Last week, a new docudrama premiered on Netflix.

It's called Crime Scene Time Square, and I was pleased to be a producer on it.

The show examines how the environment in New York's Times Square in the late 1970s and early 80s,

a nearly lawless area rife with drugs and sex work, made it possible for one man to commit

and nearly get away with unthinkable acts of violence.

Many of the characters interviewed for the show have already appeared as subjects

of Realtreport podcast interviews, people such as filmmaker Larry Ravine, adult film actress and

writer Veronica Vera, and sex show performer Joseph Stryker. And then there's Marty Hodas,

the self-proclaimed porno king of New York.

Perhaps more than anyone else, Marty was responsible for the change in Times Square that took place from the 1960s when the area descended into such a dangerous area of the city.

It was Marty who introduced sexual peep shows into the adult bookstores and sex shops,

and then ran an empire of slees, adult theatres and massage parlours.

I first came across Mardi when I read articles in the newspapers from the early 1970s.

The sex trade might have been illegal back then, but Mardi didn't hide from the public gaze.

In fact, he enjoyed the publicity

and regularly appeared on the cover of magazines and on interview shows.

A few years ago, I got hold of a number for Mardi and called him. I said I'd love to meet him

and hear about the old days. He invited me over to his apartment and served me a feast of pastrami, shrimp,

cheese and wine. And he talked. So this is Marty's story, and in some ways the story of

Times Square itself. The day that the astronauts landed on the moon, the headlines were how Haudas built his peep empire.

How Porto King built his peep empire. And they were down below me. Would you believe

that? That was the Daily News. Marty Haudas never directed an adult film, and he never appeared in one either.

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