Well, there is another madame (I guess). Will the Reps continue to give him standing ovations?
Prostitute, Flynt keep pressure on Vitter
By Kate Moran
Staff writer
Adult magazine publisher Larry Flynt brought the prostitute who claims to have had an affair with U.S. Sen. David Vitter before the media on Tuesday and called on Vitter to resign the seat he won by campaigning on a platform of conservative values.
In her first public appearance since the allegations emerged, Wendy Yow Ellis told reporters that she used to meet Vitter for sex several times a week between July and November 1999, only months after he was elected to Congress.
Ellis said Vitter found her through an escort service and would meet her at an apartment at Dauphine and Dumaine streets in the French Quarter. At first, he knew her only by her stage name: Leah.
She said the assignations ended "abruptly" when she proposed escalating the relationship and divulged her real first name to Vitter. She shares that name with his wife, Wendy Baldwin Vitter.
"When I asked him if he would like to carry this beyond the business, I gave him my name and phone number, and he looked down," Ellis said. "I said, 'My real name is Wendy,' and he said, 'Oh my God.' That was the last time I saw him through the escort service. I did see him a few times at the club where I danced at after that, but he just kind of gave me a look of disbelief."
Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine and occasional political rabble rouser, ignited the prostitution scandal this summer when he uncovered Vitter's phone number in the records of an escort service based in Washington.
Shortly after that, Ellis spoke to the Times-Picayune about her trysts with Vitter in New Orleans. She since has sold her story to Flynt for an undisclosed amount, and it will appear in Hustler along with revealing photographs later this year.
"She looks damn good for her age," Flynt said of Ellis, who is 34. He said he also is helping her with a book deal.
Ellis too late for big bounty
This summer, Flynt ran an ad in the Washington Post offering a $1 million bounty to anyone who could provide evidence of an illicit relationship with a government leader. He said Tuesday that Ellis did not qualify for the reward because she was not the first to point out Vitter's indiscretions.
"Wendy would have gotten a lot of money on this deal, but she was not the first source to out Vitter," he said. "The pie gets smaller as you go along."
A spokesman for Vitter declined to comment on Flynt's press conference, other than to say the senator is focused on important Louisiana issues. Vitter has previously denied "those New Orleans stories."
Flynt billed himself Tuesday as the scourge of politicians who espouse conservative values in public while carrying on extramarital affairs in their private lives. He said his objective is not to titillate, but to expose hypocrisy.
"It is not a question of muckraking and exposing the perverts. It's more than that," Flynt said. "It is trying to maintain some honesty in the government."
"It would be nice if we could bring about his resignation," he added about Vitter.
Flynt said he also unearthed the phone numbers of two national news anchors in the records of the Washington escort service, but he chose not to disclose their names because they do not hold public office and cannot cast a vote that could "affect my way of life."
Although Flynt said Vitter is the only officeholder whose name has turned up in the escort service phone records, the publisher said he still has to wade through 3,000 phone numbers. He said he also has his sights on a closeted gay senator who he said consistently votes against gay rights.
Ellis, a convicted felon and former drug user, passed a lie detector test in August in which she asserted that she carried on a four-month affair with Vitter through a company called the New Orleans Escort Service.
She said at the press conference that the trysts took place from July-November 1999, shortly after Vitter won a special election that sent him to Congress. That is a later time frame than she offered earlier this summer, when she told The Times-Picayune that the encounters occurred when Vitter was still a state legislator, a post he resigned in May 1999 while running for the open congressional seat.
The assistant managing editor of Hustler said earlier this week that Ellis believes her affair with Vitter might have lasted longer than four months, but the polygrapher asked her only about the period of time when she felt certain she was telling the truth.
No photos exist, she says
Her former boyfriend, Tait Cortez, said earlier this summer that he found photographs of Ellis and Vitter in a provocative pose in late 1998. But Ellis said this week that Vitter was cautious about their arrangement and that photographs of them do not exist.
Ellis at one time used Cortez as an alias. In July, a former New Orleans madam named Jeanette Maier alleged that Vitter had been a client at her Mid-City brothel and preferred a prostitute who went by the name Wendy Cortez.
Ellis said this week that she has never met Maier and that her dates with Vitter were set up through her pimp, a man she knew only as Jonathan.
Ellis would not answer questions Tuesday about how much she will be paid for divulging details about the Vitter affair to Hustler. She said that she wants to redeem her reputation, which she said was tarnished when Vitter denied news reports about his involvement with prostitutes in New Orleans -- essentially calling her a liar.
'I am telling the truth'
"I have been called a liar most of my life, and this time I am here to set the record straight that I am telling the truth," she said. "I am going to represent my country and be honest about it."
She challenged Vitter to take a lie detector test and said she would like to go "head to head" with him about their affair. She also said he deserves whatever punishment his wife, who has previously supported him in public, decides to mete out.
"She deserves to know the truth," Ellis said of Wendy Vitter. "She deserves to know that he is a liar. He is going to sit there and look at her in her eyes and tell her, 'No honey, I didn't do this, but please forgive me for something I didn't do.'ยค"
Kate Moran can be reached at
[email protected] or (504) 826-3491.
