Chattanooga, Tennessee: known for its southern charm, Civil War battlefields and β¦ an infamous swingers palace? Indeed, perched in the hills overlooking the city, Tennessee once had its own Playboy mansion of sorts. Once upon a time, in the anything-goes s, local nightclub operator Billy Hull owned several strip clubs in Chattanooga, but his extravagant Tiki Palace on a hill was the one he built to host his most lavish parties and live out his own Playboy-inspired dreams.
Billy had a wife, Gloria, who he married in while they were both still juniors in high school. One of them was the man history now knows as 24 year-old Ronald Hargis. It is said in the court documents that Hull also tried to have a man by the name of Jerry Mitchell killed for the same reason.
Originally, Hull was sentenced to 20 years in prison for Murder for Hire. Hull meanwhile, being the well-known business man about town that he was, used his connections to take his charges up the lines of the justice system and to the offices of the state Supreme Court. As for one of the most unique estates in all of Chattanooga, the Tiki Palace existed in a sorry state for many years before it was demolished, along with its famous Playboy bunny-themed swimming pool in After Hull went bankrupt and the property was seized by the city for unpaid taxes, it was occupied a few times by different owners but was ultimately abandoned and relentlessly vandalised.
The history of swinging as we know it in the context of American culture appears to begin with airforce pilots during World War II. According to investigative journalist Terry Gould in his book, The Lifestyle: A Look at the Erotic Rites of Swingers , with air force pilots not having the best mortality rates in wartime, they initiated a sort of unwritten code to collectively care for each others wives who lost their husbands in battle, both emotionally and sexually.
The reason there is because the warriors that get killed left their widows behind. Every town he visited, the list grew a little longer. Then he passed copies of the list around to everyone who was on it. The Leidy list was basically the first swinger magazine because it was a way for people to get in touch with each other.
