COLLEGE

Indianapolis writer details Louisville basketball escort scandal

Jeff Greer
jgreer@courier-journal.com

The veteran journalist who co-authored a book filled with explosive allegations against the University of Louisville men's basketball program said Monday that the escort he wrote with is "pretty damn credible."

Dick Cady, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist based in Indianapolis, insisted that Katina Powell — a Louisville prostitute who claims a former Louisville staff member paid thousands of dollars and gave game tickets to her and other escorts, including her own daughters, to provide sexual services to players and recruits — "never tried to back down or amplify or gussy something up."

"Every time that we went after a fact, we either found it or found something resembling it," said Cady, who did most of the book's reporting and writing with Patricia Keiffner, publisher of the Indianapolis Business Journal Book Publishing.

"Every time we hit her with a new question or an explanation, she came through. … I thought she was pretty damn credible for what she was."

Cady was a part of a team of The Indianapolis Star reporters who won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Local Investigative Specialized Reporting for its work exposing police corruption. Cady and fellow Star journalist William Anderson were indicted for attempting to bribe a policeman in late 1974 when they say they followed an informant to witness what he said would be police bribery. Instead, they were accused of having a hand in the bribe, though those charges were dropped by the prosecutor, who said "there is no evidence a crime has been committed." Cady has called the charges a "frame-up" job.

Powell's claims, chronicled in five journals that she allegedly kept from 2010-14, when she says the illicit activities took place, have prompted Louisville to hire its own private investigator. The book, "Breaking Cardinal Rules: Basketball and the Escort Queen," has also caught the attention of the NCAA's enforcement arm.

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The former Louisville staffer in question, Andre McGee, who is now an assistant coach at University of Missouri-Kansas City, has been placed on administrative leave there and has hired Louisville lawyer Scott Cox.

McGee's former coach and employer, Louisville head coach Rick Pitino, reiterated Monday to ESPN that neither he nor any of his other staff members or players who were at the university from 2010-14 "had any knowledge" of Powell or the alleged activities involving Louisville's players or recruits.

Powell, in a September interview with the Indianapolis Business Journal, said McGee told her Pitino "knows everything" that goes on with his basketball program.

"That was the implication, yes," Cady said during an hourlong interview in his home on Monday.

But, he explained, that claim was not in the book, which was released online Friday night, because Powell did not make that same claim to him or Keiffner.

"When you've got all this stuff going on for such a long time, and it's so loud — let's remember, they were playing rap music and hip hop, and it was so loud," Cady said. "And nobody knows nothing? Yeah, OK."

Cady said he was first approached about Powell's book idea in April. Powell, he said, came to the IBJ "with a bag full of her journals." After the IBJ's book division looked over the content of Powell's journals, Cady was asked to assess them and write the book.

"I didn't want to take part in the project," he said. "I saw it as an awful lot of work involving a lot of time...."

Cady said he expected "a lot of problems" would pop up while researching the book. But he ultimately decided to take on the project because it was "a hell of a story."

Cady and Keiffner took six months to report, write and edit the book. He estimated that he spoke to Powell from 10-15 times, while Keiffner spoke with her "practically every day." They read each page of Powell's journals, copies of which Cady keeps in a stack about two feet high in a closet in his home office.

The IBJ hired Indianapolis-based Certified Fraud & Forensic Investigation to comb through Powell's phone and corroborate phone calls and text messages and match up the phone numbers she was claiming she was contacting. The firm digging through Powell's phone, Cady said, eased any concerns they had about the supposed "virus" that Powell claims in the book erased hundreds of text messages with McGee.

Asked if the firm confirmed that it was indeed McGee who was contacting Powell, Cady thumbed a stack of cellphone data records and said, "Oh, yeah."

Cady declined to share the records with The Courier-Journal.

Asked if he ever doubted the veracity of any of Powell's claims at any point in the process, Cady flatly said no.

"It seemed to me that there were three things there: No. 1, the university stuff; No. 2, this incredible thing about the escort business; and No. 3, the unbelievable thing about her and her daughters," Cady said, referring to Powell's claims that she used her daughters as entertainers and prostitutes.

"I just thought it was a hell of a story. It is a hell of a story. Really, I can't think of any book that quite compares to it."

IU: We're not involved in Louisville escort scandal

Cady also vehemently denied theories that have popped up over the weekend that Indiana University, and specifically IBJ chairman and IU booster Mickey Maurer, had ulterior motives to publishing the book after the University of Louisvillelured ace recruiter Kenny Johnson away from IU after the 2013-14 season.

Or that Keiffner, who was the general manager of the Lexington Chamber of Commerce from 1984-88, according to her LinkedIn page, had any desire to bring down the school that rivals the University of Kentucky.

"Not a factor at all," Cady said.

After Cady and Keiffner approached Louisville about the book in late August, the university hired former NCAA enforcement officer Chuck Smrt to conduct an investigation into Powell's allegations.

Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich said Friday that Smrt, who is coordinating his investigation with the university's athletics compliance office, is "probably the No. 1 person in the country that does this kind of thing. We want to know the facts."

Jurich said the university would hand over to Smrt any and all video recordings kept at the Minardi Hall dormitory, where the university's  basketball players live and where Powell alleges that most of the parties took place. He also said the university  had provided Smrt and his team with the log-in and log-out books to Minardi Hall.

Louisville media relations director, John Karman, said Monday that EdR, a private firm that manages dormitories across the country, including four living halls at the Louisville and one at the University of Kentucky, was in charge of the front-desk security at Minardi Hall.

But Cady, with a strong sense of sarcasm in his voice, said logbooks wouldn't prove or disprove any of Powell's claims, and that he had also sought them out during their reporting for the book. Powell told Cady and Keiffner that there was "one old man" at the front desk when the escorts came through the front door with McGee for their parties.

"Well, yeah, they registered every time they went in: 'Katina Powell, hooker,'" Cady said. "You know what? A dorm is porous. You want to get your girlfriend in that dorm? You're going to get your girlfriend in that dorm, and her name ain't going to be on any log."

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The book also mentions a side door used to access the building.

Cady said he and Keiffner met with Smrt and Louisville's associate athletic director for compliance, John Carns, on Friday. McGee's lawyer, Cox, asked to be present at the meeting, but neither the investigators nor authors wanted Cox there, Cady added.

Cady said Keiffner spoke with Cox on Friday.

"She is interested in money," Cox said, a statement that neither Powell nor Cady have denied.

During the meeting with Smrt and Carns, Cady said the investigators asked most of the questions. When Cady and Keiffner, pressed for more information, asked Smrt if he had spoken with McGee, they "never got an answer," Cady said.

Cady and Keiffner refused to hand over copies of the documentation they had collected for the reporting and writing process of Powell's book. They did not supply Smrt with any phone records or any of the journal entries that Powell wrote, he said.

Cady said he hoped Smrt and the investigative team read the book for more information.

"My feeling is that they needed more groundwork before they could really jump into stuff," he said. "They need to see the book."

At his meeting with university  officials back in August, Cady said there "might still be a couple skunks in the closet" at Louisville. His reasoning, he said, is Powell alleges someone other than McGee called and told her that Louisville wanted them to start bringing white women to dance for players and recruits. She didn't know who called her.

"Who the hell was that?" Cady asked.

That call, among other reasons, including the desire to be paid for her story, was part of the impetus for Powell to shop her book idea.

"If you look at the manuscript, the book, and read it carefully, there are some things that would suggest that, yes, someone else was involved," Cady said. "These things are pretty obvious, and I think they need to be addressed. We certainly couldn't prove them, but they need to be addressed. Maybe they're not true. But maybe they are."

In the last chapter of the book, Cady wrote about meeting with Powell and the other escorts. In his interviews with the prostitutes and dancers, who were the only ones to confirm any of Powell's claims, Cady said the women were "having fun" with the University of Louisville players and recruits.

The photos of the dancers and Louisville players, sprinkled throughout the book, have come under sharp criticism by the book's skeptics because they do not explicitly depict any nefarious activity. Many of them resemble the scores of posed photos taken of basketball players in a hoops-loving city like Louisville.

But, Cady said, the only objective of the photos is to "add to the texture and the reality of it."

"What do you want, pictures of guys getting (sex acts)?" Cady said. "You're not going to get that. You're not going to take that. But you've got the women undressing in the bathroom and on and on and on.

"Well, they know these women. Who are these women, anyway? Are they, by the way, strippers and hookers inside their dorm? Oh, OK … Where were the supervisors? Who's minding the store?"

Cady reached four or five former Louisville players, he said, though many others declined to comment or hung up on him. He did not expect them to know anything, and they claimed they didn't, he said, "but there were some other aspects that looked promising."

He acknowledged that many dots still need to be connected. He said if he and Keiffner had another six months to research Powell's claims, they would have "made a chain that would wrap around someone's neck."

"We did the best we could," he said. "The other side was, can those dots be connected by an independent investigation? Absolutely — if there is one. I get a little nervous when people start investigating themselves."

A few minutes later, Cady said an "independent investigation" would vindicate the book and Powell.

"What if it's all true? Then how the hell could it happen?" he said. "What if it's half-true? How the hell could it happen? What if it's one-quarter true? How the hell could it happen? Ten percent? Shouldn't be going on."

Call Courier-Journal reporter Jeff Greer at (502) 582-4044. Follow him on Twitter: @jeffgreer_cj.