A strip-joint regular's fatal descent
Suicide victim obsessed with dancers, friend says
By DAVID GAMBACORTA
For hours, he sat quietly at a bar, indifferent to the strobe lights that danced around him in a colorful blur, the music that throbbed through the walls, and the scantily clad women who gyrated on a stage just a few feet away.
He was at Cheerleaders Gentleman's Club, a hangout that cops and close friends said had become his refuge from a lonely life that showed no signs of getting better after 49 years.
The past year had been particularly tough on McGuigan, they said, and his mind no doubt reviewed the lengthy list of missteps as he unwound in Cheerleaders last Thursday night.
He had remortgaged his South Philly house three times because of massive credit-card debt. An on-again, off-again drinking problem spiraled out of control, resulting in two arrests for drunken driving.
He had to leave his longtime job for the Postal Service, for which he had worked for 23 years, to enter rehab, which he just finished last Monday.
And then there was perhaps McGuigan's biggest oversight of all: spending $34,000, friends and cops said, on strip-club dancers, whose playful charms he mistook for genuine affection.
Yet detectives say McGuigan hardly hesitated to pull out a wad of cash in Cheerleaders last Thursday when he spotted his favorite girl, Harmony Adams. For $325, McGuigan could disappear for an hour with Harmony in the Bubble Lounge.
Over the past six months, Harmony, 31, had become McGuigan's favorite dancer at Cheerleaders. He believed the two could forge a genuine relationship, bragging to friends that he had given her a key to his house and the password to his ATM card.
But reality ultimately interjected. About 9 p.m. Thursday, inside the quiet comfort of the plush champagne room, cops say, McGuigan reached a crossroads. He realized that his relationship with Harmony was, in effect, a farce. The dancer lay on the couch next him, passed out from what one cop dubbed a "substance problem."
McGuigan took out his .22-caliber derringer, which was still in its holster and shot Harmony in the back of the neck, said Detective Bob Conn of South Detectives. The bullet lodged in her back. After a pause, he turned the holstered gun on himself.
Harmony, who tells cops she doesn't remember being shot, is expected to make a full recovery. McGuigan, a veteran of the 82nd Airborne, died Friday, leaving behind an elderly mother.
Half a dozen of McGuigan's stunned co-workers called the Daily News to express their grief. All of them asked to not have their last names used.
"He was a kind person. He'd do anything for you," said Mike, who worked with McGuigan for the past 20 years at the post office. "He was also too trusting. He was looking for companionship and gave everything to those girls."
Mike said McGuigan grew up in Port Richmond with his family but eventually moved to Tree Street near 9th in South Philly. McGuigan had two older brothers who died of drug overdoses, and a failed marriage from the late '90s, Mike said.
McGuigan was so desperate for companionship that he dashed out to Oklahoma several months ago after meeting a woman on the Internet, but returned when he realized she had lied to him. He started hanging out at strip clubs, first Club Risque on Delaware Avenue and then Cheerleaders.
"He told me he knew he messed up, drinking too much and giving those girls all his money," said Carl, another co-worker. "But he kept on doing it."
"A lot of dancers prey on guys like Larry who are down on their luck and just want to tell their stories," Detective Conn said. "He was in love with her."
Conn noted that investigators don't think Harmony did anything illegal.
"She said she considered them friends," he said. "She wasn't doing anything wrong, other than what her occupation called for. The whole thing is a shame."
Detectives asked that anyone with more information on this incident call 215-686-3013.
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