June 25, 2008 News & Views » Cover

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Walk the lie 

"I did everything for the least bit of nothing ... I handled everything wrong."

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"That's when, like, the nice side just switched, like he became real aggressive," she said. "Like he jacked me up, like he put me in the upper torso." The prosecutor, assistant U.S. Attorney Julieanne Himelstein, asked what she meant. "Like that is when he had your hands behind your back and like somebody jacks you up," Lynette said. "Like I can't explain it."

Her resistance faded. "Like I fought him for a minute, but then I just gave up," she said. "You know, I mean he threw me in the car, and I tried to get back out, but he stood there for a minute, and I was like I am not going nowhere, and he ran around on the other side and got in the car."

As she'd told police, Lynette testified that Simms brought her back to the liquor house, where he locked her in a windowless room. In the original story, she said she fell asleep, woke some unspecified amount of time later, and agreed to work as a prostitute. This time, in court, she made a point of saying Simms left her in the room for two whole days. She told the jury she ate nothing and peed on the floor. When Simms came back in, she said, she agreed to do what he wanted.

"When I was in that room," she said, "I kept thinking to myself like I ain't got nothing to live for. I don't got nobody to love me. I don't have nothing. I don't care. I didn't care. So I say yes."

Simms told her to go into the front room of the house and dance for the men hanging out. Lynette said she took three shots of vodka, smoked some weed, took off her clothes and danced "like strippers dance." She made $200 in tips that night, she said, $50 of which went to Simms.

After that night, she said, she came to decide that she liked her situation. Simms took good care of her, buying her food and clothes. And she was treated well by the two other prostitutes who lived there, Kimberly and Davena.

Contrary to the story heard by police and the grand jury, Lynette told the jury that she never prostituted herself in North Carolina. After just a few days at the liquor house, she said, Simms told Lynette they'd be heading to D.C. He drove the whole crew -- Lynette, Kimberly, and Davena -- in the Thunderbird. They crashed at his place on Jay Street NE and set about putting ads up on Craigslist. Changing her story again, Lynette said Simms wasn't the only one to shoot her photos for the ads. In fact, most of the pictures were taken by the other women.

On the stand, Lynette explained the mechanics of Internet prostitution. Simms and three or four women, including Lynette and Kimberly, would all gather at a hotel room in Maryland or Virginia, places like the Marriott Courtyard in Fairfax. Simms would upload ads offering in-calls and listing their cell phone numbers. Then "we would all go to the room," Lynette said, "and wait for our phones to ring."

Himelstein asked Lynette how many times she had sex in hotel rooms. "I can't count," she said.

"Would you say it was more than one?"

"Yes."

"Would you say it was more than five?"

"Yes."

"Would you say it was more than 10?"

"It was a lot," she said. "I can't count like ..."

At the end of the night, she said, Simms would always ask her how much she'd made. "He would ask for a portion," she said, "and I would give it to him." Previously, Lynette had sworn she gave all her earnings to Simms.

After a few weeks, Lynette said, Simms told her she was going to walk the track on Rhode Island Avenue NE. Himelstein asked if Lynette knew what that meant. "It is where you go to get pussy," she told the jury. "I don't know. I can't explain it." Simms dropped her off on Rhode Island Avenue and promised to stay nearby. "He gave me some condoms and told me to walk," she said.

Pretty soon, a man waved her over to his car, and she asked what he wanted. "And he basically told me what he wanted, and I told him how much it was going to cost," she said. What did he want? "Sex." And how much would it cost? "$70." Lynette had sex with the man in his car on a side street, then went back to walking the track. "That's when the cops stopped me," she said.

And that's when she began lying.

Prosecutors addressed the problem head-on during direct examination. They tried to frame their witness's duplicity as an innocent defense mechanism.

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