The Swinger's Lifestyle

As I write this both my wife and I are sitting in jail waiting to go on trial for murder.

We are telling everyone we are not guilty of murder but I'm coming to the conclusion that what we say is irrelevant. It's irrelevant to the police and the District Attorney who think that we killed the young woman named Sandra Hamilton and nothing that we say or do is going to make them change their minds.

Day after day my wife Debbie and I sit in our prison cells and we day dream about the day that we can both get out. We are being asked by the TV networks to go on camera and tell our stories but we don't know if we should.

When we hesitate in going on record over what happen I know that people somehow think we are guilty. I also know that nothing I can say or do can change minds. I know Debbie feels the same way.

I guess the first thing you should know is that Debbie and I are swingers. We are a couple who attend parties where men and women have sex with each other and when they do it is with some other person's wife or some other person's husband.

The news media has referred to us as "sex perverts" which is understandable but of course we don't see ourselves in that light. Neither for that matter does anyone else who is into the swinger's lifestyle.

We were introduced to swinging by an older couple named the Acosta's who invited us to a party which was a barbecue on a summer's day. At that party we met other couples and all of these couples seemed to be very attractive. If not attractive they were at least very flirtatious.

During the party numerous men flirted with my wife and I got a kick out of it. I got to say right now that one of the reasons I was attracted to the swinger's lifestyle in the first place is because I have a fetish for watching my wife with other men and women. I guess that makes me a voyeur and if that's the proper phrase then so be it. To me it's just quite exciting to watch from afar another man with your wife. It's even more exciting to watch your wife with a another woman.

Sandra Hamilton first entered our lives when Debbie and I went to Las Vegas on vacation. It was the summer after I had had a mild heart attack and after that scare both my wife and I thought that Las Vegas was the perfect place to recuperate. To rejuvenate our juices and move forward. My heart attack was indeed a very mild one and so I'm not going to bore anyone with any of the medical details. Suffice to say that once my Doctor gave me a clean bill of health (at least for six months), my wife and I made reservations at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas. We made reservations for five days and during those five days we promised ourselves we would just relaxed. We told ourselves that we might play a little Blackjack and spend a lot of time by the pool. Of course we also said we would check out the swinging scene in Vegas. I was the one who suggested this and Debbie reminded me that a man in my position should be careful how they exert themselves. Upon hearing this I laughed and shook my head.

"You're full of it," I said to Debbie. Debbie smiled and nodded her head.

Actually there was no need for my wife and I to "check out" the swingers' scene in Las Vegas for we knew the scene pretty good.

We knew the Blue Oyster Club which was run out of the private home of Gary and Robin Calley who owned a two acre spread on the outskirts of Las Vegas where they threw sex parties every weekend and where a famous documentary was filmed back in the 90's which gave a inside look at the swinging lifestyle and the major players involved in it. When I saw this film back in '97 it made me interested in pursuing the lifestyle and soon after I married my first wife, she and I attended our first party held in the town of Riverside which is about fifty miles east of Los Angeles. The party itself was called a wife-swapping party and my wife had a blast which was made abundantly clear to me when she ran off with one of the men she met at this party. When this occurred I cannot say I was heartbroken because at that same party I met Debbie who would become my second wife. The last I heard my first wife was living in Florida and apparently she and her husband are still swinging and having a good old time. I do wish them well in their pursuits. I have no regrets and I presume neither do they.

On our fifth night in Las Vegas, Debbie and I made it out to the Blue Oyster Club and when we walked through the door we were greeted warmly by Gary and Robin Calley who during the day were college professors and were the type of people you'd never think were into swinging until you realized that the two of them seem to be the most enthusiastic participants in the swinging lifestyle that there were. In fact the first time Debbie and I went to a party at the Blue Oyster we entered the house after being let in by a very nice Hungarian man who then disappeared and when we walked through the kitchen which we thought was the living room we found Robin Calley leaning against the oven with both hands outstretched for support as a man behind her with a mask on was having intercourse with her.

"Hi there," the hostess of the party said as if she was a 1950's TV sitcom Mom welcoming her kids' friends into the kitchen as she bakes cookies for everyone.

While Debbie and I tried to find the words to respond to this woman we saw in front of us having sex with a masked man, Gary Calley walked in and he, too, was wearing a mask but he slipped it off his face as he introduced himself and shook our hands.

"You wanna join in?" Gary then ask us as he glanced over his shoulder at his wife who at that moment was clearly having an orgasm. I forgot what Debbie and I mumbled but we managed to get out of that kitchen and find the living room where we found a few couples watching TV and just relaxing. Although we found our bearings and ended up going into one of the many bedrooms in the house with the couples that we found in the living room we steered clear of the kitchen. Both Debbie and I never saw the point of having sex where you do your cooking.

"There he is! Back from the dead!" Gary shouted out to us when my wife and I entered his house during our stay in Vegas after the heart attack. The Calley's knew what had happen to me as did most of our friends. A few of them even visited me in the hospital. One guy called me up before he and his wife came and wanted to know if he could bring some strippers. I laughed and said no and he laughed and said alright.

After I told both Gary and Robin what had happen to me just a few weeks before, Debbie and I were lead into the living room where there were couples that we knew and a few faces that we didn't. One of those new faces that we saw was that of Sandra Hamilton who according to Robin was a dear friend of a couple that had passed away a year before in an auto accident. Robin did not mention the name of the couple which was Greg and Diane Feldman. Greg and Diane were quite well known in the circles that Debbie and I traveled in and were well liked as well.

Most of us who knew the couple attended their funerals but in the aftermath none of us when we were together mentioned their names or talked about them at length. This was the way I think our group handled death and it may have not been the correct way, but what is the right way? People like us after all, do not spend a lot of time thinking of death and contemplating its ramifications. Instead we think about having fun and when the next party is. Call us callous or whatever, but that's how we are.

Sandra was extremely beautiful and we found out that first night that she was just about to enter graduate school at USC and her major was psychology. She said she was interested in working with the criminally insane and it was at that point that I said hanging out with the likes of us and Gary and Robin Calley was a good start if one wanted to learn about the criminally insane. It was then that Sandra smiled a beautiful smile and I will admit now that it was at that point that I personally fell in love with Sandra. I don't know at which point Debbie fell in love. Perhaps it was at that same moment. But I do know that from that night on I had to make Sandra a part of my life.

When the party was over and it was time for everyone to leave we all exchanged phone numbers and I made sure that Debbie got Sandra's phone number. My wife and I had a protocol to how we got phone numbers of people we met at the parties. Whoever was interest in a certain person would tell the other partner that they wanted so and so's number. Thus if Debbie was interest in someone she would go to me in order to get that person's number and if I was interested in someone I would have Debbie get the number.

After telling my wife to get the phone number of Sandra Hamilton, Debbie laughed out loud and said that I had beaten her to the punch. Later on when we drove home she told me that she, too, had been enamored by Sandra and was planning on getting me to get her number. In retrospect I should have been pleased that my wife showed interest in the same woman that I did. At least in the past I had and when you are a swinger that's what you want from your partner. You wanted a partner who shared your desires. A partner who wanted the same thing you wanted. But when Debbie told me how much she was attracted to Sandra and how she wanted her to be with us, I felt jealous. I felt jealous instead of feeling lucky that my wife and I wanted to be with the same person. That was every man's fantasy, after all, but it wasn't mine. I wanted Sandra and my first inclination was to share her with no one.

***** ***** *****

The next time Debbie and I saw Sandra was when we invited Sandra over to our house for dinner.

We told her it wasn't going to be a party or anything but rather just the three of us. When Sandra told Debbie that she would love to come over Debbie motioned to me that she had said yes and I reacted by pumping my fist in the air like an athlete performing a fantastic feat.

I was just a few feet away when Debbie made the call and when Sandra asked where I was Debbie said I was at work. Why we lied to Sandra I do not know. I guess it had to do with the fact that as swingers we liked to play games. We liked to pretend we lived in a world that we didn't.

The dinner party Debbie and I held for Sandra went well and during the party we learn that Sandra was studying psychology but what she really wanted to do was write novels. I told her I was somewhat interested in writing myself and she and I had a long discussion about what motivates someone to write and what drives the great literary minds. A little of what we talked about went over my head but I knew enough to keep up with the conversation and to convince Sandra that I knew a little about what we were talking about.

As we talked I paid little attention to my wife who tried to keep up with the conversation but really couldn't. I've always teased my wife for being one of these people whose life revolves around her TV shows and that night was a clear example of how I was on one level and she was on the other. In the past whenever something like that happen we usually laughed about it but this night we didn't. We didn't fight about it or anything but I got the sense later that she resented the fact that Sandra and I were talking about things that she did not understand. More specifically about things she did not care about.

***** ***** *****

As our relationship deepen with Sandra, both Debbie and I knew nothing about her and what she did when she was not with us.

We knew she was going to school but that was about it. We also knew that she didn't work and we assume that she received the money she lived off of from some government grant or something of that nature. I guess in retrospect we should have asked more questions but we didn't.

For example we should have definitely asked Sandra to explain who Frank was. Frank was her friend and we never did find out his last name. He was just Frank. Someone that Sandra talked about when she was with us and when we would press her as to exactly who Frank was and what he was to her we never really got a clear answer. Instead she would just giggle like she was a teenage girl and we were her parents trying to find out the identity of the boy at school she was suppose to be dating.

In the end we should have done a lot of things but at the time asking questions was the farthest thing from our minds. We were, after all, having the time of our lives. Who cared about questions.

It was soon after we invited Sandra over for dinner at our house that we started seeing her at least every other week. It was always on a Saturday night after I got off of work at the college and I would come home and shower and get ready for Sandra's arrival around 8 pm.

When Sandra would arrive we would all immediately go to the bedroom and it was as we all made love to each other that we got caught up in each other's lives. If you were to film a movie about all of this I'm sure the scenes showing us in the bedroom talking about work and school as we made love would be very funny to watch. It would be very funny watching us give pleasure to one another as I talked about some administrative problem I was dealing with at the college while Debbie talked about her work at the insurance agency and Sandra was discussing the exam she was going to take on Monday.

Then once the lovemaking was over and we all showered we would put on these thick, blue terry-cloth robes that I bought myself and we would all have Chinese food that we would have delivered to the house. We would sit around and eat the food which we jokingly referred to as our "erotic food" and we would laugh and joke and gossip and cry as only intimate lovers can.

All of this took place only a few years ago but now it seems it happen in another life time. At times I question whether any of it happen.

Night after night in my prison cell I think back on those days and even after all that has happen I still smile. I still smile because it was downright fun. That was the bottom line. It was just fun.

***** ***** *****

If the police would have come to me before they came to Debbie I am sure that my wife and I would not be on trial for murder.

I am sure that if the police would have questioned me they would have not walked away thinking that Debbie and I were capable of murdering another human being.

But the fact of the matter was that they did question Debbie first and as a result we became the prime suspects in the murder of 25 year old Sandra Melissa Hamilton of Pasadena. We were the ones who the police and the District Attorney of Los Angeles theorized entered Sandra's apartment and butchered the woman. The autopsy would show that Sandra was killed by an assailant who crushed her skull with a blunt instrument and then stabbed her a total of eleven times in the chest----- piercing her heart with eight of the stab wounds. The autopsy also showed that her throat was sliced from ear to ear. The medical examiner said that the cut on her neck was so deep that she was practically decapitated.

Why did my wife and I become prime suspects in the murder of our dear friend? Well, believe it or not it all has to do with the way my wife Debbie answered the questions that were posed to her by the detectives who came to the insurance agency where she worked and gave her the news that Sandra had been murdered.

"How did you meet Ms. Hamilton?" one of the detectives asked. To this my wife stammered. She did not answer right away. Then she said it was at a friend's house, but she couldn't remember what friend it was.

The detective who asked the questions later told prosecutors and the news media that as he studied the face of my wife and heard her stammer out her answers it was then that he knew that in some way she was involved with the murder of Sandra Hamilton and he also thought that my wife had an accomplice. That accomplice being me.

Now when I heard the detective say this I was quite angry because I thought it should occur to the detective and later everyone else that the reason why my wife was vague in her answers and not forthcoming from the beginning was because as a rule we and others in the swingers' lifestyle do not like to publicize our private lives. We do not like to talk about what we do behind closed doors.

When Debbie was confronted with two detectives walking into her place of work unannounced and telling her that a dear friend had been murdered and they were coming to see her because her name had been in the dead woman's address book, needless to say she was shook up. She has told me time and time again that if she had to do it over again she would tell the detectives immediately that she had met Sandra at a swingers' party and that the party where she met her was at the home of Gary and Robin Calley.

"I didn't know," Debbie said soon after we were arrested and she spent most of her waking hours crying and wondering why life was so unfair.

"I didn't know," she would say over and over again. I would always tell her that it was alright and that somehow, someway we would get out of this mess. We would be freed and justice would be served.

***** ***** *****

It was Gary Calley who contacted Mark Gregory who arguably is the most famous criminal defense lawyer in the country. Being thought of in this manner after his successful defense of a movie star known for his action films who was on trial for the murder of his Gay lover. The evidence against the movie star was air tight according to the prosecutors, but as it turn out it was filled with holes once Mark Gregory got a hold of the evidence and gave his spin to the jury.

Whereas the prosecutors thought that they had the right man by displaying evidence involving DNA and clothing fiber that they said could only come from the murderer; Gregory proved------- at least to the jury, that the DA had essentially nothing. He also said that although he had nothing to disprove what the prosecution said about his client doing that was not his job. He wasn't hired to prove his client's innocence.

"You've heard it before," Mark Gregory said on a day he had the jury where he wanted them. "Innocent until proven guilty....... I'll say it again. Innocent until proven guilty. If the prosecution can prove my client committed murder then let them prove it. Until then you must see my client as innocent. You must see my client as being not guilty."

It was the kind of logic that played well to the jury made up of three computer techs, three civil servants, two high school teachers, two transit workers, a library clerk, and a notary public. They were the kind of people who lawyers like because they tend to go with their gut reactions. In other words they are jurors who are a little bit slow in figuring out complex issues.

It took this jury only an hour to find the movie actor not guilty and from the moment the verdict was read on live TV the man responsible for that verdict became a media star. Overnight, Mark Gregory became the most sought after defense lawyer in America.

How and why our friend Gary Calley was able to secure the services of a lawyer like Mark Gregory I do not know. Even now I am unaware of how he came to us. I suspect Mark is part of the swingers' community and that Gary and Robin met him at a party. But then again if that was the case this would surely become known to the public. It is not and in fact Mark Gregory is known for his Jewish faith and the fact that he attends the synagogue every week. If that's the case then it's almost impossible to imagine that he would run in the same circles as Gary and Robin Calley since neither of them are very religious and they're not even Jewish.