This is just awful. I don’t want to live here anymore. KGW’s lovely Abbey Gibb files an informative news feature on just how Portland’s awful history of human trafficking is revealed in a network of underground tunnels downtown:
http://www.kgw.com/entertainment/Sha-138610174.html
Thanks to Ben Easher for this 1999 article from Anodyne Magazine Online which includes such tidbits as:
“Back above ground, I follow Michael P. Jones to the next stop on our tour, Old Town Pizza. We enter through a trap door in the sidewalk, and I am reminded of the story (possibly apocryphal) about the legendary crimper, Joseph “Bunko” Kelly. Seems Bunco was walking down a dark street on an evening much like tonight, keeping an eye out for any likely prospects to sell to the captain of The Flying Prince which was docked at the harbor and needing a full crew. Passing by an open trapdoor, Bunco stepped in to investigate, and happened upon a macabre sight: 25 or so men lay dead on the floor, having mistaken the cellar of a mortuary for that of the saloon next door, and having opened and drunk a keg full of formaldehyde. Thinking quickly, Bunco rounded up some of his henchman and proceeded to cart all the bodies through the tunnels and out to the docks, where he sold them for 32 dollars a head. As he counted his money, Bunco said to the captain “Yep, these fellows are dead drunk all right. By rights, you should pay me extra for all the money I spent to get ’em this way.” And that’s how Bunco Kelly sold a crew of dead sailors – for a tidy profit – in what has to be the greatest crimping story of them all.”
– Portland Underground, by Miriam Zellnik
Bunko Kelly’s book, written after his career as a crimper, “13 Years in the Oregon Penitentiary” is available online.
