Norma Jean Almodovar (nee Wright) was born May 27, 1951, to Mr. and Mrs. Harold M. Wright of Binghamton, New York. She was the fourth child and first daughter in a family of 8 boys and 6 girls. Through their mother, Helen Ruth Doolittle Wright, daughter of Mark Arthur Doolittle and Clara Chauncey, the family are direct descendants of John Howland, Pilgrim of the Mayflower, and of the Reverend Charles Chauncey, President of Harvard University 1654- 1672. The Chauncey family tree traces directly back to Charlemagne and the royal houses of France and England including the Plantagenets and William the Conqueror. Her maternal grandfather is a descendant of the once powerful Lyon Family of France, then of Scotland.
To see family tree click here
Norma Jean's mother was a school teacher who retired when the family started growing. Her father served in the US Army during WWII, after which he was a factory worker- and always a dreamer. Despite his best efforts to provide for his family, there were simply too many children to feed on too small a salary. Their illustrious genealogical heritage notwithstanding, Norma Jean and her siblings grew up poor and the family was often dependent upon charity to survive.
|
|
Not long after the birth of one of Norma Jean's younger sisters, her mother became a "born again" Christian and thereafter Norma Jean and her siblings were raised as fundamental Baptists whose lives revolved around the church and Christianity. Throughout her childhood, Norma Jean believed she was chosen by God to become a missionary to Puerto Rico, and so at age 18, Norma Jean was enrolled in Philadelphia College of the Bible.
However, before she could go to college, she had to get a job. Her parents could not afford to send any of their children to college and so it was up to each child to find their own way if they wanted to further their education. After Norma Jean graduated from high school in June, 1969, she and a fellow classmate moved to New York City where they lived with her friend's Russian grandparents in the Bronx. Norma Jean got a job working as a clerk in the Empire State Building while her friend attended the local Kings College.
In January of 1970, Norma Jean decided to take a short vacation and visit her Aunt Rusty in California. She didn't know it at the time, but her plans to become a missionary were about to be derailed.
After visiting with her aunt for a week, she went to visit her Puerto Rican friends from New York who had relocated to Los Angeles and had become deeply involved in a fundamentalist religious cult. Her friends pressured her to join them and become part of the "local church." Within a week she succumbed to peer pressure and found herself as involved in the church as were her friends, even though Norma Jean had already begun to have doubts about her faith in God. During the summer of 1970, she met a cousin of one of her New York Puerto Rican friends, a man who had just been discharged from the Air Force. By November, she was sure she was in love with him and so on November 19, 1970, she became the wife of Mr. Radames Almodovar. The marriage ended three years later, with no children. By the time her marriage was over, Norma Jean had disassociated herself from the church and no longer considered herself a Christian.
To learn more about her philosophy on religion and God, click here.
|
|
|
As the family grew, Norma Jean, as the eldest daughter, assisted her mother in raising the younger children as they came along. By the time Norma Jean turned 18, she never wanted to change another diaper in her life!
|
- In 1986 with my family after our father's funeral. This is the last photo of all my siblings together. My younger sister Grace Elizabeth died of breast caner in 1995.
|
She joined the Los Angeles Police Department as a civilian traffic officer in 1972. At the time, police women had to be 5'8" tall and were only assigned to indoor duties. Norma Jean was 5'4" and did not meet the height requirement to be a police woman, and she did not want an indoor job, either.
As a traffic officer, she was assigned to the nightwatch for most of her ten year career, working from 6 P.M. until 2 A.M. out of the Rampart and Hollywood Divisions. During this time she witnessed many acts of corruption and serious criminal activity committed by other members of the LAPD.
|
During the first few years on the LAPD, I was like a kid in a candy store... so many handsome cops to date! So many men... but with a few exceptions, most cops I dated thought that making love was like using their gun- and all they had to do was take aim and shoot. Most couldn't get it out of their holster before it went off... and they were never concerned about MY sexual needs!
|
Norma Jean was nicknamed the "Bionic Arm" by her peers because she spent all her work hours doing what she had been hired to do, and on many occasions she wrote in excess of 300 tickets a day. Her other duties included directing traffic at the scene of an accident, fire or homicide, and recovering stolen vehicles. |
|
For all the work she did during her on duty hours, off duty Norma Jean liked to play just as hard as she worked. She found the handsome cops she worked with difficult to resist and dated many of them. From them she learned just about every 'deviant' sex act that can be done with another human being, even though many of these acts were still felonies at the time and every cop she dated was a felon under the law. [Ironically, she learned from these cops the sexual meaning of the words "head," kinky" and "laid"- and years later, the fact that she knew and said these words in a conversation with her "friend" Penny was used by the vice cops to get a search warrant, because the use of those words, according to Alan Venderpool and Fred Clapp, "proved that Norma Jean was operating as a madam"!!!!!!!] After a short while, the novelty of dating cops wore off when she discovered that very, very few of them seemed interested in reciprocating pleasure, legal or otherwise.
|
|
In 1975, Norma Jean met Victor, the man who is now her husband. He did for her what all the cops she dated had failed to do (or even try to do)- he gave her pleasure and told her it was her right as a woman to experience multiple orgasms. We'll return to their relationship later. |
|
In 1974 Norma Jean suffered the first of three work-related traffic accidents. She hurt her back when the three wheeled Harley Davidson motorcycle, to which she had been assigned at the time, hit the car in front of her. The driver, seeing the police vehicle behind him, decided not to go through the red light and stopped suddenly, backing up his car into Norma Jean's motorcycle. Norma Jean was on disability for over a year and a half as a result of this accident, and was hospitalized on two occasions. It was during this time she met Victor.
In her second on duty accident, she was attacked by a Hollywood businessman. He attempted to run over her with his vehicle- but only managed to knock her down. He was arrested for assault, of course, but the City of Los Angeles did not want to prosecute a member of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. As city property, Norma Jean was not allowed to sue him for the physical and emotional damage he caused her.
The third and final accident occurred on April 18, 1982, at 11:10 P.M. The police car she was driving on Hollywood Blvd. was rear-ended by a very intoxicated man in a stolen car, who, as it turned out, was an illegal alien and had just committed an armed robbery. He fled the scene of the accident involving Norma Jean, but was apprehended moments later after a brief pursuit around the block with a couple of several undercover cop cars which happened to be right around the corner when the accident occurred. The suspect was release shortly after being booked into the Hollywood jail, while Norma Jean was still in the emergency room having x-rays taken of her reinjured back and neck. That was the last day she ever worked for the Los Angeles Police........
Norma Jean was already very disillusioned with the LAPD and she was angry with her co-workers for their corrupt activities (the burglary and drug ring, murder-for-hire- ring, sex with 10 year old girls, etc.). This accident was the final straw. She knew that the man who hit her would never be prosecuted- and just like the situation with the Hollywood businessman who had tried to run her over, she knew that she could not count on the City of Los Angeles to be concerned for her well being. After completing the accident report, she went home and in a symbolic gesture of cutting her ties with the LAPD, she tore up her uniform and cut up her shoes. To replace them would be very expensive and she didn't want to be tempted to go back on her decision. She had vowed that she would never again return to work for the LAPD.
|
When the City stopped paying her disability benefits, she decided to take up a new career. She chose to become a high-priced Beverly Hills Call Girl. She is often asked why she chose this profession when she could do so many other things, including her crafts (doll-making)... her answer is that she wanted to make a social statement about the moral hypocrisy of our society- a society which seemed completely untroubled by the police corruption that permeated the LAPD, and yet demanded that law enforcement spend a significant portion of its scarce and valuable resources to set-up and arrest women whose sole "crime" was to accept money from men for acts of sex they could otherwise legally engage in, even with thousands of men- so long as they had sex for free. The arrest and subsequent incarceration would brand them forever as a prostitute and destroy their lives - all in the name of protecting them from exploitation.
|
|
Her statement was simple- "I would rather be a whore- an outcast from society- than to work for the Los Angeles Police Department. It is much more honest and I can live with myself." In addition to her new found profession, she continued her doll business, which, while it didn't generate much income, but helped to reduce the stress and anger she still felt toward the LAPD. As well, she continued working on the book she began writingwhile working the night shift on the LAPD, during the many hours she spent waiting for the tow company to arrive to tow away the stolen and illegally parked cars she found during her tour of duty. The book now included her experiences as a prostitute and she titled the book, "Cop to Call Girl."
|
On September 17th, 1983, seven cops with their guns drawn knocked at her door to arrest her on one count of pandering. Her unfinished manuscript was confiscated by the police as "evidence" of her crime and she was taken, in handcuffs, to the downtown LA police headquarters where she once worked. The pandering charge stemmed from her attempt to fulfill the alleged sexual fantasy of a former friend who was still atraffic officer. The "friend," Penny Isgro, had come to Norma Jean's home wearing a wire, and later admitted during Norma Jean's trial that she had helped set up Norma Jean to prevent her from writing an expose of the Los Angeles Police. Through the perhaps deliberate incompetence of the then attorney (whom she later sucessfully sued) Norma Jean was given no defense whatsoever during her brief trial, and as a result, was convicted of that one count of pandering- which was a felony.
For making a phone call on behalf of her very unattractive fifty- year old, six foot two, two hundred fifty pound "friend", Norma Jean was facing a mandatory three to six year incarceration in the California State Penitentiary. The judge posponed sentencing until after a 90 day psychological evaluation could be done to determine whether or not Norma Jean poses a "threat to society" for her crime of trying to fulfill her friend's sexual fantasy. The judge allowed her two weeks to put her affairs in order, before she was to return, the day before Thanksgiving 1984, to be remanded into custody.
|
|
|
|