Massage parlor defense counsel cites ‘retaliation’ over targeting of Tharpe

Attorney David Downes speaking on other issues at a recent Front Royal Town Council meeting.

In a weekend press release tied to defense motions filed on Friday, May 17, attorney David Downes alleges retaliatory police and prosecutorial actions against his client Cynthia Atkinson Bailey regarding the investigation into since-resigned Front Royal Mayor Hollis Tharpe. As reported in Royal Examiner’s related story on Bailey defense motions regarding charges of offering sexual services out of an unlicensed massage parlor, Tharpe announced his resignation as mayor effective May 2, on April 19, four days after a Warren County Grand Jury handed down a single count of solicitation of prostitution against him. See Related Story:

Defense motions filed in Biggs Drive massage parlor case

While Tharpe has maintained his innocence, he has admitted visiting the massage parlor operated by Bailey at 312 Biggs Drive. The 67-year-old Tharpe told this reporter he visited Biggs Drive for legitimate massages on his aging and aching body. However the criminal complaint attached to warrants against Cynthia Bailey and three other individuals filed May 15, 2019 allege massages of a sexual nature were a prominent part of the services “menu” being offered at the unlicensed massage parlor operating at the business address of Blue Valley Services.

Downes said he has never previously issued this type of public release regarding a client’s prosecution but felt it warranted from the circumstance surrounding Bailey’s initial 2018 prostitution charge, eventual non-prosecution of that charge and subsequent re-prosecution.

The indictment against Tharpe cites an incident believed to have occurred at the Biggs Drive massage parlor on May 31, 2018. Cynthia Atkinson Bailey was first arrested on a prostitution charge from an FRPD undercover operation. That operation occurred at 312 Biggs Drive on June 7, 2018, ending with Bailey’s arrest after a price of $150 was agreed upon for massage services including hand and oral sexual stimulation. That initial charge was “nol prossed” (non-prosecuted) by the Commonwealth on October 2, 2018.

Cynthia Atkinson Bailey’s RSW Regional Jail mugshot – Bailey is free on a secured bond.

In his press release on his client’s legal situation Downes points to an “unannounced” April 3, 2019, visit to Bailey by Front Royal Police Investigator David Fogle and Tharpe’s Winchester-based Special Prosecutor Heather Hovermale.

“Notwithstanding Ms. Bailey’s continued representation by another attorney on the subject matter she was questioned by the special prosecutor. Fogle and Hovermale were only interested in one suspect, the Mayor of Front Royal, Hollis L. Tharpe, and asked her questions only about him,” Downes writes.

Downes points to Tharpe’s grand jury indictment 12 days later, on April 15 adding, “On the same date, Special Prosecutor Hovermale was placed on written notice that Cynthia Bailey’s representation by counsel was continuing because she was still subject to prosecution for the underlying offense of prostitution. Hovermale was also advised that Bailey intended to exercise her Fifth Amendment privilege (not to self-incriminate) based on threats of multiple criminal charges.”

Those multiple criminal charges came a month later, May 15, when Cynthia Atkinson Bailey, Jesse Thomas Atkinson, Brandy Nicole Atkinson and Joshua Allan Stamper were charged on multiple counts related to the massage parlor operation’s alleged “bawdy house” or prostitution-related services. According to Downes, Jesse Atkinson, Brandy Atkinson and Joshua Stamper are his client’s son, daughter and son-in-law, respectively.

Blue Valley Services was originally licensed as a handyman/landscaping company by Jesse Atkinson at some point after Bailey’s late husband James P. Bailey III purchased 312 Biggs Drive in 2013. However according to the criminal complaint attached to warrants that license expired in 2017 leading to reports of an unlicensed massage parlor operating out of the Front Royal address.

In his concluding paragraph Bailey’s defense attorney asks “Anyone who has further information” against what he terms “retaliatory police prosecution or selective criminal charges” to contact either him or the Special Grand Jury commissioned on May 17, 2019, “to investigate the misconduct of the Warren County EDA.”

Tharpe is former EDA Executive Director Jennifer McDonald’s cousin. Under increased scrutiny by her board of directors as a result of a forensic audit of EDA finances begun in September 2018 McDonald resigned on December 20, 2018.

Former Front Royal Mayor Hollis Tharpe, right, chairing town council work session prior to his resignation – Vice-Mayor William Sealock, to Tharpe’s right, has been chairing meetings pending council’s appointment of an interim mayor to serve until a special election is called. – Royal Examiner File Photo/Roger Bianchini

Asked at the time about Warren County Commonwealth’s Attorney Brian Madden’s August 30, 2018 recusal petition to the court regarding a criminal investigation in which he was named, then-Mayor Tharpe expressed frustration at the lack of information available to him about the nature of the investigation or how he was tied to it.

“It’s just baffling – I’m absolutely clueless,” Tharpe told Royal Examiner at the time, observing, “I haven’t had any dealing with the EDA and Jennifer McDonald – I don’t have any loans with the EDA,” in listing a variety of things he said he did NOT do that might attract police attention, including committing murder, writing bad checks, shoplifting or involvement with drugs. See Related Story:

Front Royal mayor under investigation – expresses shock, seeks answers

Tharpe’s early September inclusion of McDonald and EDA business in that list came on the heels of Town Finance Director B. J. Wilson’s discovery of nine years of Town debt service overpayments to the EDA totaling over $291,000. Town officials met with McDonald and then-EDA Board Chairman Greg Drescher on August 23, 2018 about the discovery. Dresher resigned as chairman the following day; and the now three-quarters of a million dollar, eight-month-and-counting forensic audit of the EDA by Atlanta-based CPA Cherry Bekaert began the following month, in mid-September 2018.

Royal Examiner sought a response to Downes allegation of a “retaliatory prosecution” regarding his client’s intention not to testify in the Tharpe case from FRPD on Saturday, May 18, and from Special Prosecutor Hovermale on Monday, May 20. But as of publication of this story we had yet to receive those replies. This story will be updated and/or linked to those replies when available.