This week's column involves street prostitution. Researching the subject, I came across newspaper accounts of daredevil Evel Knievel's 1986 citation for soliciting sex while in Kansas City.
Knievel was driving his tour bus along Main Street when he pulled over at 34th Terrace. Police said Knievel negotiated a $60 date with a woman who happened to be an undercover officer. Knievel later told reporters that he wasn't looking for sex but a hotel. He said he thought that he recognized the women who were working the street as decoys.
Knievel, who died in 2007, went with the entrapment defense. "There is a little evil in all of us," he said at a press conference, name-checking himself homophone-style. "But there might be a little more evil in your police department than there is in me."
Knievel was taken in custody and freed after posting a $500 bond. According to an account in the Kansas City Times, he was in town to attend the wedding of colorful Grandview businessman Del Dunmire. Convited of bank robbery in the 1950s, Dunmire owns a big chunk of downtown Harrisonville. He paid a reported $1 million for the 1986 wedding. (Dunmire and his bride, Debbie, divorced, remarried and divorced again.)
Knievel was known to mix things up on his visits to Kansas City. As we recently reported, the man who tried to jump the Snake River Canyon was being investigated by the FBI for his suspected invovement in a 1973 beating of someone in Kansas City.
As for the solicitation arrest, Knievel eventually pleaded guilty a reduced charge of disorderly conduct and paid a $200 fine. -- David Martin
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I remember that because we attended Del and Debbie's wedding. What an affair. We will never forget his hospitality and the fantastic time we had. Thank's for the memories Del.
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