New Orleans Boy Scout Troop 137 was a Scouting America troop in which at least 25 boys were sexually abused between June 1974 and September 1976.
History.
Troop 137 was founded in early 1974 in New Orleans East, Louisiana, by four men: Richard Stanley Halvorsen, Raymond Thomas Woodall Jr., Harry Cramer, and Lewis Sialle. According to Sialle during his later testimony in court, the troop began with the intention to "provide [the men] with boys for their sexual pleasure". Prior to its founding, Halvorsen and Woodall had arrived in New Orleans from Coral Gables, Florida, where they were listed as maintenance men for the Adelphi Academies, an alternative school that operated as a front for boy prostitution. Peter Bradford, a co-owner of the Academies, was among those arrested for molesting the Boy Scouts in New Orleans. The first mention of the troop was in a newspaper advertisement seeking young "Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn types" to pose for fishing photographs.
Woodall and Robert Lang, a committee member of Troop 137, also formed a New Orleans-based tour guide service in 1973. Tourists were provided with entertainment, lodging, food, and access to sex workers, later including underage boys from the troop. According to Woodall in a letter to "The Times-Picayune", politicians from outside Louisiana were among their customers. Sialle testified that the service originally employed adult gay men but moved on to young boys to cut costs.
The troop leaders targeted boys from unstable backgrounds, often by infiltrating organizations such as child welfare services and Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. Halvorsen and recruiter Richard Pass' "modus operandi" was to entice boys and their families with gifts such as motorcycles or guitars, for them to then be placed in the Adelphi Academies and Troop 137. Pedophiles from outside of New Orleans would travel to the city to sexually assault the boys, and they were also taken out-of-state for sexual purposes. The boys were used for child pornography, which was photographed and filmed by the troop leaders. These abuse images were then shared by the troop, and their associates, to pedophile networks spanning the country.
Applications had been drawn up by the men to establish boys' homes, but the plan was not carried out.
Investigation.
On August 23, 1976, a conveyor belt broke down at Fotomat, a commercial film developer. The regional manager notified police after a series of photographs, sent by Harry Cramer, was found to contain two adults sexually assaulting a male child. The ensuing investigation led to the arrests of Halvorsen, Woodall, and Lloyd Schwegmann on September 10. At their homes, detectives confiscated index cards listing the names and home addresses of children in several states, which were obtained via boy-to-boy pen pal contacts listed in pornographic magazines. They also seized child sexual abuse images of fifteen different victims and magazines titled ""Boys For Sale", "Naked Boyhood", and "Young Boys and Oral Sex"". Halvorsen and Woodall were charged with multiple sex offenses, while Schwegmann was charged with contributing to the delinquency of minors and possession of the drug Tuinal. Following their arrests, the troop was disbanded. Cramer, Pass, and Lang fled and were apprehended soon after.
In the following months, the scope of the investigation widened. By May 1977, nineteen men were charged with abuse in relation to Troop 137. According to then-district attorney of Orleans Parish, Harry Connick, the clients had abused other children in thirty-four different U.S. states, as well as in England. Contacts of the troop to pederasts abroad, as far as Saudi Arabia, were discovered, as were filing cabinets full of letters dating back to 1956 of men requesting access to boys.
After his contact information and sex abuse material were discovered in the Troop 137 investigation, Claudius Vermilye, an Episcopal priest running a boys' home in Tennessee, was apprehended in November 1976. Chicago-based child pornographer and sex trafficker John David Norman's name also appeared in Halvorsen's address book.
Convictions.
Lang pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge in 1976 and was given a suspended sentence.
Woodall, who prior to trial was committed to a state mental hospital for "severe depression and suicidal tendencies" was the first to be convicted. Charged with eleven counts of aggravated crimes against nature, he received a 75-year prison sentence in May 1977. He died behind bars in 2013.
In 1977, Sialle pleaded guilty to two counts of crimes against nature and received a lighter sentence of seven years in prison after corroborating statements in court given by victims of the troop.
In August 1977, Halvorsen was sentenced to 30 years in prison on five counts of indecent behavior and eleven counts of aggravated crimes against nature. He received a lighter sentence than Woodall due to his remorse during trial. The same month, Cramer was sentenced to 45 years in prison on 26 counts of aggravated crimes against nature. Also in August, Pass was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Multiple other men were convicted and received lengthy sentences for sexually abusing the boys.
John Reed Campbell.
In July 1977, a local painter named John Reed Campbell was charged with sex crimes in connection to the Troop 137 investigation; however, he had disappeared in September 1976 following the arrests of Halvorsen, Woodall, and Schwegmann.
In February 1980, district attorney Harry Connick requested assistance from the FBI in locating Campbell. He was found two months later in Yuma, Arizona, but claimed that he was unaware of any charges against him and stated that he was in Arizona for business purposes. The charges against him were dropped in July 1982.
Connick was accused by Sialle during a 1979 court testimony of being romantically involved with Campbell, who had assisted him in an election campaign. Connick denied the allegation, which remains unsubstantiated.
Disappearance of Richard C. Jacobs.
41-year-old Bostonian Richard C. Jacobs was a multimillionaire businessman and former part-owner of the New England Patriots who was facing a maximum of 15 years' imprisonment for allegedly abusing members of the troop. One day before his trial, he jumped bail and was never seen again.