An S&M webmaster accused of keeping sex slaves and torturing them on his pay-per-view website is free on $1 million bail following a May 16 court hearing.
The New York Daily News said Glenn Marcus of Kew Gardens of Queens was released to his elderly parents in North Woodmere, Long Island, under virtual house arrest. But the paper added that it's their basement where some of his alleged activities occurred, including alleged mutilations, forcing his victims into dog cages, and demanding they call him God, according to what the paper called a source close to the case.
Marcus faces life behind bars if found guilty of the torture he's accused of committing on a woman who reputedly tried to escape, and he's suspected of keeping up to 10 women at a time as sex slaves with more charged pending, the News reported. He's described as divorced with an adult daughter and claiming to have earned only between $2,400–4,000 in the past year from the website.
He claims the acts in question were consensual and pleaded not guilty, while his attorney Mildred Whalen was quoted as telling the court his parents knew about their son's lifestyle. But the News reported that Marcus's roommate, Rona Cohen, bolted from court after a prosecutor told federal judge Joan Azrack she saw some of the alleged abuse and might have been brainwashed by Marcus.
Federal judge Joan Azrack decided house arrest was enough to protect the community, the paper said, even though she was quoted as calling the charges in the case "shocking, vile, and disgusting."
For their part, Marcus's parents are standing by their son, putting up their home to free their son and verbally assailing reporters outside the court in Brooklyn. "Are you from the Wall Street Journal?" Gerald Marcus was quoted as asking a photographer. "I want to be in the Wall Street Journal. That's my comment. Now get lost!" The News said the 76-year-old hedge fund manager later struck a News photographer with a cardboard box.
Marcus, who is divorced and has an adult daughter, claims he earned $2,500 to $4,000 over the past year from the website and a mail-order comic book business. His only assets are a 1994 Jeep Cherokee and $250.
