Pimp on trial for alleged sex trafficking
Rahim McIntyre, a/k/a "King Kobra," is accused of prostituting 3 young women, by force or with knowledge that one was underage.
SHE KNEW HIM as "King Kobra."
The thin woman with short, red hair told a federal jury yesterday at Rahim McIntyre's sex-trafficking trial that "he was just the boss," the one who kept all the cash.
She was 16 when she met him, on Jan. 11, 2006, at his then-home in Germantown. She was introduced to him through a woman she befriended on MySpace.
It soon became clear that the woman was a prostitute, "doing dates" with men for money, and was McIntyre's favorite girl, the red-haired woman, now 24, testified.
For about three weeks in 2006, she said, she stayed with McIntyre's lead girl in hotels in New Jersey and Philadelphia, including the Courtyard Marriott in Center City. She prostituted herself, too, after men saw her scantily clad photos on the Backpage and Craigslist websites.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Morgan said in her opening statement that McIntyre, 34, most recently of Dorset Street near Mansfield Avenue in East Mount Airy, is charged with three counts of sex trafficking. The two other victims were 18 at the time, she said.
Defense attorney Lawrence Bozzelli opened with a quote from Dante's Inferno: "The devil is not as black as he is painted." The lawyer admitted that his client was a pimp, but said McIntyre's relationship with the three women was consensual.
The red-haired woman, who was a minor when she prostituted for McIntyre, said she did not tell him how old she was.
Her main contact in the sex biz was McIntyre's lead girl, she said.
To recruit more girls into the biz, the woman testified, McIntyre told them to go to the Gallery at Market East in Center City "to find other females . . . who would be willing to work with us."
She also said there was a time when she saw McIntyre beat his favorite female with the heel of a new shoe the woman had bought without permission at the Gallery. The beating left the other woman bleeding, screaming and crying, the red-haired woman testified.
She said that after about three weeks, she sneaked away in the middle of the night from the hotel at which she was staying with the other woman, taking all the money from that woman's purse. "I couldn't stay and do that much longer," she said. "Everything was controlled. . . . We never had any money."