Explosive new docuseries takes aim at late Nevada brothel owner Dennis Hof

DeAnne Holliday didn’t want to come forward.

Didn’t want to relive her experiences and most certainly didn’t want to discuss them for all the world to hear.

Holliday had rebuilt her life in the decade since working as Dennis Hof’s publicist and personal assistant, and she no longer wished to be associated with the brothel magnate who rose to international fame and was elected to represent Nevada’s 36th Assembly District three weeks after his death.

But she’s among the more than two dozen interview subjects in “Secrets of the Bunny Ranch,” a six-part docuseries debuting at 9 p.m. Thursday on A&E.

The episodes present a shocking, sometimes stomach-turning fire hose of allegations against Hof, including claims of numerous rapes and assaults, sex trafficking, corruption, rampant drug use in his brothels and the grooming of underage girls.

How does Holliday respond to people who dismiss her statements as coming from a disgruntled former employee?

“I say, ‘Damn right, I’m disgruntled! I’m furious,’ ” Holliday explained in a phone interview. “I’ve been abused. I saw other people abused. Why would I not be disgruntled?”

‘The girls looked like they were having fun’

The series begins as a harsh critique of “Cathouse,” the TV project that emanated from Hof’s Moonlite Bunny Ranch in Mound House, just outside Carson City. Consisting of two seasons and several specials, it was a sporadic part of the HBO lineup from 2002 to 2014.

Through interviews with the “Cathouse” creator, coordinating producer, editor, cinematographer and lighting technician, “Secrets of the Bunny Ranch” presents a picture of serious documentarians being hired to create what became a shiny, happy and completely contrived version of life inside a brothel.

“The girls looked like they were having fun,” Dolly Hart says in the documentary. She remembers being exposed to “Cathouse” at the age of 11 or 12, around the time she was being bullied for being a first-generation Mexican American. “I think what got me the most was, like, the camaraderie between the women. Just that. Seeing how you can make friends there.”

When she turned to prostitution and went to work for Hof, Hart learned there was a lot more to the job than the tickle fights and pool parties depicted in the series. “Cathouse” portrayed Hof as something of a lovable scamp, asking the women he employed to call him “Daddy” and boasting about how he liked to sample his merchandise.

“Dennis groping people, I mean, that was a daily occurrence,” cinematographer Tom Hurwitz recalls. “And they were supposed to like it. And they pretended to like it. Nobody asked, ‘Do you ever not want Dennis to touch you when he’s touching people?’ ”

Once the series began airing, Hurwitz says, he noticed younger and younger women being drawn to the brothel.

“It became clear to me that we were part of the recruiting system for the Bunny Ranch,” he tells the cameras. “I did not feel good about it.”

‘We all had Stockholm syndrome’

Holliday was a registered nurse working in Los Angeles when she heard through mutual acquaintances that Hof was looking to be a guest on “Brand X,” Russell Brand’s late-night cable talk show.

She knew Brand a little, made a phone call and, within 10 minutes, Hof was booked on what turned out to be the show’s final episode in May 2013.

Hof was so impressed, Holliday said in the recent phone interview, that he made her a job offer. She was getting burned out on nursing at the time and had no family or ties to L.A.

“This,” she thought, “could be an incredible adventure.”

She had no idea.

Holliday relocated to Mound House and said it wasn’t long before she saw Hof behaving inappropriately with the sex workers. She was able to rationalize some of what she saw because the women were going along with his advances. Holliday eventually realized they didn’t have a real choice in the matter.

“While you’re there, and I don’t know if people can understand this,” she said, “but we all had Stockholm syndrome.”

‘They need us’

Shelly Dushell was recently divorced when a tornado hit her Oklahoma City home. She had seen Hof on TV and emailed him a photo. Dushell says he hired her, picked her up at the airport and took her to a bungalow behind one of his brothels where he demanded unprotected sex.

Jennifer O’Kane Lawrence fled an abusive relationship and ended up at the Love Ranch South in Crystal because she had also seen Hof on TV. She says he raped her, repeatedly, sometimes multiple times a day, whenever their paths crossed. When she tried to escape, Lawrence says, she was pulled out of her rental truck by some of her co-workers, beaten under orders from Hof and hospitalized. (Lawrence filed a police report, but the Nye County district attorney’s office declined to prosecute Hof because the statute of limitations had expired.)

Sarah Drescher had been working for Hof for only a couple of days when she went to the Carson Tahoe Regional Medical Center for a rape kit. On Sept. 1, 2018, she says in footage recorded the next day on an investigator’s body camera, Hof invited her over for breakfast, then had sex with her against her will. “Secrets of the Bunny Ranch” takes viewers inside Hof’s Northern Nevada home through more body camera footage as a search warrant, based on Drescher’s testimony, is served.

Other rapes and sexual assaults are discussed throughout the series, but interview subjects say the majority were never reported because of Hof’s strong ties to law enforcement and the communities in which he operated.

In a clip from a TV appearance, Hof explains that Nye County wouldn’t have an EMT system or ambulances without the tax dollars generated by his brothels.

“This county, Lyon County, we pay for all the police cars and the communications,” Hof says. “So, they need us.”

‘The Lamar Odom situation’

Holliday said she worked for Hof longer than she wanted to because she lived in an apartment he provided, and she didn’t have family on whom to rely.

“When you’re in a situation where you don’t have support,” she explained during the phone call, “you get stuck.”

Holliday finally found the impetus to move on during one of the most infamous moments in the history of Nevada’s brothels.

“I was already planning on leaving,” she said, “and then the Lamar Odom situation happened.”

On Oct. 13, 2015, the former NBA star and then-estranged husband of Khloe Kardashian was found unresponsive at the Love Ranch South after days of partying there. An entire episode of “Secrets of the Bunny Ranch” is devoted to the media firestorm that followed.

Hof’s prostitutes sold clients on the idea that they were safe inside his brothels, Holliday said, and that no one would ever know about their visit unless the client talked about it. For that sense of security, clients paid a premium. Odom’s bill totaled $75,000.

“It should never have gotten out in the media,” Holliday said in the interview, “but Dennis, I know, called TMZ.”

Not only did Hof break the story, she said, he reveled in the attention.

“Dennis was on a manic high. He said, ‘This is the best thing that’s ever happened to us. Let’s keep this story going.’ ”

‘I don’t believe it’

“Secrets of the Bunny Ranch” throws out so many allegations — and the stories bounce from Northern Nevada to Nye County and back so frequently — it’s sometimes difficult to keep track of everything.

Two of the interview subjects, though, stand out for their defense of Hof.

Paris Envy worked at the Love Ranch South and was dating Hof until he was found dead there on Oct. 16, 2018. She believes the rape claims that surfaced in the final months of Hof’s life were designed to derail the burgeoning political career of the man who had rebranded himself as “The Trump of Pahrump.”

Envy also questions the reported manner of Hof’s death.

“For them to all of a sudden say that he died from a heart attack? I don’t believe it,” she says.

Like Hof, Vernon Van Winkle is an HBO alum, having starred in the docuseries “Small Town News: KPVM Pahrump.” The owner of the local TV station has another theory as to why the rape allegations against Hof were false.

“My opinion, Dennis has as much (sex) as he wants, when he wants it, how he wants it,” Van Winkle says. “Why would he do something that would be illegal or cause him problems of losing all the licenses that he has?”

‘The women deserve to be heard’

This is the atmosphere Holliday did not want to revisit.

She’s once again working as a registered nurse but declined to say where for fear it would make her “too vulnerable.” (Similarly, TJ Moore, the madam at the Love Ranch South who collected Odom at the airport, was interviewed for the series via Zoom from an unknown location for safety reasons.)

“I value my privacy and my anonymity. And it took a year for the producer to convince me to go on. It took a year,” she said. “I kept saying, ‘No, no. I’ve got a new life. I don’t want my boss to know. I don’t want the company to know. I don’t want my patients to know.’ ”

Finally, Holliday said, she realized she was “kind of the glue” that held the series together. Her bosses, she added, have been supportive of her decision.

“Because I was so close to Dennis, and I saw these things that these women are saying, I can validate them,” Holliday said. “And I think the women deserve to be heard.”

Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567.