Once one of America's top republicans, Lawrence King is serving a 15-year prison sentence for a multi-million dollar fraud.
But financial crime is only half of the story.
This is the true story of Lawrence King.
It is the story of a cancer at the heart of America and of its continuing cover-up at the highest level.
One man is attempting to uncover the full story. John DeCamp is among the most highly decorated Vietnam veterans.
A former republican state senator in Lincoln Nebraska, he is now a lawyer, fighting the legacy of Lawrence King's abuse of power.
John DeCamp: It's a web of intrigue that starts in our holy of holies, Boys Town, Nebrasca, one of the most respected institutions of the United States, and spreads out like a spider web to Washington DC, right up to the steps of the nation's capital, the steps of the White House, involves some of the most respected and powerful and richest businessmen in this United States of America.
And the centerpiece of the entire web is the use of children for sex and drug dealing and drug couriers, the compromising of politicians, the compromising of businessmen, but worst of all, the corruption of key institutions of government that have the duty and responsibility to make sure these things never happen.
For John DeCamp the trial starts in a unique town just outside Omaha.
“Well-famed Boys Town is in the news again.”
Made famous by an Oscar-winning film, Boys Town is America’s favourite children’s charity. It was founded in 1917 by a catholic priest Father Flanagan.
Father Flanagan: The saddest spectacle on our social life is the neglected, unwanted and unloved boy who has become a serious problem in our society.
Father Hupp: Boys Town was started to be a home for orphans after World War I and since then society has changed and the problems of boys have changed and so now it’s a question of taking care of homeless, abandoned, neglected, abused boys, and now girls also.
Boys Town has been granted the privileges of an incorporated town, a catholic diocese and a school district for five hundred children.
Boys Town has cash reserves of $ 500 million but still raises up to 35 million annually solicited from the public by begging letters and promotional videos.
Father Val Peter: I’m Father Val Peter and I take care of father’s Flanagan dream and executive director of Boys Town. Does Boys Town really exist? - people ask me. You bet it does.
Located in a heartland of America, Boys Town youth have come from many backgrounds and locals. As they graduate, they shall seek new adventures and head for different places. But always they shall carry with them the spirit of Boys Town.
If you’d like to help Boys Town, send your tax-deductible gift to father Val Peter, Boys Town, Nebraska, 68010.
John DeCamp: Boys Town for me was the first thing I ever heard of when you think of institutions that you respect.
Believe it or not, I was there for a while when I was a young boy.
When an institution like that gets contaminated then you’d … better if you got any decency at all and do something about it or at least get it cleared up.
John DeCamp lays the blame for the contamination of Boys Town on the one-time leader of the National Black Republican Council, Larry King.
Larry King was the fastest-rising black star in the entire Republican Party of the United States during all of the 1980’s.
And he was also one of the most evil individuals in this country in terms of being a dealer of children, in terms of being a thief, 40 million that they documented he stole, and in terms of using and compromising and corrupting one after another politicians.
The base for his network was the Franklin Federal Credit Union, a people’s bank in Omaha, Nebraska.
Larry King was its general manager.
Thank you. This is especially an exciting day for me.
Mr King was a very charismatic person. When he came to the Credit Union he was brought in because the Credit Union was actually failing.
He did everything to build the Credit Union.
King courted the leaders of Omaha’s wealthy business district.
Banks, industry and charities placed millions of dollars in King’s hands.
From 1979 Larry King developed close commercial ties to Boys Town and Boys Town youngsters were sent to work for his companies.
Boys Town had quite a few accounts at Franklin Credit Union.
Those were considered very valuable accounts.
They were handled exclusively by the book-keeping department.
But on the average of once a month or once every two months we always seemed to incorporate a person from Boys Town.
But King used Boys Town not just as a source of young boys for his business.
He prostituted them at sex and drug orgies.
Paul Bonacci was a victim of King’s abuse.
He was also sent by King to lure Boys Town youngsters off campus.
Paul Bonacci: We used to just drive around, go up throughout the home.
Picking up the kids.
You know, just a kind of winning their confidence, become friends with them for a while.
Started inviting them to the parties.
The kids were 10 years old or older.
In 1986 King’s plundering of Boys Town was reported by staff to its chief executive, father Val Peter.
Subsequent testimony proves that he carried out his own investigation but that King’s victims refused to talk to him.
Monsignor Hupp now blames himself for Boys Town’s association with Larry King.
Monsignor Hupp: Well, in retrospect, I regret having any association with Larry King.
And had I known it at the time, it would have never happened.
Could you understand why a very detailed report from a social worker employed at Boys Town, identifying children and identifying their alleged abusers never saw the light of day, nothing happened with that?
No, I couldn’t understand that because if I’d known that I wouldn’t put up with that.
But has something like that happened?
I don’t know of it.
Social worker Carol Stitt: Nebraska has a very clear statute, that child abuse allegations should be reported to authorities.
They shouldn’t be reported to the principal of the school, the director of the facility.
They should be reported directly to either child protective services or law enforcement.
And so Larry King remained free to feed his pedophilic parties with child victims.
But in 1988 a routine review brought King’s involvement with Boys Town youth to the attention of Nebraska’s State Foster Care Review Board.
The main information presented to the Foster Care Review Board, either via the telephone reports, the personal reports or the reports we reviewed, Larry King’s name was consistently present as someone the youths were making allegations against.
I would say we handed over at least a foot-high amount of material to authorities and nothing happened.
Omaha Police now accept that Larry King may have been abusing children.
But its most senior officer claims the evidence was not conclusive.
Attorney Gen. Spiro: It is certainly possible that Mr. King was involved in illegal acts with children.
If there was sufficient evidence of those types of allegations he would have been prosecuted by the county attorney’s office.
Carol Stitt: For me it was very clear that the case was not investigated and not pursued because of the alleged perpetrators.
Those perpetrators named by the children were some of the richest and most influential citizens in positions of power in the state,
men prominent in industry, politics, the media, even the police.
We can only name the ring-leaders.
Besides Larry King, they were department store millionaire Alan Baer
and a celebrity columnist of Omaha’s only newspaper, the World Herald, Peter Citron.
With the judicial system apparently paralyzed, Larry King spent Franklin’s money on courting political influence.
$10 million went on jewelry, flowers and private planes.
He cultivated contacts in the inner circles of Ronald Reagan’s White House.
At his palatial homes, 3 in Omaha and 1 in Washington DC, he held extravagant parties for the influential and powerful.
His lavish spending bought him a protected life.
Larry King was constantly heralded, cheered, applauded in the news media as the great businessman that’s helping the poor people, the Black community of Omaha.
But King’s extravagance attracted the attention of the Internal Revenue Service.
As a result, on April 11, 1988 the Franklin Credit Union was raided and closed by the FBI.
King was arrested and a federal investigation showed he had stolen $40 million from Franklin.
Documents we posses reveal the FBI interviewed many of the victims of Larry King’s sex ring, but no action was taken.
In November 1988 Nebraska’s state government set up a parallel investigation into Larry King.
A legislative committee was formed.
Its chairman was the republican head of Nebraska’s banking committee, corn farmer and state senator, Loran Shmit.
Immediately, anonymous threats began.
Senator Loran Shmit: I received a phone call on the floor of the Legislature.
The caller did not identify himself, but he said “Loran, you do not want to have an investigation of the Franklin Federal Credit Union”.
And I asked who I was speaking to.
He said “That doesn’t matter but you shouldn’t have an investigation”
And I said “Well, why not?” He said “It will reach to the highest levels of the Republican Party.
And we’re both good Republicans.”
Undeterred, the committee began their investigations and the money trail lead quickly to the original allegations of child abuse.
Caroline Stitt was one of the first to testify.
Carol Stitt: The night before we testified before the Legislative Committee, I did received a phone call at home that said “If you speak, you won’t live to regret it”.
To protect the inquiry, Schmit's Committee hired special legal council and full time professional investigators Gary Caridori and Karen Ormiston.
Schmit: I said, we do not want you to bring to the committee rumors, innuendos, nothing that cannot be backed up by facts.
I said, bring to the committee that which w...
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