The controversy surrounding the bars has rocked the Grove, but Cleary Spiller says she never set out to be a voice for victims when stories about Parlor and Takashima Records began spreading across social media. She simply felt that she could no longer stay silent about her own story. Salas had been a prominent member of the neighborhood's nightlife scene and she says the details coming out in June triggered painful memories.
A bearded 39-year-old with a "wolfpack" tattoo across his round torso, Salas first introduced himself to Cleary Spiller in February 2014 at the Grove hotspot Atomic Cowboy, she says. According to her, she was at the bar after a work event and was drinking a PBR. That sparked a conversation with Salas, then a sales representative for 4 Hands, about her beer preferences. Salas then went behind the bar with the bartender, she says. She recalls thinking it was weird that both men were at the tap to pour her drink, but she didn't dwell on it and accepted the beer. That's when everything went blank.
"The next thing I knew, I was blackout drunk," Cleary Spiller says. "People tell me I was out on the dance floor dancing, which is not me at all. From what I've heard, he told one of my friends that he knew where I lived and was going to give me a safe ride home. I came to for a second in his car with him taking a custom-made ring off my finger, blacked out again, and came to again with him in my bedroom on top of me and some other guy in the corner. He told me, 'Let me finish, then it's his turn.' That's when I started screaming for him to get out of my house."
Cleary Spiller says she immediately went to the hospital, where she had a rape kit administered and spoke with staff about her assault. After leaving the hospital, she says she went to the St. Louis police department to file a report but never heard anything else about the case and doesn't know if it was investigated. Contacted by the RFT, a police spokeswoman says she could find no record of a report.
Cleary Spiller says she was distraught about the ordeal and lack of justice, but ultimately filed away the pain and went on with her life — until she came forward with her experiences this June.
After posting her story, she was inundated with allegations that mirrored her own. As she read through them, she created the SurvivingSTL Instagram account to serve as a clearinghouse for so many stories of assault and survival throughout the St. Louis bar and tattoo community. She became increasingly disturbed, not just by the thought of an alleged serial predator abusing women throughout the entertainment district but, according to several of his former associates, that his actions might have been known, at least in part, by those in his orbit.
In a sworn affidavit given to the Riverfront Times and used with her permission, Nicole Casper describes a similar situation involving Salas. She says in the legal filing that she encountered him at a south-city bar one night after getting off work. Casper, who knew of Salas through the area bar scene, says he was sitting at the end of the bar with an off-duty St. Louis police officer. She left her drink unattended to use the restroom, and when she returned to it, she quickly "started feeling funny," she says. Dizzy and unbalanced, she knew she could not safely get home via the bicycle she'd ridden to the bar, and she vaguely recalls asking if someone would give her a ride home.
From there, she says, things went blank until several hours later, when she came to, vomiting over the side of a bed she'd never seen before. Salas was in the room, and she immediately asked him to take her home, she says. As he dropped her off, her statement reads, he laughed at her and told her to "call him sometime." Casper says in her sworn statement that she believes she was drugged by Salas based on the severity of her hangover; she describes feeling nauseated and like her skin was not connected to her body, uncontrollable shaking and a pounding headache, with her symptoms lasting for two days.
Like Casper, Cleary Spiller shared her account in a sworn affidavit, also obtained by the Riverfront Times, as part of a custody dispute involving Salas and Elizabeth Hely, who have a child together. In the pleadings, Hely describes being repeatedly assaulted by Salas. She claims he coerced her into sexual acts after their relationship ended by leveraging her housing arrangement. That ended after Hely began participating in services with Safe Connections, a local nonprofit that helps victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.
After learning of one another's allegations against Salas, the women now believe he is a serial abuser who was allowed to prey upon women for nearly a decade without ever being held to account. Those who know Salas suggest he was provided cover through his business and personal relationships with bar owners throughout the Grove, as well as his now-former role as a beer salesperson at 4 Hands, one of St. Louis' most prominent breweries. The gig regularly placed him in unofficial positions in which he encouraged bar patrons to drink, which his accusers allege gave him the ability to drug drinks and prey on women.
The situation is particularly vexing to several of Salas' former coworkers at 4 Hands, who claim that he was known throughout the company as a drunken embarrassment, even if coworkers and supervisors weren't aware of the severity of the allegations that would later surface.
"He was not anybody that was trusted, and there was a big wave of 'Steve is creepy,' and that's where you left it," says Tayler Barnett, a former 4 Hands employee who worked at the brewery with Salas in 2018. "That's generally where you left it: 'Steve is a sleazeball.' But none of us said anything because it was par for the course. That's who he was, and it was easier to be ignorant of that and not consider the circumstances that were enabling him to hold him accountable."
