Killing of a Porn Pioneer Still Baffles Police, Peers : Inquiry Affords Rare Peek at ‘Playpen of the Damned’

Amid the loose papers and frayed girlie posters of a bankrupt porn empire, Bob Genova telephoned a business acquaintance in Philadelphia with the latest news.

“You hear what they did to my partner?” asked Genova, whose video company had earned a reputation for B-movie porn.

“They killed him,” he boomed in a nasal voice that echoed into the hallway outside his office, where a visitor waited to see him. “It’s hard to figure. I’m all by myself now. They’re whittling me down.”

Three weeks after Teddy Snyder’s body was found punctured by nine bullets in a quiet San Fernando Valley neighborhood, the death of the balding pornographer with a taste for gold chains, leisure suits and luxury cars remains a mystery to police and to Snyder’s colleagues in Los Angeles’ billion-dollar adult film industry.

There is no shortage of theories about his death.

Vial of Cocaine

One is that drugs were involved; he was regarded in the industry as a heavy user, and a vial of cocaine was in his hand when he was found dead on a Northridge street.

A law-enforcement investigator familiar with the case said the killing had the appearance of an organized crime-style hit. Court records show that the Northridge company Snyder founded, Video Cassette Recordings Inc., owed money to a company allegedly controlled by a man linked by federal prosecutors to an East Coast crime family. And VCR’s offices have been searched as part of an ongoing investigation by a state and local law-enforcement task force probing organized crime links to the porn business.

However, many in the porn industry doubt that organized crime was involved in the killing. “It’s much ado about nothing,” Genova said.

Whatever the reason for Snyder’s death, Genova is shedding no tears for his partner, calling him a drug abuser and creep who did not care about their failing business.

But Snyder’s slaying is providing a rare glimpse into the pitfalls of the modern porn business. Experts say it is a tougher industry in which to succeed than when the mega-success of the movie “Deep Throat” caused a flood of porn businessmen, such as Snyder, to migrate west and set up shop in the Valley.

Bankruptcy Filing

Competition and falling prices for adult videotapes have thinned the ranks of what once was a legion of porn film makers and distributors. One of those tottering on the brink is VCR, which churned out dozens of successful porn tapes in the early 1980s but was forced last year to file for reorganization under bankruptcy laws. Snyder, 47, was suspended in June by a bankruptcy trustee, and friends said he was depressed about his future.

Snyder was at his hillside house in Woodland Hills the night of Aug. 1, according to information compiled from interviews with police and others. After arguing with someone over the phone, he left without telling his wife.

Police said Snyder was found shot to death at 11:15 p.m. near his parked car at Blackhawk Street and Wilbur Avenue. He had been shot four times in the front of his body and five times from the rear. Three wounds bore gunpowder marks. Nearby witnesses reported hearing a loud argument before the shots.

Law enforcement officers familiar with the case said details of the killing show that Snyder may have known his assailant and tried to run away as he was being shot.

Sharon Snyder, now four months pregnant, said her husband had been trying to get out of the porn business because customers were not buying his products anymore. “Maybe people aren’t as perverted as we thought,” she said.

Snyder entered the “playpen of the damned,” as some porn producers jokingly refer to their industry, in the late 1960s in New York. That was when it was called the “girlie” business, said Bobby Hollander, a longtime associate of Snyder’s and a director of X-rated movies.

Snyder made his name filming peep machine “loops” (inexpensive short films shown in adult bookstores that were just a generation removed from the grainy stag films of the ‘50s and ‘60s; they’ve all but been replaced by videotapes). Hollander said some of Snyder’s earliest films featured Linda Lovelace, the legendary porn star.

“He’d do the lighting and the camera work, the whole setup,” Hollander said. “He worked very hard and was very professional.”

Industry experts regard Snyder as a pioneer not because he was an innovator but because he was there at the beginning. In the late 1960s, the girlie business was so informal that loop makers often sold their products out of their station wagons, according to an industry expert. Negatives were often dumped for fear of the police.

“The whole thing busted wide open,” the expert said, with “Deep Throat,” the landmark 1972 Lovelace movie that changed the industry overnight. That movie cost $22,000 to make and had made more than $100 million by 1982. What followed was a migration of porn movie makers from New York to California.

“All the talent was in California,” said Hollander, who came out with Snyder and Genova in 1980. “All the shooters were going to California.”

Drove Rolls-Royce

Forming a succession of companies--Mark IV Productions, Mark V Productions and VCR Inc.--Snyder continued to make money, associates said. He drove a Rolls-Royce and took friends flying in his seven-seat airplane.

“He said it was a good business, and they were doing well,” said one of his frequent passengers, who ran a business near VCR’s warehouse and got used to seeing porn actresses hanging around.

During the video boom of the early ‘80s, Los Angeles police said, Snyder was a major producer and distributor of pornography--one of 34 in the city. But within the industry, Snyder acquired a reputation as a schlockmeister.

Snyder’s companies produced “low-class compilation tapes,” said William Margold, an X-rated actor, producer and unofficial industry spokesman. There were “Screaming Desire,” “Naked Night” and a series of “How To” tapes that moved home-video instruction courses out of the kitchen and into the bedroom.

Revenues Declined

Later, when porn revenues were declining, Snyder and his associates made ill-fated ventures into the distribution of educational tapes for children--a bankruptcy attorney said some of their porn tapes were mistakenly distributed in children’s tape boxes--and R-rated action thrillers such as “Bodysnatchers From Hell.”

In the X-rated industry, Snyder’s New York accent, the gold ring with “Ted” spelled out in diamonds, his cigars and cowboy hats became trademarks. He liked going to the race track. He called most of the people he met “kid.” When filming a porn video, he often removed his diamond ring and gave it to one of the actors to wear as a glitzy prop. “There was an air of Mafioso” around Snyder, said an industry magazine writer, who asked not to be identified.

At the time of his death, VCR’s records were examined as part of an investigation by a task force of officers from the Los Angeles Police Department, the county Sheriff’s Department, the county district attorney’s office and the state Department of Justice. Task force members said they were focusing on Martin Taccetta, named in court documents and by federal prosecutors as an organized crime figure.

Los Angeles Superior Court records describe Taccetta as “an individual publicly identified as having organized crime connections.”

Court Records

The court records show that members of the task force, formed in 1986 to quietly investigate organized crime involvement in pornography, believe that VCR was one of several video companies that received $850,000 worth of videotape that was distributed by Taccetta’s company, Ollinor Video.

Pamela D. Ferrero, a deputy district attorney, said Ollinor, which is no longer in business, is suspected of receiving the unused tape from a Korean manufacturer without paying for it, then supplying it to friends of Taccetta’s who operate porn-video companies.

“The buddies were then supposed to pay him,” she said of Taccetta. But Genova and Snyder’s companies, which received more than $100,000 worth of tape from Ollinor, went bankrupt without paying their debt, she said.

No charges have been filed in the alleged scam, and the investigation is continuing, Ferrero said.

Authorities track Taccetta’s organized crime ties to New Jersey, where his older brother, Michael Taccetta, is a high-ranking member of the Lucchese crime family, said Assistant U. S. Atty. Grady O’Malley in Newark. “Martin was basically his right-hand man who engaged in certain activities outside of New Jersey,” O’Malley said.

Defendants Acquitted

Both Taccettas were among 20 defendants acquitted of racketeering charges last year in Newark in what was the longest federal organized crime trial in U. S. history. Nonetheless, authorities remain convinced that the Taccettas are involved in organized crime and, according to court documents, believe that Martin Taccetta “has been trying to establish himself in the adult video business in Los Angeles” since 1983.

The pornography business, much of which is based in the Valley, takes in about $1 billion annually in Los Angeles alone, task force members said. That amount of money makes the business attractive to mobsters, they said.

According to court documents, other ties between Taccetta and VCR included a check for $2,000--dated Dec. 29, 1987--that was written on a VCR account to Marty Taccetta and stamped with Robert Genova’s signature.

The affidavits also said Joseph Abinanti, a former VCR sales executive, handled the payroll for one of Taccetta’s companies in Los Angeles. Court records say that while Taccetta was under surveillance, task force members saw him meet on social occasions with Abinanti, whose “godfather,” according to law enforcement sources, is a top-ranking Lucchese crime family member.

Efforts to locate Taccetta and Abinanti for comment were unsuccessful. But Genova scoffed at the idea of mob influence in his business.

“That’s unbelievable,” he said. He said he only met Taccetta two or three times and “didn’t know who the guy was.”

Partner’s Death

Genova declined to discuss his partner’s death at length or the telephone conversation overheard by a reporter at his office. He said that, like the police, he did not know who killed Teddy Snyder.

Others in the porn industry also do not believe that Snyder was associated with organized crime or that his death involved organized crime.

“It’s a little too far-fetched for me,” said Hollander, his longtime friend and business associate.

Jim Holliday, one of the industry’s best-known writers and critics, said mob involvement in pornography is largely exaggerated. “They aren’t even that involved,” he said.

Those who knew Snyder speculated that his expensive drug habit caused his downfall. “Nowadays, there are so many drug deals that go awry,” Genova said.

Regardless, they said, the death of Teddy Snyder leaves the industry without one of its most prolific and colorful players.

“He was a true pioneer,” Hollander lamented. Still, “he was no Mr. Rogers.”