Original subtitles

(Music)

The Ken Eaton murder

Ken was a public school teacher

And that was back in the day when you couldn't be a public school teacher and be gay.

So he had to maintain a closet

Nevertheless, he socialized a lot.

Just a couple of months before he was murdered,

I'm at a party and Ken is also there. At the time, I was

Pretty prominent in terms of

Being visibly gay in the city. The media had found me.

And any news story came up, they'd come to me.

Ken complimented me on stuff I had done for the community.

Over the last few years before that,

And he told me, he said, “John, I can't be out

And keep my job so there's really nothing I can do

To help the community,” he said.

"But do know that if there's ever anything I can do to make a difference,

I'll do that.”

About two months later, he was murdered.

And um..

Everybody was looking for a motive.

(Dance Music)

The police found out, of course,

And they couldn't make heads or tails out of who was this, who would have killed him, how did this happen?

Nobody could put it together.

There was a whole series of coincidences that occurred that was just bizarre.

The first thing is they found a list of

Gay people in a gay organization called the Gay Coalition of Iowa.

My name was on that list too, and it was the first time

They actually published a list that would give your address and phone number.

Because everybody felt at this time good enough

And trusting enough that everybody could find those things out.

But he had three names marked with stars,

And they just knew that was a sex club.

Nobody would break the news that this was a gay man.

His daughter wasn't willing to say that, his family wasn't willing to say that,

Nobody in the media would say that, and finally a reporter from the Des Moines register

Got to me, and

I thought about Ken and I thought, you know, he told me

If there is ever anything he could do

To make a difference, he'd do it.

And I thought to myself, you know, Ken? There is something you can do now. You can let me out you.

So that this becomes the story.

That it should be.

And so I did - I told the Des Moines Register that this was a gay man and this was a gay homicide.

And I think it changed the direction of the investigation.

So they went down to the gay loop,

And they eventually found the two men who had done that.

And I think it was breaking

The news that this was a gay murder,

Changed that whole investigation.

One day, a garbage man was out unloading the dumpsters,

But he went to an apartment and he couldn't get to the dumpster.

So the first coincidence is, there were two cars parked in front of the dumpsters.

Usually you're not allowed to park in front of dumpsters, right?

And then the second coincidence - the guy decides he'll get out of

The dump truck, and he will go over to see if there's anything in the dumpster.

When he looked in the dumpster, he found

A bunch of bloody clothes along with some stereo equipment.

He thought, “This is really bizarre.”

So he called the police. The police put two and two together, and figured out

When the contacted these guys' girlfriends, they gave them all up.

They knew everything that had happened, and I believe they're still in jail to this day.

But that really shook this community.

First of all, because he was such a well-loved

English teacher at Brody Middle School.

And I remember even the person I go to that cuts my hair

He cut his hair too.

And she said the whole place was just devastated.

There were gay bashings happening in the city.

The Des Moines Police Department was not nearly as friendly

Towards us as they are now.

There was a time period where, to be in a bar that was frequented by homosexuals

Was considered - you were considered visiting

A house of ill repute. And they could come in and arrest you

For being in a place where that had homosexuals. Now how they would determine that, I'm not quite sure.

But people didn't question it.

And at that time, then of course the Register, or the paper,

Would print this person was arrested being

In a house of ill repute with homosexuals the next day.

And that would cause people to lose their jobs,

And it broke up marriages,

And some people committed suicide from it.

So I think people honed in on

The sexual part

And also, where else did we have to go?

(Dance music)

By now, City Disco and the idea of disco was really grabbing

Des Moines, and Chuck Brooks had created a bar

Called The Des Moines City Disco Park.

It was a second floor establishment, and the nice thing about it is

The dance floor had lights in the bottom of it.

That was a happening place back then. I'd never seen anything like it.

So, we had a lot of fun, and we had about 600 people there

Every night at City Disco.

And they had people from Kansas City coming up here, and they couldn't believe how

Des Moines had something like this.

The first bar I went into was at 4th and Court Avenue in Downtown Des Moines

It was called the Country Cove.

It had been a straight bar called The Cove,

There was a great big sign with the word “COVE” running up and down, so in order to make it a gay bar,

They just added the word “country” in front of it and that's all she wrote.

The leather bars

And the bath houses of the 70s and 80s

They were highly sexually energized.

A little bit of everything happened in the bars.

Maybe the main floor,

Which would be a bar much like any other bar, but maybe they would have a back room or a basement

Where clothing was optional.

Or they'd have a cell set up

It's a true story that one of the bar owners

Would find out about a gay party, and would call the

Police and rat on the gay party.

The police would come in and arrest everybody at the party and take them in to jail for the night.

And the next morning, this bar owner would show up

And bail all of her own customers out of jail.

You want me to say? Her name was Marlys Watson. May she rest in peace.

But the bar owners did not

Necessarily act appropriately

When a bar was going under, suddenly it was burning down too.

Something happened at the City Disco which was unusual.

People that were gay would invite their straight friends,

And I remember dancing on the floor one time and looking over, and there's like eight people

Just sitting like this, just watching us dance as if we were freaks.

And I thought, I'm not coming back here anymore.

And I think a lot of other people felt the same way,

And pretty soon City Disco was having problems.

And then there was a fire.

This was the second or third time that there was a fire at a bar.

And it was beginning to look a little unusual.

Chuck was a tall, trim man with

Kind of a pencil mustache. He was not unattractive,

But his biggest quality was he was arrogant.

Yes.

Well, I even went home with him one night.

I had the hots for Chuck, and Chuck had the hots for someone else, and that someone else had the hots for me.

And so, eventually it worked into a three way.

However, the third in that triangle may have burned a bar or two.

I had a good time with him. I lived with Chuck for quite a while,

And Larry and his lover.

And then they met some woman, they got married in London.

Well, as a person I liked him, until I got to know him.

And he was a conniving, cheating, sonofabitch

And then if he was having a real bad run of things, or whatever,

It mysteriously burned.

But he was always out of town.

He had somebody else do the work. Hmm.

I know who done it, but when three bars by one bar owner

Tend to burn, then I think you've got a problem.

That's one that we heard, that Marlys had paid him to

Torch the Cove, see.

And what it was, we got torched.

I think Marlys had something to do,

Cause we were, Country Cove, was busy place.

Really busy, you know,

And Marlys didn't like it.

The P S Lounge had a fire. The Country Cove eventually burned, the one I worked at,

And then again it didn't burn down, it reopened as The Barn Door.

That's at least three, and I know there's a fourth one.

I was one of Chuck's best friends all of a sudden, and we played cards together.

We played poker together all the time. I'd known him for years,

But he started doing crack and stuff like that.

And that wasn't my thing.

The I could see that when we opened up

The Barbell

I didn't realize that Chuck

Was dealing in crystal meth.

I didn't know that, see, which closed our bar.

Because of that.

I thought, here we have AIDS, you're bringing this shit to my people, trying to kill them, and you don't care.

This was not Chuck Brooks' finest moment,

But he had just brought a shipment “ice”, I believe it was from Chicago,

I'm not really sure where he was bringing it in from,

But he drove his car up on the curb in front of his bar,

The Barbell Athletic Club, and left the trunk open,

And went inside. The police came by with the trunk open,

Full of methamphetamines, sitting up on the curb,

And he was very quickly arrested.

He had taken all of his possessions, and had put them in

The building next door - I think he was kind of living in there,

And yes, the car with the Cadillac was on

The sidewalk.

But all of those fires stopped after 1980.

Because that's when Chuck owned his bars.

Sorry. See I wasn't really talking to Chuck then, see.

He kind of pissed me off and I'd given him some money,

And I had never got anything back from him.

He paid everybody else off, but didn't pay me, see,

So that ended our friendship.

I opened this, I thought, no I ain't gonna be like that.

I'm gonna go for my people and my community first.

Now the East Village is a vibrant

It wasn't back then. It was kind of a rough place.

I never really saw prostitution or anything

Going on.

It's like there's this surplus store, there's these abandoned buildings.

It's the kind of place you'd come to buy your pot.

It stuck out, it was painted this dark purple, but it had huge bars on the windows.

It was crazy.

All black windows, so you couldn't really see in.

I would see some guys walking in and out, and some of them were just, you know, like, intimidating.

Or you'd walk in and everybody would rubberneck around, and you're like, “Ooh."

It kind of creeped you out a little bit, and then they'd go back to whatever they were doing.

All these leather dudes were just piled up right in a row down the whole thing,

And I'm like, “Yike.”

The whole idea behind leather, it's a statement.

Well, leather can be taken many, many ways. It can be very, very hard,

As SMBD - been there done that -

Or it can be taken softly. But it was a very big part of

The Saddle when we started.

It was really kind of tacky. I mean, the ice machine was there,

There was a stereo system on top of the ice machine that was the DJ booth,

The tables were yellow formica tables,

It was nothing special.

Now, we used to have the bar on this side. It was all wooden floor,

And I'd polish the shit and then put all the varnishes on it,

But you could never make it look good all the time.

We were trying to find a name.

I was gonna call it The Albatross - the bird that hangs around my neck.

Somebody said, well you should nickname it. And I said, “Call it Mongo's?”

“No, Blazing Saddle!” Mongo like that idea, so there it went.

I can remember the bartender that when he waited on me

Was just dressed to the nines.

He was - the jewelry, the whole thing,

It was like, OK that's what I want to be. That's what I want to do. It was Gary Moore.

Gary was on the other end - bigger than life.

Bigger than life and had a boa on. So I went right up to him.

Right off he knew that I as new.

When I started working there, the back bar

Was cement blocks with boards on it to put the booze on.

He let me kind of play with things. The back bar that's there,

I designed and had built.

Everything was a double. People loved that. That was a great marketing idea.

Every person at the bar was gay, and you looked around and you go,

“Smorgasbord” It's like so many men, so little time.

I had only been going there about a week

And then I ran into - I sat down at the bar -

And I was waiting for friends to show up, so I was drinking

My cocktail there at the bar,

And I didn't realize that lo and behold I was sitting next to the owner, Bob, Mongo.

Good ol' Mongo. I was sitting next to him. And so we just started talking,

He was a character. He just cracked me up.

And he had such great stories. He was a Vietnam vet, you know.

I mean, he was a man. I just felt like I was a regular.

Part of being a bar owner is being a showman. Ringling Brothers or something.

Because you get so many different types of people,

And attitudes, and everything else. You've gotta adapt

And figure out where they're coming from.

Not exactly what you would probably picture as a bar owner.

It wasn't like he was dressed to the nines because he owned a gay bar.

It was like, nope - work boots, work shirt, BOB.

It said “Bob” right on his shirt. Bob is kind of a jack of all trades.

And a master of none.

The first time I ever heard about Bob,

My friend Morris - my queen mother - had Bob

Reroof his house. Bob can do anything.

Just ask him, you know?

When you roof a house, you take a knife and you cut the

Shingles off on the edge with a nice straight line.

Well, Bob had dropped his knife or something and had decided

He'd just tear them off. Yeah.

Morris had this new roof that looked like shit.

That's the first time I heard about Bob.

Bob was like Dad

To like 90% of this crowd.

I never wanted to be some living legend,

I'm just trying to be one of the guys, you know? I get no respect.

Every Thanksgiving and Christmas,

I'd bring a big spread down here. Anybody could come in and eat for free.

One time there was this whole

Homeless guy walking down the street, and he kind of looked in,

And I said, “Sir, have you eaten today?” And he said, “No.”

I said, “You come on in. You don't have to buy a thing. Fill yourself up.”

He said, “God bless you.” And I said, “No, God bless you.” “Why'd you let that bum in?”

“Cause he was hungry.”

It really meant something to me, and Mom used to get so mad at me.

“Why, you got your own family, come on over!” And I said, “Ive got a bigger family, Mother,"

“And the people need something”" Suicide rates among

Gays and lesbians are higher during the holidays

Simply because they've been kicked out of their homes, nobody loves them,

And I said if I can show a little love and a good hot meal,

There be it.

I remember starting to read

Papers - short newspaper stories, never on a front page.

About what they were calling a “gay cancer".

Or a “gay plague”.

Well, that's something that's happening in New York City or San Francisco, it's really not going to affect us here.

AIDS had closed down most of those

Highly sexualized environments - Bath houses closed.

Back rooms closed. And people were dying.

So that changed the gay scene