The Best Little Whorehouse In Jersey

By Romesh Ratnesar/Morris Township

The former owner of the Sunnymede Mansion at 2 Old Glen Road was a genteel British woman, an Old World type who raised horses on the grounds and decorated its interior with Victorian furniture. She often invited neighbors over for tea and cucumber sandwiches, impressing them with her upper-crust authenticity. "She was such a lovely lady," says Elizabeth Smith, who lives just down the street. But a few years ago, the house changed hands, and last week the neighborhood learned that the current owner had, according to police, converted the beloved estate into an equally well-regarded bordello. "Oh, the former owner would be terribly upset if she knew this was going on in that place," Smith said, strolling past the manicured, sloping lawns along Old Glen Road. "I'm sure she would have died of shock."

No one in the tranquil hamlet of Morris Township, N.J., knows quite how to react to the news. Cops had staked out Sunnymede for seven months; they moved in for the bust in early August, hauling off four suspected prostitutes and 15 agitated men, some of them corporate executives spouting excuses about having got lost ("I was at the wrong place at the wrong time," said one) and about having expected only a rubdown ("My shirt was on. My pants were on," said another). Last Monday the brothel's alleged madam, Judith Kelly Dempsey, 46, returned to her $1.6 million home from a Las Vegas vacation, found that the usual assortment of lounging businessmen and $225-an-hour courtesans were missing and turned herself in to face charges of promoting prostitution. Says Lorraine Weinlein, 71, a local who freely discusses her enterprising neighbor: "It's almost like a dream. You just don't expect this sort of thing." Who would? The sisters of the Monastery of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel live right around the corner.

Most neighbors insist they had little notion of the scurrilousness at Sunnymede, even though Dempsey advertised AN AFTERNOON DELIGHT in Morris County's Daily Record and the Yellow Pages. Morris Township was once known as millionaire's row, and its residents value their privacy. But something always seemed different about Dempsey and her husband Robert. One Christmas shortly after they moved into Sunnymede, the Dempseys invited most of the neighborhood to their house for a lavish soiree. Champagne flowed in rivers. "We're mostly straitlaced Methodists," Elizabeth Smith says. "She seemed like a party girl. Not my type." Soon after, the couple divided Sunnymede's 3.2 acres into individual plots and built houses for sale on them. It irked longtime residents. "It was like she was fattening up everybody before she did it," says a neighbor. "And no one was ever invited over again." Nor, neighbors recall, did the Dempseys open the door for trick-or-treaters.

Then things got weirder. The Dempseys separated, and rumors spread that Kelly was having financial problems. She wore dark sunglasses and started mowing her own lawn. For a single woman, she was also dumping a lot of trash, including a good number of beer cans. And then there were the men who would knock on neighbors' doors by mistake at odd hours, asking about massages. A young woman who rented the mansion's carriage house said last week that she suspected something rotten "from the second day I lived here," and that not all the chaps who mistakenly came to her door looking for afternoon delights were well scrubbed. "One guy got out of a pickup truck," she said. As the woman spoke, Dempsey, who was released on her own recognizance, happened to pull up in her Jaguar. "You've got something to say?" Dempsey yelled at the tenant. "You'll have plenty to say on the 15th!" As Dempsey drove off, the trembling woman said, "You heard her. I'm getting evicted."

Investigators have turned up a computerized list of the brothel's frequent customers, and the locals suspect many of their neighbors are on it. They say the township has lost its cloistered innocence. "This road is now notorious. People come to stop and gawk," sighed a homeowner as a car swung into her driveway, having done just that. "We're so used to hearing about these sordid things these days that nothing shocks us anymore," said Weinlein, the neighbor, "and it's sad." She cast her eyes around. "Pretty soon it's going to be old news. Things will go on as usual," she said, then broke into laughter. "But right now, well--it's like that O.J. Simpson deal!"