Woman found guilty of pimping, running prostitution business near Colorado Springs
The woman accused of running a brothel out of a massage parlor in El Paso County was found guilty by a jury on multiple counts Monday.
Shirley King’s trial began Nov. 28 in an El Paso County courtroom. King was arrested in fall 2021 after an undercover operation into her massage business located in Security-Widefield. She pleaded not guilty to all of the charges she was facing.
Colorado Springs police had previously said their undercover work looking into the business lasted months. In that investigation, detectives reportedly found King brought multiple women to an adult entertainment party, where sexual acts were allegedly expected to be exchanged for money.
This case also led to a subsequent investigation into an El Paso County Sheriff’s Office detective. Arrest papers for King named a Detective Trey White as having received sexual acts from King while working undercover. Then-Colorado Springs Police Chief, Vince Niski, said Detective White’s tactics “crossed the line.” The district attorney cleared White of any criminal wrongdoing.
King was found guilty of pimping, keeping a place of prostitution, prostitution and pandering/arranging prostitution.
King was also known as Akira Summers. The prosecution in previous hearings had told the court it had offered a plea deal several times over the past year.
The most recent offer, made in July, would have required her to plead guilty to attempted pimping, a Class 4 felony. The prosecution noted that the plea deal came with a required three years of supervised probation.
King denied the plea deal offered by the prosecution, instead opting to go to trial.
Pimping is a Class 3 felony and carries a punishment of four to 12 years in prison and up to $750,000 in fines, per Colorado law.
King became a person of interest to the police in November 2020 when officers were notified that she was running an illegal business at Sutra Healing Center in unincorporated El Paso County. The information launched a nearly yearlong investigation into King’s business, where police found a ledger believed to detail illegal activities.
King told an undercover detective that several of the girls she employed performed sex acts with clients and that she kept a portion of the earnings, according to the arrest affidavit. When the detective suggested King was pimping the girls, she said she served as a “life coach,” according to the affidavit.
The undercover investigation into King ran into controversy when it was revealed she allegedly gave the detective a massage featuring a “body slide,” an act during which both participants are nude and engage in close physical contact. The detective paid King for the massage, officials said.
“As soon as this was brought to my attention, I immediately halted all investigations of this nature,” Niski said at the time. “This tactic does ‘cross the line’ when it comes to investigative strategies.”
Shirley King
Shirley King