Former Pharaoh's dancer: 'Once you walk in, you will never be the same'

She spent her school years feeling like an outcast.

Other girls were mean to her, and she never fit into any high school cliques.

The woman identified in court as K.L. said it was a refreshing change when some exotic dancers welcomed and accepted her on her first day on the clock at Pharaoh's Gentlemen's Club in 2005.

K.L. was among 40 witnesses, including more than a dozen former exotic dancers, who testified in the two-month federal criminal trial against club owner Peter Gerace Jr., who was found guilty last week of conspiracies to commit drug and sex trafficking, maintaining a drug-involved business at Pharaoh's, and bribing a former DEA agent who was a childhood friend. The jury deliberated fewer than four full days before it rendered the verdict.

K.L. testified Gerace introduced her to an exotic dancer to show her around the club.

Shortly afterwards, K.L. faced a decision when the exotic dancer offered her a taste of cocaine: Does she try it for the first time, or decline and risk being ostracized by a group that didn't treat her like an outcast?

The rest is history.

"She put it up to my nose and you sniff it," K.L. testified. "I started using, and I started using it every day."

She was 20 years old.

K.L., now 39, testified Dec. 9 with embarrassing and traumatizing details of her experiences at the club. Her full name is being withheld because she is a victim of a sex crime.

"I felt like I was part of the 'in crowd,'" she said. "I lost my family, my friends. I was heartbroken at first until Peter made me feel like I was special, like he truly cared about me."

Defense attorneys told the jury in opening statements that the former exotic dancers made their own decisions and choices at Pharaoh's without being coerced by Gerace or anyone else. They also focused on potential credibility problems and inconsistent testimony of some government witnesses.

K.L. said she didn't have a chance during her testimony to push back on those narratives, but she is now.

"The day I walked through those doors, my life was forever changed," K.L. told News 4 Investigates in an exclusive interview. "Yes, it was my decision to walk through those doors, however, once you walk in, you will never be the same."

Her first run at Pharaoh's didn't last long. She testified her then-boyfriend and father showed up on her second night after they found out she worked at the strip club. She was on the stage dancing to "California Love" by Tupac.

"It was absolutely embarrassing," she said.

K.L. returned to Pharaoh's three years later, which is when her cocaine habit transformed into a cocaine and opiate addiction.

She testified she complained to Gerace of a headache. He gave her Lortab, a type of pain pill.

"He said, 'Here, take this,'" K.L. testified.

"Did you continue using them?" Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Cooper said.

"Yes," K.L. said.

"Who kept providing them to you?" Cooper said.

"Peter," K.L. said.

She said Gerace did not let her dance in the club while they dated.

Prosecutors said Gerace gained more control over some dancers by cutting off their source of income, so they would be more dependent on him for drugs and money.

"I was not chained up and he didn’t force drugs into my body, but he might as well have," K.L. told News 4. "Peter changed me. Peter ruined me. I was like a puppet, and he controlled everything I did."

K.L. said her parents warned her not to do drugs, and she listened, "until I met Peter."

She couldn't recall a single exotic dancer who didn't use drugs in and out of the club. Some worse than others. Cocaine was everywhere, she and others testified. Heroin wasn't too hard to find, either.

She testified Gerace invited her to a room upstairs during one of her shifts. Prosecutors described the room as Gerace's private sex and drug “lair.”

K.L. said she had been up there before with Gerace, his friends, and other exotic dancers. They drank and partied with cocaine.

In this instance, it was the first time she went upstairs with him alone. K.L. testified Gerace shared cocaine with her before turning on the television.

K.L. froze on the stand when Cooper asked her what happened next in the room with Gerace.

She stared blankly for close to a minute with pin-drop silence.

"I do recall, and it was part of me trying to not get upset and cry, and at the same time, I was struggling to speak because I felt awful that [Gerace's] mom had to hear all of that," K.L. told News 4.

She testified Gerace "put porn on the TV, and he pulled his pants down and walked towards me."

K.L. turned to jurors and told them: "This is really uncomfortable. We had sex."

"I felt like I had to," she told jurors. "I felt like it was expected."

K.L. also testified that she knew other exotic dancers had sex in that upstairs room with Gerace, his friends and patrons. She confirmed testimony from another former dancer, who said Gerace gave her $200 to have sex in the club with his friend.

Her will had been broken.

Not only had K.L. become addicted to drugs, but she now engaged in sex acts because, as other dancers testified, she was at a point when she would have done almost anything to avoid withdrawal. Her drug abuse got so out of hand that she had burned a hole in her nose from constant cocaine use.

The one or two pain pills she said Gerace gave her evolved into a baggy full of pills to appease her increasing tolerance and keep her from getting sick. Her addiction worsened when she added fentanyl patches.

She testified that Gerace exploited her more by dangling pain pills while she was sick, in exchange for sex acts with him, his friends and patrons. She said she felt ashamed, but drugs controlled how she made decisions.

In 2009, police arrested K.L. and another Pharaoh's exotic dancer. That was the first time federal agents questioned her about Gerace and his club. She met with agents and prosecutors on several occasions ahead of her grand jury testimony in 2020.

There were times when K.L. changed her testimony depending on the questions defense attorneys asked her on the stand. She told News 4 that she was allowed to answer certain questions in one of three ways: yes, no, or I don't recall. She said she couldn't provide any context to her answers and struggled to recall grand jury testimony she gave four years before Gerace's trial.

K.L. said she felt relieved, but not happy, when she learned the jury convicted Gerace of the most serious crimes.

She told News 4 she doesn't hold ill will toward Gerace and fought against testifying at his trial. In fact, she didn't show up the day she was scheduled to take the stand (she said she was sick).

K.L. had been concerned about her safety if she testified. Witnesses testified Gerace often bragged about his long list of contacts with law enforcement, powerful people in the community and the Outlaws Motorcycle Club.

The government agreed and covered some of her rent and hotel rooms. She stressed that none of the government's help had influenced her testimony.

K.L.'s drug addiction to cocaine and opiates continued until 2017, when she walked out of Pharaoh's for the last time. She has remained clean and spends most of her free time as a personal trainer and spending time with her young children.

K.L. said she normally does not give in to peer pressure, but Gerace and others at the club made it seem like this is what the "cool people" did.

"It was you did it or you were weird for not doing it," K.L. told News 4. "After a while, he kept feeding me drugs and used my vulnerability to reel me in deeper and deeper."

K.L. said she wants to provide a victim impact statement at Gerace's sentencing scheduled for Aug. 15, 2025. She wants to look him in the eye, "and let him and the world know how it made me feel, everything that he did to me, my family, my life. I hope if that day ever comes, that he has to sit there embarrassed and ashamed."

"I have made some bad choices in my life, but I truly believe if I never walked through those doors, my life would be different," she told News 4. "I never would have done drugs. This person literally left me for dead, along with how many others?"