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Big Trouble

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Haney quickly filled her position and soon added a dozen more employees. By 2003, he was buying full-page ads in Buzz magazine, a glossy successor to Go-Go, touting his agency as "prompt and discreet," with three in-call locations spread throughout the city and beauties by the names of Hazie, Taj and Maya. Sometimes the girls actually looked like their pictures; sometimes the glamour shots resulted from the photographer's clever use of angles and lighting.

Now living in a nice loft in the Baker neighborhood, Haney had found business success, but he still craved legitimacy. Larry Flynt might be a self-proclaimed smut-peddling scumbag, but his offices were corporate and his business on the up-and-up. Haney, by comparison, was still relegated to the shadows because of the nature of his adult-entertainment niche.

He decided to get away from the life, and headed for Costa Rica with plans to retire there and explore his spiritual side. He was curious about Eastern religions and had a tattoo of the Buddha etched on his back. He'd gone to the Burning Man festival and taken pictures of the freaky, naked revelers cavorting in swirls of gray dust. He'd always hoped that the path of excess might lead to the palace of wisdom -- and now it seemed that the palace might be a tropical paradise.

But there was trouble in paradise: Haney left one of his phone girls in charge of Colorado Companions, and within a month, money stopped flowing into his bank account. He got word from other employees that the woman he'd entrusted with day-to-day dealings was now stealing money from the company. Haney returned to Denver to set things back in order.

He was bored, anyway. He ran the woman out of town, got Colorado Companions back on track and started thinking big. His next plan was a project called X411, a coast-to-coast service that would function as an online gateway and trusted source of information for every type of adult service imaginable in a particular market -- like a Zagat guide for the sexually ambitious. He did a soft launch for Colorado with the now-defunct www.denver.x411.com, buying ads in local publications that touted such features as interviews with a "Vixen of the Month," printable maps and coupons to spas or strip clubs, and consumer reviews on everything from "best female provider" to the "best nude retreats."

But Haney couldn't find investors to launch the website nationally, and he eventually gave up on his X411 scheme. Still, he knew that there was a lot of money -- legal money -- to be made in multimedia adult services. And he liked to spend that money. When Haney would take the occasional trip out of town, he "went all out," a former friend remembers, sometimes spending $3,000 in one night on booze, limos and drugs. Haney liked cocaine and ecstasy, but never did them during business hours, he says.

"He wanted everyone to know that he owned Colorado Companions," remembers another friend. "He threw around a ton of money. I used to party with him all the time, and I never spent a penny. It was always him. He'd invite us out to P.T.'s Gold Club, Rise. It was always table, bottle service. He picked up everything. He's a huge guy, and -- this is his words -- 'The only way a guy like me is going to get pussy is if I pay for it.' And he did it by owning an agency, and he did it by throwing money around."

More from Gary Haney's About Me blurb: "In my life I have managed to be a preacher, a politician, a publisher, and a pornographer. I have lived as far east as New York, NY, as far west as Black Rock City, NV and as far south as Quepos, Costa Rica. I have totaled small vehicles in all of those areas and lived to tell the stories. I have loved beautiful women, and had them love me back. And good friends, well where I come from they always used to say that if you have 5 good friends when you die, then you die happy. I'll just say I could have died a thousand deaths by now. I have been truly blessed. By whom I have not figured out yet. But, whoever it was, well they loved me too."

While some myspace.com users have hundreds or even thousands of friends linked to their pages, Haney had only two links: one to a hardcore music band out of San Diego and the other to "Ultra Nightlife," a Las Vegas party-promotion group.

Haney last logged onto his myspace account in July 2004. That's about the time he began smoking meth frequently, friends say.

And that wasn't the only change. His beautiful loft, located in a renovated church, was always filled with hollow-eyed, drugged-out escort girls. Haney had once been rather careful of whom he let into his inner circle, friends say, and now it seemed he had all these sketchballs around.

But still, Haney was able to keep the degree of his drug use hidden from many employees and friends. He didn't show the signs of heavy meth smoking, such as a twitchy demeanor and a lack of concentration -- and while many meth addicts drop weight, Haney kept the pounds packed on.

That October, Haney was pulled over in Lakewood while driving a stolen Dodge pickup. One of his two passengers, a female, claimed that she had borrowed the vehicle from an acquaintance. In the truck, police found small baggies of suspected meth and several credit cards belonging to other individuals. (Some of the credit-card names could be traced back to clients of Haney's escort service, Westword later discovered.) Haney was taken into custody, charged with driving under a suspended license and later released. On the custody report, Haney listed his employer as Touch Art Gallery. But the address he gave for that business, in the 2700 block of Walnut Street, was a warehouse space he was using as an office for his escort agency, and was also known to an exclusive segment of Denverites as an after-hours party club where booze flowed freely and cocaine use was rampant.

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