DANNY OWENS:
Former strip club kingpin is living in a Nashville halfway house.
He was known as the notorious kingpin of Memphis’ strip clubs.
In the 1980s, Danny Owens owned a half-dozen clubs in the city.
In 1992, Owens was indicted on racketeering charges. In 1995, he was convicted and sentenced to 27 years in federal prison.
Owens, 65, was released on Dec. 21, 2015, from federal prison in Lompoc, California, after serving 21 years.
The former strip club mogul is now at a halfway house in Nashville. He is set to be released from the facility on June 19, ac- cording to the federal Bureau of Prisons website.
“The specific location is not considered public information and will not be disclosed,” said D. Williams, a spokesman with the public affairs office of the federal Bureau of Prisons in Washington when asked what facility Owens was moved to in Nashville.
This is a long fall for the topless nightclub owner who hated to be called a “kingpin” and insisted in a 1992 interview with The Commercial Appeal that he was only a “businessman.”
“Kingpin of what,” he said in the 1992 interview. “I don’t like it because it is not so.”
In 1992, when authorities raided his home, they seized hundreds of thousands of dol-
lars, drugs, guns and real estate and business records of his kingdom that authorities said was built with proceeds from strip clubs, gambling, drugs and prostitution.
Owens is a legend in the MidSouth area, where he was often the target of federal and local authorities for nearly two decades, but was rarely convicted of the crimes he was accused.
In 1984, Owens pleaded guilty to assault and battery charges in an attack on a group of motorcycle gang members at one of his clubs in 1981. He was con victed on federal checkkiting charges in Florida in 1972.
In 1978, David McNamee, one of Owens’ rivals in the strip club business, was found murdered in his girlfriend’s home in Southeast Memphis.
The murder of McNamee, a government witness, was never solved, though authorities said Owens was alleged to be the prime suspect.
In 1975, Owens was acquitted by a DeSoto County jury in the stabbing death of a Memphis man.
Fastforward to 1992, and Owens was charged with racketeering in the indictment where authorities said he was the head of topless nightclubs, including Danny’s, Gigi’s Angels, Studs Playhouse and Super Chics, and used his clubs and other businesses as fronts for prostitution, gambling and money laundering.
Owens, along with 26 others, including his son, Blake Owens, and his top lieutenants in his adult entertainment businesses were charged with a wide range of racketeering activities, including illegal gambling, prost it ut ion and drug distribution, and a conspiracy to hide millions of dollars from the illegal activities, which authorities said Danny Owens invested in several of his property holdings.