Move over, Epstein: Pittsburgh has its own history of “black books”

Jeffrey Epstein’s “black book” and the federal government’s investigative files on the convicted sex offender have dominated headlines for years since the convicted sex offender died in 2019. The Epstein files allegedly are one factor contributing to U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson’s recent refusal to reconvene the House of Representatives. It’s rumored that Epstein’s alleged black book contains a Who’s Who of business and political leaders. There hasn’t been such a fuss over black books since the case of “Hollywood Madam” Heidi Fleiss in the 1990s and “D.C. Madam” Deborah Jean Palfrey in the early 2000s.

Pittsburgh history has its own black books and versions of the Epstein files, with examples stretching back more than a century.

Black books belonging to Pittsburgh madams Nettie Gordon and Mae Scheible and the membership rolls of a prominent 1980s gay bar contained bombshells that threatened generations of Pittsburgh men.

Yinzers don’t need to look to Hollywood or Washington for salacious stories attached to little black books, rolodexes, card files or spreadsheets. We have plenty of our own tales of rich and powerful men and their secrets.

Never found: Nettie Gordon’s black book

Dubbed Pittsburgh’s “Queen of the Underworld” in a 1934 Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph headline announcing her death, North Side madam Nettie Gordon built a sex work empire with more than 40 brothels. 

A political powerhouse and Republican ward leader, Gordon opened her brothels to local pols for meetings. For several decades in the 20^th century, Gordon serviced and mingled among the city’s wealthiest and most powerful residents. 

“Her clients consisted of just your average guy on the street who wanted to get laid,” author Richard Gazarik tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “It also included police and it included politicians. And it included public officials who all were enamored of her stable of women.”

Art Rooney in the 1920s and early 1930s was an up-and-coming racketeer sports team owner whose politically well-connected family was close to Gordon. After Rooney’s uncle Miles died in 1931 from a gunshot wound, Gordon infamously placed a large flower arrangement next to the casket at the wake. 

“Agnes, Miles’s sister, took offense and moved the flowers into a corner,” wrote Rob Ruck, Maggie Patterson, and Michael Weber in their 2010 Rooney biography, Rooney: A Sporting Life. “Someone moved them back, and a silent tussle sent the arrangement back and forth throughout the wake.”

More subtle was how Gordon’s friends and recipients of her graft handled her widely rumored black book. In its obituary detailing Gordon’s long career, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette noted that she kept a such a book. It allegedly contained a list of all the payoffs she made to stay out of jail.

“The ‘black book’ that told of the shameless avarice of police and politicians over a generation is closed for good,” the Post-Gazette wrote. 

No one ever found Gordon’s black book.

Mae Scheible’s bombshell black book

Born Mae Kegel in what’s now Pittsburgh’s North Side in 1894, Mae “Billie” Scheible cut a path through the 20^th century becoming one of the nation’s most colorful and successful madams. She began her career in a North Hills roadhouse with a financial stake provided by wealthy real estate entrepreneur Herman Kamin.

In 1926 or 1927, Scheible opened a brothel in Oakland that attracted a wide slice of Pittsburgh men, from prominent attorneys and judges to elected officials and street cops. There were so many prominent figures that Scheible’s black book might have doubled as Pittsburgh’s “Blue Book” — the city’s elite social register.

Squabbles over Scheible’s black book broke out in 1934 after raids on her Pittsburgh and New York City brothels. Scheible’s attorneys successfully lobbied to keep the client records out of evidence and away from the press. They also scored a major victory by keeping the names of prominent Schieble clients and enablers, including Kamin’s, out of court records.

Scheible’s attorney Lewis Landes told prosecutors and reporters that her records could be used as political weapons because they contained “the names of prominent Republican citizens,” the New York Times reported in 1935.

After getting ahold of Scheible’s black book, FBI agents transcribed its entries. An excerpt containing more than 20 typed pages is included in microfilmed FBI records in the National Archives. The FBI transcription reads, “The following is a list of names, addresses, and telephone numbers … of numerous men found in the apartment of Mrs. Mae Scheible … when the list was [transcribed] by Bureau Agents recently.”

“So, the actual book was probably destroyed,” says historian Jessica Pliley, who has written extensively about Scheible. 

Pliley said that long-serving FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover closely guarded Scheible’s files, along with thousands of others he collected. “I would assume that they were moved into his personal office, where he had this kind of file system that was devoted to sexually salacious material that he thought was too sensitive to be in the general files of the FBI,” Pliley says.

Hoover died in 1972, and Pliley believes that the original black books were destroyed along with all of Hoover’s other records.

The Travelers Social Club

Founded in 1967 by LGBTQ+ entertainment entrepreneur Robert “Lucky” Johns, the Travelers Social Club in 1983 bought an old East Liberty slaughterhouse that for 20 years had been the headquarters of an old Italian American social club. Not long after Travelers moved into the building, raids began by Pittsburgh police, fire department, and state alcohol enforcement agencies.

In 1984, the club sued the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) and several of its then-agents for selective prosecution and harassment (liquor control enforcement transitioned from the PLCB to the Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement [BLCE] between 1987 and 1988).

As the lawsuit worked its way through state court, raids continued. On February 14, 1988, BLCE agents, Pittsburgh police and fire department officials descended on the club and arrested club members and officers. The “St. Valentines Day Massacre” became a pivotal point in Pittsburgh LGBTQ+ and civil rights history.

The club subsequently sued city and state officials in federal court alleging civil rights violations. During the case, lawyers for the state requested copies of Travelers’ membership lists. 

The club’s membership was a sensitive subject. Keeping the list secret was a major concern during the case.

“I told the other lawyer I wasn’t producing them,” attorney Jon Pushinsky tells  City Paper. Pushinsky and his then-partner, Michael Rosenfield, represented Travelers in the case.

Pushinsky recalls telling the other laywer, “There are a lot of prominent people on that list, including elected public officials, and I’m not going to ruin their lives by giving it.”

Members included closeted elected and appointed public officials and businessmen. “The social, political environment was very different and there were a lot of people who didn’t want it to be known that they were gay,” Pushinsky said. “I mean, there were people who were at the club that night who said I don’t want to be a witness or you can’t call me — no one can find out I was here.”

Though the membership list was fair game under the rules of discovery, the state’s lawyer dropped never again asked for the list. “That request just kind of disappeared because he could’ve gone to court for an order requiring me to produce them, but he never did.”

Even today, Lucky’s silent partners in the club and its membership remain anonymous. Historian and Pittsburgh Queer History Project founder Harrison Apple used pseudonyms for them in their 2021 Ph.D. dissertation on the history of Pittsburgh’s gay bars. After CP discovered one of the silent partner’s names — a married suburban businessman — among legal records, Apple wrote in an email, “Please do not use [his] name, by request of his surviving family.”

This article appears in Nov. 12-18, 2025.