Troop 137

Troop 137 was a Boy Scout troop organized in New Orleans in 1974 by Richard Halvorsen and Raymond Woodall, with about 40 boys as members. From them the two men selected about ten to go on Scout trips, during which sexual acts took place; one boy was injured and hospitalized. The victims in New Orleans were eight to twelve years old, and documents seized in the raid led police to believe the ring may have involved as many as 30 boys, including wards of the Louisiana Welfare Department. Halvorsen was a volunteer probation officer, and many of the suspects had worked with volunteer agencies dealing with runaways and boys from broken homes; Halvorsen and Richard A. Pass gave boys guitars and a motorcycle as inducements. District Attorney Harry Connick said the Scout leaders had drawn up applications for state and federal money to establish homes for boys.¹²

Acting on a tip, New Orleans police raided the troop's headquarters in September 1976 and arrested Halvorsen and Woodall. Halvorsen, 51, and twelve other men were first charged with conspiracy to commit aggravated rape and aggravated crimes against nature; four, including the assistant scoutmaster Harry O. Cramer, 23, of Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, were then at large. A search of Halvorsen's home produced card files with the names and addresses of boys in other states. "It seems to be like spider webs strung out all over the nation," said the juvenile detective Mason Spong, who said the investigation extended into 34 states; nineteen men were eventually charged.¹²

Adelphi Academies

Halvorsen and Woodall had come to New Orleans from Coral Gables, Florida, where they worked as maintenance men for the Adelphi Academies, identified by Florida police as a former male prostitution front. Halvorsen recruited six New Orleans boys for the academies by telling their mothers he could obtain free scholarships; the co-owner, Peter Bradford, flew to New Orleans, had sex with one of the boys and met the parents, and the six boys enrolled. Bradford was charged in New Orleans with two counts of aggravated crimes against nature, forfeited bond and stayed in Florida, where no charges were filed.²

The Clients

Among those charged were Richard C. Jacobs, millionaire president of the Jet Spray Corporation and a former part owner of the New England Patriots, who forfeited a 50,000-dollar bond to avoid trial in Louisiana; Robert B. Mallers, a California millionaire; and Hugh Scott Mellor of Brighton, Massachusetts, president of a real estate holding company.¹² Woodall's address book contained the name of John David Norman, whose ring, according to the Chicago police, sent boys around the country to a network of clients. Halvorsen's files contained the name of Claudius Vermilye of Father Bud's Boys Farm in Tennessee, and the films seized in New Orleans helped Tennessee authorities identify boys filmed at the farm. By May 1977 Woodall and Halvorsen had been convicted and were awaiting sentence.¹²

The Sialle Testimony

The writer S. Dovey wrote that the case broke when film found in a broken-down commercial processing machine in Dallas was traced to Cramer, and that Robert Lang was a third founder, arrested with the others, and the only principal to avoid prison, after the state Department of Corrections recommended probation for his "minimal involvement" and "high moral character." Dovey wrote that Halvorsen and Woodall used their positions as juvenile probation officers to reactivate case files and leverage families. An associate of Woodall, Lewis Sialle, given immunity to testify, said that District Attorney Connick had been the lover of the boy pornographer John Reed Campbell, a fugitive in the case, and that "there was a cover-up"; victims said they had met the troop leaders at Campbell's home after posing for his "Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer" portraits. Sialle testified that Woodall ran an escort service that turned to the boys of the troop: "They'll get $50, a good meal and all that jazz." According to Dovey, Halvorsen, Woodall and Cramer received long prison terms. Dovey also wrote that an FBI memo of February 1977 confirmed the link to Norman's Delta Project, then run by Phillip Paske, and that Vermilye wrote to Halvorsen inviting him to the farm; and Don Berlage, a district attorney in Charlevoix County, Michigan, was connected to the case.³