August 2, 2025 • 55 mins
Kerrin Hofstrand was a stripper in Hawaii, dealt cocaine on cruise ships, worked in brothels, was an ICU nurse during the HIV epidemic and was the first person to bring ketamine into Australia. From her drug dealing days to spending time behind bars, Kerrin Hofstrand speaks about her wild life for the very first time - and nothing is off limits.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives
detective sy aside of life. The average person has never
exposed her I spent thirty four years as a cop.
For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
That's what I did for a living. I was a
homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
(00:23):
The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Join me now as I take you into this world. Today,
(00:47):
I had a conversation with Carine Hoffstrand talking about some
of the things she's done in her wild life. It's
an interesting chat that we had. She talks about how,
as a nineteen year old girl on the way to
New York to study at a prestigious acting school, she
got distracted by a young surfer in Hawaii, She fell
in love, and she never became an actor. We also
(01:10):
talked about how she started working in bars in Hawaii
dressed in a bunny suit, which then led to her stripping,
dealing drugs, and how she spent time in prison in
Australia following a huge drug bust. That's just part of
a story. She also studied to become a nurse and
worked in ICU units. She continued dealing party drugs and
(01:31):
hung out with characters in that world. We also talked
about her time managing brothels and massage parlors, and I
got an education in what it involves working in the
BDSM club. We had a bit of fun. There were
lots of laughs, but also had some serious discussions about
drugs and the sex industry and a lot of things
I didn't expect to be talking about on I Catch Killers.
(01:55):
Krin Hofstrand, welcome to I Catch Killers. Thank you well
I found out about you because they'll produce it here
on I Catch Killers. Said hey, you got to check
this lady out on TikTok and post that you were
doing on social media, and we had a bit of
a deep dive and said, hey, we're going to get
you in on I Catch Killers. So I'm very excited
(02:15):
about sitting down and having a chat with you. I'm
not sure where the conversation is going to take us,
but it will be fun and interesting, I suggest.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Thank you, I hope. So let's see, let's see what happens.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Well, you've had well reading your life and for the
research that we've done in your life. You've lived a full,
full life I have.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I always say. The only thing I haven't done that
I really want is I want to win an Academy
Award for Best Original Screenplay. That's what I want to do.
But first of all, I've got to write a screenplay.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah, that's probably just the thing that's holding you back
a little bit. Well, yeah, I can't talk on screenplays,
but books. You've definitely got a book in your stories.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yeah, if you get a book, you get a screenplay.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Okay, Okay, we'll start writing when we'll be finished shortly
and you can start putting pend the paper and get
the story highs and layers. You've been lived over in Hawaii.
You have worked as a waitress, ended up as a stripper.
Then you've got into drugs. Drugs has taken hold of you.
(03:22):
You started dealing drugs. You've done time in prison. You
manage brothels and all sorts of places, massage parlors, very
different type of life living outside what and let's call
them the probably too offensive saying the straight e one eighties,
but the normal life. What steered you into that type
of lifestyle was.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Probably because I never really lived a straight life. I mean,
my father was in the acting community, and he had
I had a million uncles, Like when in the fifties
and sixties and seventies, when it wasn't cool to be gay,
there was a lot of uncles in the acting industry,
and so I've kind of never really lived a straight life.
(04:07):
It's always been a little left to center. Even though
my mother and father never did anything wrong, I've never
lived like if my mother was a pharmacist. My father
was an actor and also owned in the old days,
owned a truck company and then did real estate, So
that's as bout as straight as we got, you know.
And he was having an affair with his secretary, so
(04:31):
that's kind of really which I knew about. So that's
as about as straight as my life got. So other
than nursing, I don't think my life's ever been that straight.
And nursing was overtaken by my intoverted commas addiction to cocaine.
So that's why I got at nursing and went on
ships where cocaine was more prevalent, so I could do
(04:52):
it more often.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Okay, and I suppose, and we're going to dive deep
into that, into the world of drugs. But also it
was during that time it was experimental. People were trying
that in the world that you were mixing.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
It was the norm in Hawaii, Yeah, because that's where
I got into. Like when I was twelve and a half,
I did a hit an acid here in Australia, but
my drug days didn't start until Hawaii when I was nineteen.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
How did you get into acid at twelve and a.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Half, Well, just because I went to a private school
and people did that. Who knows, I don't know. It's
just the thing we did, you know. I know I
did acid before I had a joint.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
It was just very strange.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Fifteen we were going at fifteen, I was going to
a place called Joseph's Coat, which was down in Piermont,
and we were all doing acid down there. Nobody was
smoking joints in my group. We were all doing.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Acid, okay bypass thee.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah, well we did that on the side, but that
was not the big thing. The thin big thing was acid.
I don't know why anyway, but my main drug thing
came in where cocaine was real cocaine, where it came
straight from South America. Like I had a deal of
friend who got on a plane literally with a bag
(06:12):
full of money, like a suitcase full of money, went
to lax, dropped the bag over to the guy who
picked up his suitcase and came back. So I was
pink off the rock. South American cocaine hadn't been cut down,
hadn't been cut down nothing. So that's the kind of
cocaine we were doing here in Australia.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Now.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
I when I was living in Hawaii, I used to
come home every two years. And when I came home
for the first time after the two years, my best
friend was on heroin. But you know, we won't go there.
I would find some coke somewhere and it was like
I did, I'm like, really, what is this? You know?
So the next time I came over, I bought some
(06:52):
with me right, so that they could see what real
stuff was like.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Okay, in the in the all the different stages of
your life, whether it was in Hawaii. When it was
living here in Australia, What was the high of your
life was? What do you look back and think that
was a great period of life.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Probably moving to Hawaii. I think that really because I've
never been an Australian fan per se. You know, because
going back to my father, I have a father who
is who was an Australiana freak. If it wasn't for
my father, I'd probably be an American citizen now. But
he said if disown me if I became an American
citizen when I married an American. But moving to Hawaii
(07:35):
was probably, to be honest, probably the highlight of my
life because while living in Hawaii, I got my degrees,
I worked on cruise liners, like the best job in
the world. That would be the highlight of highlights, and
had a great life, you know. So that because my
in inverted commas again addiction to cocaine, which I never
(07:58):
saw as an addiction up until right until the end
when it got really bad. But the rest of the
time it was like, oh, we're going out, let's do
So it was your.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Party drunk exactly exactly okay, And you mentioned your father
and just to put the listeners in so they understand
he played Bob Hatfield in the country practice, that's right,
and that's pre paid TV and everything else. That was
a huge show in Australia and I think thirty countries
across the world, and he was one of the main characters.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah, it was. But the thing is that that was
his part. That's what he was remembered for. But he
also the first thing I ever saw my father do
was when I was about six or seven years old,
and it was a swing soft drink and it's the
swing soft drink man. Nothing that you do it with
the seft drink service. You've been eaten for swing self drinks.
(08:49):
That's what my father was to me, okay, And then
all my life he did community theater, he did ads,
he did stuff on ABC TV. He did with Leonard
Teal who was also a really bit of actor who we
called Uncle Len. He did what were the first like videos,
so they were what were called fill ins on ABC.
(09:10):
So between six twenty five and six point thirty when
Belbert started, they used to do a music video. Dad
would do the filming and Leonard Uncle Lenn would do
the music. The you know, there'd be a poem or
something to it. They'd do some sort of story to
it with Uncle Len's voice.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Leonard Teele he was a big actor in these times too,
wasn't he Homicide?
Speaker 2 (09:32):
I think homicide was his big one. He's really big one.
So Dad was in homicide, rip, tied water, rats, all
of them. Everything. But what happened was after mum died,
when my mother died very early. My mother died when
she was forty four of cancer of the bladder, so Dad,
(09:52):
So that was in nineteen eighty one, and Dad in
nineteen eighty when she said no more, I'm not doing
any more treatments or any I'm just going able to go.
So he stopped working in nineteen eighty and started writing
a book on Ben Hall, who he's one of Australia's
authorities on Now all this time, I'm in Hawaii, right,
I'm not here in Australia. And then in nineteen eighty
(10:14):
one I came over to look after my mother for
the last three months of her life because I was
an ICU nurse. And when I went back, I went
back into July. I stayed until after their wedding anniversary.
I went back into the July he called me in
the October. I remember it so well, so all my
life he's been an actor, right, But he calls me
in the October and I'm in bed and I'm watching
(10:35):
Johnny Carson ten o'clock at night, and he goes, oh,
my nickname he never knew my real name. My nickname's Bugs.
He goes, oh, hi, Bugs, just letting you know. I've
got a part in a new show. And I said, oh, yeah,
what is it? Here in my thinking, he goes, oh,
it's about a country doctor. I'm like, okay, here we go.
It's all creatures great and small. It's on Channel two
(10:57):
and you know, way to go dad, And he goes,
it's called a country practice. I said, okay, We're good
on you. You know. That's how it is. So two
years later, because I come back every two years, I
came back to my father at the airport with about
thirty people around him trying to get his autograph and
(11:19):
me standing over here, going dad die. And so then
I kind of realized that he had the part that
my mother had been praying for all her life.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
You know, well, that's it was a different time. Wasn't
like you had your movie stars, but the TV stars
were big, especially in this country, and the Shaw like
that am for years and one of the one of
the main characters. I've asked the best time in your life,
your years in Hawaii, worst time in your life.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Worst time, worst day was the first day in jail.
I retract that worst time, worst day was the first
time in the SPC.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Cells US and the jails.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
One hundred percent worse, one thousand percent worse because I
was busted on a long weekend Queen's birthday. What was
the Queen's birthday? Long weekend on the eighth of June
ninety ninety one, So I was in those cells.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
You've got the pleasure of staying down there.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Didn't get out to Malawa until
the Tuesday because I had a bail hearing. I think
I had a hearing either on the Sunday or the Monday.
It must have been on the Sunday because then't have
to do it within a certain amount of time. I'm
pretty sure it was a ridiculous thing. Anyway, they weren't
going to.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Go You're not the first person to sit in that
chair and complain about the cells at the SPC. It's
a pressive, no light, sad, a bunker.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Doing things they shouldn't be doing. And then the shower
from memory was I don't know what it's like now,
but the shower from memory was out in the open
like there was nothing. There was no privacy whatsoever. So
I would say, yes, that would be the worst, and
at the same time realizing what was happening, you know,
(13:05):
like because I wasn't drunk or high or anything, because
I was just out of bed when they came in,
and so it was after I'd been interviewed for interrogated
for ten hours or eight hours, then I go down
into these cells, into this hell hole, and then the
realization and never being in jail before and never being
(13:26):
around these kind of people before, because the people I
dealt with were you know, Oxford Street gay, so I mean,
they weren't these people. And I was like, oh my god,
this is what it's going to be like. This is what,
however long is going to be like. And so that
was probably the worst day.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Okay, Okay, well it's highs and lows in life. You
haven't lived a flat line life, No, That's definitely had
it's ups and downs. Now we'll put a disclaimer out
here because I know in the conversation I've had with
you and sitting down with you now, you're very forthright
in your opinions and you're moments and the life that
you've lived. And if there's people people shocked by what
(14:04):
we talk about all discussions, my thought is that we
want to take people in a true crime podcast into
the world of world of crime, and that involves in
drugs and the sex industry and jail and all that.
So people might be shocked, But I just want people
to understand that you've come in here very kindly and
(14:24):
you're going to tell us about your life. I find fascinating.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
In a life. I mean, you know, people say to me, like,
you've led a life, and I'm like, yeah, And I
went to I was born and raised in Bankstown, So
I went to Bankstown West Public School and then I
went to marrit And Ladies' College. We never know had
a really stable, what people would think of as stable
Bankstown family life.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Well, I suppose that it exposes you to other things
in life that a lot of people don't get exposed
to their whole life.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Well that's exactly what happened, you know, on my eighteenth
birthday of my father and mother and me standing at
the back of our Bankstown house, next to the barbecue
smoking a joint. You know, that's just how it was.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Okay, Well, did you enjoy your childhood?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
I had a great childhood. I really had a great childhood.
I really until dad started the affair. It was great,
It was fantastic. And that killed my mother. That didn't
kill me, that didn't kill my brother. That just she
idolized my father. My grandmother who I idolized, who I
(15:36):
cry over every day. She hated my father for what
he did to her. I mean, but you know it
was their marriage, wasn't mine?
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah, but that took a lot too.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
It's life. There's paying with the joy, isn't he on that? Now?
At nineteen, I think you got an inheritance from an
uncle or from my auntie, from your auntie, So at nineteen,
I think it was nineteen when you went to Hawaii.
You were going over there to an acting school. Was
that now?
Speaker 2 (16:05):
I was going I had a letter of introduction in
New York to the Stella Adler studio. Stella Adler was
an actor from my father, but a girlfriend of mine
Sandra was going to Hawaii. She'd already been there. She'd
met this guy named Mark. She was in love with him,
and I said, oh, well, i'll stop off in Hawaii
with you. Now. In those days, so I've already got
(16:27):
the inheritance. And in those days, one dollar Australian was
worth two dollars American. Okay, very unlike today.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
So you were rich.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
I was, you know, I had some money behind me.
So anyway, I was on my way to New York.
I'll stop off in Hawaii with you. He lived in
a penhouse which was in an old what's called the
Hippy Hilton on Seaside Avenue, which was like a four
story nineteen thirties building with this huge leni which is
a Patiell and huge beautiful appartment for those days, right,
(16:58):
and so Andrew was going over because she was in
love with him, and she sold up all the stuff
and she was on her way to see Mark. Well
went home to.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Mark nd up your husband? Yeah, okay, okay.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
So Sandra went home after a month, I didn't end
up in Stella Adlas Studios, and I ended up marrying
Mark back here two years later.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Okay, So what attracted you to Mark.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Oh, probably his looks and the fact he lives in Hawaii. Yeah,
oh yeah. He was a semi pro serfer and a chef,
not a chef, but not a not a certified chef,
but a chef, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
So he would have bearn a big thing in Hawaii.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
He was a big thing. He had long blonde hair,
really good looking from New York. He looked like one
of the guys from Big Weddnesday, Jan Michael Vincent. So
he was the exact replica of Jen Michael Vincent for
anybody who knows who he.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Is, one of my favorite movies Big Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Anyway, he I have photos from when they were making it,
actually because I used to have a really good camera
and I was out there on the North Shore and
I actually took photos of Reno Abilera, who was in
Big Wednesday as one of the surfers, right, and I
actually my photos were on the wall of his seurch shop.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Oh cool, Okay, I made it into post. Well, I
can see that you were nineteen at the time, So
a nine year old girl traveling from Australia on the
way to New York got sidetracked and you ended up
in a relationship with him and that's when you started.
Did you start using drugs at that stage?
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Or we were just smoking, just smoking coke, just smoking pot.
I mean, really, anybody in Hawaii from the age of
five to one hundred and five smoked marijuana. It was
the thing. Everybody did it. Coke was again the thing
you did on the weekend if you really wanted to.
You didn't really need to because there was a drug
(18:59):
around it that time called kuludes, and kaludes were really big,
and so you got the kuludes from a doctor and
they were prescription description no no from description, and they
were I don't know what they were really used for.
I think they were used as a sleeping tablet. You know,
they had to be a sleeping tablet because you took
(19:20):
a half and you were like nodding off kind of thing.
But that was the big drug. So you did your
pot during the week and then you went out and
you dance on them and stuff like that. It was
something that is not around anymore. I can't I can't
describe a drug that would be around. I've never taken
a row hypnol, so I don't know what that effect,
(19:42):
but the effect that I hear about with row hypnol
is you black out with kuludes. You didn't black out.
You knew exactly what you were doing. You were just
a bit loose on your feet. You know, you did
have a few drinks with row hypno, with rohypno, with
kualudes versus with X to see right, But they were
the drugs. So coke just was another on the sideline
(20:06):
kind of thing. It wasn't until much later in life,
like I'm talking, until I got just while I was
nursing and until I got on the ships that my
coke use actually.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Is at the point in time when you realize that,
oh that this is detrimental. It's not enhancing my life,
it's what coke.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Yeah, well I didn't even realize it. My Yeah, people
around me and the guy who I actually ended up
marrying after Mark actually pushed me onto the plane to
get me back here to straighten me out from it,
because literally I was like I was on the plane
(20:47):
and they were I must have looked terrible. I really
must have looked terrible. And I had a black dress on.
I remember having a black dress on, and I had
sweat marks like this, and so I was stopped by
customs in my suitcase. So my father was in a
country patress by this time. In my suitcase was a
picture of Dad. So anyway, he's going through the suitcase,
(21:07):
he comes across the photo of my father. He said,
who's this? I said, my father, And he put the
photo of my father back down in close suitcase and said,
go on through.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
It was handy, very handy.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Then I got home and found a Graham in my wallet.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Okay, well, you could have been here in Australian prison.
I think it might be a little bit better than
America than prison, but I'm not sure. Talk about that further.
So you lived a lot of time in Hawaii and
you're working as a cocktail waitress dressed in a bunny suit. Yep. Literally.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Okay, So first, the first job I had in Hawaii,
this is before I was legally allowed to work. This
is prior to Mirk and I being married, when that
first visit was going on, And then I went back
every three months after my visa ran out. I went
back four times before we got married. I was doing trucking,
(22:00):
you know, delivering furniture. That was the illegal job in
the meta commas. Then when I got my residency. I
was working in a cocktail in a strip joint called
El Morocco on Colorkawa. I lived on seaside and off
seaside is Colorkawa. Caloricara is the main street of Wakaki.
(22:20):
So unlike the strip joints here, very much unlike the
strip joints here, people had to sit down, they had
to have a drink. There was cocktail waitresses walking around
getting the drinks. They couldn't stand up, they couldn't get
near the stage, all that kind of stuff. The strippers
did one song dressed in their little teddies or whatever
(22:41):
they had on, two songs topless, one song bottomless. Ye,
So I was walking around getting the drinks. And also
it was a hustle. Now in the Korean War pre
my time, I'm old, but not that old, they had
big girl bars. And what big girl bars were bars
where girls would come up and sit down with you
(23:02):
and go hi, how are you?
Speaker 1 (23:03):
You know?
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Rugby leg and do all that? Would you like to
buy me a drink? And then what we the cocktail
waitresses were on the alert for was a sign of
some description that he wants to buy her a drink,
and the drink started at two dollars and ended up
to whatever they have in their wallet.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
So the poor dumb blokes of the city there thinking,
oh this, this lady is interested in me, and she's
giving them a sign to the waitress that's right, we've
got one.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
And then if they spend enough, then oh, darling, why
don't we go in the booths. So the booth was
literally a booth like a banquette, and there was four
or five of them, right, and you got the big
spenders or what you hope would be a big spender
in there, and in there went a little bit further,
like they touched their boob or something like that. Nothing big,
(23:54):
nothing like, because it was not allowed.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Was these are legal clubs, absolutely legal.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
This is on the main strip of wak This is
absolutely legal. But there was security guards walking around all
the time. So none of the girls could do any
action that you might find in a private situation, right,
but they could have their breast touched and stuff like that.
But if they were within the bra and the security
guard came by, you'd see the cahan go away. But
(24:21):
that cost darling to go back there. It's one hundred dollars.
So then they'd get the one hundred bucks and then me,
as a cocktail waitress, would bring so say it was
an eighty dollar drink, right, so me, a's a cocktail waitress,
would bring the twenty dollars change back in a ten
and two five and have a five underneath stuck onto
(24:42):
the cocktail tray with my finger on it, so only
fifteen dollars would come off side your five dollars.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Run run that past me again.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Okay, So you get twenty dollars change, you fan it
out five ten and two fives, and then the cocktail
tray is always wet, always because of drink, and so
you put your finger on the five dollar bill. You
put your hand like that on top, and you go,
here you go, he's changed. Hold the five dollar bill
and push the.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Fifteen and the drive. They're distracted. They're so distracted.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
By the boob and by the girl. And then the
next step after that was you know, there's an upstairs,
but that's going to cost two hundred dollars, Like you
could tell the many price. I'm just coming out with
these prices. So there's an upstairs, you know, but you've
got to pay for it now. So the two hundred dollars.
Drink could come out. Now. The girls could drink water, sprite,
(25:38):
half and half, which is half champagne, half water, half
champagne and half sprite or champagne. But the girls who
drank full champagne were on The bartenders were on alert
to them all the time to how good or bad
they were, you know, because there was laws, you know,
And so there was no upstairs. Upstairs was Marge's office.
Marge was the owner, so there was no upstairs. Oh, darling,
(26:02):
the last the guy is just taking forever, you know,
we just can't go up right now. And then by
the time you.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Hustled him, they're plastered.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
They're plastered, and the money's gone. I'm here tomorrow night.
Come back tomorrow night and we'll get up there for sure,
and hopefully they come back the next night and do
the same thing.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Or he's got com home and.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Thought, oh they've got no money.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Yeah, okay, Well that's an interesting world. You you start
off there, but you ended up stripping because the money
was money was better. Talk through the process there.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
So Mark, my husband, I will always be very thankful
to him in a way, if that's the word. So
there was a girl that I used to work with
right and at the time, I was going to school
for nursing as well, and I was making good money.
I was making like two and now we're talking the seventies,
so I was making like two hundred dollars a night
(26:57):
and tips, which as a waitress, which would be like,
I don't know, a thousand dollars nowah, equivalent to and
the strippers were making a thousand dollars a night for
not doing anything.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
I'm on the piece of that, yes and so.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
And I was a tall, leggy, good looking person. I
was six on a five to eleven frame. I mean,
Jesus Christ, you know, anyway.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
You pass the audition.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Yeah, I passed the audition. And so I went home
to Mark and I said, I think I'm going to
start stripping, and he said, okay, right, well, because we
had an open relationship, so it wasn't like we were
like this husband and wife, you know. So I started stripping.
Did the audition, which I already knew me so, you know,
you do an audition as to whether or not you
(27:44):
can actually dance and whether or not you can actually strip.
Did the audition and started working.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
And did that and how long did you do that for.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
I waitress for two years, and I waitress for two years,
and I probably stripped for about four four going into
five because I did my two degrees while I was
doing it. But you have to understand that while I
was there was a time in that four that last
four years that I was actually nursing as well. So
(28:13):
it's one of those jobs you can go back to. Okay,
So I went back to it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Back to the stripping, back.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Back to stripping. I no know when into nursing. Oh,
I don't have to do this anymore.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
And then then and then step step away from.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
It, step away from it, and you do a couple
of nights here and there.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
How did you fall on stripping? Was it exciting for you?
Speaker 2 (28:33):
It wasn't exciting. I just wanted to because during the
night you probably there was literally fifteen girls on work,
So there's only so many times a night you have
to strip, like twice, you know, on one of the
If you're on a day shift, then that's where you
get to strip more because there's only four or five
of you on a day shift. But then again, the
(28:53):
money can be so much better because there's less people
and there's those guys that are just walking along because
their wives are shopping. They've got nothing to do for
three hours, but come in and see me. So I
used to like days better, right, and so on the
weekend days was good.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
It was a time.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
That was the time. But because I'm such a talker,
it came easy to me to do the big girl hustle.
And I had some of the best trainers. I had
this girl who was from Vietnam, so I'm like early twenties.
She was old, and she was like nearly forty, you
know what I mean. And she taught me everything she knew,
(29:32):
and she was amazing because she was in Korea in
the B Girl Times and in Vietnam in the B
Girl Times.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
There apparently.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
She taught me everything. And then we had private clients
that we had. We got like twenty thirty thousand dollars
out of in one day. One was an Australian travel agent.
I remember that was a bad one.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Well, you know, look at that, and we talk about
the men and the women doing that. It's almost like
some people might say it's exploiting women, others might say
it's exploiting men. I'm interested to get your take on it,
because that's how I quite look at it. Well, the
women are the ones that are in control, exactly one.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
It's still to this day that way. Everybody has this
opinion or this idea that everybody who's in the sex industry,
no matter what part of the sex industry, is there
under duress. You're talking about a minor one percent who
you will find in certain areas that's.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Where that happens, where they're forced.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
They're not forced in it in a lot of other
places there are you know, if you like, if you
go into these places, you can tell one hundred percent
of the time whether those girls are there happily or
not happily. If they're not happy, you know that something's
being taken from it.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Does a sisterhood look after the ones that are not
happy in that environment? Like if you one that you think, well,
you're just not cut out for this.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Well, it's not the one, it's the place. It's the
place itself. You know, there are places where there are
government run and non government run institutions that go to
these places and also go to the girls and try
to give them as much information as possible about.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Things where it might take it to the next level
where they're virtually obliged to have sex if it came
down to that.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
But that's in that certain area.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Okay, take us into the stripper locker room or change rooms,
dressing room. When you're sitting there, you said, there's fifteen
girls and there's only one on stage at the time.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
What's a conversation like the conversations like I wonder if
there's going to be a big, big whale in today.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Did you make friendships in that environment, like the girls
you're working with and all that you share the common bomb.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Yeah. I actually have a photo of all of us together.
I can't somebody was leaving. I can't remember who was
leaving and we were out for lunch. I should have
bought it. It's a really good photo. But yeah, we
were all friends. I mean once we're out of the club.
It's not like we socialized that much. All the cocktail
waitresses were female, but so I sort of hung out
(32:20):
with cocktail waitresses because they were more like afterwards, because
they were more on my type. Because you know, we
went surfing and everything, just doing other things.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Was there a stigma for you in that being a stripper,
you weren't.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Nobody knew you walked in dress and you walked out dress.
Nobody knew my grandmother when my grandmother came over. My
grandmother was a light of my life. And my grandmother
came over with my aunt who's still alive. And I
was at that time stripping and myke we knew it
was happening, right, and they wanted to see where I
(32:56):
was working.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
That's a little bit.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Mark said, okay, well, we'll go down at eight o'clock
or whatever. So I went up to Marge and I said, Marge,
my grandmother and my aunt are coming in at eight
o'clock and I'd like to be costail waitressing because I
still have my outfit. And she said, yeah, no problem.
So Nana and Jan came in and I was hotail
waitressing with Mark. They watched a couple of strippers do
(33:22):
the stripping, saw that it was all nice and you know,
neat and tidy and above board and on color Kawa,
and then left and then I got changed when.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
Again, okay, well, it's a different experience, the working as
a stripper of cocktail waitress and also studying studying to
be a nurse. It's two different types of work. What
did you always want to be a nurse and stripping
was that to subsidize The study was that it was
(33:55):
money money driven.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
It wasn't money driven. It was coren get a job
that you kind of don't really have to think about
because you're thinking about nursing.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
You know what I mean, switch off you.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
I'm not really, I'm not really. I don't want to
be I don't even want to be a waitress in
a restaurant because that's too much like hard work, you know,
in the middle of Kolakawa. I mean, mike your key
and just no, no, no no. I can do this
and sit down when it's not busy and relax and
if I don't feel like working, if for some reason
(34:30):
I'm having an off day and I don't feel like working,
all I have to do is turn up for the shift,
not make any money, and they give you fifty dollars anyway,
because you were turned up for work, right so and
for your time stripping. So it was just it was
a way to be more relaxed of a night because
(34:50):
I went to.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Apply yourself a study with making that thousand dollars a day,
what had some big days, some small days that just
depend once. Did you call them the whale? Yeah? That
cashed up my biggest day.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
I remember, my biggest day in those days was three thousand,
six hundred dollars.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Would would be funny huge now.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
And he was a guy who was over in Hawaii.
He was young, he was like in his early thirties,
and he was over in Hawaii trying to get his
marriage back together. But he'd he'd come over to Hawaii
his wife had left him. He was from Seattle, Washington,
and his why it's funny how things you remember, and
(35:38):
his wife had left him in Seattle, Washington months before.
This was around Christmas time. It was around my birthday,
so November. And anyway, he came to Hawaii and she
left him with the baby. They had like one year.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
When you say left, not just gone home later.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Left him with the baby. So he bought tickets for
Hawaii for himself and they and her. She never turned up.
So he'd been in Hawaii for a week by himself
with the child, and he gave the child to a
babysitter for the day. I was working day shift this
Saturday day shift, the ones that were the good ones,
and he came in and he said to me, I
(36:18):
know exactly what goes on in here. You don't have
to tell me. Let's just go for it. Let's just
go into the banquette. Let's not even worry about the front.
And I was like, And he turned out to be
one of the loveliest guys I've ever met my life.
Spent all his money on me that he had that
he was going to spend on his wife, that he
didn't spend.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
That revenge, I think so.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
I think so. He gave me a hopey Indian bracelet
for my birthday that he had on He just gave
it to me, and then after he left, with no regrets,
he just said, that's enough. Let's just leave it at this.
He came back and there's a security other walkway and
security guards standing at the top. And I said to
(37:02):
the security guard whatever his name was, he's going to
bring his baby back, one year old back, just to
show me. And so he came in, I met the baby,
and he left. I never saw him again, okay, and
made three thy six hundred dollars.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Well, if it's a transaction where everyone feels good about it,
he might that might have been his revenge. And that, yeah,
tell if I spent it at a strip joint. I
spent all the money at the strip joint. What about
you've discussed a good person there. There would be some
pigs there as well.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Yeah, no, there was nasty girls, but there wasn't any
bad girls, not really, because we had security guards. So
the security guards if anybody started playing up. And this
is remember that Hawaii is the military base in the Pacific.
So the grunts as we call them, on the fifteenth
(37:53):
and thirtieth of each month get paid and they all
come out. Any of them player and they're the ones
that will play any of them play up. And our
security guards were big Samoans.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
Yeah, they're not small dudes.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
You don't play around with them. So all in all,
there's no time I can remember working there that I
had any problems. I worked Marge and I had a
falling out over something I can't even remember what, and
I went to the competition which didn't have the same reputation,
(38:27):
and all of the bad boys went there.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Because there there was a gangster element in Hawaiians.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Yeah, and there was like the Samoan gangs, and there
was the White American games, you know, I mean.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
It was a cocktail too, and as you said, like
a military base and then the hard ass Hawaiian surfers. Yeah,
potentially heavy place. So four years you got through your
nursing and you started working in intensive care units.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Yeah, I started working after two years in only in Hawaii.
In America, you can do an associate degree or you
do your bachelor's. Here is only well, I don't know
how long it is. It's years, it's other three or
four years, don't know. But over there it's two years
or four years. Associate degree. You can have all your
life not even worry about doing a bachelor's and you're
(39:20):
still a registered nurse. So I did the associate degree
and I started working at the same time as doing
part time doing a bachelor's right, still working, quit then
quit stripping, went to do nursing with an associate degree,
still doing college, but only like two days a week
(39:40):
because I wasn't going to burn myself out, and started
working in intensive care. You did, Like I started working
nursing and then thought, I just really want to do
intensive care, So you do. I think it was like
a three month course within the hospital that you work in,
and we were like a class of girls, you know
what I mean there's classes that went through together and
started working in intensive care.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
How do you find that? Because people often say, like,
I was a homicide detective for a long time, and
how did you handle what you saw and did as
a homicide detective? But intensive care unit, that's to me,
that's more confronting than homicide.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Yeah, I loved it. I loved it. I couldn't I
could other than emergency. I couldn't imagine doing any other
kind of nursing because the boring stuff you don't do boring.
I don't, I can't. You know, like I nursed Bet
Middler's father, which was a really big deal so in
(40:38):
and when it got boring, I didn't nurse him anymore.
He went downstairs. But he was actually quite boring. It
was actually quite boring when he was with us as well,
because what happens is when you're on days off. I
don't know what they do here, but when you're on
days off, when you come back from days off, you
sit at the monitors. So in every intensive care unit
you'll see a desk of makeence right. You sit there
(40:59):
because you're being getting back into work, right, don't slam
you with a triple A bypass, right, So they just
get you to sit at the monitors anyway, you say,
you take the phone calls, you do the ekg's and
all that kind of stuff, or ec Jesus, you say.
And I'm sitting there, it's like nine o'clock at night,
and they're all separate rooms, all glass stuff rooms. And
(41:21):
I see this name on the monitors, Middler. I'm thinking, oh, yeah,
right whatever, And about nine o'clock at night, this phone
call comes through and there's this voice and I was
a bit middle of fan, like I'm talking fan, and
I said, Kayser, I see you. Howm I help you?
And they and she said, Hi, it's bed here. Yeah,
(41:42):
and she said, my father, I can't remember his first name,
Midler is in there with a heart attack, and I
just want to know how he's doing. And I like
lost it and I said, miss Midler, he's doing as
well as can be inspected under the circumstances, which is
the line, right, But he's doing fine. She said, okay,
could you let him know I'll be there tomorrow. And
I was like okay, And I got up from the
(42:04):
desk and I went, oh my god, I was just
talking to middle and so When my head nurse came
in the next morning, like I was on like I
think I was on the two till ten or whatever.
I came in and I said to her, Okay, Grace,
I want to look after Middler. I don't want to
look after even though it's only She goes, he's only
a heart attack. I said, then give me three heart attacks. Fine, yeah,
(42:27):
And so she came in. Bet Middler came in. I
got to look after him. And with heart attack victims,
you have to treat them like there's nothing wrong with them,
because every heart attack victim feels like it's the end.
It's like, oh my god, heart attack. It's just it's
(42:48):
the worst. And there's a person over here who's had
a trip, a bypass or a double lung transplant. You
know what I mean, You're okay. So you've got to
get him up. You've got to joke around with them,
You've got to get the moving. You got to them
talking something about anything other than their heart. So that's
what I was doing. But Middle came in with her
then new husband who she's still married to, and I
(43:11):
was joking around with a father, and I'm going get
their up. You know, you got to do this. You
got to do that, niece. She's going. She said to me, Korean,
that's my father you're speaking to And I said, yeah, bet,
I'm not you.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
I got it.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
I got to get enough. Anyway, she stayed for a
couple of hours and then she turned around to me
and she goes, I just wanted to tell you Korean
class I act. I said, thanks, Bed, I learned it
all from you. It was. That was probably the highlight
of my life was that. And then I was the
person who didn't get the autograph. I didn't get an order.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
You're too cool? Yeah, too cool. But that was around
the time she had that movie out, The Rose, which
was huge.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
I probably would be around there.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
Yeah, she was a bigger thing in those days. Okay,
so you've cocaine got hold of you, got hold of
you in that you couldn't function without it, Like what
was your.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Got hold of me? Like I thought I couldn't function
without it, and so I thought I couldn't survive without it.
And then I was working with a nurse who I
wasn't into it. She was. And in nursing you have
to have two people sign off on morphine or any
of the big drafts right, So she was into speedballing.
(44:34):
So it was her and I would sign out the
morphine and then once you'd use the morphine once she
had to throw the rest away, and her and I
signed out that she'd thrown it away into her pocket.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
So for her to do that, she had to have cocaine.
I had the deal I had the dealer.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
So you get to that point where you realize that
or you thought, and you're saying, it's psychological. So you've
had the highs, you're coming down and you think I
need to hit a cacaine. That just I never got
to it.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
I never, No, No, I didn't. Don't think I ever
got to that point. I can't say that I did,
because I wouldn't find myself going out while I was
taking it. Yes, and when I kind of felt like
that was when I was working on it. And I
remember one time one of the head nurses, because I
sounded all blocked up all the time. One of the
(45:24):
head nurses, I had got a phone call from the
dealer and he she said, this girl said to me, karein,
there's a guy on the phone with the same cold
that you've got.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
Okay, So they wake up to it.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
Yeah, so they knew and that was kind of my
wake up call for a couple of months. Yea, And
I straightened up for a couple of months, but I
always went back to it and I started hitting it.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
You know.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
There was like a couple of years that I was
hitting it, which was like you didn't have to worry
about doing this all the time, you know, And because
I was a nurse, I knew what I was doing
and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
Did that give you confidence? Like playing with the dry
until not playing using the drugs? At your medical background?
You felt that I know my limits, I know how to.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
Well you don't. You kind of think you know your limits? Yeah,
you don't know your limits. But I felt confident in
putting a syringe in my arm because I knew what
I was doing, you know, And a lot of people
came to me to put a syringe in their you know,
because it was just an easy way to.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Do it when you were nursing too. That's when AIDS
started to come in. Was that over? What was what
was that?
Speaker 2 (46:28):
Like?
Speaker 1 (46:28):
Did people understand what was going on?
Speaker 2 (46:31):
I was working, I was so as well as working
in ICU. I used to it because of my cocaine
addiction because they needed the extra money because I didn't
want to go back to stripping at this time, right,
and I'm still in college, so I'm juggling a lot
of balls in the air. I worked at another hospital
just as a relief nurse, right, and this hospital had
(46:54):
the first case of there was no name to it,
of this viruses came in and he was a nineteen
year old kid. He'd been on holiday in Maui and
he got really bad kidney pains. So there'd been whispers
in New York and San Francisco of this virus that
(47:15):
was going around still with no name because Reagan didn't
want to name it. Nobody wanted to know about it.
And we got this guy, this kid in. He died
within I think two days, because they had no clue
that virus had gone through his body and he'd only
had two sexual encounters and he'd got it through whatever.
(47:36):
Because the main guy who got it, who started it,
was an airline steward in New York. He used to
go to the bath houses in San Francisco, and the
airline stewards in San Francisco used to come to Hawaiian
and go to the bath houses. It was a straight
through thing and I remember when it first started. We
used to close the doors on them. They all had
private rooms, and we used to have to mask up
(47:58):
like has met. We used to have to mark and
the guys who or the people who delivered the food
would stand at the door and push the tray towards
them because it was worse than if you could put
COVID on steroids. That's what it was like, because no
COVID had a name. Ages didn't even have a name,
(48:21):
you know, And there was no such thing as being
HIV positive versus AIDS. You had AIDS, you had deficiency.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
Don't touch the glasses, don't do.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
Anything, don't go anywhere, don't breathe the same air. Ryan
White was the poster child for a kid who was
kicked out of every school that was known in one
of the states. Yeah, it was terrible, terrible. It was
a terrible time, but it's sort of for people who
were around. Like my best friend died last year and
he was a thirty eight year survivor of HIV and
(48:54):
he didn't die of eates. He didn't die of anything really.
He died of cancer undiagnosed don't even there anyway. He
we just we were brought up just to know what
to do in cases. So when COVID came along, Jason
and I were pretty comfortable because it was kind of
(49:14):
like we were going back to when AIDS started and
what we used to do then, you know, and it
was like masks, gloves, you know.
Speaker 1 (49:22):
That was that was the thing.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
And people who didn't wear masks and COVID I have
the wrath of care.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
In on you. You went, after all, you're a big
mask believer.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
Oh and vaccine, don't even go there without vaccines?
Speaker 1 (49:35):
Yeah, okay, And that that was from your experience.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
And I lost forty friends as forty friends and so
therefore I didn't lose that many with COVID because people
were getting vaccinated, because people were wearing masks, and because
COVID had a name, people understand, you know, people understand.
Speaker 1 (49:54):
Not as much of a stigma either, I would suggest,
because with.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
COVID had the stigma had a terrible sticker. I mean,
you couldn't go you couldn't go into a nightclub like
I used to hang around the gay nightclubs right with Mark.
And one of the big ones in Hawaii was rulers.
And I remember one time this guy who worked there,
Mark went up to him and goes, oh my god,
(50:20):
you've lost some weight. He goes, no, I haven't. I
haven't lost a pound. Have I've been working out? I
haven't lost a pound. Because it was like, oh, he's.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
Got strange horrible time, but strange time as well. You
left nursing and then you start working on a cruise
cruise liner. That don't sound like a happy time for it.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
It was the best time. What was your role with
I was a waitress, cocktail waitress, and then so I
was a cocktail waitress, and then I worked as a waiter.
So you know, you do the dinners, the breakfast, lunch dinners,
and midnight buffets. You can't get a better job than
doing seven day cruises around the Hawaiian Islands. You're telling it.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
Out, Okay, it sounds sounds ideally amazing. You were supplementing
your income. But at that point in time, you were dealing.
That That's how I got on is that was the
progression into using dealing? Was that the natural progression? Because
I hear a lot of times and people don't even
realize they're dealing. They're just giving drugs to their friends.
Speaker 2 (51:20):
And so my deal was Victor and Victor and I
knew this guy I was nursing. I was dealing for Victor.
And Victor said, there's wants to buy from us because
he was dealing. He was buying from us enough to
deal on the ships, right, So he said, why didn't
you get on the ships and you can be dealing too,
And that's what.
Speaker 1 (51:39):
Happened, okay, And the dealing on the well drugs back
then it was like there's a lot of protections now
of stopping that type of stuff, but it was pretty
easy back then. Do you mean to get like law
enforcement like getting through people weren't aware of it. So
it was very well.
Speaker 2 (51:57):
The thing was everybody from the captain down on the
ship was doing coke. This is the eighties. This was like,
this is like greed is good. This is like you
know those movies with Martin Sheen that you know, glorified
money and glorified coke and.
Speaker 1 (52:14):
You know whatever, everything everyone's happy, everybody's nobody cares, wasn'tma
and nobody.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
There was no security guard checking your bag said that
when you went back on the ship.
Speaker 1 (52:25):
Well cocaine like it's Studio fifty four, that type of
that type of stuff. It was just what that's what
the trendy people did.
Speaker 2 (52:34):
You just walked in, that's all, you know. I mean,
it'd be weird not to find somebody without coke. That
was the thing, you know, Like when I was in
New York, I went to was we were visiting, and
I went to Studio fifty four, which was kind of
like you know, they they kind of make it into
this thing that it really wasn't. It was like a
(52:57):
lot of people went there. Yes, it was hard to
get in. We just happened to know a hair addresser
to the stars, and so we got in and it
was cool or it was okay, But I mean I
had a good life back in Hawaii, so it didn't
really matter. But we also went to this party that
was in a place called Bonds International Casino and it
was just new and it was a massive warehouse and
(53:20):
they had so this is going right back. So first
of all, Mike and I were really good dances right
as a couple. We were really good dances myself, but
so everybody was watching his dance and everybody's just doing
bumps of coke while you're watching, and they had the
stairs that made a tune. Now, this is before that
movie with Tom Hanks came out where they do the
(53:41):
thing in Fao Schwartz, where is it? Where this was
before that and was on the stairs were a piano
and they had zeppelins flying around and Grace Jones was
the entertainment that compared to Studio fifty four. It was
a party that was amazing, you know.
Speaker 1 (54:03):
Okay, well, you were definitely living the good life. We
might take a break here. Okay, when we get back,
we're going to have to bring you down a notch
because you've got to do some time in prison. You've
got you've got to pay for your sins. We're also
going to talk about your your career. Your later career
is managing brothels and different things. So fascinating story. I
(54:26):
love the way you tell it. There's a thousand things
I want to ask you. You're talking through it, but
you're taking us into a world that a lot of
people don't get to see.
Speaker 2 (54:35):
So well. Yeah, and it's a shame because when I
talk to people, they're always like, oh my god, and
I'm like.
Speaker 1 (54:41):
Go and live. That's just live living life. Yeah, Okay, well,
we'll be back shortly, but i'll just prepare you that
you've got to do some time. Yeah, all right, cheers,
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives
detective sy aside of life. The average person has never
exposed her I spent thirty four years as a cop.
For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
That's what I did for a living. I was a
homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
(00:23):
The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Join me now as I take you into this world. Today,
(00:47):
I had a conversation with Carine Hoffstrand talking about some
of the things she's done in her wild life. It's
an interesting chat that we had. She talks about how,
as a nineteen year old girl on the way to
New York to study at a prestigious acting school, she
got distracted by a young surfer in Hawaii, She fell
in love, and she never became an actor. We also
(01:10):
talked about how she started working in bars in Hawaii
dressed in a bunny suit, which then led to her stripping,
dealing drugs, and how she spent time in prison in
Australia following a huge drug bust. That's just part of
a story. She also studied to become a nurse and
worked in ICU units. She continued dealing party drugs and
(01:31):
hung out with characters in that world. We also talked
about her time managing brothels and massage parlors, and I
got an education in what it involves working in the
BDSM club. We had a bit of fun. There were
lots of laughs, but also had some serious discussions about
drugs and the sex industry and a lot of things
I didn't expect to be talking about on I Catch Killers.
(01:55):
Krin Hofstrand, welcome to I Catch Killers. Thank you well
I found out about you because they'll produce it here
on I Catch Killers. Said hey, you got to check
this lady out on TikTok and post that you were
doing on social media, and we had a bit of
a deep dive and said, hey, we're going to get
you in on I Catch Killers. So I'm very excited
(02:15):
about sitting down and having a chat with you. I'm
not sure where the conversation is going to take us,
but it will be fun and interesting, I suggest.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Thank you, I hope. So let's see, let's see what happens.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Well, you've had well reading your life and for the
research that we've done in your life. You've lived a full,
full life I have.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I always say. The only thing I haven't done that
I really want is I want to win an Academy
Award for Best Original Screenplay. That's what I want to do.
But first of all, I've got to write a screenplay.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah, that's probably just the thing that's holding you back
a little bit. Well, yeah, I can't talk on screenplays,
but books. You've definitely got a book in your stories.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yeah, if you get a book, you get a screenplay.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Okay, Okay, we'll start writing when we'll be finished shortly
and you can start putting pend the paper and get
the story highs and layers. You've been lived over in Hawaii.
You have worked as a waitress, ended up as a stripper.
Then you've got into drugs. Drugs has taken hold of you.
(03:22):
You started dealing drugs. You've done time in prison. You
manage brothels and all sorts of places, massage parlors, very
different type of life living outside what and let's call
them the probably too offensive saying the straight e one eighties,
but the normal life. What steered you into that type
of lifestyle was.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Probably because I never really lived a straight life. I mean,
my father was in the acting community, and he had
I had a million uncles, Like when in the fifties
and sixties and seventies, when it wasn't cool to be gay,
there was a lot of uncles in the acting industry,
and so I've kind of never really lived a straight life.
(04:07):
It's always been a little left to center. Even though
my mother and father never did anything wrong, I've never
lived like if my mother was a pharmacist. My father
was an actor and also owned in the old days,
owned a truck company and then did real estate, So
that's as bout as straight as we got, you know.
And he was having an affair with his secretary, so
(04:31):
that's kind of really which I knew about. So that's
as about as straight as my life got. So other
than nursing, I don't think my life's ever been that straight.
And nursing was overtaken by my intoverted commas addiction to cocaine.
So that's why I got at nursing and went on
ships where cocaine was more prevalent, so I could do
(04:52):
it more often.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Okay, and I suppose, and we're going to dive deep
into that, into the world of drugs. But also it
was during that time it was experimental. People were trying
that in the world that you were mixing.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
It was the norm in Hawaii, Yeah, because that's where
I got into. Like when I was twelve and a half,
I did a hit an acid here in Australia, but
my drug days didn't start until Hawaii when I was nineteen.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
How did you get into acid at twelve and a.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Half, Well, just because I went to a private school
and people did that. Who knows, I don't know. It's
just the thing we did, you know. I know I
did acid before I had a joint.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
It was just very strange.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Fifteen we were going at fifteen, I was going to
a place called Joseph's Coat, which was down in Piermont,
and we were all doing acid down there. Nobody was
smoking joints in my group. We were all doing.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Acid, okay bypass thee.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah, well we did that on the side, but that
was not the big thing. The thin big thing was acid.
I don't know why anyway, but my main drug thing
came in where cocaine was real cocaine, where it came
straight from South America. Like I had a deal of
friend who got on a plane literally with a bag
(06:12):
full of money, like a suitcase full of money, went
to lax, dropped the bag over to the guy who
picked up his suitcase and came back. So I was
pink off the rock. South American cocaine hadn't been cut down,
hadn't been cut down nothing. So that's the kind of
cocaine we were doing here in Australia.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Now.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
I when I was living in Hawaii, I used to
come home every two years. And when I came home
for the first time after the two years, my best
friend was on heroin. But you know, we won't go there.
I would find some coke somewhere and it was like
I did, I'm like, really, what is this? You know?
So the next time I came over, I bought some
(06:52):
with me right, so that they could see what real
stuff was like.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Okay, in the in the all the different stages of
your life, whether it was in Hawaii. When it was
living here in Australia, What was the high of your
life was? What do you look back and think that
was a great period of life.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Probably moving to Hawaii. I think that really because I've
never been an Australian fan per se. You know, because
going back to my father, I have a father who
is who was an Australiana freak. If it wasn't for
my father, I'd probably be an American citizen now. But
he said if disown me if I became an American
citizen when I married an American. But moving to Hawaii
(07:35):
was probably, to be honest, probably the highlight of my
life because while living in Hawaii, I got my degrees,
I worked on cruise liners, like the best job in
the world. That would be the highlight of highlights, and
had a great life, you know. So that because my
in inverted commas again addiction to cocaine, which I never
(07:58):
saw as an addiction up until right until the end
when it got really bad. But the rest of the
time it was like, oh, we're going out, let's do
So it was your.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Party drunk exactly exactly okay, And you mentioned your father
and just to put the listeners in so they understand
he played Bob Hatfield in the country practice, that's right,
and that's pre paid TV and everything else. That was
a huge show in Australia and I think thirty countries
across the world, and he was one of the main characters.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah, it was. But the thing is that that was
his part. That's what he was remembered for. But he
also the first thing I ever saw my father do
was when I was about six or seven years old,
and it was a swing soft drink and it's the
swing soft drink man. Nothing that you do it with
the seft drink service. You've been eaten for swing self drinks.
(08:49):
That's what my father was to me, okay, And then
all my life he did community theater, he did ads,
he did stuff on ABC TV. He did with Leonard
Teal who was also a really bit of actor who we
called Uncle Len. He did what were the first like videos,
so they were what were called fill ins on ABC.
(09:10):
So between six twenty five and six point thirty when
Belbert started, they used to do a music video. Dad
would do the filming and Leonard Uncle Lenn would do
the music. The you know, there'd be a poem or
something to it. They'd do some sort of story to
it with Uncle Len's voice.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Leonard Teele he was a big actor in these times too,
wasn't he Homicide?
Speaker 2 (09:32):
I think homicide was his big one. He's really big one.
So Dad was in homicide, rip, tied water, rats, all
of them. Everything. But what happened was after mum died,
when my mother died very early. My mother died when
she was forty four of cancer of the bladder, so Dad,
(09:52):
So that was in nineteen eighty one, and Dad in
nineteen eighty when she said no more, I'm not doing
any more treatments or any I'm just going able to go.
So he stopped working in nineteen eighty and started writing
a book on Ben Hall, who he's one of Australia's
authorities on Now all this time, I'm in Hawaii, right,
I'm not here in Australia. And then in nineteen eighty
(10:14):
one I came over to look after my mother for
the last three months of her life because I was
an ICU nurse. And when I went back, I went
back into July. I stayed until after their wedding anniversary.
I went back into the July he called me in
the October. I remember it so well, so all my
life he's been an actor, right, But he calls me
in the October and I'm in bed and I'm watching
(10:35):
Johnny Carson ten o'clock at night, and he goes, oh,
my nickname he never knew my real name. My nickname's Bugs.
He goes, oh, hi, Bugs, just letting you know. I've
got a part in a new show. And I said, oh, yeah,
what is it? Here in my thinking, he goes, oh,
it's about a country doctor. I'm like, okay, here we go.
It's all creatures great and small. It's on Channel two
(10:57):
and you know, way to go dad, And he goes,
it's called a country practice. I said, okay, We're good
on you. You know. That's how it is. So two
years later, because I come back every two years, I
came back to my father at the airport with about
thirty people around him trying to get his autograph and
(11:19):
me standing over here, going dad die. And so then
I kind of realized that he had the part that
my mother had been praying for all her life.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
You know, well, that's it was a different time. Wasn't
like you had your movie stars, but the TV stars
were big, especially in this country, and the Shaw like
that am for years and one of the one of
the main characters. I've asked the best time in your life,
your years in Hawaii, worst time in your life.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Worst time, worst day was the first day in jail.
I retract that worst time, worst day was the first
time in the SPC.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Cells US and the jails.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
One hundred percent worse, one thousand percent worse because I
was busted on a long weekend Queen's birthday. What was
the Queen's birthday? Long weekend on the eighth of June
ninety ninety one, So I was in those cells.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
You've got the pleasure of staying down there.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Didn't get out to Malawa until
the Tuesday because I had a bail hearing. I think
I had a hearing either on the Sunday or the Monday.
It must have been on the Sunday because then't have
to do it within a certain amount of time. I'm
pretty sure it was a ridiculous thing. Anyway, they weren't
going to.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Go You're not the first person to sit in that
chair and complain about the cells at the SPC. It's
a pressive, no light, sad, a bunker.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Doing things they shouldn't be doing. And then the shower
from memory was I don't know what it's like now,
but the shower from memory was out in the open
like there was nothing. There was no privacy whatsoever. So
I would say, yes, that would be the worst, and
at the same time realizing what was happening, you know,
(13:05):
like because I wasn't drunk or high or anything, because
I was just out of bed when they came in,
and so it was after I'd been interviewed for interrogated
for ten hours or eight hours, then I go down
into these cells, into this hell hole, and then the
realization and never being in jail before and never being
(13:26):
around these kind of people before, because the people I
dealt with were you know, Oxford Street gay, so I mean,
they weren't these people. And I was like, oh my god,
this is what it's going to be like. This is what,
however long is going to be like. And so that
was probably the worst day.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Okay, Okay, well it's highs and lows in life. You
haven't lived a flat line life, No, That's definitely had
it's ups and downs. Now we'll put a disclaimer out
here because I know in the conversation I've had with
you and sitting down with you now, you're very forthright
in your opinions and you're moments and the life that
you've lived. And if there's people people shocked by what
(14:04):
we talk about all discussions, my thought is that we
want to take people in a true crime podcast into
the world of world of crime, and that involves in
drugs and the sex industry and jail and all that.
So people might be shocked, But I just want people
to understand that you've come in here very kindly and
(14:24):
you're going to tell us about your life. I find fascinating.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
In a life. I mean, you know, people say to me, like,
you've led a life, and I'm like, yeah, And I
went to I was born and raised in Bankstown, So
I went to Bankstown West Public School and then I
went to marrit And Ladies' College. We never know had
a really stable, what people would think of as stable
Bankstown family life.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Well, I suppose that it exposes you to other things
in life that a lot of people don't get exposed
to their whole life.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Well that's exactly what happened, you know, on my eighteenth
birthday of my father and mother and me standing at
the back of our Bankstown house, next to the barbecue
smoking a joint. You know, that's just how it was.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Okay, Well, did you enjoy your childhood?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
I had a great childhood. I really had a great childhood.
I really until dad started the affair. It was great,
It was fantastic. And that killed my mother. That didn't
kill me, that didn't kill my brother. That just she
idolized my father. My grandmother who I idolized, who I
(15:36):
cry over every day. She hated my father for what
he did to her. I mean, but you know it
was their marriage, wasn't mine?
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah, but that took a lot too.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
It's life. There's paying with the joy, isn't he on that? Now?
At nineteen, I think you got an inheritance from an
uncle or from my auntie, from your auntie, So at nineteen,
I think it was nineteen when you went to Hawaii.
You were going over there to an acting school. Was
that now?
Speaker 2 (16:05):
I was going I had a letter of introduction in
New York to the Stella Adler studio. Stella Adler was
an actor from my father, but a girlfriend of mine
Sandra was going to Hawaii. She'd already been there. She'd
met this guy named Mark. She was in love with him,
and I said, oh, well, i'll stop off in Hawaii
with you. Now. In those days, so I've already got
(16:27):
the inheritance. And in those days, one dollar Australian was
worth two dollars American. Okay, very unlike today.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
So you were rich.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
I was, you know, I had some money behind me.
So anyway, I was on my way to New York.
I'll stop off in Hawaii with you. He lived in
a penhouse which was in an old what's called the
Hippy Hilton on Seaside Avenue, which was like a four
story nineteen thirties building with this huge leni which is
a Patiell and huge beautiful appartment for those days, right,
(16:58):
and so Andrew was going over because she was in
love with him, and she sold up all the stuff
and she was on her way to see Mark. Well
went home to.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Mark nd up your husband? Yeah, okay, okay.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
So Sandra went home after a month, I didn't end
up in Stella Adlas Studios, and I ended up marrying
Mark back here two years later.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Okay, So what attracted you to Mark.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Oh, probably his looks and the fact he lives in Hawaii. Yeah,
oh yeah. He was a semi pro serfer and a chef,
not a chef, but not a not a certified chef,
but a chef, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
So he would have bearn a big thing in Hawaii.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
He was a big thing. He had long blonde hair,
really good looking from New York. He looked like one
of the guys from Big Weddnesday, Jan Michael Vincent. So
he was the exact replica of Jen Michael Vincent for
anybody who knows who he.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Is, one of my favorite movies Big Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Anyway, he I have photos from when they were making it,
actually because I used to have a really good camera
and I was out there on the North Shore and
I actually took photos of Reno Abilera, who was in
Big Wednesday as one of the surfers, right, and I
actually my photos were on the wall of his seurch shop.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Oh cool, Okay, I made it into post. Well, I
can see that you were nineteen at the time, So
a nine year old girl traveling from Australia on the
way to New York got sidetracked and you ended up
in a relationship with him and that's when you started.
Did you start using drugs at that stage?
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Or we were just smoking, just smoking coke, just smoking pot.
I mean, really, anybody in Hawaii from the age of
five to one hundred and five smoked marijuana. It was
the thing. Everybody did it. Coke was again the thing
you did on the weekend if you really wanted to.
You didn't really need to because there was a drug
(18:59):
around it that time called kuludes, and kaludes were really big,
and so you got the kuludes from a doctor and
they were prescription description no no from description, and they
were I don't know what they were really used for.
I think they were used as a sleeping tablet. You know,
they had to be a sleeping tablet because you took
(19:20):
a half and you were like nodding off kind of thing.
But that was the big drug. So you did your
pot during the week and then you went out and
you dance on them and stuff like that. It was
something that is not around anymore. I can't I can't
describe a drug that would be around. I've never taken
a row hypnol, so I don't know what that effect,
(19:42):
but the effect that I hear about with row hypnol
is you black out with kuludes. You didn't black out.
You knew exactly what you were doing. You were just
a bit loose on your feet. You know, you did
have a few drinks with row hypno, with rohypno, with
kualudes versus with X to see right, But they were
the drugs. So coke just was another on the sideline
(20:06):
kind of thing. It wasn't until much later in life,
like I'm talking, until I got just while I was
nursing and until I got on the ships that my
coke use actually.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Is at the point in time when you realize that,
oh that this is detrimental. It's not enhancing my life,
it's what coke.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Yeah, well I didn't even realize it. My Yeah, people
around me and the guy who I actually ended up
marrying after Mark actually pushed me onto the plane to
get me back here to straighten me out from it,
because literally I was like I was on the plane
(20:47):
and they were I must have looked terrible. I really
must have looked terrible. And I had a black dress on.
I remember having a black dress on, and I had
sweat marks like this, and so I was stopped by
customs in my suitcase. So my father was in a
country patress by this time. In my suitcase was a
picture of Dad. So anyway, he's going through the suitcase,
(21:07):
he comes across the photo of my father. He said,
who's this? I said, my father, And he put the
photo of my father back down in close suitcase and said,
go on through.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
It was handy, very handy.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Then I got home and found a Graham in my wallet.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Okay, well, you could have been here in Australian prison.
I think it might be a little bit better than
America than prison, but I'm not sure. Talk about that further.
So you lived a lot of time in Hawaii and
you're working as a cocktail waitress dressed in a bunny suit. Yep. Literally.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Okay, So first, the first job I had in Hawaii,
this is before I was legally allowed to work. This
is prior to Mirk and I being married, when that
first visit was going on, And then I went back
every three months after my visa ran out. I went
back four times before we got married. I was doing trucking,
(22:00):
you know, delivering furniture. That was the illegal job in
the meta commas. Then when I got my residency. I
was working in a cocktail in a strip joint called
El Morocco on Colorkawa. I lived on seaside and off
seaside is Colorkawa. Caloricara is the main street of Wakaki.
(22:20):
So unlike the strip joints here, very much unlike the
strip joints here, people had to sit down, they had
to have a drink. There was cocktail waitresses walking around
getting the drinks. They couldn't stand up, they couldn't get
near the stage, all that kind of stuff. The strippers
did one song dressed in their little teddies or whatever
(22:41):
they had on, two songs topless, one song bottomless. Ye,
So I was walking around getting the drinks. And also
it was a hustle. Now in the Korean War pre
my time, I'm old, but not that old, they had
big girl bars. And what big girl bars were bars
where girls would come up and sit down with you
(23:02):
and go hi, how are you?
Speaker 1 (23:03):
You know?
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Rugby leg and do all that? Would you like to
buy me a drink? And then what we the cocktail
waitresses were on the alert for was a sign of
some description that he wants to buy her a drink,
and the drink started at two dollars and ended up
to whatever they have in their wallet.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
So the poor dumb blokes of the city there thinking,
oh this, this lady is interested in me, and she's
giving them a sign to the waitress that's right, we've
got one.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
And then if they spend enough, then oh, darling, why
don't we go in the booths. So the booth was
literally a booth like a banquette, and there was four
or five of them, right, and you got the big
spenders or what you hope would be a big spender
in there, and in there went a little bit further,
like they touched their boob or something like that. Nothing big,
(23:54):
nothing like, because it was not allowed.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Was these are legal clubs, absolutely legal.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
This is on the main strip of wak This is
absolutely legal. But there was security guards walking around all
the time. So none of the girls could do any
action that you might find in a private situation, right,
but they could have their breast touched and stuff like that.
But if they were within the bra and the security
guard came by, you'd see the cahan go away. But
(24:21):
that cost darling to go back there. It's one hundred dollars.
So then they'd get the one hundred bucks and then me,
as a cocktail waitress, would bring so say it was
an eighty dollar drink, right, so me, a's a cocktail waitress,
would bring the twenty dollars change back in a ten
and two five and have a five underneath stuck onto
(24:42):
the cocktail tray with my finger on it, so only
fifteen dollars would come off side your five dollars.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Run run that past me again.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Okay, So you get twenty dollars change, you fan it
out five ten and two fives, and then the cocktail
tray is always wet, always because of drink, and so
you put your finger on the five dollar bill. You
put your hand like that on top, and you go,
here you go, he's changed. Hold the five dollar bill
and push the.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Fifteen and the drive. They're distracted. They're so distracted.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
By the boob and by the girl. And then the
next step after that was you know, there's an upstairs,
but that's going to cost two hundred dollars, Like you
could tell the many price. I'm just coming out with
these prices. So there's an upstairs, you know, but you've
got to pay for it now. So the two hundred dollars.
Drink could come out. Now. The girls could drink water, sprite,
(25:38):
half and half, which is half champagne, half water, half
champagne and half sprite or champagne. But the girls who
drank full champagne were on The bartenders were on alert
to them all the time to how good or bad
they were, you know, because there was laws, you know,
And so there was no upstairs. Upstairs was Marge's office.
Marge was the owner, so there was no upstairs. Oh, darling,
(26:02):
the last the guy is just taking forever, you know,
we just can't go up right now. And then by
the time you.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Hustled him, they're plastered.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
They're plastered, and the money's gone. I'm here tomorrow night.
Come back tomorrow night and we'll get up there for sure,
and hopefully they come back the next night and do
the same thing.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Or he's got com home and.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Thought, oh they've got no money.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Yeah, okay, Well that's an interesting world. You you start
off there, but you ended up stripping because the money
was money was better. Talk through the process there.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
So Mark, my husband, I will always be very thankful
to him in a way, if that's the word. So
there was a girl that I used to work with
right and at the time, I was going to school
for nursing as well, and I was making good money.
I was making like two and now we're talking the seventies,
so I was making like two hundred dollars a night
(26:57):
and tips, which as a waitress, which would be like,
I don't know, a thousand dollars nowah, equivalent to and
the strippers were making a thousand dollars a night for
not doing anything.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
I'm on the piece of that, yes and so.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
And I was a tall, leggy, good looking person. I
was six on a five to eleven frame. I mean,
Jesus Christ, you know, anyway.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
You pass the audition.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Yeah, I passed the audition. And so I went home
to Mark and I said, I think I'm going to
start stripping, and he said, okay, right, well, because we
had an open relationship, so it wasn't like we were
like this husband and wife, you know. So I started stripping.
Did the audition, which I already knew me so, you know,
you do an audition as to whether or not you
(27:44):
can actually dance and whether or not you can actually strip.
Did the audition and started working.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
And did that and how long did you do that for.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
I waitress for two years, and I waitress for two years,
and I probably stripped for about four four going into
five because I did my two degrees while I was
doing it. But you have to understand that while I
was there was a time in that four that last
four years that I was actually nursing as well. So
(28:13):
it's one of those jobs you can go back to. Okay,
So I went back to it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Back to the stripping, back.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Back to stripping. I no know when into nursing. Oh,
I don't have to do this anymore.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
And then then and then step step away from.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
It, step away from it, and you do a couple
of nights here and there.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
How did you fall on stripping? Was it exciting for you?
Speaker 2 (28:33):
It wasn't exciting. I just wanted to because during the
night you probably there was literally fifteen girls on work,
So there's only so many times a night you have
to strip, like twice, you know, on one of the
If you're on a day shift, then that's where you
get to strip more because there's only four or five
of you on a day shift. But then again, the
(28:53):
money can be so much better because there's less people
and there's those guys that are just walking along because
their wives are shopping. They've got nothing to do for
three hours, but come in and see me. So I
used to like days better, right, and so on the
weekend days was good.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
It was a time.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
That was the time. But because I'm such a talker,
it came easy to me to do the big girl hustle.
And I had some of the best trainers. I had
this girl who was from Vietnam, so I'm like early twenties.
She was old, and she was like nearly forty, you
know what I mean. And she taught me everything she knew,
(29:32):
and she was amazing because she was in Korea in
the B Girl Times and in Vietnam in the B
Girl Times.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
There apparently.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
She taught me everything. And then we had private clients
that we had. We got like twenty thirty thousand dollars
out of in one day. One was an Australian travel agent.
I remember that was a bad one.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Well, you know, look at that, and we talk about
the men and the women doing that. It's almost like
some people might say it's exploiting women, others might say
it's exploiting men. I'm interested to get your take on it,
because that's how I quite look at it. Well, the
women are the ones that are in control, exactly one.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
It's still to this day that way. Everybody has this
opinion or this idea that everybody who's in the sex industry,
no matter what part of the sex industry, is there
under duress. You're talking about a minor one percent who
you will find in certain areas that's.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Where that happens, where they're forced.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
They're not forced in it in a lot of other
places there are you know, if you like, if you
go into these places, you can tell one hundred percent
of the time whether those girls are there happily or
not happily. If they're not happy, you know that something's
being taken from it.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Does a sisterhood look after the ones that are not
happy in that environment? Like if you one that you think, well,
you're just not cut out for this.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Well, it's not the one, it's the place. It's the
place itself. You know, there are places where there are
government run and non government run institutions that go to
these places and also go to the girls and try
to give them as much information as possible about.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Things where it might take it to the next level
where they're virtually obliged to have sex if it came
down to that.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
But that's in that certain area.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Okay, take us into the stripper locker room or change rooms,
dressing room. When you're sitting there, you said, there's fifteen
girls and there's only one on stage at the time.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
What's a conversation like the conversations like I wonder if
there's going to be a big, big whale in today.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Did you make friendships in that environment, like the girls
you're working with and all that you share the common bomb.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Yeah. I actually have a photo of all of us together.
I can't somebody was leaving. I can't remember who was
leaving and we were out for lunch. I should have
bought it. It's a really good photo. But yeah, we
were all friends. I mean once we're out of the club.
It's not like we socialized that much. All the cocktail
waitresses were female, but so I sort of hung out
(32:20):
with cocktail waitresses because they were more like afterwards, because
they were more on my type. Because you know, we
went surfing and everything, just doing other things.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Was there a stigma for you in that being a stripper,
you weren't.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Nobody knew you walked in dress and you walked out dress.
Nobody knew my grandmother when my grandmother came over. My
grandmother was a light of my life. And my grandmother
came over with my aunt who's still alive. And I
was at that time stripping and myke we knew it
was happening, right, and they wanted to see where I
(32:56):
was working.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
That's a little bit.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Mark said, okay, well, we'll go down at eight o'clock
or whatever. So I went up to Marge and I said, Marge,
my grandmother and my aunt are coming in at eight
o'clock and I'd like to be costail waitressing because I
still have my outfit. And she said, yeah, no problem.
So Nana and Jan came in and I was hotail
waitressing with Mark. They watched a couple of strippers do
(33:22):
the stripping, saw that it was all nice and you know,
neat and tidy and above board and on color Kawa,
and then left and then I got changed when.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
Again, okay, well, it's a different experience, the working as
a stripper of cocktail waitress and also studying studying to
be a nurse. It's two different types of work. What
did you always want to be a nurse and stripping
was that to subsidize The study was that it was
(33:55):
money money driven.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
It wasn't money driven. It was coren get a job
that you kind of don't really have to think about
because you're thinking about nursing.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
You know what I mean, switch off you.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
I'm not really, I'm not really. I don't want to
be I don't even want to be a waitress in
a restaurant because that's too much like hard work, you know,
in the middle of Kolakawa. I mean, mike your key
and just no, no, no no. I can do this
and sit down when it's not busy and relax and
if I don't feel like working, if for some reason
(34:30):
I'm having an off day and I don't feel like working,
all I have to do is turn up for the shift,
not make any money, and they give you fifty dollars anyway,
because you were turned up for work, right so and
for your time stripping. So it was just it was
a way to be more relaxed of a night because
(34:50):
I went to.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Apply yourself a study with making that thousand dollars a day,
what had some big days, some small days that just
depend once. Did you call them the whale? Yeah? That
cashed up my biggest day.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
I remember, my biggest day in those days was three thousand,
six hundred dollars.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Would would be funny huge now.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
And he was a guy who was over in Hawaii.
He was young, he was like in his early thirties,
and he was over in Hawaii trying to get his
marriage back together. But he'd he'd come over to Hawaii
his wife had left him. He was from Seattle, Washington,
and his why it's funny how things you remember, and
(35:38):
his wife had left him in Seattle, Washington months before.
This was around Christmas time. It was around my birthday,
so November. And anyway, he came to Hawaii and she
left him with the baby. They had like one year.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
When you say left, not just gone home later.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Left him with the baby. So he bought tickets for
Hawaii for himself and they and her. She never turned up.
So he'd been in Hawaii for a week by himself
with the child, and he gave the child to a
babysitter for the day. I was working day shift this
Saturday day shift, the ones that were the good ones,
and he came in and he said to me, I
(36:18):
know exactly what goes on in here. You don't have
to tell me. Let's just go for it. Let's just
go into the banquette. Let's not even worry about the front.
And I was like, And he turned out to be
one of the loveliest guys I've ever met my life.
Spent all his money on me that he had that
he was going to spend on his wife, that he
didn't spend.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
That revenge, I think so.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
I think so. He gave me a hopey Indian bracelet
for my birthday that he had on He just gave
it to me, and then after he left, with no regrets,
he just said, that's enough. Let's just leave it at this.
He came back and there's a security other walkway and
security guards standing at the top. And I said to
(37:02):
the security guard whatever his name was, he's going to
bring his baby back, one year old back, just to
show me. And so he came in, I met the baby,
and he left. I never saw him again, okay, and
made three thy six hundred dollars.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Well, if it's a transaction where everyone feels good about it,
he might that might have been his revenge. And that, yeah,
tell if I spent it at a strip joint. I
spent all the money at the strip joint. What about
you've discussed a good person there. There would be some
pigs there as well.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Yeah, no, there was nasty girls, but there wasn't any
bad girls, not really, because we had security guards. So
the security guards if anybody started playing up. And this
is remember that Hawaii is the military base in the Pacific.
So the grunts as we call them, on the fifteenth
(37:53):
and thirtieth of each month get paid and they all
come out. Any of them player and they're the ones
that will play any of them play up. And our
security guards were big Samoans.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
Yeah, they're not small dudes.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
You don't play around with them. So all in all,
there's no time I can remember working there that I
had any problems. I worked Marge and I had a
falling out over something I can't even remember what, and
I went to the competition which didn't have the same reputation,
(38:27):
and all of the bad boys went there.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Because there there was a gangster element in Hawaiians.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Yeah, and there was like the Samoan gangs, and there
was the White American games, you know, I mean.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
It was a cocktail too, and as you said, like
a military base and then the hard ass Hawaiian surfers. Yeah,
potentially heavy place. So four years you got through your
nursing and you started working in intensive care units.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Yeah, I started working after two years in only in Hawaii.
In America, you can do an associate degree or you
do your bachelor's. Here is only well, I don't know
how long it is. It's years, it's other three or
four years, don't know. But over there it's two years
or four years. Associate degree. You can have all your
life not even worry about doing a bachelor's and you're
(39:20):
still a registered nurse. So I did the associate degree
and I started working at the same time as doing
part time doing a bachelor's right, still working, quit then
quit stripping, went to do nursing with an associate degree,
still doing college, but only like two days a week
(39:40):
because I wasn't going to burn myself out, and started
working in intensive care. You did, Like I started working
nursing and then thought, I just really want to do
intensive care, So you do. I think it was like
a three month course within the hospital that you work in,
and we were like a class of girls, you know
what I mean there's classes that went through together and
started working in intensive care.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
How do you find that? Because people often say, like,
I was a homicide detective for a long time, and
how did you handle what you saw and did as
a homicide detective? But intensive care unit, that's to me,
that's more confronting than homicide.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Yeah, I loved it. I loved it. I couldn't I
could other than emergency. I couldn't imagine doing any other
kind of nursing because the boring stuff you don't do boring.
I don't, I can't. You know, like I nursed Bet
Middler's father, which was a really big deal so in
(40:38):
and when it got boring, I didn't nurse him anymore.
He went downstairs. But he was actually quite boring. It
was actually quite boring when he was with us as well,
because what happens is when you're on days off. I
don't know what they do here, but when you're on
days off, when you come back from days off, you
sit at the monitors. So in every intensive care unit
you'll see a desk of makeence right. You sit there
(40:59):
because you're being getting back into work, right, don't slam
you with a triple A bypass, right, So they just
get you to sit at the monitors anyway, you say,
you take the phone calls, you do the ekg's and
all that kind of stuff, or ec Jesus, you say.
And I'm sitting there, it's like nine o'clock at night,
and they're all separate rooms, all glass stuff rooms. And
(41:21):
I see this name on the monitors, Middler. I'm thinking, oh, yeah,
right whatever, And about nine o'clock at night, this phone
call comes through and there's this voice and I was
a bit middle of fan, like I'm talking fan, and
I said, Kayser, I see you. Howm I help you?
And they and she said, Hi, it's bed here. Yeah,
(41:42):
and she said, my father, I can't remember his first name,
Midler is in there with a heart attack, and I
just want to know how he's doing. And I like
lost it and I said, miss Midler, he's doing as
well as can be inspected under the circumstances, which is
the line, right, But he's doing fine. She said, okay,
could you let him know I'll be there tomorrow. And
I was like okay, And I got up from the
(42:04):
desk and I went, oh my god, I was just
talking to middle and so When my head nurse came
in the next morning, like I was on like I
think I was on the two till ten or whatever.
I came in and I said to her, Okay, Grace,
I want to look after Middler. I don't want to
look after even though it's only She goes, he's only
a heart attack. I said, then give me three heart attacks. Fine, yeah,
(42:27):
And so she came in. Bet Middler came in. I
got to look after him. And with heart attack victims,
you have to treat them like there's nothing wrong with them,
because every heart attack victim feels like it's the end.
It's like, oh my god, heart attack. It's just it's
(42:48):
the worst. And there's a person over here who's had
a trip, a bypass or a double lung transplant. You
know what I mean, You're okay. So you've got to
get him up. You've got to joke around with them,
You've got to get the moving. You got to them
talking something about anything other than their heart. So that's
what I was doing. But Middle came in with her
then new husband who she's still married to, and I
(43:11):
was joking around with a father, and I'm going get
their up. You know, you got to do this. You
got to do that, niece. She's going. She said to me, Korean,
that's my father you're speaking to And I said, yeah, bet,
I'm not you.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
I got it.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
I got to get enough. Anyway, she stayed for a
couple of hours and then she turned around to me
and she goes, I just wanted to tell you Korean
class I act. I said, thanks, Bed, I learned it
all from you. It was. That was probably the highlight
of my life was that. And then I was the
person who didn't get the autograph. I didn't get an order.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
You're too cool? Yeah, too cool. But that was around
the time she had that movie out, The Rose, which
was huge.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
I probably would be around there.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
Yeah, she was a bigger thing in those days. Okay,
so you've cocaine got hold of you, got hold of
you in that you couldn't function without it, Like what
was your.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Got hold of me? Like I thought I couldn't function
without it, and so I thought I couldn't survive without it.
And then I was working with a nurse who I
wasn't into it. She was. And in nursing you have
to have two people sign off on morphine or any
of the big drafts right, So she was into speedballing.
(44:34):
So it was her and I would sign out the
morphine and then once you'd use the morphine once she
had to throw the rest away, and her and I
signed out that she'd thrown it away into her pocket.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
So for her to do that, she had to have cocaine.
I had the deal I had the dealer.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
So you get to that point where you realize that
or you thought, and you're saying, it's psychological. So you've
had the highs, you're coming down and you think I
need to hit a cacaine. That just I never got
to it.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
I never, No, No, I didn't. Don't think I ever
got to that point. I can't say that I did,
because I wouldn't find myself going out while I was
taking it. Yes, and when I kind of felt like
that was when I was working on it. And I
remember one time one of the head nurses, because I
sounded all blocked up all the time. One of the
(45:24):
head nurses, I had got a phone call from the
dealer and he she said, this girl said to me, karein,
there's a guy on the phone with the same cold
that you've got.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
Okay, So they wake up to it.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
Yeah, so they knew and that was kind of my
wake up call for a couple of months. Yea, And
I straightened up for a couple of months, but I
always went back to it and I started hitting it.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
You know.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
There was like a couple of years that I was
hitting it, which was like you didn't have to worry
about doing this all the time, you know, And because
I was a nurse, I knew what I was doing
and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
Did that give you confidence? Like playing with the dry
until not playing using the drugs? At your medical background?
You felt that I know my limits, I know how to.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
Well you don't. You kind of think you know your limits? Yeah,
you don't know your limits. But I felt confident in
putting a syringe in my arm because I knew what
I was doing, you know, And a lot of people
came to me to put a syringe in their you know,
because it was just an easy way to.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Do it when you were nursing too. That's when AIDS
started to come in. Was that over? What was what
was that?
Speaker 2 (46:28):
Like?
Speaker 1 (46:28):
Did people understand what was going on?
Speaker 2 (46:31):
I was working, I was so as well as working
in ICU. I used to it because of my cocaine
addiction because they needed the extra money because I didn't
want to go back to stripping at this time, right,
and I'm still in college, so I'm juggling a lot
of balls in the air. I worked at another hospital
just as a relief nurse, right, and this hospital had
(46:54):
the first case of there was no name to it,
of this viruses came in and he was a nineteen
year old kid. He'd been on holiday in Maui and
he got really bad kidney pains. So there'd been whispers
in New York and San Francisco of this virus that
(47:15):
was going around still with no name because Reagan didn't
want to name it. Nobody wanted to know about it.
And we got this guy, this kid in. He died
within I think two days, because they had no clue
that virus had gone through his body and he'd only
had two sexual encounters and he'd got it through whatever.
(47:36):
Because the main guy who got it, who started it,
was an airline steward in New York. He used to
go to the bath houses in San Francisco, and the
airline stewards in San Francisco used to come to Hawaiian
and go to the bath houses. It was a straight
through thing and I remember when it first started. We
used to close the doors on them. They all had
private rooms, and we used to have to mask up
(47:58):
like has met. We used to have to mark and
the guys who or the people who delivered the food
would stand at the door and push the tray towards
them because it was worse than if you could put
COVID on steroids. That's what it was like, because no
COVID had a name. Ages didn't even have a name,
(48:21):
you know, And there was no such thing as being
HIV positive versus AIDS. You had AIDS, you had deficiency.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
Don't touch the glasses, don't do.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
Anything, don't go anywhere, don't breathe the same air. Ryan
White was the poster child for a kid who was
kicked out of every school that was known in one
of the states. Yeah, it was terrible, terrible. It was
a terrible time, but it's sort of for people who
were around. Like my best friend died last year and
he was a thirty eight year survivor of HIV and
(48:54):
he didn't die of eates. He didn't die of anything really.
He died of cancer undiagnosed don't even there anyway. He
we just we were brought up just to know what
to do in cases. So when COVID came along, Jason
and I were pretty comfortable because it was kind of
(49:14):
like we were going back to when AIDS started and
what we used to do then, you know, and it
was like masks, gloves, you know.
Speaker 1 (49:22):
That was that was the thing.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
And people who didn't wear masks and COVID I have
the wrath of care.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
In on you. You went, after all, you're a big
mask believer.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
Oh and vaccine, don't even go there without vaccines?
Speaker 1 (49:35):
Yeah, okay, And that that was from your experience.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
And I lost forty friends as forty friends and so
therefore I didn't lose that many with COVID because people
were getting vaccinated, because people were wearing masks, and because
COVID had a name, people understand, you know, people understand.
Speaker 1 (49:54):
Not as much of a stigma either, I would suggest,
because with.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
COVID had the stigma had a terrible sticker. I mean,
you couldn't go you couldn't go into a nightclub like
I used to hang around the gay nightclubs right with Mark.
And one of the big ones in Hawaii was rulers.
And I remember one time this guy who worked there,
Mark went up to him and goes, oh my god,
(50:20):
you've lost some weight. He goes, no, I haven't. I
haven't lost a pound. Have I've been working out? I
haven't lost a pound. Because it was like, oh, he's.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
Got strange horrible time, but strange time as well. You
left nursing and then you start working on a cruise
cruise liner. That don't sound like a happy time for it.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
It was the best time. What was your role with
I was a waitress, cocktail waitress, and then so I
was a cocktail waitress, and then I worked as a waiter.
So you know, you do the dinners, the breakfast, lunch dinners,
and midnight buffets. You can't get a better job than
doing seven day cruises around the Hawaiian Islands. You're telling it.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
Out, Okay, it sounds sounds ideally amazing. You were supplementing
your income. But at that point in time, you were dealing.
That That's how I got on is that was the
progression into using dealing? Was that the natural progression? Because
I hear a lot of times and people don't even
realize they're dealing. They're just giving drugs to their friends.
Speaker 2 (51:20):
And so my deal was Victor and Victor and I
knew this guy I was nursing. I was dealing for Victor.
And Victor said, there's wants to buy from us because
he was dealing. He was buying from us enough to
deal on the ships, right, So he said, why didn't
you get on the ships and you can be dealing too,
And that's what.
Speaker 1 (51:39):
Happened, okay, And the dealing on the well drugs back
then it was like there's a lot of protections now
of stopping that type of stuff, but it was pretty
easy back then. Do you mean to get like law
enforcement like getting through people weren't aware of it. So
it was very well.
Speaker 2 (51:57):
The thing was everybody from the captain down on the
ship was doing coke. This is the eighties. This was like,
this is like greed is good. This is like you
know those movies with Martin Sheen that you know, glorified
money and glorified coke and.
Speaker 1 (52:14):
You know whatever, everything everyone's happy, everybody's nobody cares, wasn'tma
and nobody.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
There was no security guard checking your bag said that
when you went back on the ship.
Speaker 1 (52:25):
Well cocaine like it's Studio fifty four, that type of
that type of stuff. It was just what that's what
the trendy people did.
Speaker 2 (52:34):
You just walked in, that's all, you know. I mean,
it'd be weird not to find somebody without coke. That
was the thing, you know, Like when I was in
New York, I went to was we were visiting, and
I went to Studio fifty four, which was kind of
like you know, they they kind of make it into
this thing that it really wasn't. It was like a
(52:57):
lot of people went there. Yes, it was hard to
get in. We just happened to know a hair addresser
to the stars, and so we got in and it
was cool or it was okay, But I mean I
had a good life back in Hawaii, so it didn't
really matter. But we also went to this party that
was in a place called Bonds International Casino and it
was just new and it was a massive warehouse and
(53:20):
they had so this is going right back. So first
of all, Mike and I were really good dances right
as a couple. We were really good dances myself, but
so everybody was watching his dance and everybody's just doing
bumps of coke while you're watching, and they had the
stairs that made a tune. Now, this is before that
movie with Tom Hanks came out where they do the
(53:41):
thing in Fao Schwartz, where is it? Where this was
before that and was on the stairs were a piano
and they had zeppelins flying around and Grace Jones was
the entertainment that compared to Studio fifty four. It was
a party that was amazing, you know.
Speaker 1 (54:03):
Okay, well, you were definitely living the good life. We
might take a break here. Okay, when we get back,
we're going to have to bring you down a notch
because you've got to do some time in prison. You've
got you've got to pay for your sins. We're also
going to talk about your your career. Your later career
is managing brothels and different things. So fascinating story. I
(54:26):
love the way you tell it. There's a thousand things
I want to ask you. You're talking through it, but
you're taking us into a world that a lot of
people don't get to see.
Speaker 2 (54:35):
So well. Yeah, and it's a shame because when I
talk to people, they're always like, oh my god, and
I'm like.
Speaker 1 (54:41):
Go and live. That's just live living life. Yeah, Okay, well,
we'll be back shortly, but i'll just prepare you that
you've got to do some time. Yeah, all right, cheers,
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