Edward Raymond Ege, Joseph Boyd and Joseph Victor Bruno v. United States

Ege, Boyd and Bruno have run afoul of the Mann Act. A young California girl who had renamed herself Cindy was their pawn.

As a child through the normal school years, Cindy had been moved from one foster home to another. After nine years of school, she started to work. She was employed as a clerk by three San Francisco concerns, each in rapid succession. She then graduated to the chorus line of the burlesque follies. She seems to have been an habitue of the Sarong Club in San Francisco. At least in 1953 that club had among its clientele persons like the defendants Ege and Boyd who had commercial use for young women willing to accept their management in the prostitution field.

Ege maintained in San Francisco sort of a supply house of women (of whom Cindy became one) and Boyd and Bruno operated houses of prostitution where and when they could find local law relaxed. Eventually, Cindy and Ege argued. In the vernacular, “they fell out.” And that seems to have given the federal agents their chance to make a case.

During her career, Cindy was sent by Ege to Scottsdale, near Phoenix, Arizona, where she worked in Boyd’s “house” which operated there awhile. Then she returned to…