as Tracy mentioned in her book, Prime Waterfront Real Estate.

I know this because after trying I had lunch at Kincaid's that day, we went for a stroll along the boardwalk, what locals call the Strand, and he pointed it out to me. So Tracy ran away from home to move home. Yeah, we touched on this glancingly in Episode eight, the fact that she stuck around South Bay, that was early in her adult career, though she could have moved on, moved to Hollywood, to Sherman Oaks.

But now she didn't gone two and a half years and she never left. When last we checked, she was living with Tommy, her jobless Experion boyfriend and possible suitcase pimp in Lawndale, which borders Redondo. Psychologically, however, Blondeau and Redondo are miles apart. Here's Tracy's childhood friend and neighbor, Mark Baxter. We're divided by one street, but there are our enemies, Londo kills guys from behind, the redundant kills guys from Wandell. We've always been at war with Wandell, if you wanted people from Madondo to not know where you're at.

Go move to Lawndale. From a practical perspective, South Bay makes no sense, pulls in the valley, which is a hike from South Bay and from an emotional perspective, South Bay makes even less sense. There are a lot of painful memories for her there. Maybe, though, the pain is what's keeping her in South Bay, like time has stopped for her at the point of trauma and she's unable to move on. It's haunted by that place, those people.

And the haunting goes both ways. She hovers in and around the town, inspiring guilt and confusion. And former intimates, she's both there and not real. And roomer marvel and disgraced try for one, never has a moment's peace until he leaves fleeing to Oklahoma for college. He is, of course, forced to hear her raising hell at the poop deck because the bike shop where he works after school and on weekends is just down the street from the bar.

And when he's off work hanging out with his friends on the Strand, he's forced to see her whizzing past him on roller skates, trailing catcalls. In her wake, she could ride down the street and everybody, hey, hey, hey. Yeah, oh, yeah. People would pull over their cars at home and yell and scream at her all the time.

And Troy isn't the only ex of Tracy's having these disturbing Norn encounter encounters. Here's Mike Pacino.

Somebody told me where she lived in Lawndale. And I saw the Camaro out there. And I like bicycle riding skateboard. She drove the car. You know, I was like, I didn't yell and I just want to see if that was a part and then I saw it in the city, like turning at a gas station or something. And she didn't see me, really. But I mean, I just it's like I want to go out there life.

It's like a just a memory. And it doesn't end there. I don't know, it's weird because I think later on I hear like, you know, I get places and they're bragging about like the weather or whatever. And I talk about I mean, you know, it's like, fuck, I'm like, Mr. Bregman, I don't know. But she definitely made her mark as far as the industry stuff or whatever she was into it. I mean, I saw a lot of other girls, you know, I mean, they just didn't make Mark.

I mean, she was pretty big.

Naturally, guys are bragging about sleeping with her. She's famous now. Yeah, let's talk about that because she's a funny kind of famous is famous in a dark and disreputable way, a way that makes some people pretend not to know what she's famous for. So afraid are they of being implicated in her fame is infamous. This is Dave Andoh, then manager of the local video store Video Mart, where Tracy and Tommy are regulars. They're dropping off some caves and looking at where they might look tonight or tomorrow or Monday or during the week, when did you realize who she was?

So right away. I mean, if I said Farrah Fawcett, you've got a picture of every five of us wanted, would you go with that? Verifies that this faces on all the boxes in the adult section over there. It's. I mean, that's her first. There's no question about it. I like the Farrah Fawcett comparison. There is a 70s and 80s sex symbol, and she's officially a star because of the TV show Charlie's Angels, but she's unofficially a star because of that swimsuit poster.

The best selling poster of all time. And that poster was a sensation thanks to the smile and the teeth and the feathered hair. Really, though, thanks to the erect nipples. So a pornographic image, but playing coy about it, Tracy Farrah, without the false modesty, Toyin Michael haunted by Tracy, her mother and sisters are tormented by her.

Mark Baxter, who dated Tracy's younger sister Grace in typical North Redondo fashion. He had a girlfriend, she had a boyfriend, and they saw each other on the sly, remembers the house when the scandal broke.

That was horrifying. That was one of the quietest houses on the freaking blog on that street, you know, with a hard working mom, with daughters. And then all of a sudden that kind of attention is being sent over to the household. You know, I actually do remember big fights between the sisters, actually. I can remember going over to the house and screaming in the freaking house and then Grace coming out of the house and then just leaving.

It's remarkable.

At the time, Teresa would only have been a mile or so away. I know. So the story comes full circle, starts in Redondo, ends in Redondo. And as much as Tracy Story and Nora story is the story of the Valley. It's a story of the beach to. In part two, we glossed over the financial particulars of Tracy's last adult movie, which also happens to be her one legal adult movie. Tracy, I love you. We're going to get into those particulars now.

As you already know, Tracy and her thirtysomething boyfriend, Stuart Dell, had formed their own production company, the Traci Lords Company, TLC. What you don't know, they linked up with the distribution company VIP. This company was run by Honey Weber. And Sy Adler is the skinny on honey, courtesy of Avon founder Paul Fishbein. I remember Honey Webber because she was a walking, talking bullshitter and I remember meeting with her at one of the trade shows right before I think it was right before the Tracy scandal happened.

And she had an array of movies that she was producing that were coming out over the next two years and she was promoting them. And this one is this and this one is this. And this is a great one. And we're doing this and this and this and this and this. And it was like, all right, whatever, you know. And there is this, a lot of that, a lot of people blowing their own horn that we're nothing really going on there.

David Blanda, who is David Jennings, produced several of Tracy's movies, also had dealings with Honey.

She doesn't come off much better in his recollection, honey spell to explain why she had been a chorus girl when she was much younger. And, you know, she was a showgirl. And when I knew her, she had bulked up quite a bit. I think she might have been mid to late 40s when I came in contact with her and she was blonde, starting to grow a little bit to still cute, but definitely pudgy. I met with her at her home and it was kind of a weird experience because she had these two guys, they're lounging around.

They looked like they were goons and she had this big snarly dog. And his partners say Adla is more of the same again, David Blanda, Sy Adler had kind of a shady background. They were heavy duty people. There was this background vibe of don't mess with us, we're bad fuckers. Sy Adler and Honey Weber, we're what I call fans of the circus sex. They would try and find something that's more far out. The theory is that audiences get bored with the same old thing.

Blando actually wrote a book called Skinflints. In it, he recalls a conversation with Honey Honey bragging to him about he takes Tokyo in which an octopus tentacle is inserted into the vagina of a Japanese performer. Honey claim that she was, quote, teaching Tracey things Tracey never dreamed of this person's unsavory right, like even by porn industry standards. What we're Tracey and Stewart doing with these two, first of all, why these two in particular? But in general, why were Tracey and Stewart messing around with middlemen at all?

David Blanda asks the same question. If she wanted to have her own company, which was TLC company, why didn't she just get investors? She would have total control, including a control over what the products would be and why wouldn't she? David Blanda answers the question. Well, I think savvy investors would want documentation of what they're getting involved in, basics like proof of age. Now, she was underage. She would avoid going this route. People do tend to look closer and harder when it's their money on the line.

Maybe Tracy gets worried that her I.D. can't hold up to that kind of scrutiny. She wants a buffer until the buffer starts to seem like a liability.

By the time Tracy and Stewart are set to make Tracy, I love you, they'd already made two movies with honey and say Beverly Hills Copulatory and Tracy takes Tokyo, both directed by Stuart under the name Steven Cartier. Could be Tracy and Stewart are sick of honey and say, eating into their profits.

You never know how much attention to PETA rumors, but there's a persistent one. It's even alluded to in that 1990 GQ profile of Tracy that she and Stewart tried to pull a fast one on honey and thigh, told Honey and Sy that they did go to France, but that they didn't shoot. Tracy, I love you because they were too coked out. The lie went over with honey and say about as well as you'd expect it to. David Blanda again.

They didn't buy the Coke story, I imagine they threatened her pretty good, you know, you turn that movie over to us, so we're going to come after you. You know, like I said, these were pretty heavy duty people. Tracy went public with her age to put the partners under too much scrutiny, to carry out their threats after the whole age thing came down. And, of course, once the light of the law shined on the whole thing, well, you know, the VIP people scurried away like cockroaches when you turn on a light.

And doubtless it hadn't escaped Tracey's attention, the turning herself in would do more for her than just get honey and say off her tail, there'd be a whole host of side benefits. Every Traci Lords tape gone from shelves except for the one she owned, increased fame, a clean slate, etc.. So David Bladder's theory strikes you as credible? It does, yes. Me too. And we've gone back and forth on this point. Was the mob a serious threat to Tracey as she claimed the Guardsmen trial via her mother?

Yes or no? Basically, we settled on now. But in the last episode, Ashleigh, you mentioned these shadowy figures in the background of the porn business and said that Tracey might have occasionally felt menaced by them. Well, if Tracey hooked up with honey and sigh, then she brought two of the menacing figures into the foreground. What's more, if David Blendr is right and she lied to honey inside and she provoked the menacing figures as well, that would explain why she seemed so freaked out that night with Troy.

It was more than just Koke jitters.

Yeah, she'd grafted the grifter's tangled with hardcase people and these hardcase people really were after her.

David Blackner, again, one producer was supposed to have hired goons to hang her by the tits.

So she was in deep shit and needed to dig herself out, which is why she informed on herself pretty straight forward.

Another reason blandest theory holds water is because of the money issue I'll follow. This is something that's always bothered me. If Tracy orchestrated the whole thing, went to such extreme lengths, took such extreme risks to get filthy rich, why didn't she? She sold the title to Caballero, the adult studio for one hundred thousand dollars. One hundred thousand dollars is nothing to sneeze at, especially in nineteen eighty six dollars. But it's hardly the score of the century.

It's Carballo the scored big since Tracy I Love You was the top seller three years running. And yes, she negotiated a royalty for herself, which was smart.

But why not own the whole thing or at least a bigger piece? It's almost as if the money were an afterthought, as if what Tracy really wanted was to unload the movie, get it off her hands so she could put it behind her and move on with her life. That's what it looks like to me. Anberlin also has a credible theory, she believes that there was a prior bust for the passport and for drugs and Tracy went to Japan to make the movie before.

Tracy, I love you, Tracy. Take Tokyo. Here's Amber, you're talking about an 18 year old girl. OK, who's using. She was in possession of cocaine. Not only that, but she was in possession of stolen ID.

The charges on that are really big. Now, from my own experience 20 years ago in Ventura County, just going along my life, having my party, I was arrested on the highway. They knew exactly who I was. It came right up that I was so and so and so and so also known as Anberlin, you know, adult film star, blah, blah. They took me to jail. They took me into an isolated room. It was the most harrowing experience of my life.

The police, literally half of them wanted pictures of me. And here I was trashed. I'd been up for four days partying. All I wanted to do was get home. And these cops are like, pull up your top and take topless tits out pictures with us. And they're doing all this stuff to me at the same time. They got me in this room and they're going to tell us everything, you know. And if you don't give us everything you know, you're going to go to prison for the rest of your life.

This is a common police tactic. What they do, anybody that's out there that's ever been arrested and busted for anything that is notable has been taken and interrogated and broken down. They want to know who you are, who you attached to, what is attached to that bla bla bla bla bla bla bla. They throw all this stuff at you to make you think they've got all this information or whatever is going on.

And this girl was busted. OK, she did certain things, she manipulated, she had fake ID that is like felony, felony, felony, felony.

You're going to prison for the rest of your life unless you do say or be whatever we want from you right now about the people that you're involved with. OK, Brooke. She broke it's a kid, she chose herself the way I see it in that moment over anybody else. In my personal opinion, in my experience, if it would have been those pornographers sitting on the other side of the coin, then they would have said, give up that girl or we're going to take you.

I don't believe any one of us would not have been at risk for being thrown under the bus.

OK, for me ever now that even if the details are a little off, like Tracey's ID wasn't stolen, it was false and I doubt it was in Japan until he takes Tokyo, the train he got busted, Tracey would have only been 17 then. I bet it was on the way back from France. And Tracey, I love you because it was on that trip that she turned 18, which is when they could really threaten her for false identification, for drug possession, for who knows what else, for not paying taxes.

Right.

Tax shit how they got Ginger Lynn. But like I was saying, even if Amber is slightly off on the details, the thrust is right. The emotion is right. I can feel it if I've learned anything over the years from reporting it's this. The simple explanation is usually the one that bears out, not the complicated fancy one, the complicated fancy one. In this case being that Tracy is a criminal genius prodigy Machiavelli and Stilettos who spent almost three years casing the adult industry so that on her 18th birthday she could elaborately flee, said the two scenarios.

Ambers and David Blender's also different. Really? No, they're not. In AMRs, Tracy commits an act of pure impulsivity and desperation, and Blender's Tracy is half a step ahead and even a quarter of a step ahead of pure impulsivity and desperation.

So she lets herself out as the adult industry has always maintained, but only because she has no other options.

But it's convincing, isn't it? It adds up. It does. There's one final scenario I want to throw out there. It comes originally from Ginger Lynn. She suggested it when she was describing how the US attorney pressured to testify against adult agent Jim S and adult producers Ronald Cancer and Rupert Mackney. The U.S. attorney showed me a series of photos.

And one of the series of photos was from a film that we did. The Trace knitted together these photos of Tracy fucking people, and they've got Tracy Fucking and one of the crew members. I don't know how she got into the business.

These people were involved with people that were taking photographs, knew where she was and what she was doing. So either she was in cahoots with them or I it just why would why would anybody let it go on? Why would someone take photos continuously on different sets if they knew somebody was underage? I don't think Tracy was ratted out, I think that the whole thing was a plan from day one. That's some crazy grassy knoll eyed conspiracy theory intrigue, Ginger is talking there.

She's saying that she thinks Tracy was an FBI plant, right?

Yeah, but if you recall, Tracy was talking not totally dissimilar, crazy, as you know, Lloyd, conspiracy theory, intrigue in her memoir. She didn't say that she was an FBI plant, but she did say that when the FBI guys pulled her out of bed, dragged her downtown for questioning, they told her that she was part of some sting operation and that the case on her was a few years old. She said a lot of things in that memoir.

I know. And some of them weren't true. But I don't think this particular thing is outside the realm of possibility. Listen to these words of attorney John Weston, the FBI, which was handling the Tracy Lords case. Essentially, the head of the FBI was Attorney General Meese. I suppose it could be a total coincidence and misted know what was going on with the Tracy Lords case and didn't know anything about this commission report. But I don't believe in coincidences and I certainly didn't believe there.

So I assume that they were linked and that the two were handled in some respect to capitalize on the maximum serendipity of the two events. And serendipity may be unfair because in that case, the commission folks, I mean, the attorney general had the ability to control the timing of both.

But I don't believe in coincidences anymore than Weston does. And we have a lot of them here. Tracy makes one movie after she turns 18. That movie starts filming the day after she turns 18. She owns the rights to that movie. Coincidence, coincidence, coincidence.

Like cherries on a slot machine. This is old news, though, Ashleigh. This is why we think Tracy had to have ratted herself out.

Just wait, because on the other hand, you have the government specifically, you have Edwin Meese and Mrs. the attorney general of the United States, which means, as Western points out, that the FBI essentially reports to him and he's got this commission with his name on it, the supposed to expose pornography as a crime against nature and humanity. The report gets released. And then mere days later, Traci Lords, the biggest porn star in the world, is exposed as underage.

More cherries on the slot machine. So what you're saying is maybe miss has the FBI dig into the adult industry and the FBI is the FBI. Porn producers aren't going to be heavily scrutinizing Tracy's I.D. or Tracey story because it's not in their interest to do so. And the local cops really just want to keep the adult industry in line, make sure it's not getting too egregious. The FBI figures out who Tracy really is. The question is, when did they figure it out?

Because Ginger and Tracy are thinking the FBI knew for a while. Ginger even thinks Tracy and the FBI were working together.

I seriously doubt Tracy and the FBI were long term colluders and I seriously doubt the FBI knew for a while. But I'm not speaking about idealism about the FBI, especially the FBI under MS. I remember me coming up dirty in the Iran-Contra affair.

He was accused of covering it up, wasn't he?

Well, he wasn't charged with obstruction, but he was investigated. And that was only a few years after the misreport. No, the reason I don't think the FBI knew about Tracy for long is because she wasn't in the misreport. And had they known the truth about her age when they were writing the report, she surely would have been.

Then how do you explain the photo? The US attorney showed Ginger of Tracy having sex with a crew member on set, not just that one photo. There were multiple photos, according to Ginger, taken on multiple sets.

Those photos just don't seem that incriminating to me. The FBI could have obtained them from a number of sources, including routine surveillance work.

OK, but they must have been sitting on the knowledge for at least a period because they obviously coordinated their bust of Tracy with the dropping of the misreport. Yes.

To give the report maximum impact, it's show business, basically his great PR for the report. I just don't think the period was long. A few days, maybe a few weeks, but not a few months and definitely not a few years. And the conclusion to be drawn is Ginger's conclusion that nobody ratted out Tracy and nobody ratted out Tracy because the FBI already knew. Right. Making both the adult industry and Tracy, the victims, in a sense, they're pawns in the government's game.

That's dark but possible.

This is the scenario I'm assuming that you're getting behind. It is. And you're still with Amber. Oh, yeah. It's the side benefits you mentioned earlier, Ashleigh, that I think really think Tracy, with the adult industry, that she was so helped by the scandal, the adult industry so hurt, acted as gasoline to the paranoia. And then, of course, there's her subsequent maligning of it. If you can vilify something that's already considered villainous, that's what Tracy did to the adult industry.

And maybe she did turn on the industry, but the industry turned on her every bit as quickly and it could be argued even more viciously. Here's Paul Fishbein. From the outset, she was the bad guy in all of this.

She duped the industry. She got the industry in trouble. She cost the industry millions of dollars. People could go to jail because of her. There was no gray area. And even the guys who were trying to sell her movies under the table after the scandal publicly would say she's the bad guy and she cost us. There was nobody looks and said, well, you know, she was a 16 year old kid or 15 when she got into it and she had a bad background or bad childhood or, you know, she didn't know what she was doing.

Nope. She was the bad guy and that was it. Publicly and collectively, obviously, the adult industry took a hard line on Tracy, she done it wrong but good and fuck her privately and individually. However, it was a different story. Feelings were more ambivalent. His adult actor, Tim Connolly. All the industry felt like they got fucked and cheated, and they were she was just hated for that because she used everybody. But, you know, I felt like, you know, you're talking about she used you.

Are you fucking kidding me? There were even feelings of self recrimination. Adult actor and Tracy Tommyrot.

There's a certain amount of regret on my part just because I mean, you know, the business is for 18, 18 and over. You know, I didn't feel right about a girl who was underage. You know, that was like kind of kind of, you know, made me feel kind of shitty.

And Tom remained remains to this day fond of Tracy, the first movie that came out she was in.

I think there was that not of this Earth, I think was playing down in Hollywood Pacific Theater. And I went down and actually saw it wasn't it wasn't that good. But, you know. See, because I still kind of I like to out with like I still like, you know, 40 years later, I, I'm still like, oh, go, girl. And then when she did Cry-Baby with John Waters, I thought that was great.

They call it my girl. I've always supported I don't have any bad feelings about the whole thing or even the, you know, the other and, you know, because to me, she did what she had to do, you know? I mean. And the feelings of adult actor Hershel Savage were downright admiring. I remember hearing from a lot of the producers and owners of video company, we got to destroy the stuff. No, she should have said something like a fucking money we're losing.

I remember that. I remember one thought that I had, wow, she made all this money and now they'll never see those videos. That's great.

I felt that, I mean, felt that it's an exploitative business.

I don't know what side deals she made in terms of residuals, which was unheard of anyway, you know, so but but to kind of like do all that stuff, make how much ever she made and then to get away with it. I kind of like that. Even Ruby Gutzman, who did hard time for selling treacy's tapes after it was revealed she was under age, didn't blame Tracy, not according to Paul Fishbein, who raised the subject with Ruby before Ruby died.

I asked him one day, why didn't you do it? And he said to me, Because I was greedy. And that was the censor.

Since we're questioning the casting of Tracy as an industry heavy, we should also ask this question. Did Tracy, in fact, sic the IRS on fellow performers and Harry Reems, Tom Byron and Ginger Lynn? Harry Reems is dead, so he can't weigh in. And we know what did wins response. Does a bear shit in the woods? Tom Byron, though, isn't quite as definitive. Ginger's convinced it was. I'm not so sure. I started getting investigated by the IRS in 1986, which was the same year the treaty oil regulation came out.

Is it a coincidence or did she have something to do with it? I don't know. There's no real way to know. It's not like she had to rat us out because the government already knew about it. Why would they need her to what information? I mean, if didn't have any information about my finances or Jews or or Harry Reid, this what information could she have with the government that the government already knew about?

Tom raises a good point. Harry, Tom and Ginger were, after all, porn stars. If you had even a passing familiarity with porn back then, you knew those three names. So the government, which is already all over the porn business because of the Meese commission, didn't need to be tipped off. I understand, though, why it's something Ginger can't let go. She feels, with some justification, that the IRS only went after her because she refused to testify against members of the adult industry and Tracy's behalf.

And then when she was forced into testifying, she faked a bad memory on the stand. So she pissed off the government royally. And her 1991 run-In with the IRS was a nightmare charged with willfully subscribing to a false tax return. The case going to trial and ending with her bled dry by legal fees and behind bars in federal prison. But I don't believe the source of the nightmare was Tracy or even the IRS. Then what was the adult industry?

I think the trial was so awful for Ginger because until that moment, she was an innocent on the face of it. An absurd thing to say about a porn star pushing 30. If it's true, it was at her trial that she discovered how dangerously sentimental was her belief that the adult industry was one big, happy, functioning, dysfunctional family. Here's Ginger on that trial. They're bringing in all of these people, trying to get them to say that, you know, I did movies for on this day and they paid me cash and there were two people that came in and stood up and one of them was Susan Randall.

Sears walked by the jury and she's pointing to me and going, thumbs up. And I'm like, I'm dying.

You know, she's just wonderful. And Russ, Hampshire was the other person, everybody else, not everyone that they wanted me to testify against. But a lot of the people that I refused testify against testified against me.

So apart from Susan and Russ Hamsher, the founder of BCA Pictures, by the way, Paul, people were not stand up with Ginge.

Now, they're sleaziness wasn't just on the outside like she always thought it was through and through. They betrayed her, snitched on her when she hadn't snitched on them. In fact, the whole reason she was in trouble was because she hadn't snitched on them while she was also in trouble because of drugs.

She actually went to federal prison for violating her probation by failing a drug test, which wasn't his fault, or the IRS his fault. Now, that wasn't Ginger, obviously, but she wouldn't have been on probation or taking a drug test had she not been so loyal to the adult industry anyway. My sense is that a lot of the anger and disappointment she was feeling toward the adult industry that redirected to Tracy, whom she already couldn't stand, certainly easier to hate, Tracey, than your family.

You said it. OK, listen, here comes a direct address at the start of this project, Ashley and I approached Tracey through both her manager and her PR representative. We even tried to go through a mutual friend to let her know what we were about to do and to see if she was willing to speak to us.

She politely, yet firmly declined. Normally, that would be the kiss of death, the podcast over before it even began. Not in this case, though, we felt we didn't need to speak to Tracey because Tracey had already spoken, said what she had to say, and underneath it all and on talk shows, which I think are equally vital. My gosh, yes. The talk shows her early life, her sexual abuse, her troubled relationship with her mother, her father, her years and ex.

These are not topics she's reluctant to address. On the contrary, whether it's 1995 when she was promoting her album 1000 Fires, which featured the song Fathers Feels about the rape by Ricki or in 2003. And she was promoting her memoir or in 2013. And she was weighing in on rape culture in Steubenville. She's out there and she's out there on national TV, has discussed her past on Oprah, Larry King, Rosie O'Donnell, Whoopi Goldberg, Piers Morgan, to name but a few.

She even took part in an installment of the A&E biography series. It's true that when she goes on the show, she's mostly covering material that's in her memoir. But just hearing her speak is revealing. There's a strength in her voice and intelligence there is to an unrelenting quality to her sentences.

Here she is, for example, on Larry King, discussing underneath it all what led to writing the book, because after 20 years, it's been now since I was that 15 year old little girl in porn movies and as many successes as I have enjoyed, I still have this title before my name, the ex porn star thing. And you're always going to have more than that, though. There has been so much about me that has been said and so many, quote unquote, true Hollywood stories done that have been anything but true.

I really wanted to set the record straight. I thought I deserved to do that. And also, you know, two fold. There is such a huge epidemic in this country right now with teenage prostitution and pornography that I think that the other side of the story really needs to come across and be told she's fighting for the advantage in every exchange and she always never not fighting for control of the narrative as well.

And then there's the obsessiveness of herself presentation and its deep meaning. I don't think it's merely PR. She wants to control how you see her. Yes, but I suspect she also wants to control how she sees herself. And I have some evidence to back this up. Here's Troy and the experience of reading underneath it all. When it first came out, her book came up.

I was in a bad place in my life. I was going through a divorce with my wife. I had three kids and I was living with a stripper from Texas. As crazy as a stripper, I don't know why the hell how the hell that happened, but my life was just like in chaos. So I got the book and I was so excited to see how she turned out, like whatever happened to her, like, know, I'm reading it and I get to the part where she says, I didn't get her money for the abortion and then she has to turn to porn and shit my pants.

What the fuck are you telling me? I couldn't believe I was just like in shock sometimes I read what she's going to be a book signing in Baltimore and my step mom, I just moved to Baltimore, so I got this letter to Laura and I said it to my step mom. Basically, you know how I hope you've made it through all this and and I hope you're still the same person that you were back when I knew you were coming.

I'm going to catch up for my number. And I said to my stepmom. So a couple of weeks go by, that date comes around and then that night comes around and then my phone rings, it's Laura. So so we're talking a little girl finally, and we didn't see eye to eye on a couple things. She said, well, I have my diary, everything down I go. I remember that. And then I think I think what happened was I had said that I would maybe like to have kept the baby would have been so cute.

And I think that hit a really sore spot with her. And then it went south from there.

And that was the last time I talked to evidence that Tracy possibly revises history. But it's evidence we already had. We knew that the circumstances surrounding the abortion were likely far murkier than her depiction. Now, there's something else going on here I want to read you a passage from. Underneath it all is from the bonus chapter in my paperback edition, and it covers the publication of the book. Tracy writes, I've done hundreds of interviews for radio, television and print, traveling from Texas to D.C. to San Diego.

Along the way, I made many star appearances or boyfriends and schoolmates as well as complete strangers showed up at my signings. My high school sweetheart read the book and gave me one of the most heartfelt apologies I've ever received. I was overwhelmed.

OK, I see.

Wow Troy's memory of this conversation and traces a mismatching, not mismatching, opposing, even taking into account the fact that memory is not just highly subjective but highly emotional and that memories themselves shape shift inside people's skulls. You still can't reconcile these two memories, which means you're forced to choose, believe one or believe the other.

Choice memories, perhaps the more believable, if only because it and he seems so guileless.

He doesn't appear to be trying to make himself look good. Tracy look bad. He's just seeing what happened to the best of his recollection.

And yet I think that Tracy believes hers. That's what I meant when I said she's trying to control the way she sees herself, not just the way others see her manufacturing circumstances is, I suspect, how she manages her psychology and pain, because that phone conversation, at least according to Troy, is painful, intensely painful. He said this as well.

I lost Laura Kuzma and then interplays and Tracy laws. And this is crazy. This they affect my relationships and how you were in relationships with women so to was a victimless crime is is not true.

And she turns it into some warm and fuzzy life affirming Tracy affirming moment. And can you get the truth out of such a person. I don't know.

Maybe, though, that will be trying to get the truth out of the wrong Tracey post porn Tracey revisionist Tracey the Tracey of recent or semi recent years. But what about the Tracey who existed between 1984 and 1996, the Tracey who was very much in porn, that world's most glamorous and potent figure? What would you give to talk to her? Anything, obviously.

But you don't have to give a thing, as you know, because about three quarters of the way through the process of making this podcast, something was dropped in our laps and never before heard taped interview Tracey did in 1985 how to convey the thrill of that moment. I'm not even going to try listening to that interview was just uncanny, if not almost like we were conducting a seance, didn't it? It did, OK.

Without further ado, 1985 Tracey, his 1985 Tracey on how she transitioned from nude modelling to porn to a non-sexual role and really what gives me life.

And I want them to have I love her. And I started having sex in the kitchen and they weren't filming that. We were just having sex with a little clearer picture. Do you know it was kind of crazy. So I said, OK, and I liked it. It's not the. Are we going to point out that she's saying that Tom wasn't a stranger, that she wasn't tricked into porn? We're not. We're going to allow listeners to draw their own conclusions.

His nineteen eighty five Tracey on what makes her sex scenes hotter than other female performers, sex scenes in an expose.

And there's a lot of girls in the business who just get out there and lay down and have spoken, but the guys have to go through the job of getting harder. So I feel that in a sense, a girl should get her heart on. A girl should get her heart on two is that sexual swagger who's talked about and it's a self aware sexual swagger, a savvy sexual swagger, which is to say she isn't just running on instinct. She's thought about this, his 1985 Tracey on starting her company, TLC.

I found that I was doing a lot of crappy little videos and things that I was ashamed to have my name on. Whenever someone tries to go, I want to they go. It's going to be good, girl. It's going to be. It has to be. I don't want to think I want to visit her because she said know which I started making. I start saying my name a lot of the shipment. I give you a good example.

Just in the bathroom is probably the worst thing I've ever seen. It was a quality in and I could hear of me and Julian had a similar lack of hair. Michael was in the background saying, look, we of each other's faces crazy. And I thought that was bullshit. I'm breaking in to say that Michael Phillips, the one addressing Tracy by her fake real name, was the director of Lust in the Fast Lane back to nineteen eighty five.

Tracy, when I went to the future of my own production company and make the money on myself and no one else is going to get the truth about everything I did. So I had to Boxgrove. They're going to have to pay me for it, that someone else is going to take money out. I put so much into myself. Why should I write my own story, hire my own crew, get my own makeup people. I know enough people to where I could do that very easily.

We're also not going to point out that she doesn't sound like she's on drugs or under anyone's thumb, are we know again letting listeners draw their own conclusions, his 1985 Tracy on how her porn career might actually help her mainstream career.

I want to do straight stuff. I do. So I'm going actually to hear some of the disintegrator. Now, I just think if anyone ever finds out, oh, my God, there's a porno queen. Is that what you did for me? The you know my name. She's always thinking, thinking you can almost hear the hum of her brain and his 1985 Tracy on the adult industries drug problem, and it is within with a similar goal to get.

Really bad head trips and they try to find a way out. They want the money. So to show oneself, they book things they booked themselves months and months ago, go all time pretty sinister before they don't show up on set and can really get into drugs because they think it's the only way. It just makes things worse. It's interesting to hear her talk about female performers taking drugs because they feel it's the only way out, that must have been what she was feeling by the end in 1986 and finally, his 1985 Tracy on being of age but looking under age.

I prefer no makeup because I have a look like a young girl, every other innocent thing about me, but some people just cover up with paint and I look, I don't want to do and but without my makeup, I look about it even if I just want to as big grandmotherly, which isn't that big. It doesn't sell. It doesn't sell as well as you could put ponytail in my hair and like light pink lipstick. In the past 17.

So she could pass for 17, the age she actually is. Imagine that next time on the finale of Once upon a Time in the Valley.

Once you have done adult and this is my opinion, I'd love for someone to prove me differently. But I personally think that once you have done adult, you've got a black mark over your name, there's a slur against you. You were the girl that got naked and had sex on film. Is there anything wrong with it? No. Will mainstream think that there is most likely because no one's ever really broken through huge.

A few have tried. Ginger Lynn, of course, Traci Lords, Jenna Jamison, Sasha Grey. But they didn't make it huge. They did a few little some meaty roles, all given that they've done mainstream stuff, but no one's really broken through and been accepted. They never became like whoever the stars are these days, they never became an Angelina Jolie or whoever the names are. They were always like, oh, and it's starring that porn star.

And you know what? That's I think just the way it goes.

Sadly, this has been a presentation of C 13 originals, a division of Caden's 13 executive produced by Chris Corcoran and me. Lilianna, like directed by Zach Levitt, created and written by me, produced by Ashley West, edited and mastered by Chris Bazzel, Bill Schulz, Harry Kraul and Ian Mond.

Theme Music and original score by John Goodman. Production Engineering Incoordination by Sean Cherry and Terrence Mallon Bowen Field Recording. I read Ferner Artwork, Marketing and PR by Kurt Courtney, Josephine and Francis and Hilary Duff. Once upon a Time in the Valley is hosted by me and Ashley West. Thanks for listening.