Anchorage Daily News

For the man known as Jerry Starr, the sex trafficking case against him comes down largely to this: Did he force Anchorage women into prostitution or did they pick that life for themselves?

Prosecutors argued to jurors Friday that he controlled the women in every way. Don Arthur Webster Jr., alias Starr, recruited them into his escort businesses with the lure of cocaine, then kept them there with more drugs, beatings, threats and intimidation, assistant U.S. attorney Audrey Renschen told the jury.

Webster is a "predator of young girls and young women," Renschen said. He was like a spider, spinning his web in the dark corners where most of us don't look, she said. Women stepped into the web not knowing what they were getting into, then found it very hard to get out, she said.

But the defense shot back that the women chose to be prostitutes. They were always free to leave the homes that Webster provided, assistant federal defender Michael Dieni told jurors. He repeated what many of the witnesses told jurors during the two-week trial, that they had a better life with Webster than on the streets as hookers or strippers.

They sure weren't sex slaves, he said.

"This was an eyes-wide-open scenario when they got involved," Dieni said.

Prosecutors have tunnel vision, looking only at isolated incidents of violence that Webster disputes even happened, Dieni said. "Cherry picking the evidence," is how he described Renschen's closing argument.

Webster, 51, is on trial in U.S. District Court on multiple federal sex trafficking and drug offenses, all felonies. He jotted notes throughout the trial and seemed emotional at times. He chose not to testify and the defense called no other witnesses.

It's the first federal sex trafficking trial in Alaska.

The case went to the jury Friday afternoon but no one expects quick verdicts. Webster faces 13 sex trafficking counts, each involving a different woman or girl, and 19 drug offenses. Five charges were dropped before the case went to the jury. The Daily News does not identify victims of sex crimes.

Jurors heard from dozens of witnesses over 11 days of testimony.

Women testified about turning as many as 10 tricks a day for Webster at hotels or the homes of their "dates." One said she started when she was 13. Two other teens told jurors he tried to bring them into the business but they knew what it was all about and refused.

All of the women who worked for Webster either were assaulted or threatened by Webster or were around when it happened to someone else, Renschen told jurors.

She reminded them of testimony about a prostitute beaten up at a "family meeting" after buying drugs from someone else.

One woman told jurors she was beaten a number of times, suffered chipped teeth and broken ribs, and was twice put into "The Box," a closet in a trailer home that Webster used to punish his girls.

Two of the women were so desperate to leave, they ran away without any shoes, Renschen said.

Webster essentially turned the women into puppets by showering them with cocaine, the prosecutor said. They would do anything he wanted to get crack, she said. They were addicts and "high all the time."

"That's a very clear form of force," Renschen said. Force is not just violence, but also compulsion or restraint, she said.

The women also had another thing in common: They all were vulnerable targets, Renshen said. Homeless. Addicts. Runaways. Grade-school dropouts. They were women, she said, with "no prospects." And he controlled where they lived, what they wore, who they saw, she said.

Sex trafficking is a federal crime based on the idea that interstate commerce is affected, even if minimally. Prosecutors say the women turned tricks at chain hotels, did imported drugs, called long distance on cell phones paid for by Webster, wore clothes that Webster brought here from Outside. And, they say, he left Alaska to bring several of the women back here.

Four counts involve girls the government says were under 18. The government doesn't have to prove he forced them do anything, just that he knew they were underage, Renschen said. Turning a blind eye to what's obvious is no defense, she told jurors.

Just consider how young a couple of the girls look in pictures from the time, she said. In one group photo, everyone's dolled up for New Year's in furs and fancy outfits. The youngest of Webster's prostitutes is a head shorter that the rest and from a distance looks like a kid playing dress-up.

That girl is not to be trusted, defense lawyer Dieni told jurors. She's manipulative, stole drugs from the other girls, and is "a pathological liar," he said. She told Webster she was older than she is, he said.

When police first questioned her, Dieni reminded jurors, the teen said that she only went on three "dates" and that Webster never knew about it. But in court she testified that she handed him the money from more than 100 dates.

"She is a tough, tough cookie," Dieni said.

Basically, the defense argument was that the women's stories don't make sense and can't be true.

Some may want to blame Webster for the years they spent with him and now regret, Dieni said, years they should have spent with their children.

How can they remember conversations from years ago so well when they were using drugs so much, he said.

The defense didn't dispute that the women sold themselves for sex or were addicts, but reminded jurors that the witnesses said Webster did not force them into that life.

The atmosphere in Webster's houses was "almost festive," Dieni said. The women had access to cars, could spend money if they brought back receipts, went out to dinner, had cable TV, he said.

If women had broken ribs and scars and chipped teeth, like they said, where's the physical evidence? There should have been X-rays, medical records, photos, he said.

Jurors went home for the weekend around 4:30 p.m. Friday. They'll resume deliberations on Monday.

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