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Born in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1932, Thevis was raised by strict immigrant grandparents in the Greek Orthodox Church. When other boys played games, Mike worked for he was taught that toil, education and success were a natural order of life. Leaving high school in Raleigh at age seventeen, he moved to Atlanta where he finished school and entered Georgia Tech in textile engineering. Poverty forced him to leave college and he began work in a downtown Atlanta newsstand. By the 1960s, Michael owned several newsstands. Married with three kids, and financially strapped, he was forced to move out of his apartment when he could not afford the rent increase to $57:50 a month. Thevis found the solution to his money problems through porn. He learned that 90% of his profits came from magazines like Playboy, which accounted for only 10% of his sales. So he expanded his porn offerings to magazines and films featuring bondage, sadism and masochism, bestiality and child porn. Career criminal Roger Dean Underhill met Thevis in the fall of 1967 and together they developed a profitable peep show machine that was manufactured and distributed by two Thevis-controlled corporations, Automatic Enterprises and Cinematics. They faced competition from Nat Bailen, who believed himself the inventor of the peep show. He had made them in the early '60s to show children's cartoons at shopping centers and amusement parks. Later some of his machines were sold to a bookstore in Times Square which used to show porno. Underwood and Thevis set fire to Bailen's Urban Industries 4/27/70. On 11/13/70, they murdered a fellow Atlanta pornographer Kenneth "Jap" Hanna, who'd originally introduced Thevis to Underhill. In the fall of 1973, they knocked off an employee (James Mayes) who complained about his wages. Shortly after the killing, Underhill was arrested on charges of possession of stolen guns and the transportation of those guns across state lines. In 1976, Thevis was convicted to eight and a half years for arson conspiracy and interstate transportation of obscene materials. While in jail, Michael was ordered to pay more than $650,000 in damages to Urban Industries and their insurance companies. The IRS began investigating his taxes. His wife of 26 years divorced him. And Florida indicted him on racketeering charges. After getting paroled in January 1977, Underhill turned FBI informant in exchange for immunity for his crimes. Due in part to his assistance, prosecutors put together an airtight case of racketeering against Thevis. Before the information could be given to a federal grand jury, on April 28, 1978, Thevis escaped from jail. He was on the FBI's Ten-Most-Wanted List. "In addition, seven of his business associates, and four of his corporations were named in a fourteen-count Federal racketeering indictment. He was charged with the Fayetville bombing, the Louisville arson, extortion of money from a pornography distributor in Houston, and an attempt to kill a goverment witness. To make matters worse, he was indicted for the Jap Hanna murder. These indictments represented the products of Underhill's collaboration with the goverment. "Thevis may have suspected Underhill's role as a government informant, but he didn't know with certainty until the arson case was triedin Lousiville and Underhill testified against him. Shortly after the trial an "open contract" was taken out on Underhill's life, meaning that payment was available to anyone who killed him." (Porn Merchants, p.107) On 10/26/78, Underhill and a guest were killed by shotgun blasts. Michael was arrested and confined to a federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut where he confessed his crime to a cellmate. For the next two decades, Thevis remains in jail. His ex-wife, sons and former secretary Laverne Bowden are thought to control many of the pieces of his former empire. For years after the incarceration of Thevis, consumers in the Southeastern United States found it almost impossible to get porn. No other pornographer in the area had the resources or gumption to fight the feds and DAs bent on shutting down the industry. Thevis was due to receive parole in early 1998. 10/26/99 Does Tennessee porner Mike Skokolo = Mike Thevis Jr? A Mike Skokolo owns a bunch of stores up there (TN) and a 421 Corp based in Atlanta.... The 421 is almost certainly a shell and Skokolo has GOT to be a fictitious name. I know that Thevis Jr has had conversations and dealings with Michael Morrison. I also know that Morrison has tried to buy VCA on a couple of occasions. I do know that Skokolo is NOT Michael Morrison...or at least the guy who claims to be Skokolo is not.
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