That includes almost two years after he violated probation in 1995 by grabbing, kissing, and propositioning a teenager he was interviewing for a topless job. By then, any normal 80-year-old libido might have run its course. But in 2003—at 86, about the time the Strippergate plan was unfolding—he assaulted a waitress at Rick's. He offered her money for sex, the 23-year-old said in her lawsuit, and grabbed her breast and rubbed one of her nipples. He settled with the waitress, but got six months probation for misdemeanor assault.
According to the new Colacurcio task force, 91-year-old Frank's still got a lecherous smile on his face. An FBI affidavit includes a statement by a club employee that Frank was "always trying to get me to his house," while another said "he gets laid every night."
Adam Turman
According to the FBI, dancers at the Colacurcio clubs did a lot more than strip.
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Still, if the feds indict him again, if only to preserve the sanctity of legal candidate-buying and keep girls' locker rooms safe, Seattle might have seen the last of its tin-horn Godfather. In his 10th decade, Frank wriggles and winces like a man in pain, and among his ailments is polycythemia rubra vera, a condition that can lead to thrombophlebitis, or blood clotting.
On the other hand, this could be the start of something big for Frankie, even if he's busted again. As his father's history indicates, incarceration's just the cost of doing business the Colacurcio Way; you get back and the till's still warm. Frankie has already done six months for tax evasion without breaking a sweat, although he did complain, Frank-like, to a reporter afterwards about the "horrible" lack of women.
Observers and investigators say Frank the younger is already on track to the top of the family biz. As his father once primarily was, Frankie is directly involved in hiring dancers, collecting cash proceeds, and trying to stay a few steps ahead of the cops and revenuers.
Like his dad, Frankie has also been married and divorced, owned a million-dollar home, and piled up income. A dozen years ago, Frankie was already making almost $700,000 a year, according to his tax return. It's closer to $1.2 million today, federal investigators say.
A trim 5 feet 10 inches, with prematurely gray cropped hair and deep-set brown eyes, Frankie's a modish, new-and-improved version of the old man. At times he exhibits brawler Frank's disposition, too, according to one of Frankie's ex-wives. When they split, she told a judge she was "concerned about his reaction" and his "terrible temper," and sought a restraining order to keep him away from the house, as did his second wife.
As heir apparent, Frankie is at least partially overseeing activities that are comparably subtler, supposedly more regulated, but apparently no less profitable than the activities of Frank's earlier racketeering days. (Counting assets and annual revenues, it's at least a $16 million production.) And that they allegedly needed a separate location, a small Lake City apartment, to stash money sounds almost like creative mob lore. But while both deny the family gangster legend—Frank calls it "Mafia malarkey"—they were reported to have had a good laugh one day in 2005 when the cell phone of an investigator for Frank's attorney suddenly went off in a courtroom, playing the theme from The Godfather.
Frank might be best remembered as the guy who, 50 years ago, hung a man by his feet out the window of a hotel room to make the guy talk. He talked. Five years ago, he told a TV photographer "I'll take that camera away from you pretty quick" if he didn't stop taking Frank's picture. He stopped.
While he's got a temper, Frankie isn't necessarily a chip off that block. Frank once called his son a "cream puff" compared to Dad. And Frankie's mom Jackie, in a 1993 deposition for a divorce from Frank (they divided $2 million in assets), thought then that if Frank weren't around to run the empire, "I don't think [Frankie is] capable of doing it."
Among Junior's prized possessions are a comic-book collection and a statute of St. Francis dating back to his grade-school days. He values heirlooms handed down from his grandmother and grandfather, who were Bellevue farmers, including a tea set and a silver-dollar gold chain.
A year after his parents' divorce, Frankie began dropping hints to his first wife, Terri, a former club manager, about separating. They'd married on New Year's Eve 1991, with Frankie facing a short term for tax evasion. By 1994, they had separate rooms and he had a girlfriend.
"I was convinced our marriage was over, and I was in another relationship," Frankie told the court in a declaration. "Every time I tried to discuss divorce with Terri, she simply lost it." It took two years before he "told her unequivocally" he was leaving.
In her own statement, Terri, with a child from an earlier marriage, said Frankie "has threatened violence." She sought a restraining order, although Frankie continued to deposit $6,000 a month into her bank account.
The 1997 divorce suit shows Frankie made $678,445 from five different Colacurcio clubs, the bulk, $500,000, from Rick's. A property agreement gave Terri a house in Snohomish County, three cars, and a motor home. Frankie got three cars and a flatbed trailer, and retained ownership interests in the clubs as well as in the club's accounting firm, Accurate Bookkeeping, and the clubs' hiring agency, Talents West, on Lake City Way.
