Anchorage Attorney Cliff Groh wrote several pieces for his blog, Alaska Political Corruption, dealing with Bill Allen. One was titled, "If Bill Allen is the Source of All Evil, why is it only now that his flaws are obvious?"
A lot of people who now want to distance themselves from Bill Allen had plenty of opportunities over the years to see up close how bad he was-a man who cut corners as a matter of course, a man whose well-documented active and varied sex life reportedly crossed the line into the illegal over and over.
Even people who had indirect contact with Bill Allen knew he had no morals.
It was the early 90's and I was working as a Billing Tech at the old VECO Camp in Deadhorse (Prudhoe Bay). My roommate was the Secretary/Receptionist and one morning, I noticed that she had a particularly long conversation with someone on the other end of the phone whom it seemed she was trying to calm. When the conversation was over, she stood up, came over to my desk, and said in a hoarse whisper "Follow me NOW!" We went into the bathroom and I thought her story was going to explode out of her.
It seems that our great and powerful leader, Mr. Bill Allen, got drunk the night before...so drunk that he claimed to have had a black out. He didn't remember that he'd promised a woman with a questionable career path a trip to Prudhoe Bay with her...errrr..."mother." He also didn't remember that he offered to let them stay in his permanent room. He found out when he got a call from the airlines that she would be on her way in a few hours (he'd called and arranged the trip the night before in his stupor). He then called my roommate because she had to make sure a) the room was prepared b) the expeditor picked this woman and her madame "mother" up at the airport and rearranged her schedule to cart her around c) someone was found to "give her a tour" (i.e. keep an eye on her). She said Allen kept repeating over-and-over again "just don't let my girlfriend find out." (She worked on the slope.)
I saw the young woman running around the VECO camp scantily clad and staying as public as possible. When she wore a low-cut neckline, high-cut over the thighs painted-on workout outfit in the gym, it filled up so full of drooling, gawking carhart-wearing guys, no one else could use it. VECO Camp had to assign someone to watch her, as she and her pimp "mother" were trying to make so many contacts, they were a terrible disruption.
I remember chuckling as I wondered how we were going to bill this. I also wondered how the clients would feel about their money going towards Allen's "appetites." I have no doubt that was not the first nor the last time his employees had to clean up his sexual messes.
This wasn't the only thing I learned about Bill Allen in the short year I worked for VECO:
--A number of folks told me about a VECO Christmas Party where Bill and one of his employees got incredibly drunk in front of all the big wigs from the oil companies and the two men ended up in a knock-down drag-out fight.
--According to long-time employees, Bill Allen had a notorious pattern when he cycled through girlfriends. Everyone knew he had a new one when he sent the old one to work up in Prudhoe.
--If you did Bill a favor and he was grateful, he would reward you. I know my roommate was hoping for that. (I didn't stay long enough afterwards to find out first hand.)
Like I said, this was after only working for VECO for about a year.
So, when I saw that Pete Kott was using Allen's behavior as an attempt to have his charges dismissed, I was far from surprised...
McCloud noted in her motion that authorities recently served a search warrant in connection with that investigation. The search warrant concerned the crimes of sexual abuse, promoting prostitution and the federal sex trafficking charge of coercion and enticement.
The stories focused on Bambi Tyree, who by then was 27. Since then, another woman came forward and said in interviews that she had sex with Allen when she was underage, and that Allen paid her to fly to Anchorage from the Lower 48 to have sex.
But the new material goes much further, identifying two other underage female victims, though McCloud referred to them only by number. Her motion says a fifth woman, also identified only by number, was a 19-year-old prostitute who knew Allen had sex with other underage girls at the time she was seeing him, in 1997.
"Its newly released documents contain allegations and evidence that Bill Allen committed a multitude of primarily sex crimes against children, and that he sought to have them swear that he never committed such acts," McCloud wrote in her motion.
Some of you may remember the name "Bambi Tyree"...
Tyree's relationship with Allen emerged from an earlier investigation by Anchorage police and the FBI into the "Joe Millionaire" child sexual exploitation case in 2003. In that case, Josef Boehm, the wealthy owner of Alaska Industrial Hardware, was charged with trading crack cocaine for sex with a series of underage girls. Tyree, then a young adult and a heavy cocaine addict, pleaded guilty in the case and told investigators she provided many of the girls in return for a steady supply of drugs from Boehm.
In the course of giving evidence against Boehm, she also mentioned her relationship with Bill Allen. Her story was corroborated by at least one other woman who talked to federal authorities at the time.
Yep...Joseph Boehm...the man who was providing underage girls for wealthy, influential Alaska men. Several lawyers wrote letters to ask the court for leniency. One of those lawyers was former prosecutor Tim Petumenos. Another was Anchorage Assemblyman Dan Coffey, who said:
"Look at those who are now blaming Joe for all the bad things that happened to them," he told the judge in the letter. "If you do, I doubt you will find that any of them have made any contributions to our community. Joe has. He built a company which employs hundreds. These people who now point fingers at Joe, have never built anything. They are vultures who saw Joe's addiction as a way to get to his wealth and they were all over him with their drugs and the other inducements."
One of the people that letter was directed at was Bambi Tyree, whom Joe Boehm (according to testimony) had coerced into his bed by using drugs when she was a minor. And yet Dan Coffey tried to turn the tables by making Joe Boehm the victim.
And this same girl was coerced by Allen:
One witness, a boyfriend of Tyree's after she turned 18, said Tyree talked about having a sexual relationship with Allen when she was 14 or 15, in the mid-1990s, when Allen would have been in his late 50s.
Allen bought her a car, gave her money and provided for her family, the boyfriend, Vince Blomfield, told a private investigator.
Let's also not forget that Coffey, the man defending Boehm, was distributing Republican Party donations to select Assembly Members...much of that money came from VECO.
Investigators can't seem to find a direct connection between Boehm and Allen.
The point...everyone knew what Bill Allen was. The scuttlebutt was all over the place for years. But Allen pays off his victims and then accuses them of shaking him down. Anyone who worked for him and knew of his behavior would have been afraid of losing their jobs. His "friends" whose campaigns and businesses he helped finance (or whose money he helped spread around to the right people) risked destruction of their livlihood and/or reputation by Allen if they spoke up.
Then again, there were also those "friends" who wallowed in the filth right along with him. For anyone who knows the unpublished history of Alaska since the pipeline, exploitation of women has been as much a part of the "Corrupt Bastards Club" as money.
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