Questions Emerge in Assault Story

The folks throw­ing cold water on Los Alamos whistle­blower Tommy Hook’s assault story are going to love this.
“A dancer at the top­less bar Cheeks said Tuesday after­noon that Tommy Hook had received a lap dance inside the club ear­lier the night of the beat­ing,” today’s Albuquerque Journal says.

Hook… told his wife from his Santa Fe hos­pi­tal bed early Sunday morn­ing that he was lured to Cheeks by a mys­te­ri­ous late-​​night call from some­one who said they had infor­ma­tion about fraud at the Los Alamos lab…
When the alleged caller didn’t show after more than an hour, Hook made his way to his car parked near the exit at about the time the club closed at 2 a.m., Hook told his wife.
Susan Hook and [attor­ney Bob] Rothstein said four to six men pulled Hook from his car before he could drive away, told him to keep his mouth shut and beat him to near uncon­scious­ness.
But accord­ing to a Cheeks dancer, Hook did more than just wait by the bar. “He did get a lap-​​dance from the wait­ress,” Jeanette McCalip, a dancer who was work­ing at Cheeks on Saturday night, said of the whistle-​​blower.
McCalip said she saw Hook when she got off work Sunday lying beat up on the ground out­side the club’s door, sur­rounded by cus­tomers who were leav­ing. McCalip said she rec­og­nized Hook as the same man who got a lap-​​dance from a wait­ress inside the bar, because it is her stan­dard prac­tice to keep an eye on all the customers.

Could be. But it seems like it’d be awfully tough to pair up the busted mug above with any face in a dark­ened club. Hooks must’ve looked a whole lot dif­fer­ent before his beat­ing than he did after, right? Anyway, we’ll see what facts emerge.
Click here for more.

Rothstein said a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor got an entirely dif­fer­ent story when he inter­viewed sev­eral Cheeks employ­ees.
“We’ve had a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor who inter­viewed the man­ager, the bar­tender and two secu­rity guards,” he said. “All four of them con­firmed that Tommy sat at the bar, he was drink­ing light beer, didn’t have any inter­ac­tions with the girls who were danc­ing there…“
Montoya, the club owner, said Tuesday that law enforce­ment offi­cers instructed him to not speak about the inci­dent, but he did say Hook prob­a­bly wouldn’t have lived if it weren’t for a Cheeks secu­rity guard who helped dis­rupt the fight.
“My secu­rity employee did save the guy’s life,” he said. 

THERE’S MORE: As Nick notes, the Santa Fe New Mexican has an awfully dif­fer­ent account of the awful night.

June 8th, 2005 | Los Alamos and Labs | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.