Beaver Bust
Summary: A mother and daughter face charges of running a sex-for-hire biz out of their home. Reporter: Amy Marcinkiewicz,WPXI Channel 11 Airtime: 1 minute, 31 seconds on June 5 Visuals: * Suggestive photos from the duo's Web site allegedly soliciting assorted "services." * Outside the modest home in Beaver County, which resembles all the other homes on the street -- at least from the outside ... Highlights: * When Marcinkiewicz announces, "State police say behind closed doors at this Rochester, Beaver County, home, illegal activity was going on: a prostitution ring they say [was] operated by mother and daughter. ... Police say [the mother's common-law husband], handled the money." * When a state police officer reveals, "You can go on [the Internet] and send a private message for the escort services, and they use various codes to talk back and forth about what types of services they'll perform. But we did do that research and verified what was going on at that location." * When Marcinkiewicz, in the newsroom, almost whispers, "We learned this investigation has gotten much bigger because anyone who logged onto the Internet to contact this service -- state police now have your IP address and they are coming after the 'johns.'" * When the officer continues, "And hopefully we can identify a lot of the customers, the clients and some of the financial transactions that took place." * When the mother is interviewed from behind the half-opened front door of her home, and she asserts -- while shaking her head in a way that might put her at risk for whiplash -- "No there's not a prostitution ring. I'm 44 years old. Who wants a 44-year-old prostitute?" * When Marcinkiewicz continues, that while the mother "denied the charges to Channel 11 ... we found this picture of her on the Internet advertising an escort service. Police say she and her daughter confessed their involvement." Marcinkiewicz asks the police officer, "They should be scared?" And he replies "Absolutely." * When Marcinkiewicz ends, "When we came back to the house on Friday, no one was home. We have learned through court documents that the three who live here have been evicted, given just weeks to get out." What We Learned: What I'm going to inform you of now: a slideshow of the suspects was the second-most popular page on the KDKA Web site the last time I checked. Unanswered Question: Yeah ... who wants a 44-year-old prostitute? News Value: 2. Marcinkiewicz doesn't over-sensationalize the piece, which would have been easy to do. And I've never understood why people hounded by the news answer their doors, let alone make comments.
