Anchorage Daily News

Bound and blindfolded, the woman cowered for hours in a small dark closet.

The man she knew as Jerry Starr beat her that day in her Spenard home, she said. She must have lost consciousness because she remembers waking up in a car, hands tied together, something covering her head so she couldn't see. They drove to a place -- she didn't know where -- and he carried her up some stairs "like a sack of potatoes." Inside, she said, he put her in "The Box."

The woman, now 33, told the story to a federal jury in Anchorage on Tuesday. She was one of Starr's prostitutes, a favored girl, the only one with her own house, the one who enforced his rules and beat up others, she said on the witness stand.

It didn't matter. Their relationship became violent anyhow, she said. That day in the closet, she said she wondered if she would survive.

"You feel like this might be it," she told jurors.

Jerry Starr is the alias of Don Arthur Webster Jr., on trial in U.S. District Court for multiple sex trafficking and drug charges. Prosecutors say the women who worked for him are victims. The Daily News has a long-standing policy of not identifying sex crime victims.

'BOX' HAD MENTAL LOCK

Prosecutors brought the box into the courtroom last week -- a small plywood closet reassembled by the FBI after it was seized from Webster's Muldoon trailer. It looked out of place in the formal federal courtroom. Some jurors stood up to get a better look.

There's no lock on the door. The witness Tuesday said she didn't even try to get out. Things might have gotten worse, she said.

Webster told her he put other women in "The Box" too, usually for going "out of pocket," she said. That's the group's term for buying drugs from someone else.

She was both his prime target for abuse and the woman he most spoiled, other witnesses have testified.

She's still pretty, confident enough to look lawyers in the eye as they question her.

Before becoming a prostitute for Webster, she worked as a stripper, but just for a couple days here and there, she said.

She grew up in Oregon, graduated high school, worked retail jobs and as a soccer referee. She moved to Anchorage with her son in May 2001, hoping for a fresh start with the boy's father. Her mother lived here. But as these stories so often go, things didn't work out. The boyfriend returned to Oregon and hooked up with her best friend.

One night at a party in Anchorage she tried crack. She threw up the first time but kept smoking. When they ran out of crack, someone called Jerry. He brought more, she said.

He seemed taken with her.

COURTING WITH CRACK

She worked at Spirits of Alaska liquor store and he'd show up just to talk. He brought her crack at the apartment she shared with her mother.

She lost her job, and Webster was there for her. They had sex regularly. He gave her crack, took her shopping and to dinner. They got their nails done together.

He brought her to a house on Lois Drive. It was nice and clean. She moved in with her son. Webster paid for everything, the giant flat screen TV, her son's private school tuition, all their food.

The house was called 007. Webster told her it was his seventh house for his girls.

She knew about his escort business. One night he told her to get dressed for a date at a hotel. He told her to charge $250 for 15 minutes, plus tips, a high rate for an Anchorage call girl.

From then on, she said, she worked for him, usually making $400 a date but sometimes thousands.

The first time he punched her was because he thought she looked at him cross-eyed, she said.

"He called it 'peeling' my head," she said.

There were other beatings, both of her and other women, she said. Once, when she was a few minutes late from a date, Webster pounded her with his fists, chipping her teeth and breaking her ribs. Another time, he beat her after finding an alcohol bottle in her room, she said.

DRUGS OK, ALCOHOL NOT

Why was alcohol a big deal? Assistant U.S. Attorney Audrey Renschen asked.

His mother was an alcoholic and he wouldn't stand for it, the witness answered. Better to have a needle in your arm, he told her.

And she beat up his other women when he told her to, she said.

"This one's for your daddy," she remembers telling one girl.

But it wasn't all bad, she told the jury. Defense lawyer Michael Dieni produced photos of Webster watering the lush lawn at 007, of him fishing with the witness's son at a picnic.

Wasn't he just jealous? Dieni asked.

Paranoid, the witness said, especially when he started using crack, she said.

Webster was arrested on Oct. 20, 2006, the day she had a miscarriage at his apartment after getting high, she said.

The FBI gave her a plane ticket to leave Alaska and $4,000 to start over. She was clean for a while but started using again. Someone else is raising her son.

They arrested her in November on a "material witness" warrant to make sure she showed up to testify.

She said she hopes she'll be free after the trial.

Find Lisa Demer online at adn.com/contact/ldemer or call 257-4390.

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