The Reporter Who Infiltrated The Chicken Ranch for Marvin Zindler

Fifty years ago this summer, Houston’s KTRK Channel 13 sent an undercover news crew to infiltrate La Grange’s Chicken Ranch. The flamboyant newsman Marvin Zinder later presented the story on television and forever cemented his legacy to The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

But Zindler, who died in 2007, never stepped a foot inside the Chicken Ranch as far as anyone knows. That job went to Larry Conners, a young journalist at the time, who now hosts a daily talk radio show in St. Louis. The Record spoke to Conners last week about the story which led to the downfall of La Grange’s notorious Chicken Ranch and then spawned a Broadway musical and motion picture.

“Marvin and I met these two DPS agents, and they were telling us that they had been looking at the Chicken Ranch possibly having some organized crime involved,” Conners said. “They were out there perched on a hill, watching it with binoculars, recording license plate numbers and things of that nature.

“Big Jim Flournoy, the Sheriff, came out and threw a shotgun down on them,” Conners said. “They said, ‘Hey we’re law enforcement.’ They showed their badges and everything. Flournoy said, ‘I’m the law in this county. You’re not. Your orders will change tomorrow. Now get out of my county.’He had a shotgun, and they weren’t going to argue with him, so they left. Sure enough, the next day, they go word from somebody in Austin: ‘Hey, go do something else.’ So that got our interest. Who’s pulling the strings?”

Conners said he and Zindler never found out who was pulling the strings. But he suspected that Flournoy had powerful connections within the state government.

“Everybody knew the Chicken Ranch existed and it had for decades,” Conners said.

Zindler was a Houston police officer who investigated business scams and consumer rip-offs prior to his broadcast career. He often incorporated police-style “sting” tactics into his television reporting. With that in mind, Channel 13 sent Conners and a crew to the Chicken Ranch with a mission to document any illegal activities taking place inside – namely, prostitution.

“I had a van delivered to the station, a big orange van,” Conners said. “I was going to pose as a University of Texas student with my photographer as a buddy, and we were going to go and have fun. We get there, and it’s hot as hell. Frank, the photographer, stayed in the van. A buddy of his who had come in from New York came along with us. He didn’t know what we were getting into until we got there.”

Conners recalled the interior of the Chicken Ranch.

“When you walk in the front door, there were mirrors all the way around this living room and dining room put together,” Conner said. “In one corner to the left there was a jukebox. Then there were basic Samsonite chairs sitting across from each other on the other side. The guys would come in and take a seat. The girls would come out. They weren’t naked but they wouldn’t have much on, maybe a slip or a Victoria Secret-type garment. They would sit down and the guys would look over. One of them would say, ‘Hey, you want to go do the cotton sheet dance?’ That’s the way they described it, and they would go into the back.”

Conners said Channel 13 was supposed to purchase a small, quiet Minolta camera for him to use during this clandestine operation. But he never got the camera. Instead, he had to settle for a large Canon 35 mm film camera. Conners stuffed it into the pocket of an Army fatigue jacket that he wore that day – which made him look awkward on a hot summer day.

“To get a photo, I had to get half the camera out of my pocket so the lens would clear,” Conners said. “I’m trying to figure out how to do that without drawing a lot of attention. I kept throwing money in the jukebox, trying to pull this camera out, because to my ears, every time I took a shot it sounded like a .45 going off. I knew I was going to be spotted, but I got away with it.”

“All these guys were coming in,” Conners added. “They were good old southern boys. They all had rifle racks in their pickups with rifles and shotguns in every one of them. I tried to get a few shots before we leave, and one of the gals comes over to me and takes my hand where the camera is. She says, “You’ve got a camera?” I say, ‘Yeah, can I take pictures of the girls? I can do that, right?’ She says, ‘Let me go ask Miss Edna.’” Conners didn’t want to wait and hear from Miss Edna Milton, the last madam of The Chicken Ranch.

“I motion to Frank’s friend for us to go,” Conners said. “A couple of the guys start saying, ‘Who’s got a camera? That guy’s got a camera!’ They didn’t want to be exposed for being in there. Now its dark, and there was a yellow bug light hanging above the porch. Moths flying around, stuff like that. We get back out to the van. When the van was delivered to me, the keys were already in the ignition. Now it’s dark as hell and I can’t find the ignition. Is it on the console? Is it on the column? I couldn’t figure out where the key goes.

“Frank is screaming like, ‘They’re going to a car, they’ve got guns!’” Conners recalled. “I can’t figure out where the key goes. Finally Frank hits the strobe light on the camera and it goes off. It looked like the sun rose inside the van. I got big spots in my eyes, but at least I figured out how to get the key in the ignition and we go tearing out of there. I think I got a mile and a half or two from the country road, and as we get there a Sheriff’s car comes racing into the Chicken Ranch. But we got away.”

Conners said he received several threats after the story ran on television.

“We were getting calls from guys saying, ‘If my car shows up on TV, I swear I’ll come down there and kill you and your family,’” Conners said. “It was pretty common. You didn’t take it lightly. La Grange is about 100 miles from Houston, and a lot of people said, ‘Why are you doing a story on it? It’s not even in Houston.’But it was a story, and we go where the story is.”

Conners said he heard stories about men who took their wives and girlfriends out for a late dinner and drinks while the series ran on TV, so that they wouldn’t be home to watch the 10 o’clock news.

“These guys were covering their tracks,” he said. “There may have been 60plus guys who came and went that night while we were at The Chicken Ranch. They did not want that on the air.”

Conners would return to La Grange to interview Miss Edna and Sheriff Flournoy. He also witnessed the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office try to falsely pin assault charges on Zindler when it was Flournoy who assaulted the newsman. Read all about it in the next installment in this series.

50 Years after it closed, The Record is running a series of articles this summer looking back at the key figures surrounding the Chicken Ranch and the complicated legacy it has left behind.