From the Palm Beach Post
Withdrawing from an embattled Castle
By Paul Lomartire, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 11, 2002
You wouldn’t expect a year in the life of a porn star to be boring.
And it hasn’t been for Wendy Iwanow, former Northwood Hills “castle” home
resident, who starred in the R-rated (for violence) November 2001 Palm Beach
Post story: The Porn Star vs. The Neighbors.
Iwanow — stripper, escort, veteran of more than 200 Triple-X films under
the name Bianca Trump — bought her dream house on Westview Avenue intending
to be anonymous in March 2000. Almost immediately, Iwanow, who is white,
began squabbling with her black next-door neighbors, Fred and Cynthia
Stubbs.
The bickering would start with a disputed property line and 4 inches of
retaining wall and grow to include charges of racial slurs, devil worship,
vandalism and violence. An October 2001 street brawl included the Stubbs and
their friend Shantelle Ulmer, and Iwanow and her friend Kim Turner.
The 18-month neighbor war swirling around Iwanow stands as the worst West
Palm Beach police have ever had to referee. From March 2000 until the end of
September, they were called 141 times.
But now it’s all over.
In late September, Iwanow sold her dream house to a chef and moved to St.
Lucie County. He paid $270,000 for the historic, two-story,
Mediterranean-revival home built in 1922 to look like a castle. Iwanow, who
moved into the home in March 2000 and spent two years renovating, had paid
$163,000.
The courts
Iwanow, who turned 30 on Nov. 7, claimed that during the street brawl she
was dragged from her car and hit in the face with a pipe. West Palm Beach
Police made no arrests because of conflicting eyewitness accounts.
Iwanow plans to sue them for the decision. In December 2001, Boca Raton
attorney Barry Silver filed with the state his intent to sue the city of
West Palm Beach because police “failed to take action to protect Ms. Iwanow
and refused to properly investigate and prosecute numerous criminal
violations, threats and assaults made against Ms. Iwanow.”
The mandatory six-month waiting period to sue a municipality ended, and
today nothing is on a court docket, but Silver says the lawsuit will
proceed.
After the street fight, Circuit Court Judge Nancy Perez granted Iwanow
restraining orders against Fred and Cynthia Stubbs and their friend
Shantelle Ulmer, who lived on 39th Street.
Fred and Cynthia Stubbs were upset about the Post’s story last November and
refuse to talk publicly today.
After the November 2001 story ran, Fred wrote a letter to the Post that
included: ” I never said or acted in any of the ways that my former and
current next-door neighbors alleged in the article…. In my opinion, the
article was a blatantly biased and irresponsible, piece of yellow journalism
designed to invoke dangerous negative emotions in the community.”
Ulmer was arrested in July for violating the restraining order. Last month,
the charge was dropped by an exasperated state attorney because Iwanow
didn’t show up in court.
Just after the street brawl and accompanying publicity, Ulmer lost her
government-assisted Section 8 housing on 39th Street. Ulmer is now living in
Boynton Beach. During the summer, she moved into a home owned by the
Stubbses.
“We love our house,” she says. “If it wasn’t for Mr. and Mrs. Stubbs, we’d
probably be homeless when I lost my housing.”
She describes the past year simply. “It was a nightmare.”
Ulmer, still unemployed, says she plans to return to school so she can
become a medical assistant.
Problems and
more problems
Iwanow moved to Northwood Hills from Broward County when she found her dream
house.
As she fixed up her castle, she set out to fix her neighborhood. She joined
Kim Turner, who owned a similar castle home next door.
Mayor Joel Daves consider the two women among the city’s best neighborhood
activists. Iwanow wrote the neighborhood association’s newsletter and built
and maintained its Web site. She and Turner helped elderly and poor
neighbors upgrade their homes and clean up their yards. But along with
planting trees and helping neighbors keep up their property, Iwanow’s
aggressive style dogging slum lords, politicians and lazy code enforcement
officers rankled many in the neighborhood.
“Things started happening in the neighborhood because Wendy put herself out
there,” says Turner. “She had a force of will that you could either comply
with or be run over by.”
In January 2001, Iwanow was quietly supporting herself with a $39.95-a-month
subscription porn Web site that featured live cameras throughout her home.
When someone complained to Palm Beach County commissioners about her
business, she was outed as a porn pro.
Income from her Web site dried up by late summer 2001 because she filed for
federal Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection. The IRS informed the court that
Iwanow owed $52,931.15 in unpaid taxes and interest.
On a hot morning in August, Turner, who teaches stained-glass art, was at
work when her husband, Todd, who works for an airline, called and said he
couldn’t get to their house. The West Palm Beach Police SWAT team had closed
Westview Avenue. They were camped in front of Iwanow’s house.
“This is Wendy’s world, and we just live in it,” said Todd, exasperated.
Another of Iwanow’s friends, who feared Iwanow was going to kill herself,
had called police. When police arrived, Iwanow was in her home and refused
to come out or answer phone calls.
“After an approximate nine-hour standoff,” reported Detective R.G. Halsey,
“Ms. Iwanow was taken into custody without incident and transported to
mental health.”
Police found a loaded 12-gauge shotgun under her bed. That was the same gun
that turned up in police reports in April after an armed burglary at
Iwanow’s house.
During a backyard cookout for a handful of friends, two black men wearing
ski masks came into Iwanow’s house through the open front door. One of the
men had a.9mm handgun that was used to collect $330 from the guests. Wanting
more money, the thieves sent Iwanow upstairs to retrieve cash from her
boyfriend’s wallet.
Once upstairs, instead of calling 911, Iwanow fetched her shotgun. When she
came down the stairs pumping a round, the two men ran.
No arrests have been made.
On Aug. 30, Iwanow’s Chapter 13 case was dismissed by United States
Bankruptcy Judge Steven H. Friedman for Iwanow’s “failure to make
pre-confirmation plan payments and/or for failure to appear at the…
meeting of creditors.”
Trouble travels
When Iwanow left West Palm Beach, she said goodbye to no one. Not even Kim
Turner.
“I kept waiting for a letter or an e-mail, but it never came,” says Turner.
“The person who was my friend was a very good friend. The person she is now
needs help, and I hope she gets it.”
At the September closing for her beloved castle home, Iwanow told the new
owner that she had found her dream home in St. Lucie County. But that house
west of Fort Pierce on a rutted, rural road was not built to look like a
castle. It’s a common, ranch-style home built in 1989 that Iwanow and her
boyfriend, now estranged, bought for $125,000.
A week after moving into the house, Iwanow called St. Lucie County deputies
to say her boyfriend had attacked her. Deputies, obviously unimpressed with
her claim, did not arrest the boyfriend or ask him to leave. The officers
left when all was peaceful and noted in their report that “both sound S/2,”
which means drunk.
On Oct. 22, Iwanow went to St. Lucie County circuit court and was issued a
temporary restraining order against the boyfriend, who lives in Lake Worth.
She asked that he be kept away from her, their house and her favorite stops:
the Okeechobee Wal-Mart and in Home Depot, Respectable Street Cafe and the
Hotel Biba in West Palm Beach.
The boyfriend says simply, “She needs help. None of this is true.”
The case was dismissed on Friday when Iwanow failed to show up in court.
And Iwanow isn’t talking either.
She writes in an e-mail that she hopes to sell her Triple-X Web site along
with the props and costumes accumulated from her nude dancing career.
She says in a phone message: “I just want to disappear and reinvent myself.”
I have known Bianca for several years and have even seen a rare soft side of her, B T as she is often referred to has a rough and tumble exterior and does not shy away from a fight. But I have seen her when her defenses were down and deep inside she really is just a little girl. I hope she finds whatever it is that she is looking for.
