Saturday, January 22, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

CRAZY HORSE TOO CASE: Strip club manager exits jail

Prosecutor argues D'Apice is threat to community

A courtroom sketch depicts Nicole Rubino, who is four months pregnant, and her husband, Crazy Horse Too manager Robert D'Apice, in their jail uniforms. The pair appeared Friday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Johnston, who released them on their own recognizance. Illustration by David Stroud.

Strip club manager Robert D'Apice was freed Friday, despite a prosecutor's contention that his release could endanger the community.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Johnson, chief of the Organized Crime Strike Force, argued that D'Apice should remain in custody while he awaits a trial on racketeering and other charges.

The prosecutor said records reflect a 20-year history of violent confrontations between D'Apice and others, including law enforcement officers.

D'Apice's newly retained attorney, Michael Cristalli, noted that his client has had no convictions for the past 10 years and has maintained consistent employment during that time.

"He has a huge entourage of family support here," the attorney told U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Johnston. "He is not a danger to the community."

D'Apice, a shift manager at the Crazy Horse Too strip club, was arrested Wednesday at the business after a federal grand jury charged him with racketeering, making false statements and tax evasion.

His pregnant wife, Nicole Rubino, was charged only with tax evasion and was allowed to surrender on Thursday.

Johnston released both defendants Friday on their own recognizance after the pair pleaded innocent to the charges against them.

The judge scheduled a March 28 trial date, but Cristalli said the complex nature of the case means a delay is inevitable.

Johnson did not object to Rubino's release. The 28-year-old defendant, who is four months pregnant, has retained Paola Armeni to represent her.

The defense attorney said Rubino, a former hairdresser who married D'Apice in March, has never been in trouble.

"She kind of got dragged into this," Armeni said after Friday's hearing. "It seems like the government has a little bit of an ulterior motive."

Rubino's relatives have accused authorities of using the woman and her husband to catch their real target: Crazy Horse owner Rick Rizzolo, who has been under investigation for at least a decade.

Dozens of law enforcement officials raided the strip club in February 2003, searching for links between the business and organized crime.

The indictment against D'Apice focuses on allegations that he and others at the strip club have used force to compel customers to pay disputed charges. The racketeering charge accuses D'Apice of committing extortion, robbery and kidnapping at the business.

In court on Friday, Johnson said records of violent acts involving D'Apice date to February 1985, when he was working as a bodyguard for porn queen Marilyn Chambers.

The prosecutor said San Francisco police entered a room to arrest Chambers, but D'Apice blocked them and tried to take Chambers to an exit.

Johnson said D'Apice, who was armed, was arrested after he pushed the officers and boasted about his mob connections.

When authorities again came to arrest Chambers in December 1985 in Ohio, the prosecutor said, D'Apice pushed them back into a hallway and exposed his holstered handgun.

Johnson said that incident resulted in D'Apice's felony conviction for carrying a concealed weapon.

The prosecutor said D'Apice also was involved in a series of domestic violence incidents that began in 1993. Cristalli said his client has a 1995 misdemeanor conviction for domestic battery involving his ex-wife.

Rubino continually shook her head as she listened to Johnson's accounts of incidents involving her husband and his ex-wife.

Johnson said records show that D'Apice and his then-wife had been separated for eight months in August 2001, when police responded to a report that he had kicked in her front door.

The prosecutor said police again responded to the woman's home in December 2001 after D'Apice entered the residence through a "doggy door" and began kicking and punching the woman.

Johnson said the woman's decision not to pursue charges against D'Apice in connection with both 2001 incidents is indicative of the fear he instills in his victims.

Family Court records show that Robert and Kristine D'Apice were divorced in March 2002.

In court on Friday, Johnson also gave the judge details about two of the racketeering acts listed in the indictment against D'Apice.

The prosecutor said one involves an allegation that D'Apice held two Crazy Horse customers against their will for three hours after they disputed charges in January 2001 and the other involves an allegation that he broke a patron's neck in September 2001, leaving the man paralyzed from the chest down, after he disputed an $80 tab.

In a January 2003 incident, Johnson said, police were taking a report from a customer outside the club when D'Apice came out and began yelling at the customer. Police believed D'Apice was trying to intimidate the customer, Johnson said.

The prosecutor said authorities are continuing to investigate D'Apice's involvement in more recent acts of violence at the business, but witnesses and victims have expressed fear of the club's connections to organized crime.

Johnson cited a perjury charge against former Crazy Horse cocktail waitress Paula McBride as an example of that fear.

McBride, 27, of Henderson is accused of making false statements when she testified before a grand jury in August 2002.

At the hearing, according to the indictment, she denied telling FBI agents that she had seen D'Apice leave the Crazy Horse with Kansas City tourist Kirk Henry, the customer who suffered a broken neck outside the business.

When McBride was arrested on Wednesday, Johnson said, she asked agents why she was being singled out "when so many other people have lied to the grand jury and to the investigators."

She also expressed her fear that the FBI could not protect her and her family, the prosecutor said.

The fear McBride expressed is not hypothetical, Johnson said. "This is something very, very real."

McBride was released Thursday on her own recognizance.

Cristalli said D'Apice, 50, first moved to Las Vegas around 1979 and has lived here continuously since 1990. The attorney said D'Apice has worked for about a decade at the Crazy Horse, where he makes between $600 and $1,000 a week.

The defendant's 28-year-old daughter, Kiana, came to court to support her father Friday but declined to comment after the hearing.

Cristalli denied that D'Apice threatened police officers in 1985 and said he would have faced related charges if he had done so. He also said D'Apice completed 18 months' probation after his felony conviction.