SEATTLE — Frank Colacurcio Sr., a former owner of the now-defunct Honey’s strip club south of Everett, died Friday.
Colacurcio was 93 and had been in poor health. He was being prosecuted in a federal racketeering case which resulted in Honey’s and his other clubs being shut down.
The death came a week after his son, Frank Colacurcio Jr., 48, of Shoreline, pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge.
Under a plea agreement, the younger Colacurcio is facing about a year in federal prison. He and one of the strip club companies he ran also agreed to surrender to the federal government cash and property valued at roughly $3 million.
Federal prosecutors in 2009 charged the Colacurcios and others as part of a racketeering investigation into rampant prostitution and other crimes at Honeys and three other Seattle-area strip clubs.
Honey’s, long the focus of vice investigations by law officers in Snohomish County, was permanently shuttered in May as part of the federal case. The other strip clubs met the same fate.
Meanwhile, David Carl Ebert, 62, of Monroe; Leroy Richard Christiansen, 68, of Seattle; and Michael Fueston, 62, of Tacoma, in April pleaded guilty to racketeering or prostitution-related charges.
Only the elder Colacurcio’s case had yet to be resolved.
His death was confirmed by his attorney, Irwin Schwartz.
Colacurcio Sr. had a criminal record that dated to the Franklin Roosevelt administration and included federal tax-evasion convictions in the 1970s and ’80s. The son of a King County farmer, he operated nightclubs that featured nude dancers after making a name for himself in Seattle’s pinball industry in the ’50s. He was identified as a racketeer in hearings before a U.S. Senate organized crime committee in 1957.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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