MANATEE COUNTY — Prosecutors have decided to drop a soliciting charge against one of two 93-year-old men who were picked up during recent undercover prostitution stings. The state, however, will continue to pursue a case against the other elderly man.Carlos Underhill, 93, will not be charged, although he does not deny stopping to chat with the "good-looking girl" who made eyes at him and turned out to be an undercover cop. Underhill says that he was going to give the woman a ride because he saw her sitting at a bus stop "with her
He admits that he found her attractive, but that he found the sex talk confusing, and that he told her he had to come back later to wiggle out of the awkward situation. It was even more embarrassing, he said, to call his daughter from jail and ask her to pay his bond. "My daughter and I haven't talked about it since," he said.
Police say Underhill was willing to pay $30 for sex, and that he promised to come back a few hours later to consummate the deal. But prosecutors say that they cannot move ahead with the criminal case because there is no way to prove that Underhill planned to come back.
Underhill was fined $150 for trying to pick up a prostitute in 1990, when he was 75. In the February case, he says that he was not cruising Tamiami Trail for sex, and that all he wanted to do was chat with the buxom woman who smiled at him as he drove past. "All I was going to do was talk," he said Monday. "It wasn't for sex. I am 93, you know."
Meanwhile, in the case of Frank Milio, prosecutors have issued subpoenas and plan to take him to trial in April. Milio, according to police records, tried to pay $20 in November to an undercover officer on 14th Street West. Milio recently told the Herald-Tribune that he was only flirting with the woman. "I haven't had that in years," he said. "Ninety-three is kind of old."