By HILLARY DAVIS
Sun Staff Reporter
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Howard Leventhal said he had sex with a 20-year-old woman.
Police replied that she was 15.
Now the Ash Fork-area man stands accused of four counts of sexual conduct with a minor after allegedly participating in a sexual exploitation ring operated out of a Kaibab Estates West home. He is accused of having sex with the underage bride of a 51-year-old man, who police say offered her to multiple partners while photographing and videotaping the encounters.
Leventhal said the girl was a woman – and a married woman.
“She was 20 years old. That’s what she told me,” Leventhal said in an interview. “She looked it. I didn’t ask for ID.”
Last September, Leventhal and his 4-year-old daughter were riding his horse to a watering hole in the woods near his home when he saw a sign on a tree about a woman nearby, who was sunbathing nude. That is how he met Donald Leacock and his high-school aged wife – and she is his lawful wife, after marrying him in Missouri that summer.
After striking up a friendship, Leacock said he and his wife “swing,” and that he wanted Leventhal to have sex with the girl because he was physically incapable of doing it himself. He did say they seemed happy together, though.
Leventhal described himself as a sexually open-minded man, and so went along with it. He said he visited the Leacock home three or four times and that the older man was present for every liaison. Leventhal said he did not pay or offer anything to trade to have sex with the girl.
After those encounters, Leventhal said he was nagged by the permeating smell of cigarette smoke in the Leacock house, and guilt over cheating on his wife. So be broke it off.
On April 22, police contacted and arrested Leventhal, booking him into jail. He bonded out.
The civically active businessman – he runs a towels and linens business – said the incident ruined his life “beyond comprehension.”
“The only crime I committed was cheating on my wife. And now I got a nightmare. Now I’m gonna lose every bit of credibility in all the years I’ve built up here,” he said. “Anybody’s gonna look at me strange from now on. My daughter’s gonna suffer. My wife’s gonna suffer.”
Leventhal will be arraigned Monday in Coconino County Superior Court.
Hillary Davis can be reached at 556-2261 or hdavis@azdailysun.com.