As prosecutors see it, Crystal Quinn was lured to her death.
She suspected it, too, based on text messages she sent shortly before sunrise on July 28 in Wellsville.
The former exotic dancer, who had agreed to cooperate in the federal government’s sex- and drug-trafficking case against strip club owner Peter Gerace Jr., was staying at Simon Gogolack’s place.
At first, she thought Gogolack would protect her from the motorcycle club members she feared.
“They’re coming in, aren’t they?” she texted him at 5:36 a.m. after he went outside.
“If they do it, just let it happen,” she told him in another text. “Don’t get your ass killed.”
But minutes later, in a text message to someone else, Quinn suspects Gogolack might be in on a plan to harm her.
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“Yeah, I just heard Simon speaking to one of the bikers,” she texted at 5:41 a.m. “I think he’s getting me set up right now.”
A minute later, another text revealed her sense of dread: “Call me now. 911”
Her text to the outdated phone number never reached who she intended to contact.
On Aug. 1, it was Gogolack who called 911 to report Quinn had died in his home. Rigor mortis – the stiffening of joints and muscles following death – had already set in when first responders arrived at the scene to find her dead of an overdose. Authorities believe she had been dead 24 to 36 hours before his 911 call.
Stung by the death of a witness, prosecutors and the FBI ratcheted up their investigation over the summer and fall in what had already been an intense Pharaoh’s Gentlemen’s Club criminal case targeting Gerace and retired DEA agent Joseph Bongiovanni. The government contends Gerace and his associates groomed vulnerable and drug-addicted women into a life of daily drug use and coerced and manipulated them into engaging in commercial sex acts. Prosecutors have charged the now-retired Bongiovanni with accepting $250,000 in bribes from Gerace and drug dealers whom he thought were associated with organized crime and shielding them from arrest, as well as providing them with information about investigations and cooperating sources.
Since Quinn’s death, a dozen others connected to the case, directly or indirectly, have been charged in federal court, including two leaders of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club and a leader of the Rare Breed Motorcycle Club who made federal court appearances last week in Rochester.
It was during the motorcycle club leaders’ court appearances when federal prosecutors for the first time described what brought Quinn to Wellsville and the connection between those she spent time with to the motorcycle clubs.
“It’s the government’s position that Crystal Quinn was murdered, and it was staged to look like an overdose,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Cooper said in court Thursday.
Guilt by association?
Given their reluctance to answer some of the judge’s questions, it’s likely prosecutors are holding back some information amid the ongoing investigation or that they simply don’t know everything about her stay in Wellsville.
At court hearings in Rochester, Cooper and Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Tripi stressed to Chief U.S. District Judge Elizabeth A. Wolford what they called a nexus between Gerace and Pharaoh’s with the motorcycle clubs and also the links among the motorcycle clubs and Gogolack and Howard Hinkle Jr., another Wellsville man.
The hearings dealt with whether to keep in custody John Ermin, who prosecutors believe to be the national president of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club; Michael Roncone, who had been president of the Rare Breed Motorcycle Club in Wellsville; and Scott J. Barnes, who agents said has been living at the Outlaws clubhouse on Northumberland Avenue in Buffalo. None of the criminal complaints against them mention Pharaoh’s but relate to firearms charges against them.
But prosecutors talked about Gogolack and the bikers’ connections to Pharaoh’s.
A new indictment in September added two kidnapping and six witness tampering charges against Gogolack, 39, a previously convicted drug dealer, who had already been indicted on narcotics and firearms charges after Quinn turned up dead in his home.
Gogolack, according to authorities, said Hinkle told Quinn days before she died “that there was money on her head.” Hinkle has been detained on narcotics and firearms charges stemming from a search of his home.
Assistant Federal Public Defender Jeffrey T. Bagley, who represents Gogolack, discounted the prosecutors’ assertions about Gogolack at the bikers’ hearings.
“In my opinion, they’ve got a narrative, and they’re trying to fit facts in the narrative rather than the other way around,” Bagley said. “They’ll stop at nothing to have these folks detained, including making accusations about my client that I haven’t heard from them and have no basis in the evidence.”
Defense attorney Paul Dell, who represents Roncone, said he heard “disturbing allegations” during his client’s hearing.
“What we heard was guilt by association for uncharged crimes,” Dell said.
Prosecutors offered up the information about Gogolack, beyond what was charged in the motorcycle club members’ criminal complaints, to strengthen their bid to keep them detained based on flight risk and danger.
“Nothing places Michael Roncone at the poker game or at Simon Gogolack’s residence,” Dell said.
Lured to Wellsville
Gogolack and Quinn were high school classmates who have known each other since they were 18, but hadn’t been in touch since then, Tripi said.
Then they ran into each other at a local bar a week before she died, he said.
The two reconnected, and he invited her to Wellsville.
“It’s clear he was trying to get her to Wellsville,” Tripi said. “He’s luring her to Wellsville.”
He succeeds, and the two end up with Hinkle at a poker game that has long been associated with the Rare Breed Motorcycle Club, prosecutors said.
“One of the places that Crystal Quinn was before she died in Wellsville was at a poker game that was attended by Rare Breed associates,” Tripi said at a detention hearing for Roncone last week in Buffalo. “This is a big thing for them. They host these games. And they make money through these poker games.”
She was the only woman at the game.
Hinkle’s lawyer, Frank Bogulski, has previously said Hinkle and Gogolack accompanied Quinn to the card game at a fire hall.
Photos show Gogolack and Hinkle talking to each other in a field, away from Quinn, by the fire hall.
Others at the card game were high on drugs or drinking heavily, Bogulski said at a hearing for Hinkle last month. But there was no talk about Quinn being a witness, he said.
Gogolack and Hinkle accompanied Quinn to other places, including Hinkle’s cabin, and all of them ended up at Gogolack’s place after the card game, prosecutors said.
Robert Bolm, a former attorney for Gogolack, previously told The News that Gogolack found Quinn dead after waking up next to her in his home on Aug. 1.
A sworn statement from an FBI agent says Gogolack admitted giving two drugs to the woman before she died.
When Gogolack calls 911, he was acting “erratically,” Cooper said.
But Gogolack’s place was not investigated like a crime scene, Tripi said.
By the time federal prosecutors in the Pharaoh’s case even learned of her death, her body was already cremated, Tripi said, but he added an autopsy had been conducted.
The cause of death was “an overdose of fentanyl,” Wellsville Police Chief Timothy O’Grady previously told The Buffalo News, basing that assessment on toxicology tests taken on Quinn’s body.
Prosecutors said she was found to have 400 times a lethal dose of the potent opioid drug.
“This was not an accident,” Cooper said.
Added Tripi: “Nobody accidentally overdoses on that much fentanyl.”
It’s not a “party amount” of fentanyl, he said. “She had an instant death amount.”
Steven Cohen, who until early September was Gerace’s defense lawyer, said shortly after Quinn’s death that she died by suicide.
The Pharaoh’s nexus
Prosecutors sought to make several connections last week in Buffalo and Rochester courtrooms.
“We know that Mr. Hinkle has supplied (marijuana) plants to the Rare Breed at their Wellsville property,” Tripi said at a detention hearing for Roncone last week in Buffalo.
Hinkle’s name is also listed in Roncone’s Rare Breed meeting minutes as someone to contact about removing scrap from the motorcycle club’s Wellsville clubhouse, he said.
So prosecutors believe the connection between Hinkle and the Rare Breed club is clear.
Federal prosecutors have said in previous court filings that the Outlaws Motorcycle Club provides security at Pharaoh’s. Ermin has managed Pharaoh’s for about 10 years.
Prosecutors call the Rare Breed club a support club for the Outlaws Motorcycle Club.
Tripi cited a plaque at Pharaoh’s from the Rare Breed club thanking the strip club for supporting the club’s blues cruise event.
“That type of plaque indicates there was a relationship between Pharaoh’s, Gerace and this manager, Ermin, and the Rare Breed Motorcycle Club,” Tripi said.
After Quinn testified before the grand jury earlier this year, Gerace was charged with witness tampering in connection to his Pharaoh’s case, which led to him being detained.
It became clear to anyone following the case that Quinn was cooperating with authorities, Tripi said.
“We know he was furious about it,” Tripi said of Gerace in Rochester last week. “On good authority, he was complaining about Crystal Quinn.”
Gerace was detained on March 27. Ermin visited Gerace in jail on April 4 and also on July 6, Tripi said.
So prosecutors are drawing a connection from Gerace to Ermin, then from Ermin and the Outlaws to the Rare Breed club, and from the Rare Breed members in Wellsville to Hinkle and Gogolack.
“Do you have any proof?” Wolford asked Tripi.
Tripi said investigators are still investigating. He acknowledged it as a “circumstantial case, but it’s strong in my view.”
Ermin has the power to command legions of followers, Tripi said.
“Just eight days after Crystal Quinn was outed during a (prosecution) proffer in this courthouse, (Ermin) visited Peter Gerace,” Tripi said. “Within months she was dead. Within days of her being dead, she was texting fear of the bikers. These people had the motive to kill her.”
