Herb Humphries - My Hero
By Ken Tipton

I first met Herb Humphries when I was 27. I was working for IBM in St. Louis as a computer repairman but I had a sideline business called High Signs where I used a powered hang glider called an ultralight to do aerial advertising.

Herb was a special interest TV Reporter for KMOX. He was assigned to do a story about my aerial advertising business and we met several times to shoot it. Unfortunately, Herb worked afternoons and nights so we never met for the interview early in the morning when the winds are light and best for flying. By the time Herb and I would get together in the afternoons, the winds were always too high to fly. So we would go off to a local bar and wait for the winds to die down.

We met many times and we got to know each other pretty well over many a Budweiser beer. We were both Texas boys and liked to fish for Bass. We were also news junkies and Herb told me how he had helped start the first all-news radio station in New York called WINS. Herb even told me a little trivia that most people don't know. What does NEWS stand for? It's the information you need to know gathered from the North, East, West, and South.

Being news junkies we would bitch about how the news had changed from the days of Edward R. Murrow, Huntley and Brinkley, Harry Reasoner, Walter Kronkite, and all of the other true news pros. Those reporters told us the facts of what was happening in the world and never used adjectives such as shocking, explosive, or horrific to make sure we didn't change the channel during the commercial breaks. Nowadays it's all about the ratings and hard fact news has been replaced by titillation, sexual innuendo, and false allegations.

Herb never did get to do the interview with me about High Signs . It was eventually handled by KMOX reporter Dennis Riggs and you can see it below if you wish.

> High Signs Video

I opened the first video store in St. Louis in 1981 called Video Library and co-founded the St. Louis Chapter of the Video Software Dealers Association. Over the years Herb and I would run into each other and usually wound up talking trash over a few beers.

During a period of intolerance over renting adult video movies from 1985 to 1990 that was sparked by the fundamentalist religious group called the NFD -National Federation for Decency and the U.S. Attorney General's infamous "Meese Obscenity Commission", we formed a group called the VCAC - the Video Coalition Against Censorship and I was their spokesperson. Things were nuts in St. Louis with Mom & Pop video stores being busted, their owners arrested, and their movies confiscated before anything was found to be legally obscene. The NFD also targeted any video store who dared to carry Martin Scorsese's controversial movie, "The Last Temptation of Christ". My Video Library stores were the only stores that refused to remove "Last Temptation" which made me a bigger target for the NFD. Another reason the NFD targeted my stores was just plain stupid. I had invented and was marketing through my stores a game called the "Mystic Spirit Board". It was like a Ouija Board but my game came "with" spirits that could pick lottery numbers, find lost keys, or even help you contact Elvis. The "Mystic Spirit Board" was featured in the 1988 comedy spoof of "The Exorcist" call "Repossessed" which starred Linda Blair and Leslie Nielsen. The NFD claimed that my game opened portals into this world for demons and other agents of Satan to enter. My thought was "give me a fucking break already". (Picture and movie clip are below)

Herb tried to get KMOX to do a story about the NFD and how they were harassing my family and employees over "Last Temptation" and the "Mystic Spirit Board", but no news organization would touch that topic because it dealt with religious issues. After all, this was St. Louis, with it's suburbs of St. Charles, St. Ann, St. Peters, St. Whatever etc. They didn't want to piss off their viewers over religious censorship when they could titillate them with porn busts.

I went through two obscenity trials and even though I won them both, the legal fees and negative publicity bankrupted my business and family. After my divorce and in the deepest of depressions, my life hit rock bottom with a suicide attempt that failed. I eventually crawled my way back and my entrepreneurial instincts kicked back in.

I opened a business called Paintball Wargames at the St. Charles Speedway and it became very successful. One Sunday, I got a call from my paintball referee who told me that the group that had come to play that day was the same religious group that had ruined my video business. I asked the ref to see if the group minded if a walk-on player came to play with them. They said it was fine and I showed up in full paintball gear, face mask and all. I also carried a top-of-the-line paintball gun that was far superior than what the religious group was using. It was decided that because my gun out classed the others, that I would play on one team and then switch teams at the end of each game.

I had a wonderful time getting the best payback possible by shooting the shit out of the Jesus freaks all day long. A few days after this incident I got a call from a woman in the religious group that had played in the paintball game. She had felt guilty for what had happened to my family and business. She told me how she used to be a prostitute and had serviced the St. Louis Prosecutor. She told the religious group this information and they blackmailed the Prosecutor into ruining anyone they targeted. The same group also blackmailed the St. Charles Prosecutor because they had information about several DUI's that had been covered up including one where the Prosecutor was driving drunk on Highway 70 in the opposite lanes. This information was later verified by the former Mayor of St. Peters, Tom Brown, who had operated take-out pizza parlors in two of my stores. Now things were starting to make sense.

The St. Charles Prosecutor had already been defeated in an election and his life was going nowhere. But the St. Louis Prosecutor was still the arrogant bully he had always been. At one point during the "Porn Wars", the Video Coalition Against Censorship had a meeting with him to try and establish some sort of guidelines in regard to what kind of adult films could be rented. As the spokesperson, I attended with members Johnny Beck, David McNut, and our Kansas City Attorney, Erol Koplovitz. What the Prosecutor didn't know was that I had in my briefcase copies of hundreds of receipts where he had rented adult movies from a store called Box Office Video on Gravois Road in St. Louis. This proved that the Prosecutor was a huge hypocrite but we were prevented from making the receipts public by the Video Privacy Act. Click on this link for info on the law - http://www.epic.org/privacy/vppa/

In this meeting with the Prosecutor he talked loud and fast about how we were smut peddlers and he was going to make sure we were all going to be put out of business. The more he railed, the more pissed off I got. There's probably nothing more stubborn or hotheaded as an Irish Catholic and I was ready to kick this prick's ass. I reached for the receipts but our attorney forced my briefcase shut and he ushered us out of the room. The Prosecutor came out and gave a press conference saying that all video stores that carried obscene material would be arrested and put out of business. I spoke up asking who would be the judge of what was obscene, him or a jury. He just smiled. I waited for things to settle before a walked right into his office and called him a fucking hypocrite. I told him about the rental receipts and he quickly threw me against the wall using his forearm to pin my throat. We screamed at each other until I was escorted out the door. The last thing we all heard, including the remaining reporters was, "The next time I see you is when you are arrested".

During the "Porn Wars" there were several Prosecutors involved. The Federal Prosecutor, Tom Dittmier, did nothing. The St. Louis County Prosecutor, Buzz Westfall, played it smart. While he talked tough to the press, it was a different story behind the scenes. He called me personally to inform me that officers would be coming to my Hazelwood store to remove 10 adult movies for investigation. I asked Buzz if I should turn myself in and he said not until he finished his investigation. He said that the movies would be investigated every Friday night, for a very, very long time. In other words, he could answer his religious backers with, "It's under investigation", when in fact he knew it was all bullshit and nothing was going to happen. The same thing could not be said for the St. Louis and St. Charles Prosecutors who made arrests and RICO forfeitures. After we found out about the blackmails, we had a better understanding of what was really going on.

But what to do about the corrupt St. Louis Prosecutor. Kicking his ass what at the top of my list. But my attorney kept me cool. This is when I turned to my old friend Herb Humphries and I setup a meeting with the former prostitute to have her lay out what had happened. Herb was excited to be able to finally get a real story to report on instead of the "fucking fluff" spots he would complain about. After talking to the former prostitute, she introduced him to two of the former Madams she used to work for. One in Illinois and one in Missouri. To get the story on the air properly, Herb needed the prostitute and the Madams to go on the record. But none would because of their fear of the Prosecutor.

Herb then proposed that an unauthorized prostitution sting could probably be set up to exposed the Prosecutor. Unauthorized because he knew the Prosecutor had ears everywhere and would probably be tipped off. Herb knew some St. Louis County cops who had a big problem with the Prosecutor over a former police officer that had been indicted for embezzling from a police pension fund. The cop had taken a senior cop as hostage and a deal was worked out with the Prosecutor to end the stand off. But the arrogant Prosecutor reneged on the deal. There was a lot more to the story then anyone ever knew and the cop that held his superior hostage actually sent us an email a few years ago telling us that the Samuel L. Jackson movie called, "The Negotiator" was based on his story. The bottom line was that these cops would be more than happy to bring down the St. Louis Prosecutor and a plan was put into place.

The next time the Prosecutor ordered a girl, the Madam would page Herb on his beeper and Herb would have the police substitute an undercover cop. The day finally came and by the time I found out that the sting was going down, I almost missed it. I got Herb's page and met him in the parking lot of a Jo Jo's restaurant just up the hill from the Marriott Hotel that was across from the St. Louis Lambert Field Airport. When I saw that Herb had no camera crew or anything I was very confused. But then he explained. Herb was an "old school" journalist and he was taught that newsmen report the news, they don't make the news. He felt that he had dishonored himself and his craft by setting up this sting and as far as he was concerned, it was fine if no one ever knew about it. He was also disappointed with the rest of the St. Louis media who had inklings that the Prosecutor was a bad seed but didn't have the balls to challenge him. He said that the media was the last line of defense for the common man against corporations and people who abuse their power, but the St. Louis media had failed by paying more attention to ratings instead of what was really going on.

The sting was successful and the Prosecutor pleaded guilty to solicitation. After an investigation by some Post-Dispatch reporters into a Crime Victims Fund that the Prosecutor had been embezzling from, he pleaded guilty to those charges also. The Prosecutor was disbarred, given a large fine, and a prison sentence that the judge suspended for fear the Prosecutor would be killed in prison. Herb and I felt he got off too damn easy.

Over the years as I wrote the screenplay for HEART of the BEHOLDER, I sent it to a former Post-Dispatch entertainment reporter named Joe Pollack for review and notes as well as to Herb who had retired in Texas in 1994. The Prosecutor never knew that it was Herb who set up the prostitution sting and he made me promise to not tell anyone of his involvement until five years after his death. I argued with him that what he did was a good thing and that he had no reason to be ashamed. I was able to talk him into keeping quiet until the third anniversary of his death. Believe me, it was extremely hard to do that because after we screened our movie in St. Louis, that was the one question asked over and over. Who was the reporter?

On Thursday, August 24th, 2006 at the Tahoe/Reno International Film Festival, we screened HEART of the BEHOLDER. It was also the 3rd anniversary of Herb Humphries death and his involvement in bringing down the St. Louis Prosecutor was made public after the screening. I had notified some of Herb's closest friends such as Ruth Jacobs, Charlie Brailer, and Bruce Marr who had worked with Herb back at KFWB in Los Angeles and who were part of the radio community known as the "Hollywood Boulevard Gang". Not only was Bruce Marr able to attend the screening, but Bruce gave me some wonderful footage with Herb that is linked below.

Herb Humphries was a damn good man. A big man with a big heart. In 2004 he was inducted into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame and I want to make sure he will never be forgotten. My family won't forget him and I know his friends will hold him dear in their hearts. So to end this small tribute let me close the way all of St. Louis was used to hearing him say, "This is Herb Humphries - night side."

>Herb Humphries VideoPart 1

> Herb Humphries VideoPart 2

> Herb Humphries VideoPart 3

>Mystic Spirit Board in the movie "RePossessed"