Sunday, December 22, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

'Nightmare' at strip club haunts man

Disabled Kansan seeks damages for injuries suffered at Crazy Horse Too

Amy Henry on Friday removes the sling from a mechanical lifter used to move her paralyzed husband, Kirk, from his bed to a wheelchair in their home in Olathe, Kan. Photo by REED HOFFMANN/ SPECIAL TO THE REVIEW-JOURNAL Kirk Henry's 12-year-old son, Jared, checks his father's blood pressure Friday morning after Henry felt light-headed. Since his neck was broken, problems with low blood pressure have threatened Henry's life repeatedly. Photo by REED HOFFMANN/ SPECIAL TO THE REVIEW-JOURNAL Kirk Henry poses with his family in this undated photograph taken before his September 2001 injury. With Henry are, from left, his son, Jared; wife, Amy; and daughter, Karsyn.

Kirk Henry says his life couldn't have been happier last year before a visit to a Las Vegas strip club turned tragic.

The 43-year-old salesman of computer cables was earning $140,000 a year, was in great shape and enjoyed a carefree life with his wife, son and daughter.

But all that forever changed when, Henry says, a dispute over an $80 tab at the Crazy Horse Too Gentlemen's Club led to an employee attacking him just outside the front doors and breaking his neck, leaving him on the ground and unable to move.

"I thought he was going to come back and kill me. It was a nightmare," Henry said last week in a telephone interview from his home outside Kansas City, Kan.

Police responded to the Sept. 20, 2001, incident and, two weeks later, served search warrants on the club and confiscated business records. No one has been charged.

But Henry, now paralyzed from the chest down and suffering numerous health problems that prevent him from working, is seeking damages through a civil lawsuit he filed last year against the Crazy Horse Too and owner Rick Rizzolo.

Crazy Horse Too representatives contend that Henry's neck was broken when he fell down after spending hours drinking in the club. They say a club employee summoned paramedics after finding him lying in the parking lot.

Rizzolo attorney Daniel Carvalho said Henry's memory of the incident is unreliable.

"At the time of this incident, he had been up for over 26 hours," Carvalho said. "He was over two times the legal (blood-alcohol) limit to drive a vehicle, and that was taken an hour and a half after the accident."

But Henry's attorneys, former federal organized crime prosecutors Donald Campbell and Stan Hunterton, contend Rizzolo has cultivated an environment of lawlessness at the Industrial Road club by employing numerous felons with lengthy criminal histories that include convictions for battery, robbery, extortion, burglary, fraud and drug dealing.

"For years, the management and 'security' staff of the Crazy Horse has been infested by a rogues' gallery of thugs, thieves, drug pushers, and corrupt ex-cops," Campbell wrote in court documents. "Most, if not all, have well documented ties to organized crime figures who frequent the premises. All of this has nurtured a culture of violence marked by robberies, beatings and even death."

Last month, court documents filed in conjunction with the case revealed that Las Vegas police and the FBI have been conducting a joint criminal probe of the club for more than a year.

In a case set for trial next month, Rizzolo's attorneys will defend a lawsuit containing allegations strikingly similar to Henry's. In that suit, a California woman alleges that Crazy Horse Too bouncers, among them two convicted felons, beat her husband to death behind the club.

Among those accused of killing trucker Scott Fau in 1995 is former Las Vegas police officer Joe Blasko, who died last month of natural causes. Blasko was thrown off the force in 1978 for supplying information to mob enforcer Anthony "Tony the Ant" Spilotro.

Blasko went to work at the Crazy Horse for Rizzolo, a generous contributor to local political campaigns and a longtime friend of Las Vegas City Councilman Michael McDonald, after serving a prison stint in the 1980s. Blasko was convicted for his role in a botched burglary at a Sahara Avenue jewelry store that ended with the arrests of members of Spilotro's Hole-in-the-Wall gang.

In a Friday interview with the Review-Journal, Campbell for the first time publicly identified Bobby D'Apice as the Crazy Horse employee Henry has accused of breaking his neck.

"Mr. D'Apice has been identified by my client as the person who attacked him," Campbell said, refusing to elaborate.

D'Apice, a shift manager who was running the club when Henry suffered his injury, said during a Monday deposition that he never touched Henry.

D'Apice testified that he was tossing another patron out for exposing himself to a dancer when he found Henry in the parking lot. He said he believed Henry was drunk and had fallen down.

"I said, `You can't lay here. Just get and go wherever you have to go,' " D'Apice said. "He says, `I can't move my legs. Would you call 911?' And I did."

Efforts by the Review-Journal to reach D'Apice were not successful.

Carvalho, Rizzolo's attorney, says D'Apice's story is bolstered by the account of a cabdriver who was outside the club at the time.

Jon Bernardo says he saw Henry fall with no one near him.

But Henry's attorneys question whether Bernardo is an independent witness because he often was requested to drive home Crazy Horse workers. Bernardo also was given special treatment at the club. In his deposition, Bernardo acknowledged that other cabbies complain because the Crazy Horse allows him to "jump the line," moving ahead in the queue of cabs waiting for customers.

"They like the way I do my job," Bernardo said when asked why he was the only driver conferred this treatment.

D'Apice is the former boyfriend of porn icon Marilyn Chambers, the star of the wildly successful 1972 adult film "Behind the Green Door." Both of D'Apice's criminal convictions stem from his stint from 1980 to 1986 as Chambers' road manager while she traveled the country singing and stripping at topless clubs.

According to court documents, vice raids during Chambers' performances in San Francisco and Cleveland led to the pair being arrested twice in 1985. Chambers faced obscenity charges and D'Apice was charged with carrying a concealed weapon without a permit both times.

In Ohio, he also faced a charge in connection with the type of bullets loaded into his .45-caliber pistol. The criminal charge said D'Apice possessed "armor-piercing bullets that would go through a bulletproof vest." Henry's attorneys referred to the rounds in court documents as illegal "cop killer" rounds. D'Apice said in his deposition that they were actually safety slugs designed to avoid ricocheting when fired.

Henry's attorneys appear ready to play up the criminal histories of D'Apice and other Rizzolo employees during the civil trial.

During Rizzolo's deposition, they asked him questions about current night shift manager Vincent Faraci, a convicted felon and the son of a Bonanno crime family captain.

Henry's attorneys also questioned Rizzolo about his relationships with reputed organized crime figures Joey Cusumano, Fred Pascente and Chris Petti, all of whom are listed in Nevada's casino Black Book.

It remains unclear whether Henry previously had identified D'Apice as his attacker to authorities now investigating the club.

A police detective visited Henry in the hospital a few days after the incident, and Henry did not identify anyone in a book of mugshots shown to him as his attacker.

But nearly a year later, FBI agents interviewed Henry at his home.

They showed him a second set of photographs. According to Henry's deposition, he was able to identify the man who attacked him "without a doubt" in his mind. The FBI agents did not share the man's name during the visit, Henry testified.

When questioned by Rizzolo's attorneys three months ago, Henry described the person who attacked him as a stocky, big-necked man, 5 feet 10 inches or 5 feet 11 inches tall, with slicked-back hair and a New York accent.

Henry's attorneys say that description is consistent with D'Apice, who grew up in New York and lived there during part of in the 1990s.

During Henry's deposition, Rizzolo's attorneys did not ask Henry whether he knew his attacker's name.

"I heard a noise behind me, and before I could turn around I felt an arm come around my shoulders and neck and I heard like a grunting noise," Henry testified.

"My head was, neck was twisted down violently, and I fell to the ground. I felt a pop."

He then found he couldn't get up.

"I reached down and touched my legs and there was no feeling," he said. "I screamed, 'I can't feel my legs. I can't feel my legs.' "

Currently, Henry has partial use of his arms and little control of his fingers. He must rely on his wife as a full-time nurse and is depending on his father to make their house payments.

"I have to rely on my wife just to get me out of bed," Henry said in the telephone interview.

"I made most of the money before, but now I constantly feel like I'm a burden to my family."