♪ this is "nightline." >> tonight, the chippendales murder. the popular club for women only. the famed all-male revue and the booming business known for its a-list guests. >> brooke shields celebrated her birthday at our club. >> but behind it all, the dark past of the founder. how his greed and jealousy led to murder. >> will hears a gunshot and a door slam, and he knows something terrible has happened. >> where did it all go so wrong? look good. feel good. play good. gillette proglide, five blades and a pivoting flexball to get virtually every hair on the first stroke.

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phenomenon synonymous with girls night out and bachelorettes. >> muscular men disrobing for an audience of women. kind of flipping the script in terms what was we usually think f as a strip club situation. ♪ you're gonna have a good time ♪ >> take it off! >> does your husba husband know you are? ♪ >> part of the whole point of chippendale's was nobody was ever naked, the naughty bits were always covered. >> it was a cathartic experience for women to be able to do this and have attractive men pay attention to them. it was a role reversal. >> reporter: like many big business ventures, this one started with humble beginnings. >> in many ways, chippendales is an american dream story. it's the story of the south it's immigrant who came to the united

states with hollywood dreams and who made them come true. >> a lot of people look at your business and say, it's a fad, it's a passing fancy. >> lust has never been a passing fancy. it's not a fad, it's pretty much like a necessity. >> reporter: after working as a janitor and borrowing money from a friend, steve opened a nightclub called destiny ii. >> destiny ii is not catching on. and steve and his business partners decide, okay, we are going to rebrand the club. they land on the name chippendales. which has nothing to do with chip n dale, the disney characters. thomas chippendale, the 18th century furniture designer. >> it has a nice, catchy name to it. a bit of a classy name. >> reporter: steve meets an entrepreneur who suggests he turn the club into a male strip tease for women. >> and banner gee thought, wow, i can do male strippers. if it's bringing women in, doesn't matter to me.

♪ >> this is chippendales, a nightclub exclusively for women. the only men allowed in the club are the waiters, bartenders, and the male dancers. >> steve told the local paper 600 women showed up. >> the manager saw the receipts when he tried it the first time and it blew out the door. >> reporter: soon steve starts thinking about expanding and meets an emmy-winning tv producer from new york named nick denoia. >> his claim to fame is he makes this kids tv series called "unicorn tales." >> once upon a time in the here and the now, there came to unicorn city a boy named andy. >> reporter: he has grand ideas of turning chippendales into a broadway-like show with choreography and storylines.

>> nick's show revolved around characters for each of the men. >> the barbarian. >> a newman for a new world. >> zorro. >> his symbol, a single red rose. >> the perfect man. >> the perfect man! >> reporter: the new york venue became an instant hit. >> what we've created here is an equal opportunity fantasy factory. >> compared to chippendales in l.a., it was huge. it looked like a basketball arena with seats on both sides. >> and on the east coast, the celebrity factor kicks in. >> andy warhol came in, john travolta, brooke shields celebrated her birthday at our club. >> reporter: the dancers were even making the rounds on daytime talk shows, becoming press darlings. >> from new york city, here are the chippendales! >> it was pretty much every talk

show. i mean, regis and kathie lee. >> hunks and more hunks. >> sally jesse rafael. donahue. there was so much national attention. >> you liked it? your grandchildren are watching. >> this stuff was made to order for those shows. >> chippendales became a household name. >> we were the beatles without the talent. >> many who might not have heard of chippendales would flip on their tv and see chippendales men dancin and stripping before a national audience. >> reporter: nick was often getting credit as the club's founder, not steve. >> there's this fateful moment in chippendales history which is known as the napkin deal. >> steve and i, we ride to dinner. nick came. >> nick and steve were really at each other's throats. they're trying to work out a deal for the future of the

business. >> and nick denoia said, look, if you're not going to need any more money, at least let me take the show on the road, i can make money that way. >> denoia proposes he'll have complete creative control over the touring and get 50% of the profits. >> nick basically wrote, he had the rights to take the show on the road in perpetuity. and he signed it. bannerjee didn't think the tour was worth anything. and he quickly signed it off. >> after everything was done, nick had left, steve asked, he said, what's perpetuity? and i said, it's forever and ever. >> you're on two shows a night every night. you may have a day off, maybe one day off. ♪ >> reporter: the tour soon became such a hit that steve started his own version. >> steve was sending his dancers out on the road. he was not supposed to do that, by the terms of the napkin deal. nick is enraged, and that only

ramps up the tension between them. >> i heard him talking on the phone and saying, you know, bannerj bannerjee, screw him, that money's mine. when you start hearing stuff like that about money, you know things are going south. >> finally nick goes to court, and he gets an order shutting down bannerjee's rival chippendales tour. >> reporter: nick continues running the chippendales tour but also starts his own exotic male dance trooup in times square, new york. >> he shares a small office with two talent agents he knows. one is will mott, the other is robin juarez. >> april 7th, 1987, steve bannerjee is in l.a. and nick is in new york city working in his office. >> this man comes up to the 15th floor where their office is and walks in. >> looks at will and says, are

you nick denoia? will says, no, i'm not, but he's right back there. >> reporter: after a few minutes -- >> will hears a gunshot. and knows something terrible has happened. will comes into nick's office and he sees him there slumped back in his chair. >> a man has been shot. >> what's the name of your place? >> this is chippendales universal. >> oh, wow. >> in the late 1980s, early 1990s, the murder rate in new york city was really high. >> and look, if you don't solve a murder within the first 48 to 72 hours, you're probably not going to solve it. >> when the detective interviewed me at the funeral, first thing i told him, maybe you should talk to steve bannerjee. >> got a call from an officer asking me questions. i go, steve bannerjee? he goes, no, he's already

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♪ ♪ ♪ hey google, turn up the heat. ♪ ♪ ♪ we're at chippendales! >> despite the murder of nick denow yeah the chippendales clubs in new york and l.a. are still going strong. >> bannerjee was able to buy back nick's share of the touring rights from nick's family, and the show just went on. >> but steve bannerjee was about

to go on the offensive in ways no one could have imagined. >> in 1991, i was getting stalked by an american guy who had come from los angeles, who kept wanting to have meetings with me. and they had a troupe of dancers called the chippendales which he wanted to bring to europe. >> steve bannerjee is introduced to a heavy-duty music agent, a guy named carl layton pope. >> i wasn't about to do some kind of pseudo sex show. >> ladies what do you want them to do? >> reporter: instead, chippendales becomes a theatrical production in europe, another enormous success for bannerjee. >> adonis, this rival troupe, is booked to play blackpool, which is this resort town in the uk. >> it's the atlantic city of

england, and the crowds are great. >> bannerjee was dying to talk to us more about what these guys do. and he was certainly becoming paranoid. and i thought, this is nonsense. >> reporter: as reid scott took the stage in blackpool, he had no idea the terrifying experience that was about to transpire. >> a detective shows up and has to sit down the dancers and their do you remember manager. >> he said, we have intercepted a call that there has been a contract put on your life. somebody wants to kill you. how? they said, cyanide injection. in england, i slept with a knife under my bed. i'm scared to death. and i said, it's got to be bannerjee. ♪ >> reporter: the fbi in las vegas gets a call from a man who goes by the name strawberry.

>> strawberry is an fbi informant who has a bizarre story to tell. >> he was hired by somebody to go to black pool with cyanide -- >> to take out three exotic male dancers who dance under the name of adonis in the uk. >> reporter: strawberry says he was hired by ray colon, a muscle guy for the mob who met steve in 1978 at chippendales. >> ray becomes steve's go-to guy whenever he needs to get something done. >> the agents in los angeles head up to colon's house in santa clarita. they conduct a search warrant of the premises. lo and behold, what do they find? >> 46 grams of cyanide. enough to kill 230 people. they arrest ray. and after sitting in jail for about seven months, he decides to fully cooperate with the fbi

and tell his story. >> colon not only provides all this information on the adonis hit, he also provides all this information on the related nick denoia murder. >> and he links them together in a way that no one had at that point, which is steve bannerjee. >> ray colon reveals he was the middle man in nick de noia's murder. he hired rivera lopez to pull the trigger. turns out rivera lopez is already in prison for an unrelated crime. >> now they've got to get steve bannerjee on tape. >> the fbi arranges for ray colon's release from prison to work as an undercover informant. >> bannerjee was not keen on talking on the phone, which becomes a problem for us. >> the plan is that ray is going to tell bannerjee that he is out of jail so he could get treatment for his kidney disease. >> ray convinces steve to meet. >> sent him into the meeting,

colon is immediately directed into the restroom. bannerjee puts his finger to his lips, tells colon not to say a word. >> colon starts trying to have a conversation with him, steve starts writing his answers on post-it notes, showing them to colon, then tearing them up and throwing them into the toilet. >> it's like we're playing chess against bannerjee. we make a move, he counters us. >> scott fair yola has this big idea. he is going to get ray colon to tell bannerjee he's a fugitive from justice, meet with bannerjee in europe, so why would he ever suspect that he was being recorded in that circumstance? >> bannerjee wanted to meet in zurich. we got colon a disguise. >> colon and bannerjee dispatch to a hotel room. >> the fbi have the rooms on either side of ray's supposed

hideout room. >> this is absolutely a do-or-die situation. if bannerjee doesn't give us what we need in this conversation, what's the plan? i mean, this has to work. >> steve says his life is horrible because he's constantly afraid he's going to get arrested. >> the conversation went on for three or four hours. bannerjee's desperate. the thing he really wants to know is if the fbi mentioned anything to colon about "the dead." that was the code word they used for the murder of de noia. >> at that point steve starts talking about the murder and how it's not linked to him. >> bannerjee asks colon, do they know i gave you the money to buy the guns? >> that is the moment when colon and certainly garriola know

they've got him. he has confessed to purchasing the guns and setting up the hit of nick de noia. >> the fbi now has enough to arrest steve bannerjee. >> steve bannerjee is behind bars tonight. >> walk up on him, put handcuffs on him. i remember he was kind of shaking quite a bit. the only thing he says to us, "this is b.s., and i can beat this case, i got good lawyers." >> faces life in prison and a $1.75 million fine. >> bannerjee ends up getting charged on eight counts. so in the summer of 1994, bannerjee and his lawyers finally make a plea which is accepted by the court. >> his plea deal requires that he be sentenced to 26 years in prison. what was also devastating for steve bannerjee is he would lose ownership of chippendales. >> we sat down there, we're

waiting. it was a very long time before somebody came in and said there will be no sentencing today. >> bannerjee was down hanging in his jail cell. he had committed suicide the morning of listen tensing. >> he cheated the justice system. he cheated all of us. >> by killing himself, all his assets go to his family instead of the government. >> gilbert lopez rivera, who was the person who actually killed nick de noia, was eventually convicted of homicide, he was sentenced 25 years to life. colon got a reduced sentence for his cooperation. >> and the chippendales, almost 40 years later and under new ownership, the dance troupe survived that period of darkness and tragedy. even thrived. of course, those white cuffs and collars still remain. >> the horribleness of steve bannerjee, all his crap, didn't take anything away from the

wonderful entertainment that we put together. >> you can see "20/20's" full show "chippendales murder" beginning tomorrow on hulu. we'll be bake with the "final thought." did you know some deodorants may not last all day? secret works immediately! and is designed to last for up to 48 hours. with secret, keep it fresh. available in over 10 amazing scents and aluminum free. secret you try to stay ahead of the mess but scrubbing still takes time.

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