Authors: Jeff Benedict,Don Yaeger
Fair filed police complaints on more than one occasion, but never pressed charges. “I knew if I went through with it, he would kill me,” she told ESPN. “He also told me that he would pay somebody to finish my face off. People don’t understand the fear that battered women live in and they think, ‘Well, she dropped the charges. She’s a liar. It didn’t happen. He’s a big football player and she’s slandering his name.’ I was a nobody out of Cincinnati coming after this big professional football player.”
McGee was familiar with the attacks suffered by Fair. “He really messed up Tracy’s mind,” McGee confirmed to the authors. “She’s a sweet girl, but he really messed with her mind.” And Fair was not the only girl familiar to McGee as a victim of Billups’s violence. Jenny Chapman, the sister of NBA star Rex Chapman, endured repeated abuse at Billups’s hands. With Billups’s career winding down in 1991, Jenny Chapman finally pressed charges after Billups threatened to end Rex’s NBA career by breaking his legs in retaliation for Jenny breaking off her relationship with him.
“He hit me close-fisted,” Chapman told ESPN. She too was only willing to discuss publicly the situation on account of Billups’s death. “He slapped me. He choked me … to the point where I’d just pass out and wake up the next morning and have to deal with it all over again.”
According to McGee, Billups’s physical violence toward women was connected to his warped sense of sexual prowess. He used physical violence to gain sexual control. “That’s what he wanted to do with Jenny,” McGee said. “He wanted to control her mind, her body, everything.”
The FBI wiretapped Jenny’s phone and began monitoring Billups’s phone calls to her while he was in his last year in the NFL. The following is a partial transcript from an FBI-recorded call between Billups and Chapman:
J.C.
: You gonna have somebody else do your dirty work or you gonna do it yourself?
L.B.
: I don’t ever get my hands dirty, Jenny.
J.C.
: Yeah, I know, because, see, a real man would.
L.B.
: No. A real man who got power wouldn’t.
J.C.
: How can you sit here and think that I would want to be with you when you threaten people that I love? How can you think that I would even want to even be associated with someone like you?
L.B.
: Because I’m a hard mother [expletive] and I’m gonna prove it to you. I promise you that on my mother’s life.
“I think it was his transition coming into football, coming into money so quickly,” Chapman said, trying to explain Billups’s violent tendencies toward her. “Never having that great amount [of money] just to do whatever you wanted to do and then all of a sudden it brings you power and it brings you all this fame just to do whatever you want whenever you want. He was used to getting what he wanted. If I was not going to give that to him, then he would become violent.”
McGee, who was sympathetic toward Chapman, agreed. “Being an athlete, you get notoriety, wealth, and power,” McGee explained to the authors. “Lewis was a person who used his. He used his to the fullest. I mean he had wealth. He drove a Lamborghini. He drove a Corvette. He had this very plush, gorgeous home in Orlando. But that wasn’t enough for him. He had to use his power of controlling to get somebody. ‘Hey, I’m Lewis Billups and you know I have all this stuff.’ And then once he got ‘em over to his house, he wanted to control them.”
S
o what does a guy like Billups, who used his fame to get access to and exploit women, do when all of that dries up? As confirmed by a stack of police reports and court records, the authors found that after retirement Billups preyed on women in clubs and bars, portraying himself as an active NFL player and seducing them into social encounters that ended in brutal sexual attacks.
After the Bengals released Billups following the 1991 season, he was signed by the Packers. However, one month into the 1992 season, Green Bay replaced Billups in the lineup with rookie first-round draft choice Terrell Buckley. After being let go by Green Bay, Billups was left without a source of income. The timing could not have been worse. Billups had to hire a criminal lawyer to defend him in the midst of the ongoing federal probe being conducted in the Jenny Chapman case. Billups also had to hire a civil defense lawyer to represent him in Seattle where he had been sued for rape. Meanwhile, creditors were hounding him for debts that were run up while he was living the high life of an active player. The following is a letter Billups wrote to American Express weeks after the Packers let him go:
“I, Lewis Billups, cannot pay American Express Centurion Bank. The reason is, that on or about the day of October 7, 1992, I was fired from the Green Bay Packers. I am now in the process of trying to get on with another team. I have no other means of employment or cash flow. At this point in time, I have no money in the bank. I am trying to sell my house and car to get some cash, but until that happens, I have no money. Thank you and please understand.”
Shortly after writing this letter, on November 30, 1992, Billups convinced Wendy Williams,* whom he met at an upscale Orlando club, that he was still playing in the NFL. Unlike some women who go to clubs in search of gaining a sexual relationship with famous athletes, Williams knew little about football. She was, however, undergoing some marital problems at the time she met Billups and his friend.
Playing the part of the rich, famous athlete, Billups eventually convinced Williams to come join him at his $800,000 Orlando mansion for lunch. “It was something interesting,” Seminole County prosecuting attorney Stewart Stone, who would later prosecute both Billups and his friend, explained to the authors in an interview. “She was intrigued and excited about the opportunity to go with two young, wealthy men, one of whom was a professional football player. She got in over her head.”
Shortly after Williams arrived at Billups’s home, he slipped a depressant into her beverage. Once it took effect, he raped her while his friend secretly videotaped the attack. Williams, unaware that her assault was filmed, chose not to report the incident to police. She feared that Billups’s celebrity would guarantee a media circus. But days later, Billups and his friend showed up at her house in broad daylight and presented her with a videocassette depicting the entire ordeal. Billups then threatened to deliver a copy to her husband’s office unless Williams came up with $20,000.
Billups and his friend repeated their threat numerous times during that week. Finally, Williams telephoned the police moments after the two men showed up in her driveway a second time. Moments later, police apprehended Billups and his friend and seized a videotape from the back seat of their car. “The tape depicted sexual contact,” confirmed prosecuting attorney Stewart Stone to the authors. “It appeared that she was under the influence, but not obviously. There was no sign of overt force, but it was not necessary to prove overt force because Billups was charged as raping someone who was mentally impaired.” Billups’s plan was to drug Williams so that she appeared to be consenting, thus making the video all the more valuable for extorting money.
The following day, Billups’s arrest on rape charges was reported in the
Orlando Sentinel.
As a result, six more Orlando area women came forward and reported being similarly seduced, raped, and videotaped. “There was no question in my mind that Billups was guilty,” said Stone. “Billups and [his friend] definitely had a thing going.”
As investigators soon discovered, there was more, much more:
• Just weeks earlier, on December 3, 1992, Billups had been arrested for drunk driving. Police had been called to respond to a dispute outside an Orlando area bar, where Billups was berating Patty Abdelmessih and spitting on her. Abdelmessih had provoked Billups’s wrath when she tried to prevent him from forcing another woman into his car. Abdelmessih discovered the woman in the women’s bathroom, moaning and sweating profusely after Billups had been buying her drinks all evening. Referring to the sick woman, Billups’s male companion said, ‘We didn’t mean to dose her.’ Police arrested Billups after he refused to respond to their questions and attempted to drive away.
• In November of 1992, a woman had contacted police and alleged Billups had assaulted her during a tour of his mansion. In her complaint, the woman reported being stripped, raped, robbed of the $50 in her purse, and kicked out of the house. Her clothes were thrown out after her. No arrest had been made because she declined to press charges.
• In July of 1992, an Orlando woman had obtained a restraining order against Billups after reporting that he had been hostile and abusive toward her and had threatened to physically harm her.
• In a neighboring county, sheriff’s officials confirmed that Billups had been involved in at least three additional incidents at several nightclubs, all of which required police intervention.
Before Seminole County authorities wrapped up their investigation into Billups, he was convicted and sentenced to a year in federal prison in Georgia for the threatening phone calls made to Jenny Chapman. While incarcerated, Billups agreed to plead guilty to the charges filed in Orlando in connection with the Williams case. Although Billups was imprisoned, the prosecutors in Florida were disadvantaged due to Williams’s decision not to testify against him if the case went to trial. “It was extremely difficult,” said prosecutor Stewart Stone. “Williams feared Billups.”
It all became academic, however, when Billups died in the car accident less than one week after walking out of federal prison.
“Even though he’s dead, I’m still scared of him,” Chapman said in her interview with ESPN. “I think about the prospect of him being alive and it’s too much. I’m scared of the memories. I’m scared of what could have happened if he were alive. I don’t think I could have had peace in my mind had it ended any other way.”
The Gambler
“I wish,” Art Schlichter said, raising his voice over the shouting in the background and the static on the phone, “that I could have just been addicted to drugs or alcohol. Because if drugs were my problem, who knows …” At that moment, a prerecorded message drowned out the end of Schlichter’s sentence. The message informed the listener that “this call is from an inmate at an Indiana correctional facility.”
Such is Art Schlichter’s luck. He was ready to boast that given the state of quarterbacking in the NFL today, he might still be drawing a paycheck from the league. But before he could finish, he was once again reminded that he’s in a place where arm strength doesn’t matter, where his story means almost nothing.
But what a story it is. Once one of the most promising college quarterbacks in America—a player so complete that the Baltimore Colts traded away starter Bert Jones to draft him with the fourth pick of the first round in 1982—Schlichter today sits in the same Pendleton, Indiana, lockup that once housed Mike Tyson.
Schlichter is guilty of the only sin that the NFL has decided it can’t tolerate—gambling.
“You have to admit it is hard to believe that people who have killed, people who have raped, and people who have sold drugs are still in the league,” said one longtime agent who once played against Schlichter, “but a guy who gambles, no, there’s no place for that in the NFL. I don’t condone gambling, but it isn’t the worst sin being committed out there.”
The NFL’s stance has always been that gambling eats away at “the integrity of the game.” But, Schlichter wondered aloud one evening, “does that mean beating your wife, raping a woman, or beating people senseless has nothing to do with integrity? How can the league, in a way, say one problem like gambling is worse than those others?”
Yet if the NFL was looking for a poster boy for the evils of gambling, Art Schlichter provided the perfect picture. If any one man had it all, it was Art Schlichter. High school All-America. Most prized recruit of the legendary Woody Hayes. Four-year starter at one of the nation’s most famous football-playing schools, Ohio State. Two-time Big Ten Most Valuable Player. Highest finish ever by a sophomore in the Heisman balloting. Drafted into the NFL ahead of Marcus Allen and Jim McMahon. Heir apparent to the mantle worn by Earl Morall and Johnny Unitas. Considered the next great quarterback in a league that adores its quarterbacks.
He could run and throw. He was polite and articulate. He was good-looking and single. He had never touched a drop of alcohol, never tried drugs. He hadn’t even lit a cigarette.
But there was one factor NFL prognosticators like the Cowboys’ Tex Schramm didn’t consider when rating Schlichter a “can’t miss” prospect—an addiction that would one day cost him everything.
It began when he was in junior high school with a nickel bet on a card game with his grandfather. As a college freshman, the thrill climbed to another level when a buddy took him to the race track with information about a “fixed” race—one he would bet on and win. “That was an incredible walk on the wild side,” he said in an interview from prison. “It gave me my first real thrill of doing something wild.” Schlichter and his buddy, though, were so sure they would get caught by police that they didn’t cash the ticket from the fixed race.
Schlichter’s love for gambling seemed more legitimate when, as a junior at Ohio State, one of his coaches started meeting him at a local horse track where they discussed not football, but a little “action.”
For a man who loved competition, nothing short of a long post route to a wide receiver could present him with the rush of gambling. He felt an incredible thrill when he watched his coach/betting partner “wheel a horse,” betting $72 and winning $3,000. “I figured if it was all right for him, it was all right for me,” he said. “And that was exciting seeing all that money.”
From then on, Schlichter didn’t just bet, he made outrageous, exotic bets that he believed would provide him outrageous payoffs. Those bets, though, always came with outrageous odds. Art Schlichter refused to accept the dictum: when something seems too good to be true, it often is.