Behind the Mitchells' door
My strange encounters with a strange crew
BY SARAH PHELAN
sarah@sfbg.com
Wednesday July 22, 2009
When James Raphael Mitchell, 27, son of the late porn film director
and strip club owner Jim Mitchell, was charged with murder, domestic
violence, kidnapping, and child abduction and endangerment last week,
my first reaction was to wonder if he suffers from posttraumatic
stress disorder.
I had run into met James in October 2007, at which time he sported a
military-style buzz cut and told me he was in the Marines. And now I
was reading reports that he had shown up at the home of his one-time
fiancée, Danielle Keller, 29, the mother of their one-year-old
daughter, Samantha Rae, killed Keller with a metal baseball bat, and
fled with Samantha. He then led police on a five-hour manhunt that
ended in Citrus Heights.
I later encountered James at the O'Farrell Theater, the club his
father Jim and uncle Artie opened 40 years ago. At the club, the
brothers produced porn films, battled with former Mayor Dianne
Feinstein's vice squad, and entertained members of the city's
political elite before Jim shot Artie in 1991.
Jim's attorneys described the killing as an "intervention gone awry,"
while Artie's kids believed it was a wrongful death.
In the end, Jim served less than three years of a six-year sentence
for voluntary manslaughter at San Quentin. After his release, he
continued his involvement with Cinema 7, the corporation the Mitchell
brothers formed to oversee their porn empire, until he died of a
heart attack in July 2007.
Shortly after Jim's death, his eldest daughter, Meta, became the
O'Farrell Theater's general manager. In fall 2007, Christina Brigida,
a childhood friend of Meta, contacted me to see if I'd be interested
in "a column about the reality of what the sex industry is like for
females (both strippers and non-strippers)" and "female managers in
adult entertainment." She proposed that she and Meta write the
article. "The notion that the O'Farrell Theater is run by old white
men pimping out women for money with no regard as to their treatment
and/or well-being is just flat out not true," Brigida wrote.
In her piece, Meta recalled: "Growing up in my family there was a
distinct line between the boys and the girls. The boys got to go on
special outings with my dad and uncle, while the girls were left at
home. As I grew older, so did my resentment. I continued to hate
being left out. I felt like it all had to do with my dad's business.
The boys could go inside, and I couldn't. I grew to hate the theater
for taking my dad away from me."
Meta went to school and got a job as a mortgage consultant in San
Ramon until 2004, when she began to recognize the club "as something
that had taken care of us through the years."
And that's how I came to be drinking coffee one morning in the club's
upstairs room, talking to Meta, a petite woman with a black bob,
brown eyes, knee-length leather boots, a tiny dog, and a massive
lime-green handbag. It was then that I met her younger brother,
James, who his friends call Rafe.
I was seated in front of a photo of Pope John Paul II greeting Fidel
Castro in Cuba, and a painting called Night Manager. The conversation
somehow turned to war, at which point Rafe turned and told me he was
in the Marines.
Meta resumed our conversation, which included my asking about a class
action suit the O'Farrell dancers had brought against the club and
Meta's talking about her innovations, which included theme nights and
costumes. At that point, Rafe interrupted, observing that "guys get
drunk and just want to have fun and don't care about costumes."
Clearly there was tension between Meta and James. And clearly Meta
wanted to control the content of any story about the club. Although
she promised me an interview that Halloween and mentioned that she
"might be in costume," I wasn't surprised when I didn't hear back.
When I read the news about James, I called former San Francisco
District Attorney Terence Hallinan, who is representing James and is
a long-time friend of the Mitchell family. Hallinan had just returned
from Mitchell's arraignment in Marin County, where he is being held
without bail.
"James feels terrible about what happened," Hallinan said. When asked
about the possibility of James having PTSD from his time in the
Marines, Hallinan said, "I don't know if he's been overseas or not."
I then got a hold of a copy of the permanent restraining order Keller
had secured on July 7, five days before she was killed.
From it, I discovered that James had not been deployed overseas. In
fact, according to the allegations in the court order, he had abused
Keller for almost two years, beginning a month after the couple met
claiming the abuse was his way to avoid Iraq.
The court filing also revealed that James brought his gun everywhere
and usually kept it in his jeans until his siblings, including Meta,
filed their own five-year restraining order after he pulled it out
during a family business meeting at the O'Farrell Theater in November
2007 and "waved it around in a threatening manner."
Keller's statement also charged that James has mood swings, used
cocaine, had a meth addiction, and was arrested for domestic violence
in February 2008 when Keller was four months pregnant.
The couple's penultimate fight took place March 4 when Keller told
him she was going to live with her mom. After that incident, James
was arrested for violating his probation, and San Francisco District
Attorney Kamala Harris recommended putting James behind bars for
three months. But 11 days before Keller's killing, Superior Court
Judge Mary Morgan sentenced him to two days and stayed the sentence.
Warren Hinckle, a veteran Bay Area journalist and long-time Mitchell
family friend, observes that people can't imagine what it was like to
have grown up in this "battle-prone family."
"Sure, I knew Rafe, and obviously something very bad and weird
happened," Hinckle told the Guardian. "People forget that the
Mitchells spent a lot of the money that they made on First Amendment
battles, and that they were on mob territory."
Keller's attorney, Charlotte Huggins, said she wants to make sure
there's money set aside for Samantha. But that may be tricky because
James was living on trust fund money. Following a 2008 settlement of
the dancers' class action suit against Cinema 7 in which the
corporation agreed to pay $2 million in legal fees and $1.45 million
toward the dancers' claims Cinema 7 president Jeffrey Armstrong
claimed in court filings that the corporation "is not able to pay the
entire amount up front."
Instead, Mitchell matriarch Georgia Mae and John P. Morgan,
co-trustees of the Jim Mitchell 1990 Family Trust, which holds
two-thirds of Cinema 7's shares, pledged stock certificates as
security interest.
Jim Mitchell's four adult children receive $3,000 a month from the
trust. They have the right to withdraw 50 percent when they turn 30,
and the remainder when they turn 35.
Court files show that Meta, who turned 30 last year, along with
Justin and Jennifer Mitchell, are trying to wrest control of the
trust from their grandmother, Georgia Mae, 85. Instead, they would
like to appoint their mother and Jim's ex-wife Mary Jane Whitty-Grimm
as the successor trustee. A hearing is set for September.
A stripper who used to dance at the O'Farrell Theater under the stage
name Simone Corday wrote the book 9 1/2 Years Behind the Green Door
(Mill City Press, Inc. 2007), in which she recalls Artie Mitchell as
her lover. Corday told the Guardian that when the Mitchell brothers
shared a house in Moraga, Artie worried about Jim's child-rearing techniques.
In Corday's book, Artie is quoted saying, "You know how Jim has Rafe
dressed as Rambo so much? Now they're calling Rafe 'the enforcer.
' If any of the kids use a swear word even mine when they're over
there Rafe is supposed to attack!"
Corday said she was shocked by Keller's killing. "It's been
disturbing. What with his name being the same as Jim's, and both
being held in the Marin County Jail. It's eerie."
--------
Behind the Mitchells' door: 2
http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics/2009/07/behind_the_mitchells_door_2_1.html
by Sarah Phelan
July 22, 2009
More details about the Mitchell family have emerged from the
Guardian's investigation of the events that led up to the July 12
murder of Danielle Keller than I had space for in my print story
about the Mitchells. [see above]
So, I am posting them below, along with more details of an encounter
I had with James Rafe Mitchell, who has been charged with Keller's murder.
I've also included more details of a conversation I had with Rafe's
older sister Meta, at the O'Farrell Theater in October 2007, and
another extract from a column that Meta Mitchell wrote, when she took
over as general manager of the Mitchell's strip club, two years ago.
And I've included more details about Mitchell matriarch Georgia Mae,
who Cinema 7 paid $80,000 in 2007, even though she is 85, performs no
services for the strip club, and lives in Lodi.
And extracts from testimony that Jim Mitchell Sr. and Meta Mitchell
gave in 2007, during a class action suit that dancers brought against
the club and that was eventually settled in 2008, after Mitchell Sr. died.
"I came to the conclusion at the age of 12 that I didn't want
anything to do with my father," wrote Meta Mitchell, in a column that
her assistant emailed me in 2007. "So I stopped visiting him. This
was shortly before a time of pure chaos, which is when my father shot
my uncle. When that happened, it only reinforced my belief that the
theatre bred disharmony and malcontent within my family, and I didn't
want its influence anywhere in my life."
When I met Meta Mitchell, who eventually got over her aversion to the
family business theatre and began working there as a costume manager
in 2005, she placed her little dog, which was named Baby, and a
massive lime-green handbag on the green felt of the pool table that
dominates the strip club's upstairs room. Then she told me that when
she took over the theatre, the office was full of plastic dildos and
other gifts that dancers had given her dad and uncle, but that now
this male energy was slowly being massaged towards femininity.
When I met Meta's brother, Rafe, that same day, he mentioned that the
sofa that I was sitting on was the same one that Hunter S. Thompson
sat on when he came to interview the Mitchell Brothers for Playboy.
An interview, Rafe added, that Thompson never wrote, because he
became friends with Rafe's father, Jim, and his uncle Artie.
Court filings show that Rafe was attending Marine Corps reserve
weekend trainings until Samantha Rae, his daughter with Keller, was
born in 2008.
Keller's killing occurred on the second anniversary of the death of
Miller's father Jim--timing that had several long time acquaintances
of the Mitchell observing that Rafe had a tragic and unusual childhood.
As former Mitchell Brothers' dancer Simone Corday observes in her
memoir, "91/2 years behind the green door," Rafe's father and uncle
shared a weekend ranch in the East Bay in the late 1980s, where Jim's
four kids--Meta, Rafe, Justin and Jennifer--and any number of Artie's
six kids, used to run around and play together, but things abruptly
changed after Jim killed Artie with a .22 rifle in February 1991.
Bay Area journalist Warren Hinckle told me last week that Rafe, who
was 8 when his father killed his uncle, "was really shook up at his
father going to prison."
Hinckle said Rafe was in counseling in his youth, but the Marines
"seemed to have straightened him out."
Hinckle even claimed that Rafe would bring his uniform to the
O'Farrell Theatre and change into it there, before heading out to
participate in Marine Corps reserve weekends.
"If Rafe didn't have his baseball bat lying around in his car, then
maybe none of this would have happened," Hinckle added, noting that
Rafe's car was always full of sports stuff.
Hinckle stressed that it's hard to imagine what it was like growing
up as one of the Mitchell kids. At the time, the O'Farrell Theatre
was constantly being raided by the city's vice squad, and Jim and
Artie, who were hardly a picture of domesticity, were constantly in
court, where they spent a lot of the theatre's earnings fighting over
porn-related First Amendment issues.
"Combine the raids which were like the bombing of Dresden and that
warfare with then mayor Dianne Feinstein's police, and it was rough
time growing up as a kid in that situation," said Hinckle, who
described Rafe as," a good guy, funny as hell, but with a lot of
stuff to deal with."
Court filings show that Rafe's siblings, his drug use, and the
Marines were a source of tension between Rafe and his ex-girlfriend
Keller. In a statement that Keller filed when she requested a
permanent restraining order against Rafe, Keller included the
following account of how the couple got into a March 4 fight:
"Our fights can start anywhere and sometimes narrow down to the
Marine Corps, his siblings, and drugs. James told me I was a
psycho-bitch, he called me obtuse, he said that I am irrational, and
that our daughter is going to grow up like me. I cursed back and
tried to defend myself. This time he brought up his siblings'
restraining order. He said, 'Anybody can get a gun. I can get a gun
in two hours if I wanted.' The fight continued and James was getting
ready to go to his golf class. I was scared because I never know what
can happen after he leaves angry."
Keller's attorney Charlotte Huggins, a family law specialist,
believes Mitchell received Keller's permanent restraining order,
which also required that Rafe's once-a-week, two-hour visits with
Samantha be supervised, the day before Keller's killing-and that this
triggered the attack.
Huggins also feels that Keller's death is evidence that more needs to
be done to protect women. "If the restraining order was treated in
criminal court, not family court, it would have more impact," Huggins
told the Guardian. "And maybe, when victims file a request for a
restraining order, they should be required to watch a video, showing
how many recipients end up playing fast and loose with it, and how
many victims end up being killed."
Mitchell's attorney, former San Francisco District Attorney Terence
Hallinan, told the Guardian that he does not believe that the murder
was premeditated. He also told reporters that Mitchell called him
while he was on the lam July 12, and followed his advice to turn himself in.
Huggins challenges Hallinan's claims that Mitchell's actions were not
premeditated. "He brought a metal baseball bat," Huggins said. "And
Danielle's mother left the house for about an hour, so it sounds like
he was stalking her."
Marin District Attorney Ed Berberian told the Guardian, "We are very
focused on the fact that there is no excuse for abuse and this was an
extremely violent attack."
Noting that Mitchell never held a job because he had inherited money
from his father and had a meth addiction, while Keller was on
welfare, Huggins wants money to be set aside for Samantha.
Court filings show that each of Jim Mitchell's four kids receive at
least $3,000 a month from the Jim Mitchell 1990 Family Trust, which
Jim established in October 1990, four months before he fatally shot Artie.
Court filings also show that Mitchell matriach Georgia Mae Mitchell,
the grandmother of Jim and Artie's kids, is currently co-trustee of
that trust. And that instead of equally distributing $15,000 a month
between Jim's four children, Georgia kept $3,000 for herself.
According to court filings, Cinema 7 grosses $4 million in theatre
sales, annually, and that prior to Mitchell Sr.'s death, Cinema 7
paid Georgia Mitchell, a former school teacher, $80,000 annually, and
that Georgia was receiving this salary in monthly installments, even
though she performed no services, and lived in Lodi, which is 90
miles away from the theater.
As a result of these alleged financial irregularities, Jeffrey
Armstrong, President of Cinema 7, the corporation that Mitchell
Brothers set up to manage their porn empire, informed Georgia
Mitchell that he was cutting her off.
Mitchell matriarch Georgia Mae allegedly retaliated by threatening to
terminate Armstrong, reduce the salary of Cinema 7 Vice President
Richard Mezzavilla, and establish herself as Cinema 7 President, and
install maintenance engineer Michael "Rocky" Davidson as Cinema 7
Vice President.
As a result of these alleged threats, Meta Mitchell, 31, and her
siblings Justin, 25, and Jennifer Skye,23, are trying to wrest
control of the trust from Georgia Mitchell and John P. Morgan, and
give it to their mother, Jim Mitchell's first wife. Rafe is not named
as a co-filer on that petition.
The three siblings have also filing a petition to prohibit their
grandmother from "exercising stock powers in a manner that will have
an adverse impact on the economic performance of a closely held
family corporation.
Court filings show that as trustees of the family trust, which holds
two thirds of Cinema 7 shares, Georgia Mitchell and John P. Morgan,
pledged stock certificates as security interest in a $3.45 million
settlement that Cinema 7 reached in 2008 with O'Farrell dancers. The
other third of the stock is held by Lisa Adams Mitchell, Jim Mitchell
Sr's second wife.
In that settlement, Cinema 7 agreed to pay $2 million in attorney
fees, and a maximum of $1.45 million towards costs that the dancers
incurred after the club ceased its piece rate wage system, and failed
to pay them minimum wages, compensate all hours worked, illegally
waived their breaks, had illegal access to their stage fees, failed
to indemnify them for expenditures, and failed to maintain proper records.
During the dancers' class action suit trial, James Quadra, attorney
for the dancers, asked Jim Mitchell Sr. whether he recalled if there
were meetings where Cinema 7 personnel defined what Cinema 7 meant by
a "lap dance" in the piece rate system. Here is Jim Mitchell's reply:
"You need a lap for a lap dance. And the private dances were in
booths for two songs., You are getting down to like, you know, lap
dance, erotic theater, America. And your question is like just a
waste of the public's slender resources."
When the judge told Mitchell that he (the judge) did not know what
was said in deposition, so while some of the things might be
repetitive to Mitchell, they weren't necessarily so for the judge,
Mitchell replied, "I appreciate that. And I also appreciate being in
the City for 37 years, paying a lot of taxes. And I don't appreciate
having to step over the winos when I come here for this to be drug on
and on and on, I suppose to perhaps, whatever. But it doesn't sit
well with people that live and work in this town for many, many years
to let it go on like this. Like drop a basketball in the ghetto and
asking, 'Did you define what that is for them?' No. I don't know if I
did or not.
During that same trial, which occurred in 2007, Meta Mitchell, who
had begun working as a costume manager at the club in 2005,
voluntarily took the witness stand. Asked if she was close to her
father, Meta Mitchell said, "we have a better relationship now than
we have any time in my life up to this point."
Admitting that it would be fair to say that she would like to see
Cinema 7 be successful in its quest to fight the class action suit,
Mitchell said she was not friends with Cinema 7 President Jeffrey
Armstrong. "I've known him my entire life. But he's more of a friend
of my father's than a friend of mine."
Asked if she was friendly with any other Cinema 7 managers, Meta
Mitchell said, "I don't associate with them outside of work, which I
guess is my definition of a friend.
Asked if she was any reason she was aware of that the dancers would
be afraid of her father Jim, Meta Mitchell replied, "He can be a
little gruff and he can be cranky, a grouchy old man. I don't know
that fear is the right word."
Asked if she thought her father could be intimidating, Meta Mitchell
said, "I suppose anyone could be initimidating," and "I'm sure at
some point in time my father could be considered intimidating."
Meta Mitchell also revealed that prior to her testimony she had
reviewed the prop room inventory, which included costumes that
dancers wore to perform at the club. She also said that when she
first started working at the club in June 2005, there were many
costumes in the prop room, and that she didn't visit the theater
prior to her employment there.
Meta Mitchell testified that when she began working there, six months
before she testified by which time the trial was in full swing, was
an inventory that Vince, another long term Cinema 7 employee had, "I
believe it was handwritten," Meta Mitchell said. " He lived in a
different time than I do. "I need everything in the computer."
Acknowledging that she created the first computerized inventory for
the prop room from scratch, Mitchell revealed that she did not
include costumes that were destroyed or thrown away. "I purged them,"
Mitchell said. "I didn't want to do extra work by inventorying things
that I was going to get rid of." As a result of Mitchell's purge, no
record exists at the O'Farrell Theatre outlining that costumes and
props existed. Mitchell also claimed that she had no personal
knowledge of the policies or practices in place, prior to her
arrival, regarding the use of the costumes that the theater had for dancers.
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