Audio By Carbonatix
In their interviews with several girls who’d worked for Jim Grady, police often seemed perplexed about what they were looking for. At times, the investigators also managed to convey — in not-so-subtle ways — that while the girls may not have felt exploited, they were.
After their interviews, some models reported that investigators had told them that Grady used hidden cameras in his studio to take pictures of them naked — although no evidence of such cameras was ever found. Grady was also charged initially with giving alcohol to minors, even though the under-eighteen models said they’d never seen any on the premises.
On April 2, 2002, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s Collin Reese and Jefferson County investigator Mike Harris interviewed a seventeen-year-old girl named Lyssa, who’d posed for Grady’s Web site. Some excerpts from the interview:
Reese: I’m sensing in you right now a feeling of, ‘Eh, it wasn’t too cool, but I did it anyway.’
Lyssa: It didn’t feel wrong at the time. It kind of feels weird now.
Reese: Lyssa, I’m gonna ask you some difficult questions. Did you have clothes on?
Lyssa: Yes.
Reese: You did have clothes on? You had a top and a bottom?
Lyssa: Yes.
Harris (after telling Lyssa that “Young people make mistakes all the time,” and “It’s easy to get tricked by people”): Were there certain things you had to do that were very uncomfortable?
Lyssa: No.
Harris: At times, were your breasts exposed?
Lyssa: Nope.
Harris: Did he ever make you feel uncomfortable?
Lyssa: No.
Harris: Well, in retrospect, would it make you feel uncomfortable, you know, now, thinking back?
Lyssa: Probably.
Harris: Tell me why.
Lyssa: Um, just thinking back to it, I was having fun at the time…but now that I know this dude’s probably not legal, it kind of tricks people, and I probably wouldn’t feel comfortable. (She then describes an outfit she wore for a photo shoot set in a room designed to look like a normal teenager’s bedroom.)
Harris: But normal teenagers don’t wear those outfits, right?
Lyssa (pause): Right.
Reese: Was he focusing in on your butt?
Lyssa: No, it was all of me.
Reese: Do you know what pornography is?
Lyssa: Yes. Like Playboy?
Reese: Yeah, exactly. Now, in your mind, what’s the purpose of that?
Lyssa: Make money?
Reese: Okay. And the type of people who buy Playboy, they’re paying money for what?
Lyssa: To see women exposed?
Reese: That’s basically what we’re talking about here. This Jimmy, or whatever he’s calling himself, he’s not selling clothes.
Harris: What’s he selling?
Lyssa: He’s selling us.
Harris: Right.
Reese: He’s paying you $50 an hour? He’s making a lot more than that. A lot more. This is serious.
Harris: Did he have you stick your buttocks out?
Lyssa: He had me pull straps down.
Harris: Was there a problem with your pubic hair? Did you have to do anything?
Lyssa: No.
Harris: Ever feel uncomfortable?
Lyssa: No.
Harris: In any of these poses, did you have to spread your legs at all?
Lyssa: Nope.
Harris: Did he ask you if you had any other friends who would be interested in doing this?
Lyssa: Nope.
Harris: If they were to take all the pictures you took and put them in a portfolio and brought it up to Conifer High School to show your classmates, how would you feel?
Lyssa: Probably violated.
Harris (nodding): Okay.
Lyssa: Like they weren’t his to show. It’d be like showing your classmates your butt.
Harris: And that would make you feel uncomfortable, right?
Lyssa: Um-hmm.
Harris: Do you feel like what he’s done to you is okay? How do you feel about all this now that we’re involved and you know that there’s some type of investigation going on? Tell me what your thoughts are about that.
Lyssa: Um…uh, I don’t feel like he should be doing what he is. Especially with all under eighteen.
Reese: Are you going to go back there?
Lyssa: No. When I was done with the first shoot, I wanted to.
Reese: Why?
Lyssa: I guess he had that way of talking to me; he made me feel comfortable.
A week later, Arapahoe County sheriff’s investigator James Rasmussen interviewed another former Grady model named Dusty.
Rasmussen: Were any of the photos provocative?
Dusty: Not that I know of.
Rasmussen: Did the models show anything? Flesh?
Dusty: Top of breasts, buttocks.
Rasmussen: Were any of the poses provocative?
Dusty: Sexy.
Rasmussen: Did you ever feel violated?
Dusty: No. But after I turned eighteen, I became a stripper.
Rasmussen: Was your mom okay with all of this?
Dusty: Yes, she saw the Web site.
Rasmussen: Did Jimmy ever publish pictures of you you didn’t want to be published?
Dusty: No.
Rasmussen: Do you know he sells the photographs of you?
Dusty: Yes.
Rasmussen: Did you ever see Jimmy give underage girls alcohol or hear of him giving alcohol?
Dusty: No.
Rasmussen: Never?
Dusty: No.
Rasmussen: Have you ever seen any underage girls posing that was not right?
Dusty: One was doing a ‘chair bra,’ that is when they do not have a bra on and they push their breasts against the chair, the chair covers their breasts.
Rasmussen: Were you ever present during the Web talking?
Dusty: Yes.
Rasmussen: Did it ever get out of hand?
Dusty: No, not out of hand. Just got boring.
Rasmussen: Did it get to be awful stuff?
Dusty: No.
Rasmussen: Do you know of anything that’s not right, that was being done there, girls under eighteen being touched, have touched others, been propositioned, offered drugs or alcohol, done anything illegal?
Dusty: Not that I know of or have seen.
