Man Reveals Ex-Stepdad’S Dark Side Former Stepson Says He Walked In On S&M Party

A Spokane man accused in the sexual assault-kidnapping of two Japanese women was active in a sadomasochist sex ring, his ex-wife and former stepson say.

Edmund “Eddy” Ball is fluent in Japanese, studied in Japan and is fascinated with Asian culture, Tammy Ball and her son Josh Hames said in interviews Monday.

Eddy Ball would frequently have “S and M” sex parties at his house at 208 S. Ralph in east Spokane, with 50 or more guests, said Hames, his ex-stepson.

People from Seattle, Pasco, Spokane and North Idaho would attend parties at various homes after communicating on Internet chat rooms and on the phone, said Hames, 20.

Other contacts, he said, were made through adult bookstores, which have sadomasochist magazines and videos, including those produced by amateurs.

In court documents, police detectives call the Spokane group the “Bondage Discipline Sadist Masochist Club.”

Hames said Eddy Ball would “get ahold of them on the Internet, then they’ll just flock to his home for these parties.”

Hames said he walked in on such a party in 1996 or 1997, and had to sign a secrecy form. “It said there were no drugs or alcohol allowed, and we weren’t supposed to tell anyone about what went on there,” Hames said.

“I saw a lot of half-naked people dressed in leather, standing around and talking, and I could hear people having sex in the basement,” he said.

Hames said people in the group used nicknames like “Nasty,” “Skanky” and “Smelly,” and apparently don’t all know each other’s true names.

Restraint boards, handcuffs, whips and paddles were visible throughout the house, and sex orgies were held in three basement rooms, Hames said.

“I just ate their food and split. That was it for me,” Hames said. “I’m not into that bondage stuff.”

Hames described a large photograph on a living room wall in Ball’s home. He said it shows Ball looking like a Sumo wrestler in leather underwear. He is holding leashes attached to studded dog collars around the necks of two women.

“I guess he thinks of it as his `family portrait,”’ Hames said.

Three women lived in the house with Ball and wore chain collars with padlocks, according to Hames. Ball kept the keys. “He calls them his slaves and they call him, `master,”’ Hames said.

Ball also has made at least one amateur “S and M” video with his digital camera, which allows for editing on a home computer, Hames said.

“I asked them, `Why the hell do you do this?”’ Hames said. “They told me that getting whipped and being restrained causes your body to release these chemicals which makes them high for up to a week.”

But the whipping and paddling also leave welts that last just as long, he said.

Tammy Ball said she and Eddy Ball separated in 1997 after he returned from Osaka, Japan, where he enrolled in biomedical technology courses, similar to those he took at Spokane Community College.

He previously worked as a long-haul truck driver, Tammy Ball said, and he once told her he was a police officer in Texas, a marksman for the Queen of England and had ties to the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club.

“I don’t know what to believe. Only about half of it, I guess,” she said.

Upon his return from Japan, she said, Eddy Ball disappeared for a year with the couple’s daughter, who was 6 at the time.

“When we were still together, he never did anything like this,” Tammy Ball said. “He had one pierced ear, but now, I guess, he has pierced earrings and tattoos all over his body.”

She and Eddy Ball have joint custody of their daughter, who was with him at the time of his arrest and was taken into custody by state child welfare workers.

Tammy Ball said she had no involvement in the sex ring, and wants to regain custody of her daughter.

After his mother and stepfather filed for divorce, Josh Hames said he remained friendly with Eddy Ball, and would see him regularly.

“He was there for, like, eight years of my life, and so I stayed in touch with him after he and my mom split up,” Hames said.

He visited Eddy Ball last month and helped him fill the trunk of his Ford sedan with “sex toys for a party he was going to somewhere.”

Tammy Ball and her son said they were surprised Sunday to read a newspaper account of the arrests of Eddy Ball, 40, Lana C. Vickery, 43, and David M. Dailey, 38.

Vickery and Dailey lived at a house at 12910 E. Broadway, where two young women kidnapped Nov. 11 are believed by police to have been held and sexually assaulted over a seven-hour period.