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Gypsies, more properly referred to in their own language (with origins in Sanskrit) as the Roma or Romany, comprise about 14% of the population of Eastern Europe.

The “Gypsy” people, originated in Northwestern India and migrated westward until they reached Europe. Originally settling in Romania, they were enslaved in that country until 1864-one year after Abraham Lincoln issued the American Emancipation Proclamation. The word “Gypsy” originated from the misconception that the dark skinned migrants to Europe were of Egyptian origin. Like African Americans, the end of formal slavery for the Roma did not mean the end of their persecution. Because they were generally dark skinned, and, like American slaves, kept illiterate and vilified by stereotyping, they were kept out of professions, subjected to arbitrary law enforcement, and frequently, like Eastern European Jews, forbidden from owning land. Like African – Americans who were subject to the sexual whims of slave-owners, and Eastern European Jews who were subject to rape, there is great disparity in Roma physical types. Although many remain dark skinned owing to their Indian sub-continent origins, you simply can’t tell Roma by any particular look.

The Roma language derives from ancient Hindi and has picked up elements of many languages of the people through which they traversed on their journey from India to Europe and from there to every corner of the world. In the 20th Century, the Roma have continued to suffer both horrific and petit forms of persecution.

During World War II, the Nazis deemed them to be sub-human. They were the first people upon whom Zyklon-B gas was used as an experiment in extermination techniques. 80%–probably around 800,000—Roma died at the hands of the Nazis, about the same percentage as European Jews. Some estimates are higher, placing the number of Roma killed at 10% of the total holocaust number.

Roma who made it to America have similarly faced arbitrary discrimination after migrating to the land that held out the torch of liberty: Roma presently in their late 40’s to 50’s report having been expelled from various California school districts, arbitrarily, as soon as it was discovered that they were “Gypsy” children. Consider that stereotyping by the media about “Gypsies” that would be considered “politically incorrect” and socially unacceptable remains completely unchallenged to this day. The movie “Quicksilver” starring Kevin Bacon features as the villain, “The Gypsy,” who is a violent drug dealer; a children’s show recently on the Disney Channel portrays a scenario of a “Gypsy” who has a pet monkey that he has trained to steal. A little girl befriends the Monkey and teaches it that it is wrong to steal; an episode of “Law and Order” deals with “Gypsy” cab drivers, none of whom happen to be ethnic Roma.

If one were to substitute the words Jew, Asian, Latino, African-American, or half a dozen other ethnic groups into these scenarios, studios would be picketed, movies would be boycotted, and stockholder resolutions would be introduced condemning the practice. As with any ethnic group, there are the good as well as the bad: famous and well respected people of Romany descent include Charlie Chaplin, Rita Hayworth, Bob Hoskins, and Yul Brynner.

Gypsies in the Holocaust

I began doing civil rights work with the Moshwara Clan of the Roma, beginning with a press conference demanding extradition of Nazi war criminals from Canada who had massacred Gypsies during World War II. Gradually, I became involved with them on investigative and social levels.

One day, I found myself in the company of the King of the Moshwara Clan–Duey Stevens–and a certain drunk Gypsy female. In Roma society, there are Roma and Gadjo, or non-Gypsies, just as there are Jews and Gentiles: you are either one or the other. The woman, in her inebriated state, said certain things that a Roma should not have said in the presence of a Gadjo.

As we drove away from meeting with the woman, the King was making apologies for her behavior. At one point, he said, “but she was drunk…she didn’t know what she was saying.”

To this I replied, “I come from simple folk. My grandparents on my mother’s side came from a little town called Gorodiesche outside of Kiev. They taught me an old Ukrainian proverb: ‘what’s on a sober man’s mind [as I touched my fingers to my head], is on a drunken man’s tongue [as I touched my fingers to my lips]‘”

He didn’t say anything for the next ten minutes. When he finally spoke, he said, “my friend, there is great wisdom in your family. You’re absolutely right. She meant every word she said. You have saved me from a lot of grief and anguish. From now on, you are no longer Gadjo, you are Roma. You are part of my family.

Some months later, I repeated this story to a couple of Duey’s younger brothers and other members of the Moshwara Gypsy council.  One of them, visibly astonished, asked me, “he said that?!”  “Yes,” I explained, quizzically.

One of the brothers then said, “I don’t think you understand.  You are now no longer Gadjo; you are Roma; you are part of our clan.”  “I’m honored,” I told them, and I truly was, at this confirmation that Duey was not simply flattering me.

“I don’t think you understand,” the brother continued.  “This only happens maybe once every 50 years, that Gadjo is accepted as Roma.”  I responded that I was doubly honored to be part of the Moshwara clan.

“You still don’t understand,” he went on.  “In the entire history of Gypsy clans, we have never heard of Gadjo being adopted into the King’s family!”  “I’m triply honored to be part of the King’s family,” said I.

“You still don’t get it.  You are our brother.  We can deny you nothing,” he insisted.

“I like that.  I will tuck that away for future reference,” I told them, truly and deeply honored…and to this day they have never disappointed me or treated me differently from my status, as I suppose, a Prince of the Gypsies.  At the current King’s grandson’s wedding, I was seated next to the King.

To this I say, Bach t’lo (Roma for “Life and Luck,” the Roma toast!)

Since my old Compuserve homepage (which I’d had since 1993) got shut down when AOL ended Compuserve Classic service, I’m in the process of transferring over my “Anecdotes & Adventures” page to this blog.  So the first story I’m going to put out there is Part 1 of my Tales of the Castle Dracula, from when I lived at 2550 Laurel Pass in the Hollywood Hills with Gyula Tamas Zubovicz, aka Count Dracula.  Part 1 are the stories about Helmut, the Gay German-Australian butler, who made Lurch of the Addams Family seem downright normal by comparison.

Helmut Brunjes, butler at the Castle Dracula in the mid-to-late 1980s, was one of the most truly demented and perverted people to ever inhabit the earth. Not because he was Gay--but because Helmut was one of the most truly depraved masochists that I ever met. The son of a Polish Jew and a German woman who was hiding his father during World War II, Helmut was first seduced, consensually, by an American soldier on occupation duty, when he was 11 years old. He attended the Intercontinental Hotel School in Europe, before doing a stint in the merchant marine during which, as he put it, he "buggered his way around the world." Commenting upon his experiences in the merchant marine, Helmut once expressed relief (after receiving negative results on an AIDS test) that he was not personally the entire cause of AIDS in the world, explaining that at the time when Gays and Haitians were the two highest at risk groups for the disease, that he'd "buggered so many Haitians" that he was sure that he must have personally spread "the entire plague upon the world." Australia will never be the same without Helmut--

Helmut eventually wound up in Australia, where he fell in love with a Czechoslovakian émigré who had a knack for just the right kind of abuse. Once, coming to work with his eyes blackened, his nose broken, and his lip split and bleeding, black and blue all over, his boss, immediately told him "Helmut, you can't come to work like this. Go home!" Helmut proceeded to explain what happened: "Oh George. It was my boyfriend. He strangled me with an electrical cord. He dragged me around the house by my hair.  He whipped me.  He tortured me with a pair of pliers. He pummeled my face for nearly an hour...." "Go home Helmut!" George insisted. "Oh George," continued Helmut, "it was beautiful."

Helmut's night out--

Coming to America with his boss, as associate of Dracula (Gyula Tamas Zubovicz) Helmut was traded to Dracula as interest on a debt. Moving into the Castle Dracula as butler, chef, and laundress, Helmut immediately warmed up to his role as a virtual slave. His great ambition in life had always been to be kept in bondage in a dungeon, so slavery to a group of Transylvanian vampires and werewolves was getting closer to his personal life goal. There were all sorts of interesting people for Helmut to meet at the Castle. Frequent visitors there were Irv Rubin, nitwit leader of the Jewish Defense League and various members of his entourage. Although the JDL ostensibly did not admit Gays to membership, it was riddled with latent homosexuals, one of whom made a date with Helmut. When Earl Krugel, Rubin's notoriously misogynist underling found out, he threatened to expel the member from the JDL in such a fit of rage that everybody except Rubin (a village idiot if there ever was one) likened to a jealous boyfriend throwing a fit at his lover's infidelity (everybody but Rubin always assumed that Earl Krugel was a closet case). Despondent over the breaking off of his date, Helmut decided he needed a night out.  Returning a couple of days later, Helmut related his adventure to me, explaining first of all that he'd been picked up at a Gay bar by a wealthy Peruvian. Returning with him to his home in the Hollywood Hills, they first had a wild Jacuzzi party with three of his other friends, and then retired to his bedroom. "When I first entered the bedroom said Helmut, I saw hooks on the ceiling, and silly me, I thought they were for planters." In fact, the hooks were mounted on pulleys and had shackles on the ends of their chains. The Peruvian proceeded to shackle Helmut's hands, strip him naked, and proceed to haul Helmut up and down over himself on the bed, after which he left Helmut hanging from the ceiling. Helmut loved every minute of it. "Unfortunately," Helmut later complained, "He had to go to work on Monday so he unshackled me on Sunday evening and let me go!"

Left holding the bag--

A couple of Hungarian women stole Helmut from Dracula and used him as the proverbial "patsy" in a mail fraud scheme.  They set up a corporation called Gold Card Services and had Helmut as the sole officer and signer on all the bank accounts.

They took out ads in Spanish language newspapers everywhere, telling potential customers, 'send us $65, we'll send you a credit card.'  The whole thing was a fraud.  When somebody would call or write and ask why they hadn't received their card, they would get a "lulling letter" telling them they'd been assigned a "case number" and that their inquiry would be investigated.  Each time they'd contact the company, they'd get another computer generated "lulling letter."  Nobody actually ever got credit cards.  The women took off with the money and left Helmut holding the bag.

When Helmut got busted and pleaded guilty to 13 counts of mail fraud, one of the women paid him off to flee the country.  Nobody could figure out why, because he only had to do another six months in federal lockup and his longtime fantasy was to be kept in a dungeon where he could be assaulted and tortured.  Prison comes pretty close to his life-long fantasy.

Helmut Surfaces--

Fast forward to the 21st century.  I'm discussing an IPO (Initial Public Offering) of stock in connection with my defense of a Tony Pellicano co-defendant.  The IPO was done in Frankfurt, Germany, by VMR (Value Management Resources).  My client tells me that a German named Oberman had come over to Los Angeles to negotiate the deal with Amiram Shafrir, my client's nemesis.  As soon as he mentioned "Oberman," my ears caught on fire.

"Charles Oberman?" I inquired?  My client didn't remember his first name.

"Was he 5'8," curly hair, and Gay as a three-dollar bill?" I asked.

"Yeah.  How did you know?" my client queried.

"Because he was the butler when I lived at the Castle Dracula," I explained.

My client didn't believe it, until two weeks later I walked into lock-up at the Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center and showed him Helmut's German Passport, Swedish and German union cards, and his Dutch, German, and Swedish seaman's papers going back to 1958.

Don't ask how I got them, but I have been a private investigator for over 30 years!

Subject:  Holiday Party, 1977; Pic 1-L-R Unknown English couple, Mark T. Radcliffe & Denise Hastings, Unknown above Lenita Sanborn, Steve Edrington above James W. McDonald; lower middle, Robert H. Branch III; Pic 2-Jan Tucker & Lenita Sanborn; Pic 3-L-R Mark T. Radcliffe, Lenita Sanborn, James W. McDonald, unknown English guest

Explanation:  Lenita was my significant other then, we’d met in Spanish class @ CSUN when she was a sophomore and I was a senior; Radcliffe I’d known since 2nd Grade, he eventually betrayed Jim McDonald, Paul T. Mooney, and myself and has been cursed forever by the FCOA; Denise was sort of Mark’s girlfriend but turned out to have been a platonic relationship, even though Denise had not wanted it to be that way; Steve Edrington is one of the strangest people who ever lived; Bob Branch was my dentist and drinking buddy; James W. McDonald was my mentor and surrogate father figure from 15 on.

Just some memories to share….

Remember the 1001 Tales of the Arabian Nights?  I have 1001 Tales of Ishihara to speak of.  Even in my Private Investigator circles this is one of my lesser known topics — and people already know that if they want my “war stories” to be (a) better and (b) completely truthful they’d better buy me a drink after a PI meeting or convention.  As the old Ukrainian proverb goes, “what’s on a sober man’s mind is on a drunk man’s tongue.”

Back in the 70’s, I used to hang out, along with my mentor James William “Jim” McDonald, with a guy who some seemed to think was Yakuza (Japanese Mafia).  Naturally, I wouldn’t know what his affiliations were.  But sure as hell, either the FBI who investigated him and put him away (and later deported) him for auto embezzlement either conveniently failed to tell all they knew to the defense, or else they were just incredibly stupid.  But that’s a story for another time.  That’s just another one of the 1001 Tales of Ishihara.

Today’s story is about how that SOB got me drunker ‘n a skunk.

Shortly after Jim and I had met him, we arranged for him to meet us with seven (7) legal secretaries at the El Torito in the Marina (Del Rey).  Before Ishihara’s limousine picked us up, we’d been drinking red wine.

When we got to the bar at the El Torito, Ishihara throws his Diner’s Club card on the bar and says, “No one pays for drink tonight.  I pay for all drink.”  Back in those days, when I was young, I could drink up a storm on somebody else’s money, so I promptly had four Mai Tais.  By the time we sat down for dinner, I was so drunk I ordered a Grasshopper and wound up pouring it all over my face because there was too much ice in it:  all this green junk all over my face!

A legal secretary whose divorce had become final the day before, Julie, was sitting next to me.  She dips a tortilla chip and puts it in my mouth.  I dip one and put it in her mouth.  Then I say, let’s do this right:  we cross arms and put tortilla chips in each other’s mouths.

At some point, Julie asks if dinner is on Ishihara.  “Of course I say,” so the word gets around the table and the women are changing their orders from “Taquitos” to “Waiter, make that a crab meat burrito;” “Oh waiter, make mine a lobster meat tostada.”  So the bar tab is now around $500 (in 1970’s era dollars) and the dinner tab is probably around another $500…and Ishihara’s not getting anywhere with any of the ladies.

After dinner, we go back to the bar and he’s furious that Julie’s hitting on me but nobody’s hitting on him.  He decides to pull a macho routine and says, “Tucker, I never see you drink hard liquor.  To prove you are man, you must drink triple shot Tequila!”  This was shortly after I’d gotten my B.A. with a double major including Chicano Studies, which meant I had to learn to out-drink my professors.  So I chug a triple shot, and then say (because two can play at a macho game) “Now to prove you’re a man you must drink Mescal with me.”  Ishihara says “what Mescal?” to which the Mexican bartender responds, “Only hombres drink Mescal.  It has a worm in it.”

Ishihara:  “No No No No No No.  We drink triple shot Tequila!”  So, Jim, Ishihara and I down another triple shot.  Jim and I chug ours, and Ishihara chokes on his.  I do a third triple shot to show him how its done and then too more straight shots in case he can’t do a triple.  I’ve now consumed for the evening red wine, 4 Mai Tais, a Grasshopper, and 11 shots of Tequila.  Ishihara:  “Bartender.  Why he not dead?”  Bartender:  “He must be mucho hombre!”  Ishihara says:  “Bartender!  I buy bottle!”

Ishihara grabs the Tequila bottle and pours it down my throat.  I remember walking out of the bar on my own two feet.  I remember passing out in the limousine and waking up briefly at the Century Plaza Hotel.  Next thing I’m throwing up on Jim’s lawn, which probably saved my life…and finally waking up 15 hours later with the worst hangover of my life.

Just another page from the Detective’s Diary.