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By Newsweek Editors
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The Spur Posse burst out of the orderly suburb of Lakewood, Calif., as America's dreaded nightmare--teenage boys run amok, a microcosm of a misogynistic and violent male culture. In March 1993 police arrested nine Spurs, ages 15 to 19, on suspicion of nearly 20 counts of sexual crimes. In the end, prosecutors concluded that the sex was consensual and all but one count were dropped. But for a time that spring, it was difficult to flip the channels without running into one Spur or another, strutting and bragging their way through the TV talk shows. "You gotta get your image out there," explained Billy Shehan, then 19, a Spur who was not among those arrested but who, despite honor grades and a promising future, felt compelled to hit the media circuit. "It's all about building that image on a worldwide basis." Tirelessly, the Spurs repeated the details of their sex-for-points intramural contest, in which each time you had sex with a girl you racked up a point. And for four years running, the winner was Billy Shehan--with a final score of 67.
The media-paid trip that Billy took to New York City with two fellow Spurs started out with many promises. "First they said to us, 'New York! For free!' " Billy recalled. " 'We'll give you $1,000, and you'll have limos every day, and elegant meals, and elegant this and elegant that'." On the ride from the airport to the hotel, Billy felt like a long-exiled prince come to claim his kingdom. "Here I was in this limo in this giant-ass city, and it was like I owned the taxis and the cars, I owned the buildings and all the girls in the windows in the buildings. I felt like I could do whatever I wanted. I had instant exposure."
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For the next week and a half, the shows vied for the Spurs' attention. "For 11 days, these guys were our best friends," Billy said of the TV producers. "They showered admiration on us." One night, Billy said, a senior staffer from "Night Talk With Jane Whitney" took them in a limo to a strip bar, a club in Queens called Goldfingers. "The Maury Povich Show" wooed the boys by sending them out for the evening with four young women from the program's staff. Afterward, the Spurs took a cab to Times Square. "Everything was a fantasy," Billy recalled, "like I was in Mauryland. Like the whole city was a talk show." Billy had his tape recorder out, and he was talking into it as he walked. Suddenly, two hands reached out from the darkness and yanked him between two buildings. "He was holding something against me that felt like a gun," Billy said. The man ripped the tape recorder out of his hands, extracted his wallet and fled. Billy lay in his hotel room all night listening to his heart pound. The next morning he phoned the staff of "The Maury Povich Show" and demanded that they reimburse him for the robbery. When they declined, he refused to go on the program. "I felt they owed me something."
Billy did, however, make an appearance on "Night Talk With Jane Whitney," where he would be much vilified for his boast about scoring his 67th point that week with a girl he lured back to his hotel room. And then he'd return home, poorer and without taped memories. "For a while when I got back," Billy said, "everybody recognized me because of the shows. But now..." His voice trailed off. "Uh, you know something sort of funny?" he said. "I didn't get that [final sex] point. The producer said, 'Act like you got a point on the show.' So I did." He gave a short, bitter laugh. "I even wrote a song about it later. 'Everyone thought I was a 67, when I was just a 66'."
S.F.
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