Marylin and Fiancée \nLAS VEGAS - After getting through what she called the worst holiday season of her life, former adult film star Kathryn Gannon - better known as Marylin Star - remains in seclusion in western Canada. And until her attorneys resolve the situation, she will not speak publicly about the insider trading scandal, which made her the subject of international curiosity and Federal interest late last year.
Adult Press Service president Marc Medoff, appearing at the Consumer Electronics Show here, says Gannon does not especially enjoy living in hiding, but she wants to disclose the entire story of the stock flap when the time and conditions are right - and she still maintains her innocence.
"There is a difference between being a dupe and being a dope," Medoff says of his longtime friend. "She feels she did nothing wrong. She was trusting other people in the situation who were older, powerful, more mature individuals who knew their way around Wall Street…and she took other people's advice and feels like she was a lamb led to the slaughter."
Medoff calls it a case of love making one do "some pretty stupid things".
Gannon was indicted in mid-December along with two former love interests, former investment banker James McDermott and industrialist Anthony Pomponio. McDermott is accused of passing advance merger tips to Gannon, who's accused of then passing the same information along to Pomponio, with both Gannon and Pomponio alleged to have made $80,000 each on stock transactions based on that information.
Gannon insists she was the unwitting dupe of the two powerful men, who are free on bond and fighting the charges. Gannon fled to her native Canada when the indictments were handed down and a warrant issued for her arrest.
Medoff says Gannon "very much" wants to resolve the situation. "There's no question," he says. "She has expressed to me repeatedly and strenuously that she wants to resolve this matter. She's in a very unnatural position, she is a very public and friendly and outgoing person, it's not in her nature to be hiding and not speaking out in her own behalf."
But when will she speak? Medoff isn't saying yet. "It may be sooner than you think," he says, "it may take a little longer. All I would say is, everyone's going to have to wait, and when it breaks, she breaks."
Gannon is in seclusion with her fiancée, Michael Gillies, in his Vancouver apartment. Medoff says the press interest in the 30-year-old adult actress and one-time exotic dancer has reached fever pitch. "Back in New York, I've got a stack of faxes, and e-mails, and letters, and phone calls, everyone from Barbara Walters and Stone Phillips…every newspaper in the world, news program, everyone's involved. She's been offered large sums of money to talk."
But Medoff won't say how much money has been offered, adding she won't just talk for the money. "She's in a very strict legal situation, that's the paramount issue," he says. "As soon as that's resolved, she will come forward."
Ironically, the U.S. State Department is not pressing to extradite Gannon. Medoff says a major complication, though, is Gannon's dual citizenship - a Canadian by birth, she has American citizenship thanks to her first marriage having been to an American.
"The crime that she allegedly committed in this country isn't even really a crime in her country," he says. "It's a civil offense." He says any extradition effort would probably take several years because of that and other distinctions between U.S. and Canadian banking crime law.
But he says it isn't likely that Gannon would be forced back to the United States against her will. "Having the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrest her is probably not going to happen, they don't want to arrest her," he says. "You can't extradite a murderer from Canada in less than a couple of years, they're not even in that ballpark."
Still, he maintains Gannon does want the situation resolved. "Kathryn and her attorneys are going to have to work out a resolution," he says. "I'm confident it will happen. It could happen tomorrow; it could happen in six months. But it will happen, Kathryn will come forward…and she will take the offensive about this situation and about her life."
Medoff also says Gannon plans to stick to the goal she set last summer - shortly after her relationship with McDermott ended and she elected to leave the adult film world, turning down a chance to do a gangbang feature for Metro Global Media of the type which European star Sabrina Johnson just performed for Fleshtone Productions.
"Kathryn left the porn business," he says. "She decided to retire. She has a new love interest, she was pursuing that love interest and a more traditional, normal life, of marriage, normal job, and family. Absolutely."
But that plan got throttled when the insider trading scandal broke. "The next time I heard from her," Medoff says, "was at three in the morning (in mid-December) when I got a phone call from her, crying hysterically, telling me what happened."
