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Jury Convicts Madam who Tricked Out Underage Girls

LAWRENCE, MA www.eagletribune.com — Melissa Halstrom had turned down a plea deal before going to trial, insisting she would let a jury decide her fate, arguing that she had done nothing wrong — the girls had come to her.

But yesterday, the 34-year-old could not stop crying as a jury found her guilty of running an underage prostitution ring out of her Elm Street apartment in North Andover two summers ago.

Prosecutors say Halstrom recruited her ex-boyfriend’s 17-year-old daughter and the girl’s two young friends into her “Angelic Delights” escort service, supplied them with drugs and set them on $300-an-hour sex sessions with older men. Halstrom gave them fake names — Alicia, Stephanie and Sasha — and would pocket $100 from each of their appointments.

Two of the girls lived in North Andover at the time, and another was from Andover.

The jury deliberated for a little over two hours after five days of testimony.

Halstrom faces anywhere from five years to life on three counts of inducing a minor into prostitution and three counts of deriving support from a child prostitute.

Sentencing is May 22.

“Of course we’ll appeal,” Halstrom’s attorney John Morris said when leaving Superior Court.

“She’s done twenty months in jail, almost two years. … They offered her a plea and she declined. She didn’t feel she did anything wrong. … The girls came to her and said, ‘How do we get involved? What do we do?'”

Halstrom’s accomplice, Anthony Gorgoglione Jr., of Milbury, was also found guilty on two charges of inducing a minor into prostitution, and his $20,000 bail was revoked as he awaits sentencing.

He had been free while wearing a GPS tracking bracelet.

Prosecutors said Gorgoglione took photographs of the underage girls for the Web site, the now defunct angelicdelights.net, which advertised the sex-for-money business.

His attorney, Lynette Leos, said she will appeal, saying he was found guilty by association.

“There was just not enough evidence to convict him,” she said. “If Mr. Gorgoglione was not sitting next to Ms. Halstrom, the verdict here would be very different.”

Earlier in the day, Judge Kathe Tuttman had dismissed four of the six charges against him, saying there was not enough evidence to bring them to the jury.

Gorgoglione’s wife was allowed one kiss with her husband as he was led out by court officers.

Jurors leaving Superior Court yesterday called it a difficult case but said their decision became clear when Tuttman gave them their jury instructions.

That’s when she explained that the definition of a minor is under age 18.

The three call girls were between 16 and 17 years old.

Morris and Leos had argued throughout the trial that the girls were minors only in their date of birth. He said they were living independently and made their own choices.

“The statute is unclear on what a minor is. Other sex crimes treat minors as under 16,” he said.

“They testified that they knew exactly what they were doing. She didn’t induce them into anything. … Do they sound like 16-year-olds?”

But Prosecutor Kate MacDougall had argued Halstrom preyed on the three troubled teens: a runaway, a girl who was being evicted from her apartment, and another who had self-esteem issues.

Halstrom showed them her flat screen television, black Saab and nice furniture and told them how great the escort business was, MacDougall told jurors.

One of the girls had testified that she thought “Melissa was awesome.”

MacDougall yesterday for the first time showed jurors photographs of the three teens in Halstrom’s lingerie, commenting on how young they looked two years ago.

She held up notebooks that Halstrom used to jot down the girls’ appointments.

Defense attorneys had argued that the girls had known they were getting into prostitution. Morris said the girls knew it was sex and not sporting events and fancy dinners, like the girls testified.

So MacDougall read the Employment Opportunities section of the Angelic Delights Web site.

“Be treated with the respect you deserve,” MacDougall read. “Your safety is taken seriously. You will have opportunities to rub shoulders with the wealthy elite. … Is that how this job was shown to them too?”

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