Latest Episode Of Welcome To Your Fantasy Explores Murder Plot

 You can listen to an all-new episode of Welcome to Your Fantasy now on Spotify. This week, host and historian Natalia Petrzela delves into the murder plot devised to kill the Chippendales competition, the assassination of Nick De Noia, and why everyone behind the scenes knew founder Steve Banarjee was behind both hits.

This episode features interviews with Detective Graham Gooch, as he details working with the FBI to stop a hit man from killing dancers, and with Carl Leighton-Pope who took the Chippendales tour overseas to Europe, along with archived interview recordings with the late Ray Colon, the person who hired the hit man, and more key players.

  During this week's episode:

 “The detectives came and talked to me. They pulled me aside at the funeral. They asked me a bunch of questions. They said, ‘Who do you think did it?’ I go, ‘It's his partner.’ He goes, ‘No, no. We already cleared him. He was in a restaurant in LA at the time.’ I go, ‘I'm not saying he pulled the trigger. I'm saying, he had it done…’” -Al Juliano, Nick’s business associate and friend   

 “So, they [detectives] kinda questioned everybody and they said, ‘Does anybody have any reason to believe or any idea why someone would want to kill Nick?’ And I stupidly blurted out of my mouth because I don't know how to keep my mouth shut apparently, ‘Who wouldn't?’” -Scott Marlowe, former Chippendales dancer

 In the 1980s the “male exotic dancers” of Chippendales were everywhere, selling the promise of women’s liberation for the price of a few dollars in a g-string. But behind the powerful mullets, oiled pecs, and non-stop parties lies a much darker story of greed, corruption and murder. In the eight-episode series host and historian Natalia Petrzela exposes one of the great, sordid, unexamined stories in American culture.

 

WELCOME TO YOUR FANTASY is the story of how two men — an immigrant from India and a children’s TV producer from New Jersey — transformed a seedy nightclub in Los Angeles into a global phenomenon, and how paranoia and greed turned Chippendales into a hotbed for drugs, corruption, and murder.

Beyond the well-known cuffs and collars, cheesy dance routines, and unlimited supplies of body oil, the series examines the club’s role in the late 70s/early 80s rise of female sexuality, gender roles and masculinity, and the corruptible power of capitalism.

Podcast host and co-producer Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Ph.D. is a historian of contemporary American politics and culture and is currently writing a book on American fitness culture, FIT NATION: How America Embraced Exercise As The Government Abandoned It.

You can listen to the podcast here. 

 

 

by

Frank Racioppi