Chippendales: Club Owner’s Paranoia Spirals Into Murder

You may have heard of the sword of Damocles, but have you heard his story? Damocles was an attendant in a royal court, a jealous flatterer who wanted so badly to become keen he wouldn't shut up about it. His ambition or persistence or whatever you want to call it got him exactly what he always wanted. A throne to sit on, but when he finally looked up he saw a razor sharp sword swinging above his head held only by a single hair. Suddenly, he realized the precarious nature of his newfound power, how it could all just end in a blink of an eye. And so, Damocles begged for his whole life back. He didn't want his dream anymore. He was too risky, but to choose power is to choose risk. What would you do? If you found yourself with everything you ever wanted, would you sit there and wait for the sword to drop, run, or would you do everything in your power to protect it? I'm Harvey Gien, and this is Killer Stories. Trust your feet into some shag carpet and hit play on an 8-track, today we're touching down in the 70s to talk about Chippendale's, not these guys, these guys. Whose name strangely comes from this guy. You'll have to google it because we don't have time for tensions today. A lot happens in this case, and it starts in an unlikely place. Believe it or not, the origins of these extremely and intentionally white strippers begins in India, with a man named Soman aka Steve Bannerjee. Steve wants to become the founder of a massive global brand one day, so when he's in his 20s, he leaves India and heads west. He eventually settles down here, in my hometown of Los Angeles, California. Steve's a type of guy who isn't shy about his dreams. He gets a job as an attendant at a gas station, and when people come in with their really nice luxury vehicles, he tells him how he wants to drive a car just like there's one day. And I imagine those people probably looked at him like he had three heads. It's the 1970s, and he's a young brown immigrant with a stutter and an accent, but you know what? Steve makes it happen, and he does it by tapping into a very novel concept. That women get a horny too. Steve knows that disco is bringing big bucks to New York City, so eventually he saves enough money to buy a failing nightclub in West Hollywood. It's a huge investment for him, so the stakes are high, and he starts by just throwing things at the wall. He tries every gimmick in the book to attract customers. Magic shows, mudrests, lean, backgammon, you name it. At some point, he changes the name of the club from Destiny 2 to Chipendales because he thinks it sounds classier. But nothing really works. Until one day, a nightclub promoter approaches Steve with an idea, he should host a male strip show for an exclusively female audience, but Steve's like, let's do it. And so in 1979, Chipendales, the male erotic dance venue is born. Steve advertises his show all over the city, posting flyers wherever he thinks women will gather. Male exotic dance night for ladies only, $20 to enter. That's the ad. Almost right away, the idea catches on. The ladies go wild. Women of all ages start lighting up to get in from young and single women on up to grandmas, and we love that for grandma, who doesn't want to get loaded while touching abs and tucking dollars into G-strings. Anyway, as a bunch of journalists have pointed out, the success of Chipendales has a lot to do with timing. It's not like Steve really knew what he was creating. Up until their launch, male strippers only really existed in gay clubs, but his desperate attempt to turn a profit accidentally creates a rare and special space for women, one where they can express their sexuality freely and safely, and it coincides with a time where more and more women are entering the workforce and have their own amenity to burn. Steve wanted the club to be respectable. Classy. No drugs. No sex work. No shady backdoor deals. None of the associations that come to mind when you think of a stereotypical strip club for men. And that took shape, in part, by the type of dancers he picked. Tall. Muscular. Masculine. Clean cut. Hairless. White. Were there still drugs and sex happening in the club? Absolutely. Apparently a lot, but Steve wanted to sell in his own words an all-American Ivy League look, in a facility that look clean and nice, and that business recipe goes on to define the brand. But in 1980, the Chippendale's performances are still a far cry from what they eventually become. They basically take any random men off the street who are willing to take off their clothes for money, which sounds like someone I know. The show lacks the polish, the storylines, the characters, the choreography, the costumes, the spectacle. All that changes in 1981 when Steve Hires a man named Nick DeNoia. Nick comes to Chippendale's with credentials. He's an Emmy award-winning television producer and choreographer for a children's show called Unicorn Tales, which doesn't involve as many unicorns as you might think. And yeah, not a lot of stripping crossover there. But you can see there's a lot of theatricality, and that becomes part of Nick's vision for Chippendale's. Pretty immediately, he turns the dial up on the production value. He adds the glitz, the glamour, and a touch of cap so that the show's deliver quality entertainment without ever taking themselves too seriously. Kind of scenes though, Nick takes his job very seriously to the point where many of the dancers resent him. According to some, he's militaristic and cutthroat in his leadership, quit to raise his voice, always ready to fire people, and apparently he regularly comments on dancers' bodies, telling them what they need to do to improve, which sounds super toxic to me. Yet by all accounts, the product that Nick creates becomes the real secret sauce for Chippendale success. He does amazing things for Steve's bank account. Soon there's talk about adding a show in New York, which gets Steve really excited. He's going national, but things begin to shift after dinner one night at a restaurant. Nick sits down with Steve and convinces him to sign a deal on the back of a cocktail napkin. Nick will get the New York show up and running. In exchange, Steve will give Nick the rights to all of Chippendale's touring shows, 50% of their profits, and complete control over the tour's creative direction. In perpetuity, that means forever. For Steve, at the time though, it's not a big deal. Chippendale's doesn't even have tours yet. He's agreeing to give up a part of the business that doesn't exist. But he comes to seriously regret that decision. The New York show opens in October 1983 and it takes Chippendales to a whole new level. The theater's bigger, the performers are more experienced, the crowds are insane, celebrities start to make appearances, it all just works. The problem is, Nick starts to receive most of the credit, some even give Nick the nickname Mr. Chippendales, and though he doesn't really show it, that really pisses Steve off. He may be quieter than Nick, but he's just as ruthless. According to former employees, he sees himself as the king of Chippendales, and he's willing to do anything to protect what he sees as his. Because he and Nick both have huge egos and both feel responsible for Chippendale's success, they start getting into fights, and the relationship turns sour. And things go even further south when Nick gets around to launching a touring arm of Chippendales, those show start raking in cash, which makes Steve realize the mistake he made in signing that cocktail napkin. Most of that cash could be his. And to make matters worse, it's not just Nick who's cutting into a Steve's profits, profits heap things he's entitled to. The New York City Mafia is also breathing down his neck. Back in the 1980s, the Bonanno family runs one of New York's most powerful and ruthless criminal organizations. Think of every Mafia trope you know, that's these guys. And Steve Banner, she gets to know the bananas. Pretty well because Steve's the perfect target for extortion. He's an immigrant running a wildly successful nightclub that deals almost exclusively in cash. So pretty immediately after opening, the Banana Family starts taking a cut of Chippendale's profits in exchange for protection. But Mafia aren't just a problem for Chippendale's in New York. They have to deal with them on the road too. Many of the nightclubs they travel to are mob-owned, and there are times where tempers flare between touring companies and organized crime groups, which only adds to already existing tensions between Steve and Nick. Things build and build and build and one day, the shoe finally drops. Nick, Mr. Chippendale's denoya, gets murdered. He's found inside his Manhattan office dead from a gunshot wound to the face. The crime scene photos are too graphic to show, but the force of the blast knocked him clear off his chair. He was only 45 years old. Right away it's pretty clear to officials that it was a hit. There are no signs of force entry, no signs of a struggle, no identifying evidence, and judging by the single bullet and casing left behind, the killer only took one shot. The news of Nick's death is obviously shocking, but it's not that surprising that Nick had enemies. No disrespect to him, but he apparently pissed a lot of people off, which means there are a lot of suspects for officials to look into. The mafia is obviously top of mind because of how Nick died, plus officials learn that he had gotten into an especially heated fight with the mob-owned club in Florida while on tour. But they also consider other suspects like a scorned ex-lover and even Nick's brother, who had completely coincidentally just taken out a life insurance policy on him. But what officials don't know is the person actually behind it all was a man named Steve. Steve did it. Steve and Nick had basically gone their separate ways, but Nick still owned the rights to touring. Thanks to that napkin deal, then Steve found out that Nick had plans to open his own company and become a competitor which pushed Steve over the edge. And when he finally had enough of Nick, he knew who to call. A friend of his, the name of Ray Cologne, which for some reason just sounds like a hitman's name to me. Anyway, Steve and Ray got together and hashed out a murder plot. Steve gave Ray $500 to buy guns, then Ray looped his buddy, Louis Lopez, Ray and Louis hopped on a plane to New York, walked into Nick's Manhattan office, and shot him. Louis was the one to actually pull the trigger and they both took off before police arrived. Now for those wondering, Steve doesn't avoid suspicion entirely. His name comes up as a possible suspect. I mean, it was an open secret that they didn't get along. But he and still, most couldn't believe that little old Steve was capable of plotting a murder. Plus, the police had no way to tie him to the crime scene. He wasn't in New York, so he ends up getting away with it. And if Steve ended things here, kept quiet and put his head down, maybe he would have never been caught. But that's not Steve's mindset. After he kills Nick, one of the first things he does is reach out to Nick's family, the people who are still grieving because of what Steve did. And he convinces them to sell back the touring rights he gave away to Nick. He pays $1.3 million, which sounds like a lowball offer to me. And once again, he becomes the sole owner of the business, a business that is still booming despite Nick's sudden and tragic death. Soon competitors start popping up all over the place, which is to be expected, right? People see a good thing and try to copy it. But as we know, Steve doesn't handle competition well. And he's already proven that he can get away with murder. So he deals with these new competitors in the same way he dealt with Nick, by hiring people to take them out. And by take them out, I mean set their buildings on fire. He tries to anyway, not all or even most of the arts since are successful, but they have a ripple effect in the LA Nightlife scene. It feels like the industry is under attack and no one knows why or who's responsible. And if you were to look at Steve, you would have no idea he's behind it because he makes a big deal about doubling chip and Dell security like he's concerned. His club is creeping next. And because he keeps getting away with terrible things, he keeps doing them. Steve's already sky high levels of paranoia seem to reach new heights around the same time as chip and Dell's is cementing its mark on pop culture. At some point, he learns that some ex chip and Dell dancers have started a new company called Adonis, the men of Hollywood. And they're taking their show all over the world. So in 1990, Steve hires another hitman through Ray Cologne to take out three Adonis dancers while they're performing in London. This time, the hitman's name sounds straight out of the wiggles. He goes by strawberry. No, really, people actually call him that. And if you're going to be killed by a professional assassin, wouldn't you want it to be strawberry? It is as bizarre as it sounds. And I haven't even gotten to the craziest part, which is how Steve and Ray plan to have strawberry kill the Adonis dancers. The idea is to inject them in the neck with syringes, filled with cyanide. Even worse, at some point, Ray suggests mixing in draino. But back to the story, similar to the first hit, Steve removes himself from the details. He has Ray hires strawberry to actually do the killing. And for each dancer that ends up dead, Ray tells strawberry that he'll get paid $25,000. And so terms are said, strawberry flies to London with the cyanide and syringes. And then he gets ready to assassinate Steve's perceived enemies, a bunch of male erotic dancers. One of whom was named Reed Scott. In July 1991, Reed gets the surprise of a lifetime. He's on stage hosting at an Adonis show at the theater in Blackpool, England. When his business partner suddenly cuts him off mid-sentence, there are some men in suits here. They need to talk to him right away. Reed quickly learns those men in suits are actually agents with Scotland Yard. And they tell Reed his life may be in danger. They have reason to believe someone wants to kill him and to other Adonis dancers. I mean, talk about a hard pivot. One second, you're revving the libidos of an audience of women. The next year, worried one of them is trying to inject you with a death needle, which I'm sure was a terrifying thing to hear, but when you really think about it, the whole plan is incredibly dumb. What was strawberry going to do? Hop on stage in front of a sold-out crowd and stick one of the dancers. Then when they hit the ground, he just runs after the others. Without anyone in the club noticing, it doesn't make sense. The stupidity of the plan isn't what's running through Reed's head. Even to Reed, he's thinking it must be Steve. And as that possibility crosses his mind, officials in America are getting closer to the truth. Turns out after strawberry made it to London, he got cold feet. He flew back to the States, went straight to the FBI and told them all about the stripper cyanide plot. That obviously leads agents to Raid Cologne. And when the FBI rates his house, it's immediately clear strawberry was telling the truth because they find an insane amount of cyanide inside. I don't know if 46 grams means anything to you, but that's apparently enough to kill 240 people. Raise excuse? He has a go for problem. The cyanide is to kill the gofers. Naturally, the excuse doesn't work. Officials arrest Ray and charge him with both conspiracy and murder for hire. I suspect he's a middleman, but they don't have anything to connect Steve to the murder, which means Steve is protected for as long as Ray doesn't rat him out. And even though Steve's still out there living as a multi-millionaire and Ray is rotting in a cell, Ray is shockingly loyal. He sits in a jail for seven months without giving officials an inch. But that changes as soon as Steve refuses to help pay Ray's legal fees, which honestly feels like the least Steve could do for Ray, but I also understand Steve's perspective here. He doesn't want anything to come back to him, sending money creates more of a paper trail. But in the end, it doesn't matter. It comes back to Steve anyway. Ray decides to spill the beans about everything, including Nick DeNoia's murder. He implicates both Steve and Louis, the guy who actually shot Nick, but in order for the FBI to arrest Steve, they need more than just Ray's word, which is why they compensate Ray to act as a mole in a sting operation, to catch Steve once and for all. On June 23, 1992, Ray Cologne meets Steve Banerjee at an IHOP in Santa Monica, California. The FBI's hope is Ray will be able to get Steve to say something incriminating, but it quickly becomes clear they underestimated Steve's paranoia. When he arrives at the IHOP, he doesn't sit down in a booth for delicious pancakes within a ray of surf flavors. No, he goes straight to the bathroom and has Ray meet him in a stall. Once inside, Steve presses a finger against Ray's lips and makes him strip down to his underwear to check if he's wearing a wire. Which, of course, he is. Thankfully, the FBI had made some special underwear that hit the recording device, so Steve doesn't see it. But even though in his mind, Ray isn't bugged, Steve still isn't willing to talk. Anytime Ray asks a question, Steve writes the answer down unopposted and then tears it up and flushes it down the toilet. So, the tape they capture is completely useless. It's just a bunch of pencil scratching and rustling. The entire operation is a bust. So, the FBI has to go back to the drawing board. The assumption is that Steve thought it was super suspicious that Ray was already at a jail. So, they develop a new plan that involves Ray being a wanted fugitive on the run in Europe. And in February 1993, they get Steve and Ray together in a hotel room in Zurich, Switzerland. The conversation lasts between three and four hours. And Steve is so paranoid that at one point, he openly talks about how thin the walls are and how concerned he is that the FBI could be listening from the room next door. Which is exactly what's happening. But luckily for the FBI, Steve keeps talking. And at some point, he mentions Nick Denoya using the codename he and Ray established the D. Steve asked if the FBI knows he bought the murder weapons that killed the D, which on its own acts as a confession of sorts. But Steve also mentions the plot to kill those adonis dancers too. Meaning the FBI has everything they need to arrest him, which is good because in this same conversation, Steve also talks about his plan to flee the United States and start a new life in India. The officials arrest Steve in September 1993 and hold him on bail. He eventually pleads guilty to racketeering arson and murder for higher charges in exchange for 26 years in prison and forfeiting ownership of chip-and-dails to none other than the U.S. government. So yeah, the government owns and operates chip-and-dails now. No, I'm kidding. Steve's plea deal is supposed to go into effect on October 24th, 1994. The day of his sentencing. But before that happens, Steve dies by suicide in prison. And his death effectively terminates the deal. So chip-and-dails passes on to his family, his wife, and two kids. And that's one of the reasons the business is still around. Some believe Steve died by suicide so that his family kept the business. Because for all the evil things that he did, everyone seems to agree. Steve loved his family dearly. He just didn't have much regard for the lives of anyone who stood in his way. You could say both Steve and Nick fell victims to demically sword. But Steve also acted as the sword itself. And some believe he may have continued to if he didn't die. He allegedly had many more names on his hit list, including Ray Cologne and his own lawyer. It's also possible Steve may have committed more crimes we don't know about, like the attempted murder of another former chip-and-dails dancer, Dan Peterson. Dan left the company to make his own chip-and-dail style calendar. And one day Dan and his team were half-make it on a beach in Santa Monica when out of nowhere a hidden sniper started raining bullets on them. Luckily, no one was killed, but no one was caught either. Some time after chip-and-dails passes on to Steve's family, they sell it to a bunch of investors. And according to the internet, the current owners are not publicly known. They apparently want to maintain their privacy, which is fair. Maybe some lives could have been saved if Steve took a page out of their book and didn't care so much about the spotlight. But yes, chip-and-dails is still around in all its hormonal glory. The New York show may have closed after 9/11, but they still release an annual Christmas calendar, run plenty of tours, and have their long-running Las Vegas residency in a 10-million-dollar custom theater. And if that's not feminism, what is? Chip-and-dails has given us so much pop culture, so many sexual awakenings. Without it, there would be no magic mic, or magic mic XXL, or magic mic's last dance. Without it, who would Steve Banerjee's son do for work? No really. He's apparently a stripper now. And he started his own business called "Stripp-and-Dails," which is a reminder for all of us. No matter what happens in life, never stop chasing your dream. Thanks for tuning in to Killer Stories, a Spotify podcast. New episodes release on Mondays. If you liked today's story and want to learn more, we drop some of our favorite sources in the episode description. Until next time, I'm Harvey Gien. Stay safe out there.