Bonus Episode

The Confrontation

Accusations of sexual assault at the Spice House strip club come to light. Two women who work there head to the club to confront their bosses, their phones secretly set to record.

Episode | Transcript

The Confrontation

Robin Amer: Hey everyone. So we’ve already wrapped up Season 2 of The City. But some new information has come to light that we thought you’d want to know. So we’ve got a bonus episode for you. 

Now, if you’ve just stumbled across us today and haven’t listened to the rest of the season, we highly recommend you go back and listen to those episodes first, cause everything here will make a lot more sense. Plus,it’s a pretty good story about a city’s struggle for its future—a struggle similar to ones other cities across the country are also facing.

Also, if you didn’t already know, this season of The City is about strip clubs, so it’s not suitable for everyone, especially kids. This episode contains explicit language, including explicit conversations about sex.

  1. Here we go.

Production team member: Previously on The City

 

Mark Thierman: We're a destination. The destination is downtown Reno. People are coming to play downtown Reno. They want a little bit naughty. They want some nice. They wanna go skiing... 

Melissa Holland: There are illegal activities taking place within them. They are not self-regulating to make any of it better. They are not entitled to remain where they are and they are not above the law. 

Kamy: There's no records. There's no reports. There's nothing. So what do you do? Lie.

Officer Leedy: We got a deal. Heavy-set girl in a red top. Heavy-set girl in a red top. 

Stephanie: I don't understand how I could be in this situation. Like, why me?

Robin Amer: It’s March 2019. The weather in Reno is brisk. Two bartenders, Chelsea and Julie, climb into a car. 

Chelsea: I'm sorry. I'm just so scared.

Julie:  No, I'm fucking scared.

Robin Amer: You can hear the wind blowing as they start their drive to the Spice House.

These two women have worked at the strip club for years, Chelsea since 2016 and Julie since 2009. 

Julie: I have anxiety so bad I want throw up.

Robin Amer: Today, they’re afraid they’re going to be fired for what they’re about to do.  

Julie: That’s fine. Whatever. Whatever. I don't care. I don't care if I get fired. I don't care. I'm standing up for what's fuckin' right.

Chelsea: I know, I know.

Julie: What they've been doing is fucking wrong. So fire me. I don't care. Fire me. They're wrong. They're wrong. And they don't have the best interests of their employees. They do not care about their female employees, dancer or not.

Robin Amer: In the past week, two women have reported to police sexual assaults they say happened at the Spice House. Chelsea is one of them. And neither she nor her friend Julie likes how these cases are being handled now.

So they’re going to confront the club’s manager, who’s their boss, and his boss, one of the club’s owners. They’ve secretly set their phones to record. What they catch on tape could be used as evidence. So even though they say they’re anxious, they also sound resolved on what they’re about to do.

Julie: OK, is your phone on? 

Chelsea: Yep. 

Julie: Oh, yeah. Alright. Let’s go. 

Robin Amer: They’re going to get every word on tape.

I’m Robin Amer and from USA TODAY, this is The City.

ACT 1

Robin Amer: In this season of The City, we tried to understand why Reno’s power brokers wanted to kick strip clubs out of downtown. 

All throughout this campaign, rumors were swirling. Rumors about drugs and sex trafficking and prostitution inside the club. Rumors that benefited the people who wanted the clubs out. 

The city itself worked hard to dig up dirt on the clubs, secretly hiring a private investigator to spy on them, and later sending in the cops undercover. 

Ultimately, the city had very little to show for its efforts. In the end, the clubs were allowed to stay. 

But as we were wrapping up our regular season, our reporter, Anjeanette Damon, discovered a new story of two women working in the strip clubs who took matters into their own hands.

Here’s Anjeanette Damon:

Anjeanette Damon: In July 2019, I interviewed Kamy Keshmiri, who owns the Spice House and two other Reno strip clubs, about what the women working in his clubs had told me. Some dancers had experienced or witnessed prostitution. Others described abusive customers and bouncers whose protection depended on how much they were tipped. 

Here’s how one former dancer put it:

Jane: If you pay enough money, you can basically touch and do whatever. Especially in the back rooms. There's, like, so much that happens in the back rooms.

Anjeanette Damon: Multiple women described similar experiences, but there wasn’t any documentation to back up their claims. Dancers told me they rarely called the police, because they didn’t want to cause problems for themselves at work or because they feared nobody would believe a stripper.

So the lack of a paper trail didn’t convince me that nothing bad happened in the clubs.

But Kamy considered it proof.  

Kamy Keshmiri: We don't have any police reports of anybody getting assaulted in these lounges in 25 years. That speaks for itself. Not one. One. One. I'm saying one. You can't come to me with one. That’s why you've got nothing in your hands other than words. 

Anjeanette Damon: Kamy became angry and that turned out to be the last interview he granted me.

I didn’t know it at the time, but one woman had finally decided to go to the police. She filed her report more than three months before I talked to Kamy and just a month before the Reno City Council decided to let the strip clubs stay.

That woman was Chelsea, who we just heard driving to the Spice House with her phone set to record.

Chelsea decided not to talk with us for this episode, but she agreed through her lawyer to let us use her first name. She filed a sexual harassment lawsuit in October, against Kamy and his brother Jamy Keshmiri, who co-owns the three clubs. Her lawyer asked her not to talk to reporters while the lawsuit is pending.

So I’ve pulled together her story from the lawsuit, the police report, and that secret recording, which I got from police through a public records request. And just a quick warning, it gets a little graphic and disturbing here.

Chelsea’s story starts back in July 2018—ironically, right about the time Reno police are sending undercover cops into the strip clubs.

One night, Chelsea stayed at work after her shift to drink with her coworkers. By the end of the evening, she’d had too much to drink to drive home and went upstairs to lie down in a space that used to be a private VIP lounge but had been closed to the public for a while.

She says in her police report that the club’s DJ, Kyle Smith, followed her upstairs. Kyle had been working at the club on and off for about five years. He was a manager, bartender, DJ—whatever the club needed help with. 

Chelsea told police that she awoke to feel Kyle pulling down her pants. She said she lay still, too afraid to move. Pretending to sleep, she peeked out of one eye and saw Kyle’s reflection in the mirror. She told police he was masturbating over her.

She said that when he was done, he left. Upset and crying, she went downstairs and told Julie about what happened. Together, they told their manager, David Hoffman. David fired Kyle that night. 

This story could have ended there. But about five months later, David hired Kyle back.

I couldn’t track Kyle down for an interview. He didn’t return my phone calls, and his lawyer said he’s no longer sure how to find him. David Hoffman also declined to do an interview with me. So again, what follows is based on police reports and Chelsea’s lawsuit. Kyle is a defendant in that lawsuit; David is not. 

About three months after Kyle was hired back at the Spice House, a second woman accused him of assault.

It happened on March 15, 2019, about a month before that final city council vote. 

Kyle was at the bar, drinking after his shift, when David asked him to go clean up a mess in the women’s restroom. As Kyle was wiping up the floor, a female patron walked into the bathroom and went into a stall.

Kyle followed her into the stall and had sex with her.

Later that night, the woman told police that she was raped. When Kyle spoke to police three weeks later, he called it consensual sex. 

Police never charged with Kyle with a crime. But it was this incident that prompted Chelsea to go to police about what happened to her in the VIP room earlier. 

So three days after the incident in the bathroom, Chelsea filed a police report. And two days after that, she asked for a meeting with her manager, David, and the club’s owner, Jamy Keshmiri.

Robin Amer: What happened when Chelsea and Julie confronted their bosses after the break.

Julie: So Kyle getting hired back after, a couple months after he had sexually assaulted Chelsea upstairs in the VIP room, that was OK? That wasn't, that wasn't something against Chelsea?

David Hoffman: Kyle came in here to help. And when Chelsea—

Julie: But why was he allowed to come back in? Why?

ACT 2

Robin Amer: OK, let’s go back to Anjeanette.

Anjeanette Damon: Chelsea and Julie sound nervous as they walk into the Spice House with their phones secretly recording

Julie: How are you, Jesse?
Spice House employee: You need a drink?
Julie: No, thank you.

Anjeanette Damon: They sit at the bar to wait for Jamy and David.

The police have started their investigation. But Chelsea waited eight months to file a police report. Detectives ultimately said too much time had elapsed for them to recover physical evidence. And Kyle was claiming it didn’t happen the way Chelsea said it did.

But maybe her conversation with David and Jamy could help.

When Jamy shows up they all head upstairs.

Jamy Keshmiri: Mind scooting a little closer? OK.

Anjeanette Damon: Jamy is Kamy’s younger brother and co-owner of the clubs. He’s known as the more pragmatic of the two. 

Jamy Keshmiri: It's why it's me, and not Kamy here, in here, sitting here. 'Cause he'll get mad and stuff like that. I mean, has a right to get mad. But at this point, we're not at the level where this is going to help.
David Hoffman: Well, and you saw how upset I was on Thursday about him screaming at me.

Anjeanette Damon: Julie doesn’t wait long before getting right to the point, standing up for Chelsea as David becomes more and more defensive.

Julie: So Kyle getting hired back after, a couple months after he had sexually assaulted Chelsea upstairs in the VIP room. That was OK? That wasn't, that wasn't something against Chelsea?
David Hoffman: Kyle came in here to help. And when Chelsea—
Julie: But why was he allowed to come back in? Why?
David Hoffman: Chelsea was drunk up here in the room—.
Julie: So that's, so that's a reason, that's a reason for her to be assaulted?!
David Hoffman: Can I talk, please?
Chelsea: Please let him talk.
Julie: Yes, you can talk.

Anjeanette Damon: David acknowledges that he hired Kyle back after the incident with Chelsea and even says he’s sorry.

David Hoffman: I—I apologize. It's just really, really been hard on me to find good people to stay here. And this is not an excuse, I promise you. It's just hard to find people that stay here that actually can work and do jobs, because we're already cut so thin right now, we're already doing two jobs, two jobs a day.

Anjeanette Damon: But he says he also asked Chelsea if she was OK with it before bringing Kyle back to the club.

David Hoffman: Those two had talked and became cool. And I asked her, “Would you mind him coming back here?” She said, “I do not mind.”
Jamy Keshmiri: Did you say that? 

Anjeanette Damon: Jamy wants to know if that’s true.

Jamy Keshmiri: Just answer. That's a yes or no question.
Chelsea: Yes, but it was only—no, I do want to talk. It was only because honestly, out of fear. I didn't know how to talk to you. Because of you alone, knowing how I cried to you down there. And that you even thought that was even OK, even passed by, to even come in and come question me on that, I actually had issues with that. And I feel like at that moment, I died down. I didn't know who to talk to.

Anjeanette Damon: Chelsea has just confronted her boss in front of the club’s owner. She’s got David on tape admitting to bringing Kyle back to work after firing him when she complained. 

Jamy blames everybody. He says David shouldn’t have hired Kyle back and Chelsea shouldn’t have acquiesced.

Jamy Keshmiri: That should have never happened. I see the mistake. He shouldn't have gone back. You should've stuck up for yourself. That's both sides of mistakes, you know. 

Anjeanette Damon: And he yells at all of them for drinking after work.

Jamy Keshmiri: This is your place of work. I know we sell alcohol. But I don't want you guys drinking here. Please?
Julie: Yes.
Jamy Keshmiri: That's something. Because if you notice a common theme here is you guys staying after work drinking, OK?

Anjeanette Damon: He says he didn’t know Kyle had been brought back to work after the incident with Chelsea. And he’s angry any of them would have put the club at risk in the midst of the Reno City Council’s efforts to kick them out of downtown

Jamy Keshmiri: Do you understand what we were going through with our licenses? We couldn't afford that! You know what, that shouldn't have been an option, to be honest with you, that he come back. I'd rather not have floormen or just close it down rather than have someone who sexually assaulted you. If he’s—Are you kidding me? If word got out that we allowed someone who sexually assaulted one of our other things, it would be food to the fodder!

Anjeanette Damon: Jamy’s longer term solution: Everybody should just stop drinking at the club and David should hire older guys. Like somehow older guys will be less tempted by the women. 

Jamy Keshmiri: If we have to go find a 50-year-old guy, I'd rather deal with him being slow and lazy and having to sit there than being a predator or or hitting on girls or scaring girls away or scaring customers away … Our problem stems from getting a couple of bouncers who I think are good, who aren't going to try to fuck the girls, who—I mean, more than normally—who aren't going to just be fucking weirdos and stuff like that. If we solve that problem, there's 90 percent of our problem. Would you agree?

Anjeanette Damon: To his credit, Jamy says that Kyle can’t come back to the club. He’s already been fired, again, for the sex incident in the bathroom. But Chelsea and Julie aren’t confident Kyle won’t be let back in. 

Jamy tries to makes clear that won’t happen. If David is shorthanded, just close the club, he says. If Kyle shows up, Jamy says, call the police.

Jamy Keshmiri: But I'm just telling you, he's 86’ed from here. So the rest of you guys know that. OK? And like I said, if it's that bad, then whoever lets him in is fired. Like I said, my option is I'll close this fucking club down. 

Anjeanette Damon: And when Chelsea tells him that she’s gone to the police, he doesn’t dissuade her from seeking justice on her own.

But again, Jamy’s concern seems more about protecting the clubs from negative publicity. 

Jamy Keshmiri: Had I known—do you guys know what we’re going through with the press? Had I known that there was a sexual predator in here...

Anjeanette Damon: Even though Kyle was fired again, none of this makes Chelsea feel any better. Jamy lecturing her about drinking after work, promising to hire older male staffers and refusing to really address David’s decision to bring Kyle back doesn’t put her at ease. 

Chelsea: Well, I'll just address my concerns … You even said earlier, if I didn't like how it's handled before, why do I even choose to work here? I don't believe that he's going to be 100% gone. I think give it three, six months, eight months. He's gonna weasel his way in. So I'm just telling you, I quit. I don't. I don't care. I quit. I don't trust it. 

Anjeanette Damon: Julie follows suit.

Julie: Well, um, I'm going to leave, um. Here's my keys. I'm not, I can't I can't stay here. I’m leaving.

Anjeanette Damon: What I saw in those reports and heard in this secret recording was that here, for the first time, was documented evidence that pierced Kamy’s claims that nothing bad ever happens to women in his club. Proof the club rehired a man they had fired after a bartender accused him of sexual assault. A man that Jamy refers to as a, quote “predator.” 

And beyond the allegations of sexual assault, I discovered something else troubling in those police reports. David Hoffman, the manager who fired and then re-hired the DJ Kyle Smith, may have tried to cover up for Kyle with police after the incident in the bathroom.

According to the police report, David told detectives he had stayed with Kyle the entire time he was cleaning the bathroom, leaving only to grab disinfectant to bring back to Kyle.

But Kyle made no mention of David being in the restroom and was apparently in there long enough to have sex for a few minutes, according to his own statement to police. 

After learning all of this, I wanted to know more about the club’s response to it. Why do nothing more than eke out an apology from David for bringing Kyle back to the club? Why continue to employ David after he told police something at odds with what Kyle himself admitted?

So I called Jamy up.

Jamy Keshmiri: Jamy speaking.
Anjeanette Damon: Hey Jamy, it's Anjeanette from the Reno Gazette Journal. 

Jamy Keshmiri: Hey Anjeanette.

Anjeanette Damon: How are you doing?
Jamy Keshmiri: Good.

Anjeanette Damon: I ask if he knows about the recording. He does.

Jamy Keshmiri: You take what you want from the recording [00:02:58] I mean, it was me being a pro on their side, as you know, they, they're trying to find something against me, obviously. But look, I meant what I said. I was very open. So I don't need to hear it. I know what I said. 

Anjeanette Damon: I wanted to know why Kyle was allowed to work in the club. 

Jamy Keshmiri: Look, when I heard about all the things that went down, of course he's fired. We fired him. But you know, we don't know if he was as bad or whatever and stuff like that, you know? Of course, you know, he's the villain. So they're painting him out to be a villain. So I don't think he's nearly the villain that he is, but he is bad enough for me to let him go and never let him back in.

Anjeanette Damon: Yeah.

Jamy Keshmiri: That's all I have to say about that.

Anjeanette Damon: So sex in the bathroom is not something that should be occurring, whether it's consensual or not. Is that—?

Jamy Keshmiri: Absolutely. Absolutely. When I said that, when I heard that, I'm like, you got to go, dude.

Anjeanette Damon: I wanted to ask him more about David and about all of the other stuff I had learned, but he cut me off.

Jamy Keshmiri: I don't want to, I don't want to get into this right now, I'm working out. 

Anjeanette Damon: I had a little more luck with his lawyer, Mark Thierman. I reached him on the phone as he was vacationing in Portugal.

As soon as I bring up the lawsuit and Chelsea’s report to the police, Mark launches into an attack on her credibility. Mark mentions that Chelsea has been arrested for DUI in the past.

Mark Thierman: The mug shots are not pretty.
Anjeanette Damon: OK—
Mark Thierman: But go ahead.
Anjeanette Damon: So her, but does her DUI record have any bearing on the fact she was taken advantage of by this DJ upstairs?
Mark Thierman: No. No one should take advantage of people even when they're drunk.
Anjeanette Damon: Right. So why do you bring that up then?
Mark Thierman: Because it's just what, you wonder about her recollection of things and how, and if there's another side to the story. I haven't talked to Kyle. I don't know what he has to say.

Anjeanette Damon: No wonder women at the clubs don’t think anyone will believe them, I think. 

Why did the club allow David to bring Kyle back to work, I ask.

Mark Thierman: It was a terrible mistake to bring him back. And if I were him, I wouldn't have done it. But he did it. Felt sorry for the guy. Who knows? 

Anjeanette Damon: And David saying he was in the bathroom with Kyle the whole time the night of the second incident?

Anjeanette Damon: So clearly, David wasn't in there the whole time, or if he was he would have known about the sex. So—
Mark Thierman: All right. So, OK. So David should get fired. You're right. Now what?

Anjeanette Damon: As of now, David still works at the club. So I ask Mark: What are the Keshmiris doing to make sure this doesn’t happen again? He tells me that their team has weekly meetings where anyone is free to bring up their concerns, including safety issues.

Mark Thierman: You go to Thursday meetings. You hear the rants and raves and how they yell at people when this stuff does happen or when a dancer comes in and complains about it.
Anjeanette Damon: So weekly meetings is enough to ensure that they're safe workplaces?
Mark Thierman: No. They take action at the weekly meetings whenever there's a problem. Specifically, when this was brought to their attention, they fired the guy

Anjeanette Damon: OK. 

Mark Thierman: ‘Cause obviously the manager wasn't doing it.

Anjeanette Damon: For Chelsea, the police are really the next step in the chain of accountability. So I turned back to the police reports to see what the detectives were able to figure out about this case. And what I found there … was surprisingly little.

In Chelsea’s case, police interviewed three people: Chelsea, David, and Kyle. David told police he had no idea what happened after Kyle followed Chelsea upstairs, even though when it first occurred, David actually fired Kyle based on what Chelsea told him.

Kyle told police he didn’t masturbate over Chelsea. He said he brought her a glass of water because she was drunk and that she pulled down her own pants.

After those two interviews, police closed the case. They didn’t press any charges against Kyle. 

In the second case involving sex with a patron in the club bathroom, police interviewed four potential witnesses and completed a rape kit on the woman, which they said did not provide them any evidence they could use in the case. Detectives decided to close the case after learning the woman had a drink with Kyle after the encounter and had told people at the bar that she, quote, “thinks she just had sex.”

That’s it. Both cases closed.

I wanted to know why the police didn’t do more.

When the political fight over the strip clubs started, the city threw a ton of resources at sussing out vague rumors of sex trafficking and prostitution. They hired a private investigator and sent in undercover cops. Council members said their intent was to look out for people’s safety. But their efforts ended up punishing the dancers, like Stephanie, who was prosecuted for solicitation after telling an undercover cop “maybe.”

In this case, the city had two women come forward and say they were victims. Admittedly, this would be a tricky case to prosecute before a jury, given the facts involved. 

But again, the city went after Stephanie for the word “maybe.” And here, I wanted to know why the city wasn’t more aggressive.

For instance, why didn’t police interview the manager David when it became clear that his statement did not at all line up with Kyle’s version of events? Why didn’t they interview Kamy or Jamy Keshmiri? Why didn’t they interview Julie, who was the first person Chelsea saw after her encounter with Kyle?

So I went to talk to Lt. Zach Thew at the Reno Police Department. He oversees the detective division and supervises the detective who investigated both cases.

Anjeanette Damon: In my reading of the report, it looked like he only talked to three people—that is the suspect, the victim, and then the victim's manager, who kind of blew it off. Was there more to be done? I'm wondering if it was thorough enough of an investigation only talking to those three people.

 

Zach Thew: Yes. To meet our burden of proof, yes. Because unfortunately, it's difficult in that circumstance where, once again, you have a suspect and a lone victim, you have a delayed report. You have no physical evidence. So, to, you have to weigh the evidence and see if you're going to be able to to meet your burden of proof to move forward in the case. 

Anjeanette Damon: But what about David, the Spice House manager, potentially telling police a story to cover for Kyle? Why wasn’t that investigated further?

Zach Thew: Yeah, we can always look at obstructing an investigation or tampering with an investigation. So in this case, we do have the individual statements, but we don't have evidence that that would rise to the to the burden of proof that we need to pursue it legally or in court.

Anjeanette Damon: What I really wanna know is how does this all fit in to the broader fight against the strip clubs?

Zach Thew: In the big picture, we try to investigate, pursue a case on behalf of the victim in the case and we remove any other context that may be going on. 

Anjeanette Damon: Lt. Thew draws what he thinks is an important distinction between his unit and the unit responsible for the undercover operations: the SET unit. 

Zach Thew: We do not, as a detective section, participate in the operations that SET does, nor do we take any sort of direction from the city attorney's office or any other office on how we're going to proceed.

Anjeanette Damon: Thew wants to make clear his department has nothing to do with City Attorney Karl Hall’s office, which was responsible for secretly hiring the private investigator to spy on the clubs, and whose attorneys aggressively prosecuted Stephanie.

In short, Thew is saying politics don’t play into his unit’s approach to cases. And in this case, there just wasn’t enough evidence to support a prosecution.

Zach Thew: I understand that the outcome in this case was that we weren't able to to get criminal charges, in this particular case. But I don't want to discourage people from reporting. I think it's, it's very important for people to understand that if you believe a crime occurred or if a crime did occur to you, that you can come forward to the police department and understand that we are going to investigate that incident on your behalf outside of any political context and without direction or influence from anyone.

Anjeanette Damon: In the bigger story we told this season, there were times when Reno’s powerbrokers seemed to roll right over people with less power and less control over what was happening in their city. People like Stephanie. 

But people like Stephanie—like Chelsea and Julie—are not powerless. 

In the end, Chelsea and Julie decided to take matters into their own hands.

Confrontations like this one, between aggrieved employees and bosses, between women who say they were abused and those they believe are responsible, are happening across America. 

But it’s so rare to actually hear it unfold the way we are able to here, thanks to Chelsea’s secret recording. 

Chelsea’s sexual harassment lawsuit is still pending. In fact, as we were wrapping up production on this episode, Julie also filed a motion to join Chelsea’s lawsuit and added her own allegations of sexual harassment. The Keshmiris are opposing that motion.

A federal judge will decide whether the case has merit.

CREDITS

Robin Amer: That’s it for this bonus episode. 

If you’re not already subscribed to The City you can subscribe right now in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you’re listening. 

If there are significant future developments in this story, we’ll be sure to keep you in the loop. 

The City is a production of USA TODAY and is distributed in partnership with Wondery. 

If you like the show, please rate and review us, and be sure to tell your friends about us.

This bonus episode was reported and produced by Anjeanette Damon, Fil Corbitt, Kameel Stanley, Taylor Maycan, and me, Robin Amer.

Our editors are Amy Pyle and Matt Doig. Ben Austen is our story consultant. Original music and mixing is by Hannis Brown. 

Editorial oversight by Chris Davis and Brian Duggan. Legal review by Tom Curley. Special thanks to Manny Garcia. 

I’m Robin Amer. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @thecitypod, where we have all kinds of behind the scenes content from Season 2, including photos of many of the key people and places in our story, and interviews with Anjeanette. 

Or you can always go to our website. That’s thecitypodcast.com.

Two women have reported to police sexual assaults they say happened at the Spice House, a strip club owned by the Keshmiri brothers. This documented evidence, paired with a secret recording made by one of the women, pierces Kamy Keshmiri’s claims that nothing bad happens to women in his club. (Photo: Andy Barron, Reno Gazette Journal)

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Robin Amer: Hey everyone. So we’ve already wrapped up Season 2 of The City. But some new information has come to light that we thought you’d want to know. So we’ve got a bonus episode for you. 

Now, if you’ve just stumbled across us today and haven’t listened to the rest of the season, we highly recommend you go back and listen to those episodes first, cause everything here will make a lot more sense. Plus,it’s a pretty good story about a city’s struggle for its future—a struggle similar to ones other cities across the country are also facing.

Also, if you didn’t already know, this season of The City is about strip clubs, so it’s not suitable for everyone, especially kids. This episode contains explicit language, including explicit conversations about sex.

Here we go.

Production team member: Previously on The City

Mark Thierman: We’re a destination. The destination is downtown Reno. People are coming to play downtown Reno. They want a little bit naughty. They want some nice. They wanna go skiing…
Melissa Holland
: There are illegal activities taking place within them. They are not self-regulating to make any of it better. They are not entitled to remain where they are and they are not above the law.
Kamy Keshmiri: There’s no records. There’s no reports. There’s nothing. So what do you do? Lie.
Officer Leedy: We got a deal. Heavy-set girl in a red top. Heavy-set girl in a red top.
Stephanie: I don’t understand how I could be in this situation. Like, why me?

Robin Amer: It’s March 2019. The weather in Reno is brisk. Two bartenders, Chelsea and Julie, climb into a car. 

Chelsea: I’m sorry. I’m just so scared.
Julie:  No, I’m fucking scared.


Robin Amer: You can hear the wind blowing as they start their drive to the Spice House.
These two women have worked at the strip club for years, Chelsea since 2016 and Julie since 2009. 

Julie: I have anxiety so bad I want throw up.

Robin Amer: Today, they’re afraid they’re going to be fired for what they’re about to do.  

Julie: That’s fine. Whatever. Whatever. I don’t care. I don’t care if I get fired. I don’t care. I’m standing up for what’s fuckin’ right.
Chelsea: I know, I know.
Julie: What they’ve been doing is fucking wrong. So fire me. I don’t care. Fire me. They’re wrong. They’re wrong. And they don’t have the best interests of their employees. They do not care about their female employees, dancer or not.

Robin Amer: In the past week, two women have reported to police sexual assaults they say happened at the Spice House. Chelsea is one of them. And neither she nor her friend Julie likes how these cases are being handled now.

So they’re going to confront the club’s manager, who’s their boss, and his boss, one of the club’s owners. They’ve secretly set their phones to record. What they catch on tape could be used as evidence. So even though they say they’re anxious, they also sound resolved on what they’re about to do.

Julie: OK, is your phone on?
Chelsea: Yep.
Julie: Oh, yeah. Alright. Let’s go. 

Robin Amer: They’re going to get every word on tape.

I’m Robin Amer and from USA TODAY, this is The City.

ACT 1

Robin Amer: In this season of The City, we tried to understand why Reno’s power brokers wanted to kick strip clubs out of downtown. 

All throughout this campaign, rumors were swirling. Rumors about drugs and sex trafficking and prostitution inside the club. Rumors that benefited the people who wanted the clubs out. 

The city itself worked hard to dig up dirt on the clubs, secretly hiring a private investigator to spy on them, and later sending in the cops undercover. 

Ultimately, the city had very little to show for its efforts. In the end, the clubs were allowed to stay. 

But as we were wrapping up our regular season, our reporter, Anjeanette Damon, discovered a new story of two women working in the strip clubs who took matters into their own hands.

Here’s Anjeanette Damon:

Anjeanette Damon: In July 2019, I interviewed Kamy Keshmiri, who owns the Spice House and two other Reno strip clubs, about what the women working in his clubs had told me. Some dancers had experienced or witnessed prostitution. Others described abusive customers and bouncers whose protection depended on how much they were tipped. 

Here’s how one former dancer put it:

Jane: If you pay enough money, you can basically touch and do whatever. Especially in the back rooms. There’s, like, so much that happens in the back rooms.

Anjeanette Damon: Multiple women described similar experiences, but there wasn’t any documentation to back up their claims. Dancers told me they rarely called the police, because they didn’t want to cause problems for themselves at work or because they feared nobody would believe a stripper.

So the lack of a paper trail didn’t convince me that nothing bad happened in the clubs.

But Kamy considered it proof.  

Kamy Keshmiri: We don’t have any police reports of anybody getting assaulted in these lounges in 25 years. That speaks for itself. Not one. One. One. I’m saying one. You can’t come to me with one. That’s why you’ve got nothing in your hands other than words. 

Anjeanette Damon: Kamy became angry and that turned out to be the last interview he granted me.

I didn’t know it at the time, but one woman had finally decided to go to the police. She filed her report more than three months before I talked to Kamy and just a month before the Reno City Council decided to let the strip clubs stay.

That woman was Chelsea, who we just heard driving to the Spice House with her phone set to record.

Chelsea decided not to talk with us for this episode, but she agreed through her lawyer to let us use her first name. She filed a sexual harassment lawsuit in October, against Kamy and his brother Jamy Keshmiri, who co-owns the three clubs. Her lawyer asked her not to talk to reporters while the lawsuit is pending.

So I’ve pulled together her story from the lawsuit, the police report, and that secret recording, which I got from police through a public records request. And just a quick warning, it gets a little graphic and disturbing here.

Chelsea’s story starts back in July 2018—ironically, right about the time Reno police are sending undercover cops into the strip clubs.

One night, Chelsea stayed at work after her shift to drink with her coworkers. By the end of the evening, she’d had too much to drink to drive home and went upstairs to lie down in a space that used to be a private VIP lounge but had been closed to the public for a while.

She says in her police report that the club’s DJ, Kyle Smith, followed her upstairs. Kyle had been working at the club on and off for about five years. He was a manager, bartender, DJ—whatever the club needed help with. 

Chelsea told police that she awoke to feel Kyle pulling down her pants. She said she lay still, too afraid to move. Pretending to sleep, she peeked out of one eye and saw Kyle’s reflection in the mirror. She told police he was masturbating over her.

She said that when he was done, he left. Upset and crying, she went downstairs and told Julie about what happened. Together, they told their manager, David Hoffman. David fired Kyle that night. 

This story could have ended there. But about five months later, David hired Kyle back.

I couldn’t track Kyle down for an interview. He didn’t return my phone calls, and his lawyer said he’s no longer sure how to find him. David Hoffman also declined to do an interview with me. So again, what follows is based on police reports and Chelsea’s lawsuit. Kyle is a defendant in that lawsuit; David is not. 

About three months after Kyle was hired back at the Spice House, a second woman accused him of assault.

It happened on March 15, 2019, about a month before that final city council vote. 

Kyle was at the bar, drinking after his shift, when David asked him to go clean up a mess in the women’s restroom. As Kyle was wiping up the floor, a female patron walked into the bathroom and went into a stall.

Kyle followed her into the stall and had sex with her.

Later that night, the woman told police that she was raped. When Kyle spoke to police three weeks later, he called it consensual sex. 

Police never charged with Kyle with a crime. But it was this incident that prompted Chelsea to go to police about what happened to her in the VIP room earlier. 

So three days after the incident in the bathroom, Chelsea filed a police report. And two days after that, she asked for a meeting with her manager, David, and the club’s owner, Jamy Keshmiri.

Robin Amer: What happened when Chelsea and Julie confronted their bosses after the break.

Julie: So Kyle getting hired back after, a couple months after he had sexually assaulted Chelsea upstairs in the VIP room, that was OK? That wasn’t, that wasn’t something against Chelsea?
David Hoffman: Kyle came in here to help. And when Chelsea—
Julie: But why was he allowed to come back in? Why?

Two women—one employee and one patron—independently reported to police that they were sexually assaulted in the Spice House strip club. (Photo: Andy Barron, Reno Gazette Journal)

ACT 2

Robin Amer: OK, let’s go back to Anjeanette.

Anjeanette Damon: Chelsea and Julie sound nervous as they walk into the Spice House with their phones secretly recording

Julie: How are you, Jesse?
Spice House employee: You need a drink?
Julie: No, thank you.

Anjeanette Damon: They sit at the bar to wait for Jamy and David.

The police have started their investigation. But Chelsea waited eight months to file a police report. Detectives ultimately said too much time had elapsed for them to recover physical evidence. And Kyle was claiming it didn’t happen the way Chelsea said it did.

But maybe her conversation with David and Jamy could help.

When Jamy shows up they all head upstairs.

Jamy Keshmiri: Mind scooting a little closer? OK.

Anjeanette Damon: Jamy is Kamy’s younger brother and co-owner of the clubs. He’s known as the more pragmatic of the two. 

Jamy Keshmiri: It’s why it’s me, and not Kamy here, in here, sitting here. ‘Cause he’ll get mad and stuff like that. I mean, has a right to get mad. But at this point, we’re not at the level where this is going to help.
David Hoffman: Well, and you saw how upset I was on Thursday about him screaming at me.

Anjeanette Damon: Julie doesn’t wait long before getting right to the point, standing up for Chelsea as David becomes more and more defensive.

Julie: So Kyle getting hired back after, a couple months after he had sexually assaulted Chelsea upstairs in the VIP room. That was OK? That wasn’t, that wasn’t something against Chelsea?
David Hoffman: Kyle came in here to help. And when Chelsea—
Julie: But why was he allowed to come back in? Why?
David Hoffman: Chelsea was drunk up here in the room—.
Julie: So that’s, so that’s a reason, that’s a reason for her to be assaulted?!
David Hoffman: Can I talk, please?
Chelsea: Please let him talk.
Julie: Yes, you can talk.

Anjeanette Damon: David acknowledges that he hired Kyle back after the incident with Chelsea and even says he’s sorry.

David Hoffman: I—I apologize. It’s just really, really been hard on me to find good people to stay here. And this is not an excuse, I promise you. It’s just hard to find people that stay here that actually can work and do jobs, because we’re already cut so thin right now, we’re already doing two jobs, two jobs a day.

Anjeanette Damon: But he says he also asked Chelsea if she was OK with it before bringing Kyle back to the club.

David Hoffman: Those two had talked and became cool. And I asked her, “Would you mind him coming back here?” She said, “I do not mind.”
Jamy Keshmiri: Did you say that? 

Anjeanette Damon: Jamy wants to know if that’s true.

Jamy Keshmiri: Just answer. That’s a yes or no question.
Chelsea: Yes, but it was only—no, I do want to talk. It was only because honestly, out of fear. I didn’t know how to talk to you. Because of you alone, knowing how I cried to you down there. And that you even thought that was even OK, even passed by, to even come in and come question me on that, I actually had issues with that. And I feel like at that moment, I died down. I didn’t know who to talk to.

Anjeanette Damon: Chelsea has just confronted her boss in front of the club’s owner. She’s got David on tape admitting to bringing Kyle back to work after firing him when she complained. 

Jamy blames everybody. He says David shouldn’t have hired Kyle back and Chelsea shouldn’t have acquiesced.

Jamy Keshmiri: That should have never happened. I see the mistake. He shouldn’t have gone back. You should’ve stuck up for yourself. That’s both sides of mistakes, you know. 

Anjeanette Damon: And he yells at all of them for drinking after work.

Jamy Keshmiri: This is your place of work. I know we sell alcohol. But I don’t want you guys drinking here. Please?
Julie: Yes.
Jamy Keshmiri: That’s something. Because if you notice a common theme here is you guys staying after work drinking, OK?

Anjeanette Damon: He says he didn’t know Kyle had been brought back to work after the incident with Chelsea. And he’s angry any of them would have put the club at risk in the midst of the Reno City Council’s efforts to kick them out of downtown

Jamy Keshmiri: Do you understand what we’re going through with our licenses? We couldn’t afford that! You know what, that shouldn’t have been an option, to be honest with you, that he come back. I’d rather not have floormen or just close it down rather than have someone who sexually assaulted you. If he’s—Are you kidding me? If word got out that we allowed someone who sexually assaulted one of our other things, it would be food to the fodder!

Anjeanette Damon: Jamy’s longer term solution: Everybody should just stop drinking at the club and David should hire older guys. Like somehow older guys will be less tempted by the women. 

Jamy Keshmiri: If we have to go find a 50-year-old guy, I’d rather deal with him being slow and lazy and having to sit there than being a predator or or hitting on girls or scaring girls away or scaring customers away … Our problem stems from getting a couple of bouncers who I think are good, who aren’t going to try to fuck the girls, who—I mean, more than normally—who aren’t going to just be fucking weirdos and stuff like that. If we solve that problem, there’s 90 percent of our problem. Would you agree?

Anjeanette Damon: To his credit, Jamy says that Kyle can’t come back to the club. He’s already been fired, again, for the sex incident in the bathroom. But Chelsea and Julie aren’t confident Kyle won’t be let back in. 

Jamy tries to makes clear that won’t happen. If David is shorthanded, just close the club, he says. If Kyle shows up, Jamy says, call the police.

Jamy Keshmiri: But I’m just telling you, he’s 86’ed from here. So the rest of you guys know that. OK? And like I said, if it’s that bad, then whoever lets him in is fired. Like I said, my option is I’ll close this fucking club down. 

Anjeanette Damon: And when Chelsea tells him that she’s gone to the police, he doesn’t dissuade her from seeking justice on her own.

But again, Jamy’s concern seems more about protecting the clubs from negative publicity. 

Jamy Keshmiri: Had I known—do you guys know what we’re going through with the press? Had I known that there was a sexual predator in here…

Anjeanette Damon: Even though Kyle was fired again, none of this makes Chelsea feel any better. Jamy lecturing her about drinking after work, promising to hire older male staffers and refusing to really address David’s decision to bring Kyle back doesn’t put her at ease. 

Chelsea: Well, I’ll just address my concerns … You even said earlier, if I didn’t like how it’s handled before, why do I even choose to work here? I don’t believe that he’s going to be 100% gone. I think give it three, six months, eight months. He’s gonna weasel his way in. So I’m just telling you, I quit. I don’t. I don’t care. I quit. I don’t trust it. 

Anjeanette Damon: Julie follows suit.

Julie: Well, um, I’m going to leave, um. Here’s my keys. I’m not, I can’t I can’t stay here. I’m leaving.

Anjeanette Damon: What I saw in those reports and heard in this secret recording was that here, for the first time, was documented evidence that pierced Kamy’s claims that nothing bad ever happens to women in his club. Proof the club rehired a man they had fired after a bartender accused him of sexual assault. A man that Jamy refers to as a, quote “predator.” 

And beyond the allegations of sexual assault, I discovered something else troubling in those police reports. David Hoffman, the manager who fired and then re-hired the DJ Kyle Smith, may have tried to cover up for Kyle with police after the incident in the bathroom.

According to the police report, David told detectives he had stayed with Kyle the entire time he was cleaning the bathroom, leaving only to grab disinfectant to bring back to Kyle.

But Kyle made no mention of David being in the restroom and was apparently in there long enough to have sex for a few minutes, according to his own statement to police. 

After learning all of this, I wanted to know more about the club’s response to it. Why do nothing more than eke out an apology from David for bringing Kyle back to the club? Why continue to employ David after he told police something at odds with what Kyle himself admitted?

So I called Jamy up.

Jamy Keshmiri: Jamy speaking.
Anjeanette Damon: Hey Jamy, it’s Anjeanette from the Reno Gazette Journal. 

Jamy Keshmiri: Hey Anjeanette.

Anjeanette Damon: How are you doing?
Jamy Keshmiri: Good.

Anjeanette Damon: I ask if he knows about the recording. He does.

Jamy Keshmiri: You take what you want from the recording [00:02:58] I mean, it was me being a pro on their side, as you know, they, they’re trying to find something against me, obviously. But look, I meant what I said. I was very open. So I don’t need to hear it. I know what I said. 

Anjeanette Damon: I wanted to know why Kyle was allowed to work in the club. 

Jamy Keshmiri: Look, when I heard about all the things that went down, of course he’s fired. We fired him. But you know, we don’t know if he was as bad or whatever and stuff like that, you know? Of course, you know, he’s the villain. So they’re painting him out to be a villain. So I don’t think he’s nearly the villain that he is, but he is bad enough for me to let him go and never let him back in.

Anjeanette Damon: Yeah.

Jamy Keshmiri: That’s all I have to say about that.

Anjeanette Damon: So sex in the bathroom is not something that should be occurring, whether it’s consensual or not. Is that—?

Jamy Keshmiri: Absolutely. Absolutely. When I said that, when I heard that, I’m like, you got to go, dude.

Anjeanette Damon: I wanted to ask him more about David and about all of the other stuff I had learned, but he cut me off.

Jamy Keshmiri: I don’t want to, I don’t want to get into this right now, I’m working out. 

Anjeanette Damon: I had a little more luck with his lawyer, Mark Thierman. I reached him on the phone as he was vacationing in Portugal.

As soon as I bring up the lawsuit and Chelsea’s report to the police, Mark launches into an attack on her credibility. Mark mentions that Chelsea has been arrested for DUI in the past.

Mark Thierman: The mug shots are not pretty.
Anjeanette Damon: OK—
Mark Thierman: But go ahead.
Anjeanette Damon: So her, but does her DUI record have any bearing on the fact she was taken advantage of by this DJ upstairs?
Mark Thierman: No. No one should take advantage of people even when they’re drunk.
Anjeanette Damon: Right. So why do you bring that up then?
Mark Thierman: Because it’s just what, you wonder about her recollection of things and how, and if there’s another side to the story. I haven’t talked to Kyle. I don’t know what he has to say.

Anjeanette Damon: No wonder women at the clubs don’t think anyone will believe them, I think. 

Why did the club allow David to bring Kyle back to work, I ask.

Mark Thierman: It was a terrible mistake to bring him back. And if I were him, I wouldn’t have done it. But he did it. Felt sorry for the guy. Who knows? 

Anjeanette Damon: And David saying he was in the bathroom with Kyle the whole time the night of the second incident?

Anjeanette Damon: So clearly, David wasn’t in there the whole time, or if he was he would have known about the sex. So—
Mark Thierman: All right. So, OK. So David should get fired. You’re right. Now what?

Anjeanette Damon: As of now, David still works at the club. So I ask Mark: What are the Keshmiris doing to make sure this doesn’t happen again? He tells me that their team has weekly meetings where anyone is free to bring up their concerns, including safety issues.

Mark Thierman: You go to Thursday meetings. You hear the rants and raves and how they yell at people when this stuff does happen or when a dancer comes in and complains about it.
Anjeanette Damon: So weekly meetings is enough to ensure that they’re safe workplaces?
Mark Thierman: No. They take action at the weekly meetings whenever there’s a problem. Specifically, when this was brought to their attention, they fired the guy

Anjeanette Damon: OK. 

Mark Thierman: ‘Cause obviously the manager wasn’t doing it.

Anjeanette Damon: For Chelsea, the police are really the next step in the chain of accountability. So I turned back to the police reports to see what the detectives were able to figure out about this case. And what I found there … was surprisingly little.

In Chelsea’s case, police interviewed three people: Chelsea, David, and Kyle. David told police he had no idea what happened after Kyle followed Chelsea upstairs, even though when it first occurred, David actually fired Kyle based on what Chelsea told him.

Kyle told police he didn’t masturbate over Chelsea. He said he brought her a glass of water because she was drunk and that she pulled down her own pants.

After those two interviews, police closed the case. They didn’t press any charges against Kyle. 

In the second case involving sex with a patron in the club bathroom, police interviewed four potential witnesses and completed a rape kit on the woman, which they said did not provide them any evidence they could use in the case. Detectives decided to close the case after learning the woman had a drink with Kyle after the encounter and had told people at the bar that she, quote, “thinks she just had sex.”

That’s it. Both cases closed.

I wanted to know why the police didn’t do more.

When the political fight over the strip clubs started, the city threw a ton of resources at sussing out vague rumors of sex trafficking and prostitution. They hired a private investigator and sent in undercover cops. Council members said their intent was to look out for people’s safety. But their efforts ended up punishing the dancers, like Stephanie, who was prosecuted for solicitation after telling an undercover cop “maybe.”

In this case, the city had two women come forward and say they were victims. Admittedly, this would be a tricky case to prosecute before a jury, given the facts involved. 

But again, the city went after Stephanie for the word “maybe.” And here, I wanted to know why the city wasn’t more aggressive.

For instance, why didn’t police interview the manager David when it became clear that his statement did not at all line up with Kyle’s version of events? Why didn’t they interview Kamy or Jamy Keshmiri? Why didn’t they interview Julie, who was the first person Chelsea saw after her encounter with Kyle?

So I went to talk to Lt. Zach Thew at the Reno Police Department. He oversees the detective division and supervises the detective who investigated both cases.

Anjeanette Damon: In my reading of the report, it looked like he only talked to three people—that is the suspect, the victim, and then the victim’s manager, who kind of blew it off. Was there more to be done? I’m wondering if it was thorough enough of an investigation only talking to those three people.

Zach Thew: Yes. To meet our burden of proof, yes. Because unfortunately, it’s difficult in that circumstance where, once again, you have a suspect and a lone victim, you have a delayed report. You have no physical evidence. So, to, you have to weigh the evidence and see if you’re going to be able to to meet your burden of proof to move forward in the case. 

Anjeanette Damon: But what about David, the Spice House manager, potentially telling police a story to cover for Kyle? Why wasn’t that investigated further?

Zach Thew: Yeah, we can always look at obstructing an investigation or tampering with an investigation. So in this case, we do have the individual statements, but we don’t have evidence that that would rise to the to the burden of proof that we need to pursue it legally or in court.

Anjeanette Damon: What I really wanna know is how does this all fit in to the broader fight against the strip clubs?

Zach Thew: In the big picture, we try to investigate, pursue a case on behalf of the victim in the case and we remove any other context that may be going on. 

Anjeanette Damon: Lt. Thew draws what he thinks is an important distinction between his unit and the unit responsible for the undercover operations: the SET unit. 

Zach Thew: We do not, as a detective section, participate in the operations that SET does, nor do we take any sort of direction from the city attorney’s office or any other office on how we’re going to proceed.

Anjeanette Damon: Thew wants to make clear his department has nothing to do with City Attorney Karl Hall’s office, which was responsible for secretly hiring the private investigator to spy on the clubs, and whose attorneys aggressively prosecuted Stephanie.

In short, Thew is saying politics don’t play into his unit’s approach to cases. And in this case, there just wasn’t enough evidence to support a prosecution.

Zach Thew: I understand that the outcome in this case was that we weren’t able to to get criminal charges, in this particular case. But I don’t want to discourage people from reporting. I think it’s, it’s very important for people to understand that if you believe a crime occurred or if a crime did occur to you, that you can come forward to the police department and understand that we are going to investigate that incident on your behalf outside of any political context and without direction or influence from anyone.

Anjeanette Damon: In the bigger story we told this season, there were times when Reno’s powerbrokers seemed to roll right over people with less power and less control over what was happening in their city. People like Stephanie. 

But people like Stephanie—like Chelsea and Julie—are not powerless. 

In the end, Chelsea and Julie decided to take matters into their own hands.

Confrontations like this one, between aggrieved employees and bosses, between women who say they were abused and those they believe are responsible, are happening across America. 

But it’s so rare to actually hear it unfold the way we are able to here, thanks to Chelsea’s secret recording. 

Chelsea’s sexual harassment lawsuit is still pending. In fact, as we were wrapping up production on this episode, Julie also filed a motion to join Chelsea’s lawsuit and added her own allegations of sexual harassment. The Keshmiris are opposing that motion.

A federal judge will decide whether the case has merit.

CREDITS

Robin Amer: That’s it for this bonus episode. 

If you’re not already subscribed to The City you can subscribe right now in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you’re listening. 

If there are significant future developments in this story, we’ll be sure to keep you in the loop. 

The City is a production of USA TODAY and is distributed in partnership with Wondery. 

If you like the show, please rate and review us, and be sure to tell your friends about us.

This bonus episode was reported and produced by Anjeanette Damon, Fil Corbitt, Kameel Stanley, Taylor Maycan, and me, Robin Amer.

Our editors are Amy Pyle and Matt Doig. Ben Austen is our story consultant. Original music and mixing is by Hannis Brown. 

Editorial oversight by Chris Davis and Brian Duggan. Legal review by Tom Curley. Special thanks to Manny Garcia. 

I’m Robin Amer. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @thecitypod, where we have all kinds of behind the scenes content from Season 2, including photos of many of the key people and places in our story, and interviews with Anjeanette.