Julie K. Brown
Appearances
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
Sure. So, you know, people say a lot that the first six massage therapists came forward, but it was really a matter of us finding them. It all started with Justin Fenton, our colleague, getting a tip from a friend who had happened to overhear at two different environments, people talking about these rumors about Justin Tucker. We did a quick search of X,
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
and found that there were several posts about this going back a few years, which was intriguing. I messaged one of the people who had put up one of those posts and was surprised when that person messaged me right back and said, yeah, someone I went to high school with had posted about this on Facebook a few years ago. I asked him to send me screenshots, and he did.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
I'd like to add, too, that these are massage therapists who are highly trained. They are licensed by the state. They've gone through an extensive training process. They know all about anatomy and that if you have tension in this muscle, you need to work on this tendon. They really see themselves as body workers and healers.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
We're not talking about some sort of shady massage parlor on the edge of town. We're talking about professional body workers working at high end spas and when wellness centers and they find it really disturbing that there is a notion that because they work with people's bodies, that it's in some way
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
okay for people to act in this way they all stressed that the alleged behavior by tucker is highly unusual and they found it highly disrespectful to their practice um and you know and i'll say unlike justin i i really like massages and you know i like to get massages periodically when i have tension in my neck or my shoulders and i'm a huge believer in in the power of massage therapy to help you work through that
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
So I really understand where they're coming from when they say that they find this behavior or attitudes around it really disrespectful to their work.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
I contacted that woman, and she wound up being the first massage therapist that we spoke to. We later put up a post in a group for Maryland massage therapists. And through that post, we learned of many others who knew about these allegations secondhand. They were able to give us the locations of spas. They were able to give us names of people that they had heard about.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
And we were able to do additional reporting that led us to the first six massage therapists who said that they had had these experiences with Justin Tucker. Also in that first story, we were able to confirm that two spas in the area had banned him. And once that first story came out, our reporting led us to other massage therapists who had similar encounters that they reported.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
And also at that point, others started coming forward and saying that they too had had these experiences with Tucker.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
Well, we've had two spa owners confirm to us that they had banned Justin Tucker from their establishment. We had other spa owners corroborate accounts of their employees. And as Brenna was saying, we spoke to the 16 women And we corroborated all of their accounts with other people who they had worked with at the time, with colleagues, with friends.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
People had text messages going back years, social media posts. uh one of the individuals had actually contacted the baltimore sun about this many years ago and an editor here who used to be at the baltimore sun remembered that person contacting a sun reporter and sharing a similar account so there is a lot of documentation going back years and there's a lot of corroboration of these accounts
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
That would be purely speculative for us to say. I do feel comfortable saying that this was This pattern of behavior, alleged pattern of behavior was an open secret among massage therapists and those who are friends with or close to people in the spa industry in Baltimore.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
So, Dan, the massage therapist shared a variety of allegations with us, but there were some common themes and there were many things that various massage therapists said. And we should say that most of the massage therapists did not know the others or perhaps knew one other colleague who had had an experience that they reported with Tucker.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
But these were not individuals who had known each other as a group before this happened. So the massage therapist said that Tucker would come in, he would generally ask for a massage in his inner thigh area, his groin, his lower abdomen. None of that they found particularly surprising because he's a kicker, he's an athlete. And I should say that most of them were very excited to work on him.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
They routinely have provided massages for other pro athletes. We're talking about some of the nicest spas in the Baltimore area. They had worked on Orioles and Ravens before. So they were very excited to work on Tucker. Most of them reported that Tucker had an erection for all or most of the massage, which they found highly unusual.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
They are taught in massage school that men do occasionally have an erection during a massage, particularly if one is working on an erogenous area, but they found it highly unusual that he had an erection for the duration of the massage. The massage therapist also reported that Tucker would move in certain ways to attempt to remove the sheet so that he would fully expose himself.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
Two of the women that we spoke to said that he in fact touched them with his naked penis as he was moving. Several women also reported that he had his hands off of the massage table in an unusual way and touched his their thighs with his fingers, brushed them.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
And several of the women also reported that when they returned to the massage room after Tucker had gotten dressed and left, they discovered a puddle of what they believed to be ejaculate on the massage table. Now, of course, as we've said, Tucker has denied all of these allegations in a very strongly worded statement and letter from his attorneys.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
But this is the general pattern of behavior that we've heard. There's also some details that we did not report until the third story. And as I was listening to massage therapists recount their experiences, I was listening to see if they would include these details because we hadn't printed them in the first two stories. So, for example, people...
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
said that Tucker kept his eyes open throughout the massage and made eye contact with them, especially when he was attempting to expose himself. That was one thing they said. most of the massage therapists, and they found that unusual. They also described him attempting to move the sheet with his erect penis, which they also said they found highly unusual.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
The massage therapist that I spoke to described a sort of mounting sense of panic during these massages. They were very aware that he was a famous, powerful, wealthy and beloved by the Baltimore community. If you had told me in December that we would be working on this story, I would be shocked because like most Baltimoreans,
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
My only impression of Tucker had been that he was a very earnest, creative, talented, sort of a beloved figure. So the massage therapist talked about this sense of shock that someone that they thought was so wholesome was engaging in this behavior. They felt very uncomfortable. They said they were very aware of the power differential.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
Many of them said that they reported the allegations to their bosses or supervisors or colleagues. Others of them were scared and didn't say anything because they were worried they wouldn't be believed. For a lot of women, this was a difficult and painful I wouldn't say secret because most of them had mentioned it to several people.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
Some of them had told over a dozen people over the years about these allegations. But it was something that was a really painful memory for them. And when these stories came out and they saw that others had had these experiences or others were reporting to have these same experiences, they felt a lot of emotion. People described breaking down in tears as they read these stories.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
One woman told me that when the first story came out, she was flooded with text messages from friends who had known her own story. And they said, hey, look, you're not the only one. She told me that she was out to lunch with her son
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The Justin Tucker Allegations
um when these text messages came in when that first story published and she just broke down in tears in the restaurant and uh and she eventually shared her own account with us which was included in the third story um so there's a lot of a lot of pain a lot of discomfort uh some folks left uh massage after this um and uh it's something that they really carried with them over the years
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
You're listening to DraftKings Network.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
Well, that's exactly why we decided to look at the case. I thought the same thing. How does this happen? She is a girl who is accused, this man, of tying her up in his apartment, having sex with her, giving her drugs, knowing that she was a potential drug addict, 17 years old, runaway, met her on Tinder, flashed all this cash. He has enough guns in his apartment.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
He had high powered machine guns in there. He had so much drugs. And here he is, a so-called addiction doctor, meeting young girls on Tinder, allegedly, and allegedly giving them drugs and then tying this girl up and having sex with her.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
And somehow when they the Miami Beach police found her and the other girl, a 16 year old girl in his apartment, they end up not questioning him at all, but handcuffing the two girls and taking them to the police station.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
Yeah, they barely asked him any questions. You know, how do you meet him? They said they had IDs. They said they were 18. Well, the girls didn't have any IDs.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
Nothing. They didn't ask him anything except his name and his email address. Nothing.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
decades so not exactly unknown to authorities that's really curious because what we found out was that he actually on paper didn't have a criminal record but we know he was in the miami-dade jail at least three times before so we weren't able to
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
To this day, the only reason why we know he has one arrest for cocaine is because the body cam footage shows when he was arrested, the detective is telling him that he's taking him to jail. And Kamala says, well, I've never been to jail before. I don't know what to do. And the detective says, oh, come on, Jeffrey. Don't you remember that cocaine arrest back in the day?
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
Giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
That's the only way we know he has an arrest. He somehow- cleansed his criminal record.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
Well, we really don't know. What we do know is that they haven't questioned her mother. They haven't questioned her father. They haven't questioned the other girl that was her friend. We really don't know of anybody that they've questioned in this case. They have sort of just wiped their hands of it and said, well, the death has been ruled undetermined.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
And so they can't figure out that, which means she didn't drown. And let's just say she did take an overdose. She didn't put herself in the river. OK.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
Jesus. Well, that's why I started getting interested in this case, because I knew of another case that I had sort of guided some reporters on, which was this gymnastics coach in Key Biscayne some of his students, by the way, a four year old and a seven year old. And that was taken to Kathleen Fernandez Rundle's so-called Human Trafficking Task Force. And they allegedly looked at it and said,
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
You know, there's nothing here. Gave it back to keep his game police. And then we started investigating and found out, wait a minute, there's other girls that had come forward over the years and they didn't do anything with him either. So here's this prosecutor who.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
boasts about she's doing all this to help sex trafficking victims, when in fact, we started seeing cases where they weren't doing anything. And this one especially stood out because the girl, after they arrested Kamlet, three months later, the girl was found floating in the river.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
So, you know, whether that's a coincidence or not, you know, we don't know for sure it's murder, but it's certainly suspicious enough. I had a forensic pathologist look at the autopsy, Michael Bodden, and he said it's absolutely should be thoroughly investigated.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
Right. Right. And she was going to testify. Her mother was trying to dissuade her because her mother feared because the girl had told the police that Kamlet said at one point, you got to get rid of any pimps that are trying to pimp you out. She wanted to stay with him. And he said, you can come stay with me, but you got to get rid of any guys that are trying to pimp you out.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
And if you can't get rid of them, I'll have some guys take care of them. And he had a lot of guns. I mean, really a lot of weapons. So there was enough to suspect that perhaps her death wasn't, you know, an accident.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
Well, it's hard to know. I do think in some cases it's a cover up of incompetence. You know, the police mishandled it, obviously. At first, Miami Beach Police were very cooperative in giving us everything we wanted. But then when they found out what we were doing, all of a sudden we weren't getting any documents.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
So, you know, they said, oh, well, you're not going to get anything more because we've opened an internal affairs investigation. Once they open an investigation, you can't get any records. So, you know, just as simple as getting his medical credentials, you would think in any place in America, you would be able to confirm that a doctor has his degree and where he got his degree from.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
Even the Department of Health, the Florida Department of Health dragged their feet forever on giving us his medical credentials. We had to get our lawyer finally after months went by. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, I do not know what happened with that. I've been told by some of our reporters that they have records requests in for over a year that have not been filled there.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
I think they are completely shut down and not giving any public records. So it's just insane because, you know, the press is really, you know, we are actually doing this for residents, for citizens, for taxpayers. We're doing the job that you guys don't have the time or the money to do. So we're trying to get information.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
And so they're not giving us information, but that means they're not giving you information, you know, residents, citizens, people who pay taxes. And it's just getting worse and worse, I think, in Florida.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
Well, he's you know, he's enjoying his life. He's basically retired. He has a daughter in Colorado. He spends a lot of time in Colorado. Lovely. You know, so he's out and about is the bottom line. He is. But he is facing narcotics, federal narcotics charges. trafficking charges from all the drugs that they found in his apartment.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
But that case doesn't look like it's going to last because they use the same search warrant that they used in this sex trafficking case. And that was among the many problems with Fernandez Rundle's case. The search warrant that they used was faulty. And so the feds are using that same search warrant to make narcotics charges stick. And it looks like they're not going to stick.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
Well, I think that, you know, we looked at her statistics too, and she really only prosecutes, or I should say it the opposite way, about three quarters of the cases that she handles gets either abandoned, dropped, or non-prosecuted. So she only actually takes to trial a quarter of the cases that she handles, and of the quarter that she handles, only half of that number are prosecuted.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
her numbers aren't good and they're getting worse every year. I mean, one problem, of course, is that she has a high turnover. She pays. She doesn't pay well. But I think a bigger problem, you know, being a journalist, we don't make a whole lot of money, but I'm driving inflation. I'm driven by, you know, the passion.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
And I'm sure a lot of the young prosecutors that go into our office are driven by the passion to expose people, to to bring justice to, you know, those kinds of things, especially when you're a young prosecutor. And when you keep hitting a wall and they don't want to, they want your client to take a, you know, they want a plea bargain. You know, they don't want to take cases to trial.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: New Year, Same Shit
You don't feel like you're doing anything. You're not bringing justice to victims. What you're doing is you're manipulating the criminal justice system. And that's what they're doing in that office. And I think that's why a lot of people are leaving.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today
Well, the bombshell was that, you know, we have an attorney general that doesn't even understand the case file or the case that she's speaking about with on national television. I mean, she's she was saying days before that she had the so-called file on her desk. Well, this case is spanned 20 years. There is no way that it would fit into one file she could fit on her desk.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today
Even if she put it in a computer file somewhere, some of those documents predate the time when probably a lot of these agencies even had them on a computer. So, you know, from the get go, I knew that. This was going to be this was going to blow up in our face. I knew it was going to blow up in our face.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today
There are, but let's just divide this up a little bit so that people understand. There's two aspects of this case. The one aspect that is valid is that there's only been two people prosecuted involved in this sex trafficking operation. We know that there were other people involved
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today
And we but we don't know whether how far the FBI went into trying to hold other people accountable besides Epstein and Maxwell. And it is valid to look at what they did or what they didn't do in order to hold people accountable for their crimes. OK, that's one piece of it.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today
To look at their investigative files, which have not all been made public, to find out exactly what they did and what they didn't do, and perhaps There were some people in the government who were saying, you know, let's just drop this. I mean, we really don't know. The other half of it is this, you know, this life that this story has taken on the Internet.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today
where people are making up things like there's a client list that hasn't been released. There's, you know, as if there is some deep state that is has hidden all these secrets about, you know, people doing horrible crimes with children. I mean, it's been just so many stories out there that that don't even have any grounding in any kind of truth at all. So we have two aspects of the case.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today
And the aspect of the case that I try to focus on is the fact that there are files out there, FBI files. Some of them are right on the... fbi's website they have a place on their website a portal called the vault and they've had thousands of documents on there which anybody can click on and in those files it's a bunch of you know gibberish it's numbers it's
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today
you know big giant white outs it's big giant blackouts it's uh it there's just nothing hardly anything that you can decipher from these files they're meaningless and uh there is a lawyer who has been working for radar online for probably about at least eight years trying to get the fbi to unredact these files. And he's been, you know, it's just been going nowhere.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today
The Justice Department keeps making up different reasons why they don't want to, you know, unredacted. So it's valid to get some of these records. Other agencies, by the way, have records of the Department of Homeland Security, which was responsible for monitoring who was on his plane when he came in from overseas. Those documents I've requested and they're all redacted.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today
So there are many files that that should be released at this point. But do we have files that list the names of all his so-called clients? I highly doubt it. I just don't think they exist. I've never heard anybody in the DOJ, the FBI, all the lawyers, you know, dozens and dozens of lawyers, all the victims, hundreds of victims. I don't think anybody has heard
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today
that there exists something called the client list. So it's a lot of misinformation that still has some element of truth to it in the sense that there are documents out there that should be released.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today
It was also gathered by a Maxwell pretty much, you know, you know, sitting through all these court cases as I have and studying it as long as I have his story. House people, you know, men and women who worked in his households testified and gave statements to the effect that it was really Maxwell that put together that that phone book, that directory, and that it would be kept on a computer.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today
And then she would just update it, you know, just, you know, print it out, you know, and it included his hairdressers, his doctors, his landscapers, his electrician, the numbers for the various airlines that he. He used American Airlines. I mean, it ran the gamut, but it did include some very famous people.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today
And, you know, by the way, some of the names of people suspected of being involved with these young girls has been released as a result of the Miami Herald suing to get some of these documents unsealed in the past. The Herald has spent an awful lot of time.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today
and money uh unsealing the case that actually ultimately led to um you know maxwell's prosecution because there were some a lot of details in there about what they did and how they did it and it was all redacted and and you know sealed and we worked to get it unsealed and we do know that there are There are some names out there that, you know, of course, all the men deny that they were involved.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today
But, you know, it's not as if the names haven't been out there.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today
Where's the truck? I mean, you know, come on. I mean, she's a former prosecutor. I mean, she's like, I just don't even understand it. First of all, if you're a former prosecutor and you understand the way these cases work, you know that there's a lot of names in there probably of victims.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today
If for no other reason, just to be a good human being, you would want to go through it somewhat yourself or work with the FBI hand in hand to make sure this is done properly. You don't just say, put the file on my desk, you know, and I don't know. I just don't. The only thing I can figure is this isn't done for the general public.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today
This is done as giving their base more, you know, their their their base just wants more. all this material, you know, this deep state material, and they have it in their heads that, you know, this was all a conspiracy and that the DOJ is involved. And look, I'm not saying the DOJ and the FBI didn't make mistakes with these cases. They absolutely did.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today
But I don't think that this is a pizza gate situation. I think that, you know, I think that, you know, we need to look at what happened so that it doesn't happen again.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today
Well, we need to know why he wasn't prosecuted to begin with. You know, that was a time when they could have put him away, when there were witnesses and victims who were willing to testify. And, you know, it just never happened. And instead, The DOJ essentially minimized the case. They covered it up, really.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today
They made it sound like he just was with one minor and, you know, they minimized the scope of his crimes. And I think we need to find out why.